Fiscal Policy Discourse in the Presidential Campaign Is it discouraging or inconsequential that all of the three leading presidential candidates have been espousing inchoate fiscal policy from the stump, making claims sometimes divorced from reality, offering precious little to address the country's ailing fiscal condition? On the one hand, it must be counted discouraging that American voters are not being treated to straight talk about the tax and budget challenges facing the nation, after what the New York Times, in an editorial yesterday, called "rising budget deficits and mounting debt from nearly eight years of profligate spending and tax breaks for the wealthy." On the other hand, it may not matter. Any rational candidate must live in mortal fear of committing the notorious "Mondale sin" of 1984, when that year's Democratic presidential candidate suggested that a return to fiscal responsibility would involve raising taxes and went on to lose 49 of 50 states that November. Candidate Roosevelt mentioned the New Deal only once during the campaign of 1932. Not much is heard on the hustings of the increase in the national debt from $5.5 trillion when President Bush took office to a projected $9.5 trillion on the day he departs next January. Debate moderators haven't asked how the candidates plan to deal with this and the candidates have not articulated solutions. Bad enough. But as the Times editorial points out, what we are getting from the candidates on fiscal policy sometimes makes Charlie Gibson look like Larry Summers. According to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ): today's superlow tax rates on capital gains are important for working people with 401(k) retirement plans. Memo to Mr. McCain: 401(k) savers get no benefit from a low capital gains rate. All of the money in those plans is eventually taxed at ordinary income tax rates, not at the special reduced rate for capital gains. Both the Democratic candidates have promised not to raise taxes on middle-class Americans making $200,000 (Sen. Obama) and $250,000 (Sen. Clinton) a year. What, then, of Obama's promise to lift the current $96,000 cap on social security taxes? And what of Clinton's promise not to raise middle-class taxes to pay for her new health care and other programs when she doesn't spell out how she will pay for them? As the Times concludes: Perhaps the candidates are afraid the American people can't handle the truth about what it would take to meet the nation's economic challenges. Or perhaps they are underestimating those challenges. In either case, it's hardly confidence-inspiring at a time of war and economic crisis.