While both presidential candidates enter the campaign's final week promising to be the better fiscal steward, each has outlined tax and spending proposals that would make annual budget deficits worse, analysts say, with Senator John McCain likely to create a deeper hole than Senator Barack Obama would.

McCain, the Republican nominee, has proposed bigger tax cuts. He has also promised more in spending cuts, but he has not specified where most of them would come from. Even now that the financial crisis has given rise to one bailout package and prompted both candidates to call for billions more in stimulus spending, McCain has stuck by his promise to balance the budget by the end of his term, a pledge that fiscal analysts call unachievable.

Obama, his Democratic rival, has vowed to reduce the deficit and put it on a path to balance. He also promises an expensive effort to make health care insurance more widely available, a raft of other spending programs and tax cuts for most families and small businesses. He would raise taxes on the wealthiest households to help pay for his health care plans.

Neither presidential candidate has provided enough detail, especially about spending programs and what they would cut, for budget groups to put price tags on their agendas.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • US Presidential Election 2008

1. Br. Michael wrote: This is really pathetic.  Of course both parties will increase the deficite.  In bad times that’s how you get out of them and in good times there is plenty to spend and deficites aren’t a problem.  Besides if either party actually does get serious, which will require that they inflict realn pain on numerical sufficient constitituancies the other party will demogogue them todeath in order to win the next election.  And so the cycle will continue, at least until the sustem collapses.  In which case both parties will blame the other. October 29, 6:40 am | [comment link]

2. Jeffersonian wrote: Br. Michael is sadly correct.  The public has been demanding what cannot long be reconciled:  Extravagant government goodies and low taxes. October 29, 10:21 am | [comment link]

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