Candidate Policy Comparisons

As an engineer, I am commonly comparing a two or three different options in a simple table. It is a great way to compare things. I really have wished to see something like this for our candidates (presidential or otherwise) in this and past elections. For some reason I never seem to be able to find them.


Anyway, I ran across a nice article comparing the proposed tax policies between McCain and Obama and thought it was going in the right direction. They have a nice table in the upper right corner "Breaking the Numbers Down" that shows some estimates about how different income levels will be effected by the proposed changes. At the very least take a look at the table if you don't want to read all the text (I don't blame you).


Here.


I don't want to get into McCain's policy vs. Obama's here, but will comment on one snippet that I thought was interesting (since I think both candidates are going in the wrong direction):

Under both plans, all American taxpayers could pay a price for their tax cuts: a bigger deficit. The Tax Policy Center estimates that over 10 years, McCain's tax proposals could increase the national debt by as much as $4.5 trillion with interest, while Obama's could add as much as $3.3 trillion.

What's the deal with this? Last I checked the national debt was already at 9+ trillion and this is impacting the value of the dollar in the world economy. Now I am no economist, but why is neither candidate pushing for a balanced budget? Republicans -- what happened to fiscal conservatism? Democrats -- what happened to reversing the mistakes of Bush? We should be paying back our debts to China, not incurring more. If that means higher taxes, I don't want to pay them but I understand it may be better for me and the country in the long-term.