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McCain: Working Families to Blame for Mortgage Mess |
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Across the country, the collapse of the housing market has created a crisis of foreclosures that is dragging down the economy. Finding a fair solution for this mess should be a top priority of the next president.
So presidential candidate Sen. John McCain must have a plan to address the crisis, right? Not so. In fact, the Republican from Arizona blames the millions of America’s working families who have lost their homes. They, says McCain, caused the economic downturn.
Of those 80 million homeowners, only 55 million have a mortgage at all, and 51 million are doing what is necessary—working a second job, skipping a vacation, and managing their budgets—to make their payments on time. That leaves us with a puzzling situation: How could 4 million mortgages cause this much trouble for us all?
It’s just another example of how McCain—by his own admission—“never really understood” the economy. (McCain now denies he said that; who wouldn’t, running for president?) In the face of the nationwide crisis brought on by predatory lending, stagnant wages and vast wealth inequities, McCain says it’s the fault of home owners.
McCain compounded the outrage of his comments by making them before a California audience. California has been hit hard by the housing crisis. The state has the second-highest foreclosure rate in the country, with more than 57,000 foreclosures in January—120 percent higher than in January 2007.
McCain, and the lobbyists who run his campaign, has raked in money from the banks and mortgage lenders whose irresponsibility helped create the crisis. So he can’t point the finger at them—he needs the campaign cash. Meanwhile, although he hasn’t shown up in the Senate too often to vote in recent months, in 2005 he voted against a bill to discourage predatory lending.
(Check out Think Progress on McCain’s record of denying assistance to home owners.)
Union members, who understand what McCain stands for, aren’t letting him get away with it. While McCain and his wealthy supporters held a $1,000-a-plate private fundraiser yesterday in La Jolla, more than 50 union members from the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council gathered outside to educate people about McCain’s record. The California events follow similar actions in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Missouri, all part of the AFL-CIO’s nationwide McCain Revealed campaign to get the word out about McCain’s anti-worker record.
McCain’s failure to offer real solutions to the housing crisis is part of his anti-worker votes on health care, trade, taxes and more.
As writer Ed Kilgore notes, “McCainonomics” is equivalent to “You’re on your own.”
…the GOP candidate thinks those suffering from the housing crisis had it coming. Yeah, that’s right: after laying out McCain’s commitment to corporate tax cuts and a tax-credit based initiative to encourage individual health insurance, he goes on at some length excoriating those who would take action on the housing crisis, and setting forth strict conditions for participation in existing housing relief programs. Market forces will apparently take care of the problem one way or another.
It may take a while, but Americans troubled by the economy and the housing crisis will eventually get the message that John McCain’s idea of economic leadership is pretty much limited to high-end and corporate tax cuts, free trade agreements, an attack on appropriations earmarks, and whatever he means (beyond his support for Bush’s Social Security privatization scheme) by “entitlement reform.”
California’s union members will keep up the effort to confront McCain on economic issues. They rallied today outside a McCain event in Newport Beach and will gather tomorrow at McCain fundraisers in Los Angeles, Pebble Beach and San Francisco.
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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education (COPE) Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
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McCain basically told homeowners to drop dead in this speech, while suggesting that banks need *less* regulation. More at http://xpostfactoid.blogspot.com/2008/03/mccain-to-homewners-drop-dead.html
Only a friggin republican would say something this moronic once again protecting those low life predatory lending companies while the average american joe blow once again gets screwed over!!!
I certainly want to thank Sen. McCain for setting me straight about who is responsible for the mortgage crisis. All this time, I thought it might be due to the paycuts taken in 1993 when my company threatened to go bankrupt and then in 2006 when I was forced to take a 19% paycut then the paycut was reduced to 11.5% when my company did go bankrupt. I also mistakenly believed rising healthcare costs and the increase in fuel prices might have contributed. Boy, was I dumb! Thanks, Senator. I will start looking for that second job tomorrow. I am sure there is a company out there that will hire a 53 year old female, high school graduate who has a lot of health problems.
The problem remains: their mistakes don’t seem to weigh as heavily as those made by the Dems.
Look at it this way: their guy has gotten over 4,000 of our forces killed; has been responsible
for chaos in Iraq, helped promote economic disaster here at home; can barely use his own language; promotes hostility around the world toward our country . . . and . . . yet . . . no Democratic candidate is a shoo-in.
McCain obviously has no touch with reality or the common worker.
