Good.
U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., may be throwing a monkey wrench into efforts to pass a $700 billion bank bailout, instead favoring alternative plans that looks to free up capital and credit markets via tax and regulatory relief while allowing financial institutions to temporarily skip dividend payments to shareholders.
Republican and Democratic officials in Washington said McCain was offering alternatives Thursday to the $700 billion plan backed by the Bush administration, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
That plan has the federal government acquiring bad mortgage assets from struggling banks with the goal of keeping them afloat and allowing more credit to flow.
McCain appears to be siding with conservatives and House Republicans who question the bailout and its costs to taxpayers as well as government rescuing private lenders and perhaps taking ownership stakes in rescued banks.
The alternative plan allocates less public money and relies more on tax breaks, lifting regulatory barriers and using less bailout-oriented mechanisms to free up capital and credit. It also seeks to create a privately funded mechanism to ensure mortgages and mortgage-backed securities.
One Republican official said McCain is standing up for taxpayers as he, President Bush, congressional leaders and presidential foe Sen. Barack Obama try to hash out a deal. A deal was close to being finalized Thursday but House Republicans and McCain are looking to get alternatives considered.
That’s exactly what he should be doing.
Then, there’s this.
According to Gingrich and Dick Morris on Hannity and Colmes, McCain has killed the Paulsen bailout and will present his own version, which will require the government to lend, not give the money, and regulations will be reformed and taxes will be loosened to help them pay us back.
Both Gingrich and Morris were giddy. They both said McCain has shown that he will stand up to anyone–including the president–to fight for the country, and he’s changed the argument: Now, the Dems support giving a trillion dollars to the Wall Street “fat cats,” as they called them over and over, but McCain has refused, in the name of the taxpayer.
Both Gingrich and Morris said that McCain had utterly and totally pwned the Dems, who will be forced to support McCain’s plan.
McCain will then go to the public and explain that Obama supported the bailout, but McCain crafted an alternative, despite immense pressure from the president and the Department of the Treasury.
As a bonus, McCain stood up for the conservative wing of the party, not the moderates, as everyone expected him to do. Both Gingrich and Morris said McCain has totally won the argument.
Let’s hope it all pans out this way.
I hate talking heads and never watch their shows, so no, I did not see Hannity and Colmes, because I hate that show. If it is true, I also don’t know that Newt and Dick have any idea what they’re talking about. Newt usually doesn’t run his trap without something behind it, but Dick Morris is another story.
I’ll be watching to see what happens, and what McCain does, and I’ll be posting about it. Got that doctor appointment today, sometime. Haven’t made it yet (they don’t start taking calls for another thirty minutes).
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