McCain Critical Of Obama's Stimulus Bill
(CBS)
"There's too much spending, too much unnecessary spending, not the right kind of tax cuts and no end game," McCain said. "In other words, after the economy recovers, we should be on a path to a balanced budget. We're laying the biggest deficit on future generations of Americans in history."
The former Republican presidential candidate added that he "appreciates" the outreach Mr. Obama has made to Republicans, but "we're a long way away."
"I appreciate the fact that the president came over and spoke to Republicans on both sides of the Capitol, but now it's time to sit down and negotiate," he said. "Now's the time to sit down and take into consideration the ideas that we have -- particularly on things like tax cuts. We should have payroll tax cuts. We should be having… incentives for people to stay in their homes. There's a lot of other proposals we have. We think we need to eliminate a lot of the wasteful pork barrel spending that's been put in and have a real, meaningful stimulus package. We realize they need the package. We need the package, America needs the package, but we're not there yet."
In the interview, McCain was also asked about the new controversy involving former Sen. Tom Daschle's nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Daschle will be grilled today over his initial failure to pay back taxes.
"I'd like to see what he has to say and how this all happened," McCain said. "It's a bit mystifying how all this could happen, but I'd like to examine the details of it before making up our mind. But this isn't exactly the ethics and lobbying reform that the president announced a short time ago."
Click here to read more on the Daschle controversy.
McCain also weighed in on his home state Cardinals' loss in the Super Bowl last night.
"The old guy, [Kurt] Warner, almost won. For a change, an old guy almost won. I'm proud of him," he said.
Click here for more Super Bowl coverage
You can watch video of the interview with McCain below:
