Harry (white flag) Reid ran his mouth just to tell John McCain he needed to come back to D.C. and whip up support for the proposed taxpayer-funded mortgage bailout debacle:
Fearing a political backlash against Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has told the White House that it must serve up support from Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) if it hopes to ensure bipartisan backing for a massive economic bailout package by week’s end.
Reid made his position clear to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Monday night, as well as to his Democratic caucus, which shares many of the GOP’s concerns that the $700 billion bailout has been drafted too hastily and is a risky remedy for an economy on the brink of crisis. Reid, according to Democratic Senate sources, also wants assurances from Senate Republican leaders that an evenly divided, bipartisan group of Senators will pass any legislative fix so his party isn’t left with the burden of doing an unpopular White House’s bidding — again.
http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/12288264/c_12287342?f=home_todayinfinance
And insisted that McCain backed it:
Republican presidential nominee John McCain will support a proposed $700 billion bailout of the financial markets, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced Tuesday evening.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/reid-mccain-to-support-bailout-2008-09-23.html
Even though McCain doesn’t back the bailout:
John McCain, holding a roundtable this morning in New York to discuss the Wall Street crisis, said he has not expressed support for the administration’s bailout plan.
“I did not say that,” McCain said twice when asked about Harry Reid’s statement last night that he been assured of the GOP nominee’s backing of the pricey rescue.
McCain aide Mark Salter later told the pool reporter covering the event that McCain “hasn’t said that to Paulson or to Reid or to anybody else. He hasn’t said that to me.”
Joining McCain at the event were Mitt Romney, Meg Whitman, former Merrill CEO John Thain and private equity titan Henry Kravis.
Asked if the assembled group might share McCain’s distate for golden parachutes, he said: “I think this group of people are as knowledge on the financial status of America as any group of Americans that I can find and I’m grateful for their advice and council.”
But, he’s willing to place his campaign on hold to help.
John McCain will suspend his presidential campaign Thursday and has asked to postpone his debate Friday with Barack Obama so the two senators can return to Washington to help negotiate a Wall Street bailout, an approach that Obama promptly rejected.
“America this week faces an historic crisis in our financial system,” McCain said in mid-afternoon remarks to reporters in New York. “If we do not act, every corner of our country will be impacted. We cannot allow this to happen.”
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/24/mccain-suspends-campaign-to-help-with-bailout/
Obama at first refused to reciprocate, saying that it was a ‘disruptive measure’ (READ: McCain outflanked him), then agreed.
ABC News has learned that President Bush called Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., this evening and invited him to participate in a meeting about the Wall Street bailout bill tomorrow afternoon in Washington, D.C., with other congressional leaders, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
Obama accepted the president’s invitation, a source tells ABC News.http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/bush-invites–1.html
But, not to worry, Obama hasn’t stopped throwing mud in campaign ads, though.
So how goes Harry? Oh, forgeddabouddit. He was jes’ kiddin’. Especially since Obama’s AWOL status from this crisis would make them look just as lame as they are.
A Democrat tells ABC News that, in a phone call late this afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that it would NOT be helpful for him to come back to Washington, D.C., to work on the Wall Street bailout bill.
McCain this afternoon suspended his campaign and said he would skip the first presidential debate in order to return to Capitol Hill to work on the log-jammed Bush administration legislation, which, as of Wednesday afternoon, was in peril.
McCain had phoned Reid to ask about the prospects of him, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and others to sit down and work together on hammering out a bipartisan proposal.
……McCain senior adviser Mark Salter emails: “Yesterday, Harry Reid said that consensus couldn’t be achieved without John McCain’s leadership. John stepped up and is providing that leadership. Now Senator Reid seems to have changed his mind for reasons we’ll let him explain. But what he should understand is that this isn’t about Harry Reid or John McCain or Barack Obama. It’s about the American people and, in the words of Warren Buffet, the financial Pearl Harbor they’re facing.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/reid-to-mccain.html
The possibility of a successful tactic by McCain to help head off the crisis was just too much for the likes of Reid.
The Dems don’t give one hair on a dead rat’s ass if the economy tanks or if the bailout issue goes unresolved. They just want to continue the mess they helped create and blame it entirely on the
Republicans.
Yeah, it’s just a political gimmick to put the country first, Harry.
John Stossel clarifies the crisis:
The government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were created precisely to interfere with the housing and mortgage markets. In effect, Freddie and Fannie diverted money to people who wouldn’t have qualified for mortgages in a real private market.
Had actual private companies performed these activities, they would have been subject to market checks. But they were not. The results were predictable.
Now that it’s all tumbling down, the politicians and pundits blame the free market.
It’s not simply misunderstanding. It’s demagoguery by people who will never admit that their “progressive” social policies have spawned a taxpayer bill that boggles the mind.
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2008/09/24/what_happened_to_market_discipline?page=1
Here’s a link to a video that sums up the causes and consequences of the “Government Sponsored Entities”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5tZc8oH–o&eurl=http://boortz.com/more/video/what_caused_crisis.html
The Dems in particular, fed the subprime lending pig and forced banks to comply. The politicians who forced this financial rape on us will not be held accountable.
The bottom line here is that people and financial entities are being let off the hook by Democrats and Republicans for very bad financial decisions. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were train wrecks ready to happen and the thought of bailing out assholes who kept re-financing their mortgages ad infinitum into bankruptcy, as well as covering for the government’s mistake, makes me livid.
Fuck em’. No one bails me out of my debts.