Okay, bear with me. Because I am bloody livid! Politico is reporting that both candidates are mulling being MIA if/when come voting time for the US Financial Rescue Plan..
McCain is already on record, being highly “uncomfortable” about this whole scenario… Well, count me as two there.
Sen. John McCain (R- Ariz.) has no plans to return to Washington this week, even though on Monday he expressed discomfort with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s trillion-dollar bailout plan and has offered his own rescue proposal.
“Sen. McCain is monitoring the situation closely,” said campaign co-manager Steve Schmidt on a conference call Monday. “We will see how this unfolds this week.”
McCain “retains his rights to evaluate it as it goes along and make a final decision,” said co-manager Rick Davis.
Obama’s camp isn’t responding with any more signs of leadership than McCain.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) also looks like a no-show.
Senior Obama strategist Robert Gibbs said the campaign would be monitoring the process as it unfolds this week, but as of Monday, the campaign would not commit to Obama making the trip back to Washington – even though the bailout proposal has taken a central role in Obama’s stump speeches.
“It’s safe to say people will know where we are,” Gibbs said.
Obama’s Veep did the ol’ “I’m monitoring” routine, with no commitment. What is it… did they all do a rare bipartisan talking point memo with the “monitoring” word?
Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), Obama’s vice presidential running mate, is also “monitoring” the bailout situation, said spokesman David Wade, calling the rescue legislation “a critical issue.”
Wow… that’s strong words from our choices, eh.
None of these candidates have high-pressure debates schedules, nor pressing engagements to keep them away from what is possibly more important than picking the next POTUS itself. And, it’s going to be a decision not in the hands of the American people (like the election), but by a Congress with deservedly record low approval rates.
So here we have three out of four are Senators vying for leader of the free world. And where are they? IMHO, playing dodge ball…
What was it Rudy said at the GOP convention?
I didn’t know about this vote “present” when I was mayor of New York City.
What “leadership”… what convictions. *NOT* Instead, it looks like we’ll be lucky if any of the three will take their Senate seats for this decision. This only compounds my disgust in having Senators for POTUS choices…. ick. Livid! I tell you… LIVID!
The only one of the four who’s demonstrated no fear to cast a vote for her opinion – whatever that may be – has no vote.
And speaking of Sarah… no official statements from her campaign yet. But I’m looking….
Vietnam era Navy wife, indy/conservative, and an official California escapee now residing as a red speck in the sea of Oregon blue.
My Congressional Rep., Darrell Issa, emailed me what I consider to be a very important and telling message: “My Decision to Oppose Bailing Out Wall Street with Taxpayer Dollars.”
http://issa.house.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=ENewsletter.Article&Article_ID=75
Thank you Mr. Issa for yielding to the will of your constituents. I wish you much continued success.
I would like to make this comparison. I’ve known for some time now that when a vehicle is involved in an accident, the insurance company will appraise the damage to the vehicle and then determine whether it is worth repairing or not.
The questions are these:
1. Do Americans need to gamble, without the right to enforce due diligence or have oversight?
2. And, do we want to play footsie with Fascism? Socialism? Communism? I say no.
3. But most importantly, is it worth $700 Billion to One Trillion dollars to America to provide a no-loss way out for those directorships involved in the businesses that are going broke?
Is the failure of Lehman Bros. and others something we can say is “totaled” or a lost cause? An important business principle is that you don’t throw good money after bad.
What could we do with the alternative? If we say we have $700 Billion dollars, can we do free market things that in our democracy will serve to strengthen legitimately the standards of capitalism and encourage others to assume the void left by the aforementioned failed businesses?
Other companies have failed in the past. Gulf+Western, CompUSA, Commodore Computers, Montgomery Ward, etc. And, get this, we still have oil, we still can buy computers, and we can still go to department stores. The continuum is a fact of life and a reality with Capitalism — a business opportunity.
Americans don’t need to imagine that the markets in which the failing companies live are very flush with prospective opportunities — it is a fact. There’s money to be made for those willing to invest and make prudent business decisions. Insurance and brokerage firms are rich businesses. There are, no doubt, investors and opportunists at the ready already. We should let the strength of the economy work for the better. And, we should never reward failure in the way the proposed bailout does.
Make no mistake, our American economy invented steroids. If we are to believe in anything at all, it is that our government should not get into business and that our economy really can do wonders. Americans are a resourceful lot.
John McCain should have retired from the senate to run full time for the presidency. Now he is in the position of being a no show for a vote that may affect deciscions he would have to make as president.
missvoting… so is Obama.
Now, it may be they both decide to show up. I doubt only one will. They will both stay away, or both go. If nothing else, for appearances sake.
But what I want from a leader is a defined decision maker. Both of these guys are sticking their finger in the wind, and I’m not one bit happy….
AdrianS: I can’t believe you actually got a communication from Issa. I’ve been trying for 3 years to get something from him and nada. Rudest office people I’ve encountered as well.
