Profiles in courage? McCain, Obama may skip bailout vote

Here's a quick one this morning: The website Politico reports that  Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama may skip the vote on the Paulson bailout plan -- if and when the plan comes to a vote in the Senate. From Politico:

Sen. John McCain 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.

... 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.

The bloviation part: I hope no one will argue with a straight face these guys are too busy to go to Washington to vote. They both have access to jet airplanes. They make their own schedules.

This is a chance to show leadership. To date neither of these guys has shown much leadership on the subject -- neither bothered to even mention the credit crisis in their convention speech. Were they unaware of it? Forgot about it? Are they afraid to take a stand? Do these guys want to lead, follow, or do they want to get out of the way?

--Peter Viles

Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to Peter Viles.

Photo Credit: L.A. Times

Comments

[Larry Clifton]

this a classic case of la times manufacturing negative news and putting mccain's face on it. the la times, baby sister to ny times, a democratic party organ, believes that they are preaching a message to trinity church, but actually you are confirming what many americans have come to realize; that the la times is as much a part of the democratic party as howard dean or charles taxman rangel....
http://www.examiner.com/x-852-Atlanta-Civics-Examiner

[bob]

God! would someone have some gonads, please! I'm getting a new bumper sticker..."It's time to stand up-Hank/Hammer Paulson for prez!"

[John in SF]

I agree with you!
Thanks for pointing it out!
Seems like a clear lack of leadership on a HUGE social issue. I hope the mainstream media picks up on this so those enamoured with either candidate get a little peek behind the curtain!

[Shawn]

Seriously, they can't take a day off to do their job? They are still U.S. Senators, right? If they don't participate in the most important vote of the year, that doesn't show much leadership does it?

[Maggie Knowles]

Senator Obama
202-224-2854

Senator McCain
202-224-2235

Barbara Boxer
213 894-5000
202 224-3553
323 634-4917
415 403-0100

Diane Feinstein
310 914-7300
202 224-3841
415 393-0707

http://votesmart.org - look up your congressional rep contact info here.

The White House
Phone: 202-456-1414 Switchboard
Phone: 202-456-1111 Comments

Barney Frank (chair financial services committee)
202-225-5931

US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs
(202) 224-7391
membership: http://banking.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=
Information.Membership
membership votes on Financial Services Modernization
Bill
http://www.votesmart.org/issue_keyvote_member.php?
cs_id=V2238

Senator Christopher Dodd (chair)
202-224-2823

Senator Charles Schumer (member)
202-224-6542
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Go to http://FedUpUSA.org - Karl Denninger has a common sense plan, please check it out.

He says first we have to re-establish trust in the markets by 1. balance sheet transparency 2. give all banks 6 months to reduce their leverage (some are at 80:1!) to 12:1 and 3. credit default swaps - put these on a regulated exchange and null out the bad ones.

I'm calling my reps (or the legislative assistant handling the negotiations for this bill in Senator Dodd's case) and urging them to review Denninger's plan.

[arthur]

the whole plan is nothing more than corparate welfare. McCain and Obama should write their own bill together.

[Mark G. Christie]

This just goes to show you that they can't vote for the bailout and show support for the real ruler in this country, (Federal Reserve) they will lose the will of the people.
They can't vote against it, or they lose the support of the people they work for (corporations and lobbyist.)

[Shelley]

You should become more familiar with how Congress works before making statements.

The vote count is known before the vote is taken. It's not unusual for Congress members who are running committee meetings or campaigning for re-election to not return to DC if their vote won't make a difference in the results.

In the case of the bail out, both will most likely vote for whatever the bail out is. And most likely their votes would not be needed.

Now, if there was an issue where their votes would make a difference, they would return to Congress, and both have during this election run.

It's the sad truth of politics: members run for office, and when they're running, they're not on the floor at Congress.

Or in the state house in Alaska.

Frankly, I'd rather they not spend the fuel for is nothing more than a token vote. Or do we want to forget that oil and gas are a problem, now?

[K. Hillocks]

Irony: The bailout of our capitalist system smells a lot like socialism. It's not ok to regulate medical insurance, not ok to regulate emissions, it's not ok to regulate trade among multinationals - because that is socialism. Now the root of our capitalistic structure has destroyed itself and needs a bailout. Wow.

[DanVK]

The correct solution for the bailout is to make mortgage payments tax deductible up to $30k/year for the next 5 years. This would reduce foreclosures, increase the value of the mortgage backed securities, and be an economic stimulus. It is highly targeted and temporary. Mortgage interest is already tax deductible, so implementation is easy and could be done immediately. All the other proposals increase government spending and are much more complicated, including potential conflicts of interest. This plan, on the other hand, reduces taxes in a highly targeted way and solves the problem.

Why is the government overlooking such a simple and targeted solution? It would allow them to repair the root of the economic crisis without authorizing any new spending.

