Republican presidential candidate John McCain may say that he is for regulation of Wall Street, but don't be fooled: He has been the champion of financial deregulation in the Senate. In 1999, McCain voted for a bill that removed the barriers between financial institutions so that investment, banking and insurance could enjoy more market freedom. Those barriers were put into place after the Great Depression to ensure that another economic calamity would not occur. But disaster has occurred as a direct result of McCain's 1999 vote. That bill, by the way, was sponsored by McCain's former campaign chairman Phil Gramm who insisted that we are in a mental recession and said that we have become a nation of whiners.
While plenty troubling in and of itself, McCain's vote for deregulation in 1999 is part of a broader pattern that has led us down the road to economic instability. Although he originally opposed President Bush's tax cuts as irresponsible, McCain now favors a tax plan that makes Bush's cuts look tame. Like Bush's so-called tax relief
McCain's plan would only further relieve the wealthiest few of their responsibility to society. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, by no means an economic leftist, has said that America can't actually afford McCain's tax plan unless spending is drastically cut. John McCain's solution? End earmark or so-called pork-barrel spending, which represents only a fraction of the federal budget and pales in comparison to the money being pumped, for example, into the Pentagon.
But perhaps the most troubling element of McCain's economic record is his position on energy independence ' or maybe it would be better to say his total lack thereof. McCain may be fond of saying that he favors an all-of-the-above approach to energy independence, but the truth is that drill drill drill is and has always been the centerpiece of his record on energy. In the recent presidential debate, Barack Obama pointed out that McCain has voted against alternative energy 23 times over the past 26 years. To take up an old presidential campaign slogan, Where's the beef? If McCain is for alternative energy, why does his record indicate the opposite?
If you watched the first debate, you may have noticed that McCain looked a bit squeamish when talking about the economy and that he didn't offer any concrete solutions to our problems. He should look squeamish, because he is directly responsible for the crisis facing our financial institutions today. He is also directly responsible for the overwhelming budget deficit and the high energy prices Americans are seeing in their utility bills and at the gas pump. And if he didn't offer any real solutions, maybe it's because the man who broke our economy doesn't know how to fix it. Then again, maybe it's because he doesn't think our economy is broken and that it therefore doesn't need fixed. After all, leaving Phil Nation of Whiners Gramm completely aside, it was John McCain who said that the fundamentals of our economy are strong. Maybe he's just been inhaling too many fumes during all those oil rig photo ops.
Nate Nelson is a junior studying political science. E-mail him at nn318806@ohiou.edu.
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