This is a transcript of Arizona Sen. John’s McCain’s interview Tuesday (July 8, 2008) with Trib editors and reporters.
McCain: ... we've been talking about the economy a lot. And I am convinced, and by the way we have five Nobel Laureates and 200, 300 economists who think that we have a viable proposal that has to do with job creation, that has to do with keeping taxes low, with health -- affordable and available health care, and to making sure that our economy can recover in a robust fashion. Spending in my view is the major contributor to a lot of the economic difficulties we have today. We have allowed spending to get completely out of control. The size of spending has increased by some 40 percent, the greatest increase in "discretionary spending." The greatest increase in size of government since the Great Society. And we therefore ran up deficits and even though revenue increased as a result of tax cuts, it had no -- could not keep up with the spending increases. The symbolic aspect of this of course and very important aspect of it is the corruption of out of control spending. I noticed there is a poll today that showed the approval rating for the first time ever in single digits, approval rating of congress. I have not met the 9 percent lately that approve of congress, so we are gridlocked, we are -- the housing bill up before the United States Senate, with the housing problem that we have today, which by the way I have some problems with that housing bill, but it's better than doing nothing, and the home ownership bill.
Let's go out on recess, two things congress never misses, that's a pay raise and recesses, no matter what the situation is. So I'll be glad to talk to you about the economy and the economy and the economy, and home ownership and lower taxes and if you want somebody to raise taxes, I'm not your guy. I'm not your candidate. And I believe that raising taxes at this particular time in history could do very great damage.
Finally, I'd just like to say a word about -- I'll just stop there with saying we've got to restrain spending, we've got to restrain the growth of government, we have to keep taxes low and we can restore this economy and we can have a strong economy again. And a lot of it has to do with green technologies and achieving oil independence. We are watching probably the greatest transfer of wealth perhaps in history from the United States of America to the Middle East and other oil producing countries, $4 or $500 billion. That has a dramatic and significant impact on our economy, on our foreign debts, on the whole -- everything that affects Americans. Lowest income Americans are suffering the worst as a result of an increase in the cost of a barrel of oil because they drive the oldest cars and they usually have to drive the furthest. So it's a national security issue, it's an environmental issue, and it's an economic issue. And we have to be on the path to independence of imported oil, and I'll be glad to talk with you about how we do that with green technologies, with automobiles that will go 100 or 200 miles on a battery, on flex fuels, on hydrogen, on all of the innovation and technology that American can be motivated to move forward on. And it has to be a national mission that we have to embark on. With that I'd like to answer or any questions or comments you have.
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