Republican John McCain said Sunday that cutting taxes and stimulating the economy are more important than balancing the budget, and accused both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama of supporting tax hikes that would worsen the impact of a recession. "The goal right now is to get the economy going again," the GOP presidential nominee-in-waiting said on ABC's "This Week," adding that he would put the country "on a path to a balanced budget" by attacking wasteful spending.

Among other journalistic crimes in his softball interview on This Week, John McCain was allowed by George Stephanopoulos to waffle unchallenged on the question of tax cuts. McCain now fully embraces the cuts that he once said "offended his conscience."

The problem, of course, is that McCain is stuck in a trap of his own making. He can claim to cut $52 billion from the budget by eliminating earmarks, but then he ends up opposing funding that he actually supports. He can accept the actual figures for earmarks (about $18.2 billion), but then he'd have to concede that he isn't anywhere close to financing his lavish tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.