Advisors Debate Fiscal Policy

August 20 - The presidential candidates' debate on taxes and fiscal policy is making waves overseas. The BBC wrote an online article about a debate that Austan Goolsbee and Douglas Holtz-Eakin had on the BBC's World Service Report. Notably, the advisors clashed on issues like the individual and corporate tax rate, the U.S.'s dependence on foreign oil, and the need for closer oversight on the housing market. Holtz-Eakin said McCain would support policies for small business which would:

"keep them in a position where they don't have onerous health care costs and mandates to provide expensive benefits to their employees."

Goolsbee, on the other hand, stressed that:

"Failure to address the fundamental challenges of oversight of the housing market - an issue that Senator Obama identified 18 months ago - could prompt ‘a second wave of the foreclosure crisis in the United States.'"