Nancy Pelosi On Trickle Down Economics

Nancy Pelosi lashed out at President Bush's and Senator John McCain's economics policies.

This is what this is. This is the failure of an ideological “anything goes” economic policy. They call it the free market. Democrats support the free market and we want to encourage the markets. But it’s not a free market when you can run wild, anything goes, privatize the gain, nationalize the risk and when you fail, the middle class bails you out. It’s just not fair. It’s just not right.

So when John McCain says, when he told the Wall Street Journal, “I am the greatest deregulator you’ll ever interview,” what a sad boast. What a sad boast. Especially in light of the consequences of that deregulation.

McCain's chief economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin told Fortune taxes will have to be raised. Both McCain's and Obama's tax plans would not bring in enough Federal revenue. Journalist Matt Miller asked Holtz-Eakin why Republicans insisted on cutting taxes.

So why does tax-cutting mania persist among Republicans, I asked Holtz-Eakin, the McCain adviser--given...that, as Holtz-Eakin himself explain to me, taxes soon have to go up substantially in any event?

"It's the brand," he said, "and you don't dilute the brand."

Tax cuts are a sales pitch that tells Americans there really is a free lunch. We can have two wars, increase domestic spending and you won't feel it in your pocketbook. The economic policy is tax cuts for the top two brackets. The Tax Policy Center did a study of Obama's and McCain's tax proposals. The graph shows how both candidates would tax different income brackets.