Follow this link to see the McCain ad that prompts this comment.

McCain still doesn’t get it.  Normally you do not cut federal spending when the economy goes into a recession.  Cutting spending does not create jobs, it kills them. Cutting spending was part of the Hoover plan during the depression.  Even Roosevelt was unaware, at the beginning of his term, of the problem that budget cutting causes.  It took the economist John Maynard Keynes to explain it.

The problem with the current economy is that business and consumers are too afraid to spend money, and rightfully so.  This behavior creates a downward spiral for the economy.  If you give people money in tax breaks, it goes right to savings if they can afford to save.  They want to set aside money for a rainy day. The banks don’t want to lend the money that people are depositing due to the same fear. Money not circulating causes the economy to contract.

When things get really bad, the only way to get money circulating is for the government to spend it to buy things. If the government buys things that are investments in economic growth, then so much the better.

This is how we got so much infrastructure built during the depression of the 1930s.  We are still benefiting from the dams and other items that were built back then.

Such investments could be roads, public transportation, airports, water treatment facilities, schools, funding of science and engineering research and development.  Blowing up the money in Iraq is not such an investment.

By the way, if the rich get too fearful to spend their money, then the government may have to tax some of  it and spend it.  Otherwise, its trickle down is not even a trickle.