Cooking the Books

The headline on Yahoo says: Greenspan: Country Can't Afford McCain's Tax Cuts.

When you click on the link, you get this page with a slightly different headline:

Greenspan: No McCain Tax Cuts Without Reduction

WASHINGTON - Alan Greenspan says the country can't afford tax cuts of the magnitude proposed by Republican presidential contender John McCain — at least not without a corresponding reduction in government spending.

"Unless we cut spending, no," the former Federal Reserve chairman said Friday when asked about McCain's proposed tax cuts, pegged in some estimates at $3.3 trillion.

Ah, but just who is pegging those estimates? The AP doesn't say. Here's the McCain campaign's take:

McCain campaign officials dispute the $3.3 trillion figure, saying it assumes eliminating 2003 tax cuts made by the Bush administration and then cutting from that higher level. They say McCain is proposing tax cuts worth $600 billion from current levels.

So, which number is correct? From the AP, we haven't a clue.

And the point of this article was...what, exactly?