MataHarley: Take a few deep breaths. Neither candidate is POTUS, so has no say on what the Administration does, and neither candidate is on the banking committee or has any “jurisdiction” on the matter. They should stay out of it. Anything they say or do is going to be from a less than informed position, since they aren’t in Washington sitting in the hearings or in on any of the private meetings being held by Administration gurus.
I do so appreciate what is very logical advice, Sara. But that “less informed position” doesn’t make me feel much better… LOL
Fact is the majority of Senators who will also be possibly voting won’t be much more informed than either McCain or Obama because they also aren’t in the hearings or private meetings. And as the next POTUS, both should be receiving briefings and be in serious consultations with economic advisors in order to form an opinion to state to us, the voters. Not “monitoring”.
At least McCain first came out with a no, and then a very “uncomfortable with it all. That’s slightly better than Obama’s “no blank check” statement. Especially since the check isn’t blank. It’s capped at $700 bil. Nothing blank about that.
Is is too much to ask that before either of these guys asks me to put them in a new and more powerful job, that I ask they do the job they have now??
Is it also too much to ask for them to assess the situation, and come out with an opinion as leadership? Bush did… even tho I disagree with him to the mat. But at least he made a decision.”
AdrianS? Kudos to your guy! Not only took a stand, but as far as I’m concerned, took the correct stand.
Congress is responsible for this mess and it is up to congress to fix it. They need to repeal Jimmy Carter’s and Bill Clinton’s social engineering forcing banks to lend 100% loans to people who can’t afford to pay. What if all these mortgages were not bundled and put on Wall Street? They would still be owned by individual banks who would fail in the same manner. And it could be a whole lot worse in some ways and more widespread because every mortgage bank would be failing.
These CEOs and CFOs of these companies Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Lehmann Brothers etc) should be brought to trial just like the Enron executives were and made to return their ill gotten bonuses. If the FEC can go after Martha Stewart for that piddling matter they can surely go after guys who made millions by falseifing the accounting of their companies. But just watch the democrats in congress try to protect these scumbags. They are all in this together. The dem congresscritters are the crooked people in Washington and probably every democrat in congress got a piece of this pie.
This is not a case of the moral high ground. Or of should we do nothing. If we do nothing we will be in a financial mess. In fact the whole world will be in a mess. I was a child in the Great Depression and believe me it was no fun. No one had any money and no jobs either. My father had to go to NYC to work as a bus boy leaving my mother and two kids with her parents. My grandfather was a locomotive engineer and only worked two days a week. They fed all their realative and friends who otherwise would have starved. The repercussions of that depression lasted way past WWII. We only really began recovering in 1950s. Up to that time money was tight for just about everyone. The government caused this mess and they should clean it up. I have no faith that the democrats will do anything. They are great ones to stick their heads in the sand and hope for the best. Every time they try their hopey feelie crap it blows up in their faces because they are incapable of looking ahead to the what ifs
And as far as teaching anyone a lesson I believe the American people will be the ones to suffernot just these companies. And teaching someone a less worked so well in 2006 didn’t it?
Actually, that’s the 70s era banking… pre banks being able to sell their assets to each other and interstate in packages. And no, we wouldn’t have the same problem, BarbaraS. Because the banks wouldn’t have enough cash assets to float as many loans as they do. Once their cash ran out, their lending would be done… tapped out for their local area.
Also, they wouldn’t have been mandated to show numbers of loans to prove they weren’t redlining, and they’d only make loans they know wouldn’t “break the bank”, so to speak.
Congress needs to act by “unfixing” what they fixed, so to speak. But this socialization of bad debt is a bad move. It has as good, if not better, chance to make a recession (not depression) worse by devaluing the US dollar. We need to watch very carefully what they do. And I’m pretty darned convinced this $700bil buyout ain’t the ticket.
But, ya know, we’re just people, and Congress does what they want. Whatever they do, we’ll have to live with it, and boot their sorry butts out at the nearest opportunity.
I’d like to do a recall of both chambers, myself…
of that 700 BILLION the government is proposing to bail out Wall Street, why not give every American over 18 1 million dollars. This would make the US a country of millionaires and allow more people to buy homes, cars, pay off credit card bills , and it would cost the government a lot less than the 700 BILLION they are proposing….
Cathy
I keep thinking that McCain should be able to make serious “hay” about the earlier reform blockage from Congress. He should be hammering away at Obama and Pelosi. If Obama is conspicuously absent, McCain should be visible and vocal.
I want McCain to show more leadership. He needs to be working with both parties to look at alternatives and oversight. Instead, he seems to be in a peeing match with the NYT.
Also, where is Palin?
Yesterday, I sent emails to my Congress critters and did not hear back from them—yet. Regretably, my reps, Feinstein, Boxer and Farr don’t often follow my postions.
I’m tempted to write in Senator Demint for President….he is not afraid to stand up and make the difficult decisions!
Breaking: MCCAIN SUSPENDS CAMPAIGN TO FOCUS ON ECONOMY; WANTS DEBATE DELAY
Has asked Obama to come back to Washington and go to work as well. Obama to speak at 4PM.
http://drudgereport.com/flash1.htm