Greg Mankiw Praises John McCain

Greg Mankiw praises John McCain and suggests everyone read his speech to the Economic Club of New York:

Greg Mankiw's Blog: McCain on the Economic Challenges: John McCain gave a speech to the Economic Club of New York yesterday.... (Full disclosure: I was among a handful of economists working for Senator McCain during the 2000 presidential primary, and I even rode the campaign bus with him for a couple days, but I have not talked with him since then.) The whole speech is worth reading....

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McCain passes [the test] with flying colors. What the speech does not do, however, is propose specific policies consistent with these admirable generalities. But maybe that is too much to hope for at the beginning of a presidential campaign.

Here's what John McCain says about the fiscal policies of George W. Bush's administration and the Republican congressional leadership:

U.S. Senator John McCain: While booming entitlement spending threatens us in the long run, our short term fiscal situation is terrible as well. In the past six years, government spending has gone from irresponsible to utterly indefensible. The numbers should shock us, and government's indifference to them should shame us....

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Legislators pass pork-filled bills without the fear of public retribution or presidential veto. Federal spending, and the special interest earmarks that destroy the budget process and waste taxpayer dollars by the billions continues at a breakneck pace. Sadly, we haven’t reformed the bankrupt “tax and spend” policies.... We have, it is now evident, merely replaced them with a new and even more insidious scheme of “borrow and spend.”...