Maverick
John McCain is facing a competitive Republican primary for his U.S. Senate seat. He’s facing wingnut former Rep. J.D. Hayworth and even wingnuttier Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Some of McCain’s previous votes are getting him in trouble so he’s trying to Castle. His latest move is to pretend he didn’t really vote for bank bailouts.
McCain sat down recently with the Arizona Republic editorial board. Reports the paper:
[T]he four-term senator says he was misled by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. McCain said the pair assured him that the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program would focus on what was seen as the cause of the financial crisis, the housing meltdown.
“Obviously, that didn’t happen,” McCain said … “They decided to stabilize the Wall Street institutions, bail out (insurance giant) AIG, bail out Chrysler, bail out General Motors … What they figured was that if they stabilized Wall Street — I guess it was trickle-down economics — that therefore Main Street would be fine.”
We all remember that McCain “froze” his campaign to go to Washington to deal with this crisis. Of course, McCain’s attempt to rewrite history is running up against actual history.
Here’s how McCain explained the bailout plan in a September 22, 2008 interview: “‘We’re going to take over these bad loans. And we’re going to have the taxpayer help you out. But when the time comes and the economy recovers, then anything that’s gained back is going to go to the taxpayers first.” As the Chicago Sun-Times explained in reporting McCain’s comments: “The plan would dole out huge sums of money to financial firms to purchase bad mortgage-backed securities so the firms can resume normal lending operations.”
In a speech the following day about improvements he was seeking to what became the TARP legislation, McCain made clear that he knew the measure was targeted at Wall Street, declaring: “No Wall Street executives should profit from taxpayer dollars … The senior leaders of any firm that is bailed out should not be making more than the highest paid government official.”
Has there ever been a bigger fiction story than McCain the independent maverick?
Tags: AZ-Sen, John McCain, Republican Hypocrisy, TARP
What do you expect from a guy who crashed five airplanes
McCain’s side of the story:
http://www.johnmccain.com/blog/post/senator-john-mccain-tarp-the-whole-story/
One excerpt, statement by McCain on 1/15/09:
The Senate considered the Resolution on January 15, 2009 and it was defeated by a vote of 42-52. Sen. McCain, along with 20 other Senators who were misled into voting for TARP, supported the Resolution of disapproval. On the day of that vote, Sen. McCain made a statement saying, in part: (4)
McCAIN: “Mr. President, I will support the resolution before us today and oppose releasing the remaining Troubled Asset Relief Plan (TARP) funds because I have seen no evidence that the additional and substantial taxpayers’ money will be used for its intended purpose. TARP was created to allow the Treasury Department to purchase up to $700 billion in “toxic assets” from financial institutions in order to help homeowners facing foreclosure and to stimulate the economy. The misuse of the first $350 billion of TARP funds combined with the lack of transparency promised by Secretary Paulson should be reason enough to oppose releasing additional funds. No further TARP funds should be released until we are able to impose strict standards of accountability and ensure that the money is spent only as intended by Congress — to purchase mortgage-backed securities and other troubled assets.”
So he voted for it before he voted against it.
Which adds a chapter to McCain’s flipfloppery here, but doesn’t change the facts of the original post.
Did you read the whole link, what McCain voted for was changed by Paulson. McCain’s comments about TARP seem consistent.
From same link:
However, on October 14, 2008, the Treasury Department announced that it was shifting its focus towards direct capital injections into banks — an option that Sec. Paulson explicitly rejected during his testimony to the Senate Banking Committee. This dramatic change was widely reported in the national press at the time.
According to a November 13, 2008 report in The New York Times: (2)
“The Treasury Department on Wednesday officially abandoned the original strategy behind its $700 billion effort to rescue the financial system, as administration officials acknowledged that banks and financial institutions were as unwilling as ever to lend to consumers. …
“Mr. Paulson conceded that he had scrapped the plan he originally sold to Congress in September, which was to have the Treasury Department buy hundreds of billions of dollars worth of illiquid mortgage-backed securities in order to free up banks to resume normal lending.
“The program is still called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, but it will not buy troubled assets. “Our assessment at this time is that this is not the most effective way to use TARP funds,” Mr. Paulson said.
“Instead, Treasury will step up its program of injecting capital directly into banks and, for the first time, expand it to include financial companies that are not federally regulated banks or thrifts.”