McCain has repeatedly said for the past several years that he does not understand economics, and therefore really doesn’t understand this country’s primary existence which is capitalism. Who in the world would want this guy to be president for any reason. The truly sad thing is that he has made no effort, whatsoever, to learn how this country functions, nor to understand what fiscal responsibility is. Well, that’s Bush all over again. Ask any hardworking individual out there about prioritizing expenses and budgeting, and they will certainly know. McCain, as well as Bush and Cheney have had everything handed to them; they have no idea what it means to work and struggle to make ends meet. They have no qualifications to run this country and get us out of debt. They have no sense of the American people, have no understanding, and certainly no compassion.
A much better president for this country is one who really understands economics, or is smart enough to take under advisement those that do, and to really listen to what works and what doesn’t. Blaming the American people for their economic woes is like blaming the American people for the Iraq fiasco. Let’s have true leaders instead who take full responsibility for their actions and make the necessary changes that will be good for this country.
We should all wake up and smell the coffee. If we don’t fight for ourselves, we are all going to perish. America is gong down faster than a comet. The government has imposed too many taxes on us., because the government is giving too much of our money away to foreign countries. And why borrow money from China and Japan in the first place. And why are we accepting items from China and Japan that are poisoning us and our pets. and if government wants privatizations on social security why don’t the all the government officials start their own social security system and leave ours alone. They don’t pay one cent into social security but they sure draw from the system when they retire. That’s not all, the government has a way of getting their hands any excess and that must be left in the system if we are to have the benefits we have paid for. Then, just like the gas taxes that we have paid in to pay for roads, we have to pay more social security taxes to make for the money the government takes out. When are we going to stop them? Then they allow any money lenders to charge us 25 to 30 percent repayment? That is not right. From mortgages, to credit cards, to any type of loan, they should not allow us to be charged more than 5 to 8 percent. That’s enough of a repayment for anyone to get and it would give us a chance to live also. And the employers’ should pay all health insurance for employees and make it so the employees didn’t have to pay any out-or-pocket spending. After all, without us, they wouldn’t have a business. And the American government should prohibit any company from being able to go outside the US to open plants. In other words, the American government should be for Americans.
Years of being a North Vietnamese POW have turned Senator McCain into a heartless man incapable of human compassion. But I am shocked that he blames the crisis on irresponsible borrowers. Does he forget that he has voted for NAFTA and says he will continue to support free trade even through this is the cause of America’s economic woes today.
All I hear is how McCain is blind to what is going on in the “mortgage crisis”. The government (aka taxpayers) is not responsible for the irresponsible actions of lenders. McCain has not categorically stated that he is against assisting true victims of the “crisis”. He has said he is against an industry bailout which would cost us (the taxpayers) billions of dollars. He is referring to speculators, people who purchased second homes and the like. Everone else suffering, guess what, it’s not the government’s (taxpayer’s) fault you were had. Someone convinced you that you could afford a house way beyond your means, with little or no down, and with that nice, little, free-market twist, an adjustable rate which is contingent on the market (meaning it can go up!). Sorry, the government (meaning me as the taxpayer) should not pay for that. Until a law is passed that says you have to prepare loan documents written in first grade English, that says, if you sign on the dotted line, you could lose everything if the market changes, we can all be convinced to do something against our interests. If it feels uncomfortable when someone says you can afford something that is worth more than you have ever earned, listen to your gut. To those who have been affected by job loss and cuts, the present economy would have made no difference. You still would have been in this boat. To quote my sister, “It doesn’t matter how good the economy is if I don’t have any money.”
Maybe McCain is against a bailout for the mortgage crisis, but he certainly wasn’t against the bailout for the Bear Stearns Investment Bank. According to our government, it’s OK to bail out banks and any other large corporation, even if they mishandle funds, but it is not OK to help Americans try to save their homes and find a way to get out of debt. Something is very wrong with this picture. McCain supports Bush and does not believe the American people are worthy of some kind of help. Be it that they have overstepped in what they believed they can actually afford, but when one takes out an adjustable rate mortgage, one does not expect it to increase so drastically that foreclosure is inevitable. Where is the real “Truth in Lending” that is supposed to be in all contracts, one that actually puts things in black and white and real dollars and cents, with reasonable interest caps? McCain has stated that if he becomes president he will give incentives to businesses in order that they can remain profitable. He has said nothing about average hard-working Americans. And I believe McCain’s definition of the “true victims of this crisis” are the banks and other lending institutions, certainly not the homeowner.
PS: If you live in a high rent area, like most big cities are becoming and your rent is $1200 a month, and you are offered a mortgage for $800 a month, even on a risky loan, what would you do? Many, many people have chosen the latter. The fact that this type of loan was even offered in the first place is the real despicable cause of this mess.