One Utah

Yesterday, at the insistence of Senator John McCain, there was a White House meeting about the Wall Street Bailout (aka Save the Billionaires Fund). According to witnesses, McCain sat silently through nearly the entire meeting until…

Towards the end, McCain finally spoke up, mentioning a counter-proposal that had been offered by some conservative House Republicans, which would suspend the capital gains tax for two years and provide tax incentives to encourage firms that buy up bad debt. McCain did not discuss specifics of the plan, though, and was non-committal about supporting it.

What a maverick! McCain torpedoed a serious discussion of what to do about the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression to promote a ridiculous idea that has already been dismissed as nonsense.

Think about it. Time Magazine’s Justin Fox:

[T]he House Republican Study Committee [plan] seems to be a joke. It calls for a two-year suspension of the capital gains tax to “encourag[e] corporations to sell unwanted assets.” But the toxic mortgage securities clogging up bank balance sheets are worth less now than when they were acquired. Meaning that no capital gains tax would be owed on them anyway. If you repealed the tax, banks would have even less incentive to sell them because they wouldn’t be able use the losses to offset capital gains elsewhere. Seriously, where do these people come up with this stuff?

Reportedly, McCain still hasn’t studied the details of the bailout proposals. He won’t actually say what his position is.

Tonight, Senator Obama has managed to corral the maverick into a debate on foreign policy. I’ll post more about that this afternoon.

UPDATE: The right-wing version of what happened claims McCain only “left the impression” that he endorsed the House GOP proposal in order to “get these recalcitrant Republicans on board.”

UPDATE: Based on personal experience, Matt Yglesias confirms that Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), who is pushing the right-wing proposal, “[H]as no idea what he’s talking about. The man is a fool, who deserves to be laughed at.”

UPDATE: Although McCain claimed he wanted to help facilitate a deal on the financial industry bailout, this afternoon House Republican Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that McCain was “very helpful” to the right-wingers because he “stopped a deal” yesterday.

UPDATE: I’ll let Spencer Ackerman have the last word here (except, of course, for our able corps of commenters).

So, in summary: Humiliating failure. John McCain didn’t screw the pooch. He was the pooch.

This entry was posted Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 10:20 am and is filed under 2008 Election, Disaster, Economy, John McCain, Republicans, This Blog. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.