[sangjmoon]

I really don't like what the government has done by taking over Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, AIG, and funding various other major transactions because what they are doing is setting the stage for another similar problem just as the savings and loan bailout set the stage for later problems, but I understand why they intervened. Almost all of our major companies borrow money for day-to-day operations. This is because even if they make tons of money, they don't make it in a steady flow throughout the year to guarantee that they can pay for any specific day's cost of business. What the government saw was a run by investors away from banks which would eliminate enough money from being available for companies to pay for their day-to-day operations which would effectively stop the economy. Our economy runs on the trust of investors in the banks, and when too many investors flee to cash, the banks don't have the money to lend to the companies. What the government saw was another depression occurring. This wasn't because the economy wasn't fundamentally sound from a short term perspective but because the dip in available money for lending was far too low causing too much of a shock for the economy to ride out without significant damage which would take a long time to recoup. However, the root of the current problems causing investors to flee is because the government intervened in previous problems and causing investors to ignore valid risks in the future which eventually build up causing yet another big mess. What the government needs to do is extricate itself from this death cycle by interfering as little as possible even to the point where the economy may go down slightly because removing short term fear by investors shouldn't lead to them ignoring the riskiness of their investments too much as happened when bad mortgages were repackaged as investment vehicles leading to the sub-prime mortgage mess. It is the keepers of the federal purse, congress, that is to blame for their shortsightedness that has brought us to this point, and that means Obama, Biden and McCain. Of course they don't have time to make this important vote.

[Steven Wilson]

What the heck....go on a vacation while they vote why don't you.
Both these clipped soprano's should have never been given the opportunity to run for president.

They couldn't even get together to cook a Betty Crocker cake....let alone...run a country properly.

Obama...Biden...McCain...Paulson...and the rest of the ilk were sitting in their offices ignoring, or helping create this financial catastrophe.

Paulson helped create it.....shorted the subprime market making billions for his bank.....and now he wants to poor $700 billion dollars of tax payer monies out....to fix the mess he helped create in the first place.

None of these clowns is worth a plug nickel.

[TStock]

You should have seen these Kooks on www.thehumanhybrid.com .. Hilarious!

[Albs]

Bloomberg 2008.

=P

[gabe]

they are running for president of the US I think that warrants a day off. i mean their vote doesnt really matter anyway right? its going to be the same outcome regardless. quit being a bunch of babies. besides what do you expect from politicians they DONT HAVE REAL JOBS.

[matthew cooke]

At this point I really think the 2 party system is hurting America badly. Both candidates are pretty status quo. In terms of intelligence and national security obviously Obama is the pick. Palin disqualified McCain as nothing short of a politician to the core. But Obama's reversal on FISA, pro war in Afghanistan and total gung ho attitude about "free trade" is about as anti-working guy as it gets. Obama's the choice but I'd sure like more choices. What do you say LA Times? Cover more candidates please?

[Chuck Terzella]

What will happen is this...before the vote, both candidates will swear they're not going...on vote day, Obama will jump on his plane to fly to DC. McCain's people will hear about it and start their plane racing for DC to not be out-manuvered. The Air Force will see two large jets off their flight paths racing towards the Capitol and shoot them both down. After that it'll be a Clinton/Paul presidency

[tot]

This is a non issue. by the time this agreement is hammered out between the parties, it will probably be unanimous vote for or against. Therefore, even if Obama and McCain go back to vote their vote will probably not make a difference.

[Silverfern]

Publicmarkup.org is a fantastic new internet resource that posts government legislation and allows viewers to leave commentary regarding each section of the proposed bill. Addressed hereis the frightening treasury bailout bill proposed to cover the AIG (et.al.) collapse. If you are so inclined, join in on the public discourse!

[Russ Miller, Ft. Worth, Tx.]

Now, if we can only get the other 98 Senators to not vote.......

[renter2]

I agree w/ Maggie, I think Karl's plan is the best one, and will stop the bleeding! FedupUSA.org

[LA]

Thank you, Maggie.

[Silverfern]

The URL for public markup dot org did not show up in my post. Here it is again, without any HTML around it -- this link is for the treasury bill we are complaining about.

http://publicmarkup.org/bill/dodds-legislative-
proposal-treasury-department-aut/

[Giacomo]

Not to be too cynical, but both these candidates are calculating what they need to do to stay in the running, and it's a very close race.

Neither of their votes is likely to change the outcome, so any exercise of "courage" in this instance is largely symbolic. On the other hand, one of them could easily doom their bid for the White House by casting the "wrong" vote on this one issue (and alienating part of their supporters) while the other stays in the background, unscathed.

In other words, you can play of role of Courageous Leader this week -- and let the other guy be President for the next 4 years. Is there something smart about that?

[cas127]

Heh.

"Profiles in Cowardice"

These are the scumbags we have to trust with our lives and savings.