Craziest Republican of the Day: (McCain policy advisor) Douglas Holtz-Eakin

By Michael J.W. Stickings

For claiming that Obama would be like Bush, in that his budget "is dedicated to the recent Bush tradition of spending money on everything." -- that, like Bush, Obama is fiscally irresponsible, and that an Obama presidency would be, fiscally speaking, just like the Bush presidency.

Hilarious, eh?

Think Progress guest bloggers James Kvaal and Robert Gordon of the Center for American Progress respond:

Obama also has expensive proposals, such as his health care coverage plan and middle-class tax cuts. But he is clear where the money is coming from: higher taxes on high-income families, ending the war in Iraq, selling the right to emit greenhouse gases, and cutting subsidies to oil and gas companies, health insurers, drug companies, and the student loan industry.

That's why the Wall Street Journal concluded that Barack Obama's budget "adds up, probably." But McCain's plan, it concluded, "would either cause the federal deficit to explode or would require unprecedented spending cuts."

McCain, of course, will stress his differences from one of the worst and most unpopular presidents of all time, but it is clear that in the most important respects he is either like Bush or worse than Bush. Take foreign policy, for example, where, as Slate's Fred Kaplan recently pointed out, he is much more of a neocon than Bush ever was.

And, in terms of fiscal policy, it is McCain (who has admitted that he doesn't understand economics), not Obama (who certainly understands that fiscal responsibility requires budgetary trade-offs), who would carry on the disastrous traditions of the Bush presidency.