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GUEST: Walter Williams, Distinguished Fellow at the Center for American Politics Public Policy, Professor Emeritus at the Daniel J Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington, co-author of “The Politics of Bad Ideas”

Republican Senator and presumptive Presidential candidate, John McCain has centered his platform for the US economy on President Bush’s tax cuts. He wants to make them permanent, despite evidence that they disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans. McCain has said that his programs would save $100 billion a year. But the Center for American Progress Action Fund questions that figure. They estimate that the overall cost of McCain’s tax cuts would be three times as much as the $100 billion he estimates that he can save. McCain is backing off from his original pledge to balance the budget by the end of his first term. A new book claims that Bush’s tax cuts have “harmed Americans and left the middle class in the worst financial straits since the Great Depression, creating a super-rich elite with the wealth and power to corrupt American democracy.” The book is entitled, “The Politics of Bad Ideas: The Great Tax Cut Delusion and the Decline of Good Government in America,” and is co-authored by Bryan D. Jones, and Walter Williams.