Oh, please! McCain saw this coming? All he saw coming were the millions of dollars from the corporate donors his lobbyist pals represent, as he worked tirelessly for years to grease the wheels of the Fat Cat Express. Just check out the credentials and backgrounds of his campaign staff: they’re ALL lobbyists. He and his buddy Phil Gramm are largely responsible for dismantling the protections put in place the last time the Republicans drove the economy over the cliff and caused the Great Depression.
Next thing we know McCain will be telling us he has a secret plan to catch Osama bin Laden, or maybe his spokesperson will tell us he invented the Blackberry.
oh, wait. they both already did that.
Repeat after me: the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

2006
McCain: I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.

Gee, I wonder whatever happened to that bill?
IT WAS NEVER EVEN SCHEDULED FOR DEBATE. Nice work, cosponsor McCain!
Here are the facts, folks:
The Republicans had control of Congress for twelve years, until January 2006. During that entire period, they produced NOT ONE PIECE OF REFORM LEGISLATION. ZERO, ZILCH, ZIP, NIL, NADA, NOTHING.
The Democrats took over the House in January 2006 and a year and half later passed reform legislation. Them’s the facts.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k353gIczXPB8L4LFtF
Face it: The Republicans are FINISHED. If McCain thinks he can distance himself from Bush and this near-disaster after voting with him 90% of the time, he’s even crazier than he appeared this past week as he flip-flopped so fast even he couldn’t keep straight what positions he held.
Even now, Bush and Paulson have made it clear “that their primary, and perhaps only goal, was to stabilize the financial markets by removing hundreds of billions of dollars of `illiquid’ assets from the balance sheets of banks and financial institutions.”
Not a word from the Republicans about homeowners facing foreclosure. “But Democratic lawmakers INSISTED [caps mine] that any plan would also have to provide relief to families that were poised to lose their homes to foreclosure. The House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, said she would INSIST [caps mine]that the plan `uphold key principles–insulating Main Street from Wall Street and keeping people in their homes by reducing foreclosures.’”
New York Times, National Edition, 9/20/08, A14.
It’s the old, old story. Republicans ALWAYS want business to be free to act with impunity and they ALWAYS slash taxes on the wealthiest so that the rich can get even richer, and then when their unbridled greed and anti-regulatory fervor leads to disaster, they want the government to bail them out. Well, here we are. The Republicans have turned us all into socialists. In a week. And saddled every American and their children and grandchildren with a crushing burden of debt.
If it weren’t for the additional misery and certain catastrophe that a third Bush term would inflict on the country, I’d vote for McCain just to have the pleasure of seeing HIM try to clean up his own stinking mess.

Oh, and here’s the great reformers plan for reforming health care:
Let’s Make It More Like the Financial Industry!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/19/mccains-plan-for-health-c_n_127900.html
Honestly, I guess people who votd twice for George Bush will swallow anything. McCain certainly is counting on that.

Yeah…Huffington is one of those “neutral” sources, right? And Barney Frank is so non-partisan.
The fact is that McCain DID see it coming. The fact is, that although that bill died, another bill (sponsored by Hagel) was introduced in 2007 in the 110th Congress.
The fact is, he DID see it coming. The fact is, he was not able to vote on the bill in committee (he was not ON the committee). The fact is, there were twenty members on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
The fact is that Dodd, Reed, Johnson, Carper, Shelby, Bennett all are on the “top recipients” list of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The top recipient list consists of both Democrats and Republicans and Shelby (R) was the chairman of the committee at that time.
McCain did see it coming…but the committee was stacked against him. You may fault him for that, but that is the way congress works. A bill gets sent to committee and sometimes gets stuck there. I’m sure it has happened to Democrats also. It is not right…but it happens.

Jonathan Alter of NEWSWEEK reports in “McCain and the Zigzag Express”:
“In truth, McCain voted in favor of every deregulatory effort that came up for a vote during his 26 years in Congress and bragged well into 2008 about his free-market “deregulatory” bent.”

Do your homework, Mz. Ellen. There was only one bill, S.190, introduced by Hagel and never scheduled for debate.
McCain “fundamentally a deregulator” McCain isn’t going to get away with painting himself as born-again reformer when he’s built his entire career on deregulation.
NO WAY, NO HOW, NO MCCAIN.

The fact is, McCain was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee for many years. He had ample time and opportunity to do something if he “saw it coming,” and the fact is, he didn’t accomplish a thing.
This week he demonstrated that under pressure he gets muddled, angry and panicky, changes his position within hours, vehemently blames other people, and proposes ridiculous “solutions” off the top of his head, i.e., a blue ribbon commission to study the economy. (How DUMB is that, and what a typical lame reaction of someone who’s been in Washington way too long.)
He’s simply not Presidential material, regardless of his military service. Obama, on the other hand, was cool, calm and collected. He has surrounded himself with experienced and knowledgeable people like Robert Reich and Paul Volker among many others, instead of doing what McCain has done, taking his cues from among the 177 lobbyists on his campaign, many of whom were lobbyists for the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the banking industry.
Instead of shooting from the hip as did McCain and calling for the firing of Christopher Cox, head of the SEC (an action the president is not permitted to take) and by most accounts one of the most competent and trusted government officials closely involved in this crisis, Obama prudently and sensibly said that everyone should wait until the people working on the problem presented their plan before weighing in.
Even George Will said this morning that Obama looked and acted far more presidential than McCain in this crisis. It’s undeniable to anyone who isn’t totally in the tank for McCain.

Do your homework, Mz. Ellen. There was only one bill, S.190, introduced by Hagel and never scheduled for debate.
Senate bills “die” after 2 years. S. 1100 Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2007 was not co-sponsored by McCain.
Do your homework, Mz. Ellen.
I did.
Dole, McCain, Sununu sponsored s.109.
Dole, Martinez, Sununu sponsored s.1100
s.1100 is farther reaching than s.109, but it was introduced after s.109 died in committee.