Last week was a truly Washington week to remember.
First up was the bailout package: failed the House on Monday, stuffed with pork and then passed by the Senate on Wednesday. As the House does not keep kosher, this stuffed pork chop passed through intact on Friday. In the meantime, billions in value melted away or rematerialized in minutes in the securities markets.
It was like picking petals off a daisy – “yes” we need a bailout, “no” we don’t. Like first time investors and other suckers, Congress took the bait – hook, line and sinker. And after the bailout was passed on Friday? The market dropped 157 points. Congress just learned its first lesson about markets: You can love stocks, but they don’t love you back.
But the week’s biggest loser (other than the taxpayers) was probably Sen. John McCain. Forget his “come let us reason together” rhetoric – he could have proved his self-appointment as the nation’s First Maverick by opposing the bailout. As the House found out, the public hates this bill, and McCain could have picked up some swing state voters had he opposed the plan. Instead he demonstrated bad economic electoral
strategy by letting Sen. Obama take this economic prize.
Now, the McCain- Palin advisers have decided to go negative on Obama’s background and colorful associates rather than fighting him on the economy. But had McCain stood with House Republicans and rallied against this Fat Cat Welfare Act and Pork for Dorks Act, he might have been able to something that has eluded Republicans for a generation: make the economy a Republican issue.
Now the campaign will amount to a contest between whose friends are worse, rather than the one thing the public needs above all: a real debate about exactly what it is Congress just did and why, under some new administration, this will never happen again.
Some Washington insiders have suggested that McCain can’t change his plan as it’s already been written. But the earth moved after this week, and he should remember something he must have learned in the military: “adapt, improvise and overcome.”
And I say let McCain argue his plan – it’s a flawed one. He’s basically running on a pledge to stop earmarks, pork-barrel spending and waste. It’s like running against sin: Who could be against it? So, why did McCain vote for a pork-chopped bill with tons of earmarks for everything from wooden arrows to tax breaks for alcohol in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands?
While the rest of the herd was planning the next disaster, where was their maverick this week? If I were Obama, I’d ask him outright: How is he going to get a bill passed in Congress without all those earmarks he says he doesn’t like?
McCain’s plan declares, “[T]he United States will be telling oil producing countries and oil speculators that our dependence on foreign oil will come to an end.” Once again, who could disagree?
The tricky little question is, How? McCain touts his “Lexington Project” as an answer. This project has set a goal of building 45 new nuclear plants by 2030 and creating 700,000 jobs. Even if Americans have come around on the issue of nuclear power, this is totally unrealistic because we can get no agreement on what to do with all that waste. And there’s the NIMBY (not in my backyard) local zoning and planning boards that are going to prevent the construction of these plants. I would like McCain to tell us where he plans to put the 45 nuclear plants.
What about McCain’s plan to develop green technologies? He’s offering a $300 million prize to improve battery technology. He also will issue a Clean Car Challenge to the automakers via a tax credit. That may have worked five years ago, but we just gave the automakers $25 billion in the most recent budget bill. How are you going to take a tax credit if you are not making money? Obama proposes taking real money and supporting American industry to develop these green jobs. That is the only way to do it. Why McCain does not revise his economic plan and do the same is beyond me.
Perhaps the biggest evidence that McCain got his economics degree on “Fantasy Island” is his plan to pay for the deficit by applying the savings from winning the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The memo this week from Afghanistan commander Gen. David McKiernan must not have reached him. McKiernan said the situation there will get a whole lot worse before it gets better. Unless McCain decides on day one to declare victory and then withdraw, we’ve only begun to “invest” in this war.
Maybe the senator and his staff should go back to school and take an economics course – because right now, the only school he’s graduated from boasts only two other graduates: Ms. Fannie Mae and Mr. Freddie Mac.
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