Our guest blogger is Robert Gordon, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Tonight Charlie Gibson channeled cocktail-napkin economics to argue, with the certainty that usually comes only from religion, that cutting capital gains taxes raises revenue.

As Jason Furman explains here, and as Len Burman explains here, the best evidence suggests otherwise. Cutting these taxes may lead to a temporary spike in revenue, because people sell stock to realize gains while rates are low. But over the long term, the biggest owners of stock—the wealthiest Americans—will mostly save what they will save, regardless of fluctuations in the rate.

The Congressional Budget Office notes that “the potentially large difference between the long- and short-term sensitivity of realizations to tax rates can mislead observers into assuming a greater permanent responsiveness than actually exists.”

Charlie Gibson tonight misled millions of observers of a presidential debate.

Our guest blogger is Scott Lilly, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Alright, so maybe a candidate for President of the United States doesn’t need to know the first thing about the Federal Budget. That’s a job for staff—right? But what if a candidate for President doesn’t know anything about the budget and can’t hire someone who does?

That appears to be the situation that John McCain is in, based on the background provided today by his “Director of Economic Policy” Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters recently:

We have $60 billion in discretionary spending that was sourced to earmarks.

Holtz-Eakin says that money could be used to fix the repeal the alternative minimum tax. The problem is that virtually no one can find even a third that much money in the annual spending bills in earmarks.

The most credible effort at earmark accounting in recent years was completed recently by the Taxpayers for Common Sense. They did an exhaustive review of the 2008 spending bills and reported $18.3 billion in earmarks. The White House Office of Management and Budget scrubbed the twelve 2008 appropriation bills and came up with only $16.9 billion. Where does McCain’s other $41.7 billion come from?

There is virtually no explanation. Did Congress spend money in other areas that McCain is counting but neither Taxpayers for Common Sense for the White House counts? That seems to be a hard argument to make. For 2008, the President’s request totals $932.8 billion (not counting the pending supplemental.) The Congressional Budget Office scores the action taken by the Congress on the 2008 appropriation bills at $932.8 billion—exactly the amount requested.

There were some areas that Congress spent more than the President requested and other areas where Congress spent less than the request. But McCain would find it difficult in most instances to object to the judgments made by Congress, for instance the $3.8 billion to improve the quality of health care for returning veterans which was included in the final Military Construction—Veterans bill but not contained in the President’s request.

It is even difficult to imagine that McCain would want to get rid of all of the earmarks. $1.2 billion of which was for better housing and facilities for servicemen and their families at military installations around the world.

The disturbing point here, however, is that even by the loose rules of budget discipline used in Washington in recent years this accounting is completely off the wall. Revenue cuts that are offset by phony spending reductions simply add to the deficit and the nation’s long term debt burden. Senator McCain needs to detail his figures in a manner similar to the materials provided by OMB and Taxpayers for Common Sense.

During an interview on the Fox Business Channel yesterday, right-wing anti-tax activist Grover Norquist revealed that John McCain’s promise to fight corporate greed is simply empty talk. Norquist essentially stated that McCain has embraced an all-rhetoric, do-nothing attitude with regard to executive compensation:

CAVUTO: So when he [McCain] talks about CEO salaries that are out of wack, that is one thing you think he should stay out of?

NORQUIST: Well first of all, it doesn’t do any harm, the president can say anything he wants, I guess…As long as he’s not talking about legislation, let him talk!

CAVUTO: Alright, so the windfall profit tax-type stuff that we see out of Democrats on the hill, you do not see him subscribing to that?

NORQUIST: No, and that’s a very big difference…You can complain about something, but when you ask the government to come in…that’s slightly different.

In a separate interview on CNN’s Glenn Beck Show, Norquist told guest host Michael Smerconish that McCain’s tax plan is a greater version of the Bush tax cuts. “[McCain] has recognized and stated that [Bush's] tax cuts are what turned the economy around, that they’re necessary to keep the economy growing and that he wants them continued. He’s gone beyond that, to call for full expensing for business investment, taking the corporate rate from 35% down to 25%… ”

Watch it:

Norquist hasn’t always been McCain’s biggest fan. In 2005, he called McCain was a “tax-increasing Bolshevik.” But now that McCain has outsourced his economic agenda to Grover Norquist, Norquist is singing a different tune.