Senator McCain, I, I want to return to the issue about Afghanistan in just a moment because of its crucial importance, but I would like you to respond to your Senate colleague on this issue of the downgrade of America's credit rating, which is an important development. He calls it a tea party downgrade, reflecting dysfunction in our system. How do you respond to that? (There really seems to be no war that McCain doesn’t want to keep fighting and no amount of tax payer money that he isn’t willing to spend on it. Rumor has it that Senator John McCain doesn’t want to give up on the Vietnam War, and has even agreeid to go back to Hanoi Hilton if they'd just continue that war.)
SEN. JOHN McCAIN (R-AZ): Well, I agree that there is dysfunction in our system and a lot of it has to do with the failure of the president of the United States to lead. I would remind you that Republicans control one-third of the government. The Senate and the presidency are controlled by the Democrats. And the fact is that the president never came forward with a plan. Now, I was gratified to hear that he had plans, but there was never a specific plan. There was always the so-called "leading from behind." (Maybe what McCain is talking about is reversing yourself on nearly every position he’s ever held, like once being a leading advocate for a sensible immigration policy to McCain’s put up the "dang" fence in his campaign ad for the senate.)
Now, look, we could have reached an agreement a lot earlier, but the members of the House of Representatives had a mandate, had a mandate last November, and it was jobs and the economy and spending. And for them to then agree to tax increases and spending increases, which was obviously a repudiation of the mandate that they felt they had from last November.
MR. GREGORY: Right. But Senator, you talked about...
SEN. McCAIN: And again, the president has not led. Yes.
MR. GREGORY: You, you talked about the tea party.
SEN. McCAIN: Go ahead.
MR. GREGORY: I mean, you, you had some critical words. You talked about a rush in the House of Representatives to pass a balanced budget amendment as being foolish. There were Republicans and Democrats who said tea party members, a lot of them freshmen conservatives, were digging in and, actually, some used the word hostage, holding the whole process hostage because they would not raise any taxes at all. I mean, doesn't--it's not just you--you know, you know how Washington works. The president was dealing. John McCain--I mean, John Boehner was dealing. They were coming up with a plan. They couldn't sell it. Was this really failed presidential leadership?
SEN. McCAIN: I think it's failed presidential leadership when you don't put forward a plan, a specific proposal to work off of. Previous presidents certainly have when we are in a crisis. And by the way, talking about hostages, of lately the Democrats have been calling us terrorists. So we need to lower that level of rhetoric, obviously. But the fact is that we need to cut the corporate tax rate. We need to fix the tax code. We need to, obviously, have a, in my view, have a moratorium on new federal regulations. There's been thousands of pages of new regulations. By the way, one has been repealed. I'm sure you know, spilled milk. Thank God there's no longer an oil spill. We obviously need to do a lot of things. (I guess BP learned its lesson, as did Exxon several years before, and we should just let the oil companies take care of their own regulations. That's leadership.)
But remember, it was the housing market that triggered this crisis. We put liquidity into the financial institutions and obviously they're doing fine. They're sitting on a trillion and a half of cash that they're not spending. But the reality is that the housing market is what triggered this crisis, and it's going to be the housing market that recovers. (Absolutely the Americans should start buying houses like McCain. Ddoes he own six, eight or eleven houses now. Spending 11 million dollars on houses between the summer of 2004 and February 2011 – Politico 8/21/08)
And that means to me, go out and buy up people's mortgages as we did during the Great Depression, and give them a mortgage that they can afford the payments to make, and then we will begin to come out of this problem. And by the way, on the S&P thing, don't shoot the messenger. Is there anybody that believes that S&P is wrong in their assessment of this situation--the fiscal situation of this country? (Is there anyone who doesn’t believe S&P isn’t just another wing of the Republican Party?)
MR. GREGORY: Well, there are questions about what their rationale was. But I want to ask you again about S&P. One of the things you said as a presidential candidate and have been saying for a long time is that lawmakers were spending like drunken sailors in this town for years and we're now all paying the price. But this was the reaction in part from House Speaker Boehner, and I'll put it up on the screen. He talked about "decades of reckless spending cannot be reversed immediately, especially when the Democrats who run Washington remain unwilling to make the tough choices required to put America on solid ground. The administration," he says, "and Democrats in Congress had sought an increase in the debt limit without any spending cuts or reforms. Republicans made clear the American people would not tolerate that and fought for the largest spending cuts possible." Do you not see this downgrade as something akin to war that should galvanize political leadership on both sides of the aisle, rather than politicizing it?
SEN. McCAIN: I do. And I believe this special committee or select committee will now, I hope, have added incentive--without the president's input, by the way, this is strictly a Congressional committee that will address these issues. And the elephant in the room, as we all know, is Medicare and Social Security. (Couldn’t bet he endless unfunded wars he keeps voting for) And unless we're ready to reform those entitlements, we're not going to have a long-term fix for our fiscal problems. So let's announce to the American people that we are going to fix those entitlement programs which are unsustainable. Otherwise we end up like Greece, and then we'll be unable to provide those benefits. (I guess this is where we called for everyone to sacrifice. This means from the old, the sick and the children. McCain voted against helping support children’s health care again and again, with the exception of Bush’s give away to the insurance companies. McCain’s current wealth is estimated between 45 million and 100 million but some believe his and his wife’s assets would bring in over one billion on the open market. Despite this he still pull in $58,358 tax free dollars for his disabilities. Yet it is the elderly who needs to tighten their belts to continue funding more wars.)
McCain's wife's childhood home
McCain Arizona property 1
McCain California property 1
McCain California property 2
McCain Virginia property
"Voters care a lot more about candidates' personal ethics than about how many houses or residences or doghouses that John and Cindy McCain own," he said (Politico ibid)
"In addition, the McCains own a minority stake in the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team, a LOT of municipal bonds, JP Morgan mutual funds, and many properties in Arizona, including plots of raw land, a medical office complex and several houses." -- dinkfinance.com 5/24/08
I think shared sacrifice is more for some people than it is for others. Particularly for a man who in 2006 is paying $273,000 just for household employees. Maybe we should start cutting there.
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