McCain's phenomenal grasp of economics

His top economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, now says that John McCain is an economic whiz (h/t VA Classical Liberal). I would never have guessed that.

Terry Gross: John McCain has said that the economy is not his strong point. That he doesn't know that much about the economy. Is that a fatal flaw for a president? Does it matter?

Douglas Holtz-Eakin: He has a phenomenal grasp of the economy and the remark he made is self-deprecating, that's John McCain in his truest form.

That was broadcast on July 24. On the same day Christopher Beam at Slate quoted Holtz-Eakin saying that McCain's comments on the stump about his own tax policies aren't always entirely accurate. At issue was a new study of McCain's proposals by the Tax Policy Center. It finds that McCain's public promises to voters cost two-thirds more over 10 years than the tax plan his economic advisers are providing to experts.

According to the study, the tax plan McCain’s campaign laid out privately is different from the one he’s selling on the stump. If you include the policies he has advocated publicly—such as repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax, increasing the dependent exemption to $7,000 right away, and reducing the corporate tax rate to 25 percent immediately—then the deficit after 10 years would actually be $2.8 trillion greater than if you go by his private plan. There’s also a rhetorical gap for Obama, but in his case the public version generates more revenue than the private one, thanks to a suggested hike in payroll taxes for people who make $250,000 or more. (Read the full study here [PDF].)

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s chief economic adviser, says the numbers he provided to the TPC aren’t secret—they’re the same ones he provides to anyone who asks. He also disputes the way the study takes suggestions McCain has made on the stump out of context. "This is parsing words out of campaign appearances to an unreasonable degree," Holtz-Eakin said. "He has certainly I’m sure said things in town halls" that don’t jibe perfectly with his written plan. But that doesn’t mean it’s official.

Commenting on Holtz-Eakin's attempt to explain away the gap between the public rhetoric and the private assurances, B. Furnas points out that the details of McCain's tax plan are not in fact publicly available. So who really knows what McCain's tax plan is?

I can believe that voters shouldn't put too much faith in whatever McCain tells them about his own fiscal policies. But how do you square that with the claim that he has "a phenomenal grasp of the economy"? And didn't Holtz-Eakin insist just two weeks ago that McCain's advisers don't speak for him?

Senator McCain made it very clear that Senator McCain speaks for Senator McCain.

Update [2008-7-27 0:27:12 by smintheus]: See also this excellent analysis of the Tax Policy Center's study by Gangster Octopus.