Democratic Senator Barack Obama said there should be several conditions on an emergency US$700 billion government plan to prop up the critically ill US economy, while Republican Senator John McCain challenged his opponent’s readiness to lead the country out of its financial nightmare — one of the most serious economic meltdowns since the 1930s Great Depression.
Sunday marked the opening of a campaign week that will see the candidates engage in the first of three presidential debates — slated to focus on foreign policy — an issue in which McCain, a four-term senator, claims the advantage over Obama, who is serving his first term.
But while Friday’s debate will likely reap a massive TV audience, polls show US voters are far more concerned about their economic well-being than any other issue in this year’s presidential election, including the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
PHOTO: AFP
And given voter anxiety about the teetering US economic situation, both candidates hammered what they claimed was the other’s ineptitude.
At a campaign stop in North Carolina, Obama focused on the financial turmoil and again blamed it on Republican policies he said McCain was committed to continuing.
“We’re now seeing the disastrous consequences of this philosophy all around us, on Wall Street as well as Main Street,” Obama said.
“Yet Senator McCain, who candidly admitted not long ago that he doesn’t know as much about economics as he should, wants to keep going down the same disastrous path,” Obama said.
Obama said the Bush administration’s proposal to put a floor under the dangerous US economic slide carried a “staggering price tag” but no plan to guarantee the “basic principles of transparency, fairness, and reform” to taxpayers who will pay for the huge and unprecedented government bailout.
The Bush administration is pressing Congress to pass the bailout measure by the end of this week.
But Obama on Sunday said any bailout must include plans to recover the money, and protect working families and big financial institutions, and be crafted in a way to prevent such a crisis from happening again.
“This plan can’t just be a plan for Wall Street, it has to be a plan for Main Street. We have to come together, as Democrats and Republicans, to pass a stimulus plan that will put money in the pockets of working families, save jobs, and prevent painful budget cuts and tax hikes in our states,” Obama said in in North Carolina.
Aides said Obama had spoken with US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, congressional leaders, former US president Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in fleshing out his approach to the bailout.
McCain, at a National Guard convention in Baltimore, Maryland, said Obama was behaving more like a politician than a leader, faulting him for not offering a plan to stabilize financial markets after a crisis in the mortgage industry led to the collapse of two investment banks and the government bailout of housing lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and insurance giant AIG.
“At a time of crisis, when leadership is needed, Senator Obama has not provided it,” McCain said. “Whether it’s a reversal in war, or an economic emergency, he reacts as a politician and not as a leader, seeking an advantage for himself instead of a solution for his country.”
Obama had previously declined to offer a financial recovery plan, saying he wanted to allow Paulson to address the matter without political intrusion.
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