Opinion: Alan Greenspan says U.S. can't afford McCain's $3.3 Trillion tax cuts

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McCain said he would offset his proposed cuts, which favors mostly the top 1 per cent of the income bracket.

He plans to achieve it by reducing the corporate tax rate, eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax and ending congressional pork-barrel spending (earmarks), unnecessary government programs and overhauling entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. His estimated tax cuts will be in the region of $3.3 trillion according to experts.

Greenspan said the country can’t afford McCain’s plans unless we cut spending. He told Bloomberg Television:

"I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money...I always have tied tax cuts to spending."

McCain used to say he is not an expert in economics and that he read Greenspan’s memoir (“The Age of Turbulence”) to learn about the economy. After hearing the comments from Greenspan, Democrats said McCain should read it again.

In a conference call with reporters, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said that even if McCain eliminates congressional earmark spending, estimated at $17 billion, it will not offset McCain’s proposed tax cuts.

"Obviously he needs to go back to that book and study it some more...That's a huge amount of money, but it's not even a drop in the bucket to pay for $3.5 trillion in tax cuts...So, every time he throws up earmarks and he's asked how he's going to pay for it, he knows he's being disingenuous, he knows he's not being forthcoming."

The McCain campaign said his tax cuts will pay off:

"John McCain opposed President Bush's tax cuts in 2003, because they didn't include the necessary spending controls. Sen. McCain's proposed job-growing tax cuts are modest in comparison to his plans to slow the exploding growth of federal expenditures — meaning that contrary to Chairman Greenspan's assertions, this relief isn't proposed on borrowed money."

It's true McCain opposed the 2003 cuts and earlier tax cuts from 2001, but now he says they will leave them intact. Obama has said he would repeal Bush tax cuts benefiting families making over $250,000 annually to pay for government programs and provide middle-tax class relief instead.

The inequalities of the Bush tax cuts that favored mostly the "rich" will in fact be sustained permanently with McCain tax cuts according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Already the country is reeling under huge federal budget debt/url] totaling $9 trillion, and I don't think McCain’s tax plans address how he is going to manage it. Instead, he will be adding it even more with tax cuts? There have been tax cuts under Bush administration for the past seven years, we can see how it has worked so far.