Prior to the crisis, McCain was promising to balance the federal budget by 2013, but the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that, at best, he'd rack up a deficit of $147 billion.

The committee estimated McCain's proposed tax cuts to cost $417 billion to $485 billion that year - based on his campaign's own estimates - but another group, the Brookings Institution-Urban Institute Tax Policy Center, said they could cost $700 billion, based on McCain's statements in stump speeches...

...At a post-debate panel sponsored by the New America Foundation on Wednesday, former Rep. Bill Frenzel (R-Minn.), a budget expert now with Brookings, said that all pre-crisis estimates have become "obsolete" - meaning, the new reality is much worse.

"Last night," he said, the candidates "were specifically asked about how their priorities might change and what sacrifices they were asking for. It's in the nature of political candidates to be cunningly evasive and they offered no clues to the answers to these questions."

He noted that Congress undoubtedly would add a new economic stimulus package to this fiscal year's spending agenda and "after last night, I have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach" about the nation's fiscal situation.

Another panelist, former Comptroller General David Walker, now president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, said that current deficits and the $10 trillion national debt were far from the full burden facing the next generation.

Entitlement promises - chiefly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits - amount to $55 trillion, constituting "massive taxation without representation."

"The low tax, high spending policies of the current generation is putting a burden on the next generation that is not only fiscally irresponsible, but morally reprehensible," Walker said, and added that, "I was disappointed in both of the presidential candidates" for not addressing the problem. LINK (subscription required)