Both Candidates Urge Greater Oversight in Bailout Plan

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: New York Times

PHILADELPHIA — Senators John McCain and Barack Obama warned Sunday that there should be more oversight built into the government’s $700 billion plan to stabilize the financial markets but said the potentially enormous expenditure would not force them to scale back their ambitious governing agendas.

Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, and Mr. Obama, his Democratic rival, agreed in separate interviews that steps should be taken to ensure taxpayer dollars are not used to enrich the executives of troubled financial firms bailed out by the government. They echoed each other in assessing the threat from the financial crisis as severe enough to warrant government intervention.

But Mr. McCain said in an interview here with CNBC and The New York Times that he would press on with his plan to extend the Bush tax cuts and to cut others. Contrary to the warnings of fiscal analysts, he said he believed he could do so and balance the federal budget, which was falling deeper into deficit even before the financial crisis, by the end of his first term....

Mr. McCain also stuck by his support for allowing workers to invest a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes in stocks and bonds, an approach that Democrats call privatization and that Mr. Obama has used to suggest Mr. McCain would subject retirees to excessive market risk.

In a separate interview earlier in the day, Mr. Obama said that despite the huge new government obligation, he would press ahead with his plans to overhaul the health care system to insure more people, make college tuition more affordable, give a tax cut to the middle class and raise taxes on those making over $250,000 a year....

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/us/politics/22campaign.html?hp

[Miss Chybil]

1. Republican agenda: "We can't afford all these silly social programs

like health care, Social Security, food stamps, WIC, veteran's benefits. We had to bail out Wall Street and fight some wars. Now their's no money left. So solly."

[pattmarty]

2. It is simply fucking disgusting that we will spend AT LEAST......

.....700 billion on this fiasco and take that same 700 billion and spend on the programs you stated above. I think that all that money would pay for single payer healthcare (Medicare for all), education, and all the other social programs that either have remained unfunded or severely underfunded for the past 40 yrs. In one swoop we could fund them all with this kind of money instead of "wasting" it on this fucked up mess.

[QUALAR]

3. Mr Deregulator's Comments

I hope the voters are aware that McPander had his toes crossed when he called for regulation. In the debates, Obama needs to expose the shallowness of McCain's ideas for growth. How can McTraitor campaign on "country first" when he supported the awarding of contracts to foreign companies to build our presidential helicopters and military aircraft tankers at a time when American workers are being squeezed? The GOP have almost turned us into a third world country. It's time for a courtesy flush in Washington DC.