Business professor Chuck Skipton and more than 300 professional economists signed a statement of support of John McCain’s Jobs for America economic plan, McCain’s campaign announced yesterday.
The list includes Nobel Prize winners, business economists with experience in the private sector, policy economists with experience in government and academic economists.
Politico.com, however, reported that “The statement leaves out two big chunks of McCain’s economic argument: the gas tax holiday and his promise to balance the budget by the end of his first term — there’s literally nothing in the release that mentions the deficit or national debt.”
Another blog included Youtube video of a speech by McCain who said he didn’t trust economists because “they are the same ones that didn’t predict the housing crisis we’re in.”
Before the 2004 election, Skipton also signed a letter supporting Bush’s plan for economic growth. Bush, like McCain, is a Republican.
“I believe growth can be achieved by low taxes and stability,” Skipton told the St. Petersburg Times in 2004, noting this was merely his opinion and that Bush’s plan was “the best hope for the economy.”
Skipton, an assistant professor, teaches microeconomics and public finance and worked for the Joint Economic Committee in the U.S. Congress in 1999 to 2000.
Those signing the statement include Nobel Prize winners in Economics (Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Robert Lucas, Robert Mundell and Vernon Smith), former Presidents of the American Economic Association (Gary Becker, Martin Feldstein, Anne Krueger and Robert Lucas), economists who have served in the U.S. Treasury as Secretary or Under Secretaries (George Shultz, Beryl Sprinkel and John Taylor).
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