McCain's Economist

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/business/23leonhardt.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=McCain%20Economist&st=nyt

Douglas Holtz-Eakin took as the director of the Congressional Budget Office in 2003, and left in 2005 on a very good note, being said that he was “an exemplary leader,” by Senator Conrad. Now Holtz- Eakin is the top economic advisor of John McCain’s campaign. His academic work focused observed the effect of taxes. He is fifty years old, which is nearly ten years older than the average economic advisors for presidential campaigns. McCain and Holtz- Eakin met during the 2000 presidential election and automatically their personalities clicked. “Both of them are economic conservatives who focus more on the need to restrain government spending than on the social good it may accomplish.” And when Holtz- Eakin claimed that he is getting too old for this job, John McCain told him that he “can’t say that,” considering McCain himself is 71 years old. Holtz- Eakin started using dynamic analysis as it should be used and was underestimated by both parties, but it ended up working out, because tax rates really do change people’s behavior.
I think that McCain made the right decision having Holtz-Eakin as his economic advisor. They both get along great and they agree on spending being the chief long-term problem. Holtz- Eakin believes that we cannot just use taxes to solve this problem, because it is much bigger than that. The spending will continue and adding taxes will just be more costly and not help the spending problem. Federal taxes right now add up to about 19%, which is pretty average throughout the years. But due to Medicare and Medicaid, the taxes will have to rise to an uncontrollable amount of 30% and higher in the future. That is absolutely absurd if we did that, because it is not possible to just use taxes to fix everything. Holtz- Eakin seems as though he has a good plan and I think he has a good plan for our countries economics.