Posting a response....

(I'm posting the full response to a friend of mine who had a comment left in her Facebook about McCain and the current economic mess. Suffice to say, I think we're going to disagree...)

With all due respect -- our GDP was soaring pretty good in the 1990's. Our unemployment was lower than what this administration has accomplished. Our energy prices was significantly lower than what we face today. We had a very strong dollar and we even had a budget surplus of a true sign of things to come.

So when you're claiming that "raising taxes isn't going to help this economy" there's a surprising disconnect between what was accomplished in the 90's and today. The Democrats want to restore taxes to the levels they were in the 1990's -- which -- by the measures I've already indicated, still functioned incredibly well in a perfectly fine flourishing economy.

Yet when you compare the national spending over the last 30 years it would seem that the economy did better under Democratic leadership and not that from the Republican party. Reaganomics may have jolted the economy, but at the expense of an explosion of our national debt -- something that Bush 41 and Bush 43 has continued to pile on.

Bottom line: Trickle down economics hasn't benefited the American economy -- in fact, the spigot is looking pretty dry at the moment. Not when jobs are going overseas and our work force has to shell out more money for education so that they can support their families. Not when salaries continue to stagnate or even start to dip.. Not when the average tax-paying American family can barely keep up with the rising cost of living, cost of health insurance while enduring a substantial spike in energy prices. You can forget the entire notion of investing because most families are simply trying to make ends meet. Trickle down economics seeks to preserve the incredibly obscene profits that CEO's and stockholders who stand to benefit at the expense of the hard working American worker.

If you inject the American tax-payer more money -- they will spend more. Look at the comparison of rising salaries and consumer spending. So why not put MORE money in the hands of the consumer while re-instating our taxes back to a period of time that actually worked.

However, I am in agreement that borrowing from other nations is an exceptionally horrid problem -- but when we have Republicans cutting taxes and willfully spending to their fingers break off -- then I'm dumbfounded how you can support the likes of John McCain.

Especially after his chief adviser is Phil Graham -- who orchestrated the extensive deregulation process when he was Senator. Especially after McCain has come out completely in favor of deregulation that we currently have -- as well as FUTURE deregulation when it comes to his health care plan. He wants to make the deregulation efforts of the banking industry to become the template for his plan for health care!

We also can't forget that McCain's own association and portrayal during the entire Keating-Five scandal should lay a pretty significant precedent to his thoughts on deregulating the markets and letting them crumble as they have. Taking a laissez faire approach to the economy -- letting them sort things out -- is the kind of inaction that got us in this financial mess in the FIRST PLACE!

I'm also a little shell-shocked of the apparent approval of our foreign policy. Why do you think other nations look at the United States with a sense of scorn and dis-taste? Why do you think the world doesn't really take us seriously right now? When you thumb you nose at the world, do whatever you want to do (invade whatever country you want to invade), and then sit and stay quiet like some petulant child who didn't get their way ... that's not a well established foreign policy.

Iraq will falter - because this administration has refused to address the Shia problem. Our agreement with North Korea appears to be falling apart. We stoked the incursion of Russia into Georgia by calling for the deployment of a missile shield in Turkey. We are currently in a stand-off with our "ally" after trying to go after Al Qaeda and the insurgents in the mountain ranges between Afghanistan and Pakistan. All the while we've let Al Qaeda grow back to pre-9/11 levels by not addressing the existence of their camps in northern Africa and Southeast Asia. Oh - and we continue to sit idle and let the genocide to continue in the Sudan.

And for someone (McCain) who has continually supported the decisions of this administration -- foreign and domestic -- if you're absolutely sold on the idea that we need another 4 years of the last 8 years -- then that makes absolutely no sense. If you believe that we don't need any change -- if you believe we don't need to regulate our markets or to continue this perverse approach to being a world leader by unilaterally bombing countries who had no linkage to 9/11 .... and if you think we don't need change .... then .... then .... what else can I say, but I'm shocked.