Kasich: GOP debate "about telling the truth"
Ahead of the Republican party's third primary debate, where GOP front-runners Donald Trump and Ben Carson will be standing at center stage, Ohio Gov. John Kasich is critiquing the "fantasy games" he believes certain candidates are playing with American voters.
"I think tonight is about telling the truth," Kasich told CBS News' Major Garrett in Boulder, Colorado. "I just had a U.S. senator call me and say, 'Please stand up and tell people how it works.' Stop these fantasy games that we can see.'"
Kasich slammed the various policy proposals of GOP front-runners like retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and billionaire Donald Trump, calling them at some points "fanciful" or "nonsense."
Kasich, who once chaired the House Budget committee, called Republicans' proposed tax cuts "crazy" and suggested that they are "going to put us so far in debt it is going to wreck our economy."
Some economists agree with the Ohio governor. According to experts, GOP contenders' proposals on tax cuts could cost the U.S. up to $3.6 trillion to $12 trillion over the next decade.
Kasich also ridiculed immigration policies put forth by some of the Republican candidates, particularly those seeking to deport all the illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States.
"Can you imagine trying to deport 10 million people from this country?" the Ohio governor asked, a pointed reference to Trump's plans for undocumented immigrants. "How do you even practically do it?"
While candidates' proposals may appeal to right-wing hardliners, Kasich said that the ideas simply aren't practical.
"The problem is," he continued, "these are promises from people that don't know how to run the place, or from people who should know better about how to run the place."