Today, Martin Feldstein and John Taylor, two of Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) economic advisers, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal claiming that McCain’s tax plan is designed to help “all Americans,” “especially those in the hard-pressed middle class,” and that “Mr. McCain will bring the budget into balance.”

In reality, McCain’s plan will significantly favor the ultra-rich and America’s largest corporations over the middle class, while driving up the federal deficit. Here is a dissection of the McCain campaign’s argument, and why McCain’s plan doesn’t really help “all Americans”:

CLAIM: John McCain’s tax policies are designed to create jobs, increase wages and allow all Americans — especially those in the hard-pressed middle class — to keep more of what they earn.

FACT: McCain’s tax plan delivers almost half its benefits to the top 1% of taxpayers, and gives the top 0.1% a $1 million tax cut. The only middle class tax cut his campaign can cite is “drill, drill, drill.”

CLAIM: Mr. McCain’s plan will significantly ease the tax burden on American families with children by doubling the personal exemption to $7,000 from $3,500.

FACT: According to the Tax Policy Center, “although this provision is sometimes described as a doubling of the personal exemption, that is true only in the first year, and then only for lower-income married couples,” leaving everyone else out. Every other family’s exemption is not fully phased in until 2016, and “because it is not refundable, it is worth nothing to poor families and little to many in the working-class.” Over 100 million families receive no tax cut under McCain’s plan.

CLAIM: Mr. McCain will bring the budget into balance.

FACT: As the Wonk Room has previously noted, McCain could not balance the budget with his current tax proposals, even if he cut ten cabinet agencies. His budget would create the largest deficit in 25 years.

Of course, the McCain campaign already has a history of disconnect between what it says and what it means. This op-ed is no exception: when McCain says his plan helps all Americans, he means the wealthy and the Fortune 200.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Anchorage Daily News reporter Gregg Erickson described Governor Sarah Palin’s relationship with Alaskan lawmakers:

Washington, D.C.;: You wrote: “If you took a poll of reporters and legislators I expect her approval rating would be down in the teens or twenties.” What do they know about her that the general population does not?

Gregg Erickson: One example: The Republican chair of the Alaska State House Finance budget subcommittee on Heath and Medicaid says he can’t find anyone in Palin’s executive office who cares about helping bring that budget under control. He is furious with her about that.

John McCain has a similarly cavalier attitude about the federal budget.

He has proposed a budget-busting $300 billion tax cut for corporations and the wealthy to go on top of a continuation of the Bush tax cuts. Paying for these huge tax cuts, which leave out over 100 million American families, would require massive draconian cuts to education, scientific research, Medicare and Medicaid, and other important national investments.

More likely, however, they would just lead to massive deficits.

UPDATE: The Washington Post reports today that Palin “employed a lobbying firm to secure almost $27 million in federal earmarks for a town of 6,700 residents while she was its mayor.”