Obama and McCain stir each other on economic matters

Brunei News.Net
Thursday 7th August, 2008

White House hopeful John McCain has suggested what he calls a "policy surge" to balance the teetering US economy.

McCain, despite new polls that show Barack Obama is leading the economy, said the right approach to stem a tidal wave of job losses and home foreclosures would be to create an economic surge to keep jobs turning over.

The Republican presidential candidate, speaking at a cabinet factory in the state of Ohio said: "Our surge has succeeded in Iraq militarily. Now we need new markets for US goods abroad, lower healthcare costs and for an assault on out-of-control spending by the government and Congress.”

McCain called for lower business taxes and said his rival Barack Obama would raise taxes on business, income and investment.

McCain said: "Raising taxes in a bad economy is about the worst thing you can do because it will kill even more jobs when what we need are policies that create jobs."

Barack Obama later savaged the Arizona senator as a self-promoter who could not fix Washington's fractured policies.

Obama said he agreed with McCain's recent assertion that America's dependence on foreign oil had been caused by the failure of Washington politicians to think for the long-term over the past 30 years.

"What Senator McCain neglected to mention was that during those 30 years, he was in Washington for 26 of them," he said.

A recent CNN poll has said Obama is, by a 54-43 percent margin, seen as the better choice to fix the faltering economy, which is well ahead of the Iraq war as voters' top concern.

Another poll by Time magazine gave Obama a 43-39 percent edge on the economy.

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