by hilzoy
John McCain, Jan. 30, 2008:
"What I'm trying to emphasize, Anderson, that we are in a very serious challenge right now, with a lot of Americans very uncertain about their future, and we've got to give them some comfort. We've got to give them some stimulus."
"Republicans managed Wednesday evening to block a relatively expansive and expensive economic stimulus package championed by Senate Democrats, who could not muster the 60 votes needed to advance their plan to a final vote.The Senate vote was 58 to 41 on a motion to curtail debate on the package of tax rebates and business incentives, which would cost $204 billion over two years."
The stimulus plan actually lost by one vote, since Harry Reid had to change his vote to "no" in order to be able to bring it up again. 99 Senators voted. Who was the one Senator who couldn't be bothered to show up? John McCain.
Despite what he said in the debate, John McCain does not seem to favor attempts to stimulate the economy during a recession:
"McCain has not joined calls for immediate fiscal stimulus, setting him apart from all his leading opponents in the presidential race except for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.On Wednesday, a top economic adviser to his campaign sharply criticized the stimulus plans floated by the White House and the leading presidential candidates, declaring that they amount to “borrowing money from the Chinese and dropping it from helicopters.”
“Just raining cash down — which seems like what Congress wants to do—is not going to have much of an effect,” declared Kevin Hassett, a senior McCain adviser, who appeared on a panel at the New America Foundation alongside the economic advisers to the leading Democratic candidates. Hassett is the director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute."
If John McCain wants to disavow all of Keynesian economics, he might at least be straightforward enough to show up and vote against the stimulus bill, rather than claiming to be in favor of "giving them some stimulus" in the debate and then just not showing up to vote on a measure where his vote could have made all the difference.
[UPDATE: Via TPM, the AP:
"Senators in both parties prepared to greet the presidential race's front-runners Wednesday, as McCain, Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., left the campaign trail to vote for a proposed $205 billion economic stimulus package. McCain returned to Washington but made an eleventh-hour decision to skip the vote, aides to his campaign said."
He was actually in DC When he skipped the vote? Sheesh. END UPDATE.]
***
On the subject of McCain, I'd like to echo Jack Balkin, who quotes McCain from last October:
"Of presidential candidates like Mr. Giuliani, who say that they are unsure whether waterboarding is torture, Mr. McCain said: "They should know what it is. It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture.""
Balkin notes that the White House has now admitted that we used waterboarding, and asks:
"Will you condemn the White House for its latest admission? (...) Do you agree that the Administration is subject to criminal liability under the torture statute and the War Crimes statute? Do you agree that the United States, under the leadership of George W. Bush, has committed war crimes and has stated that it sees no obstacle to doing so again?The country awaits your answer."
I'm not holding my breath.
I'm not holding my breath.
Gallows humor or unintentional?
Posted by: Portia | February 07, 2008 at 12:39 PM
More straight talk.
And, no. That never gets old.
Posted by: Model 62 | February 07, 2008 at 12:41 PM
Actually it lost by 2 votes.
After realizing it would fail, Reid switched his vote to No so he could bring it up again later.
Posted by: MNPundit | February 07, 2008 at 12:41 PM
I'm not holding my breath for McCain to answer about waterboarding, but unfortunately I'm not even holding my breath for anyone in the McCain-worshipping media to ask the question. Maybe we can convince Tim Russert that it's one of those stupid gotcha questions he's so fond of, and he'll ask it in a debate.
Posted by: KCinDC | February 07, 2008 at 12:54 PM
The electorate demands their checks!
McCain is a dolt, but he is right. I’d respect him on this one if he had had the stones to cast a vote.
Borrowing one hundred and fifty billion dollars to buy votes by giving cash handouts that people will use to buy things that aren’t produced here will do nothing but further sell-out future generations.
If the goal is to bring jobs back to the US, eliminate the Commerce Department, for starters.
Posted by: Bill | February 07, 2008 at 01:11 PM
Did Romney just drop out?
Posted by: someotherdude | February 07, 2008 at 01:18 PM
Bill is right
- anything other than a VERY careful stimulus package is just compounding the problem. And I doubt the senate is capable of proposing one of those.
The problem is it isn't very good election policy to be against lolly scrambles. Of course what The USA needs is a president with the stones to stand in front of them and say -
"this is going to hurt, but if you want us to have a decent future your going to have to suck it up."
straight talking express? maybe after the election - but probably not even then....
Posted by: GNZ | February 07, 2008 at 01:57 PM
"borrowing money from the Chinese and dropping it from helicopters"
That's gotta be the fifth or sixth time I've heard that said, in those exact words, over the past few days by Republicans --- Judd Gregg, Larry Kudlow's panel of experts texperts choking smokers, see how they smile, like pigs in a sty, see how they snied, among others.
Let me see now, I'm not the one who suggested moving a good part of our manufacturing base offshore so that the rest of the world could finance our government and let the Republican Party get away with massive tax cuts and letting Americans off the hook for paying for their own $3.5 trillion vanity wars.
It wasn't my idea to jettison all efforts to come up with some alternative energy backstops over the past 28 years because we should let the dumbass, oafish market decide after the fact that maybe it might be in our collective American interest to do so.
It wasn't my idea to have the regulators and the rating agencies stand down (since defunding them totally might let EVERYONE know that the Republican revolution was hatched in a lockdown ward at the local libertarian insanity spa) and watch as the mortgage market held hands with the designer pickpockets on Wall Street and whipped the ponies into a lather as they rode the wagon filled with mystery paper over the cliff, taking us with it.
And they told us (Kudlow, baby) we were flying. Look at all the little cars and people down below. What abyss? I can see my house from up here.
It wasn't my idea, first of all, to propose privatizing the Social Security and Healthcare safety net with one hand and with the other hand create financial markets that are so unstable, so thrilling, so illiquid, so opaque, so sophisticated (as in: even the sophisticated reach around to grab their behinds and find out their butts are owned by a portfolio with a dropbox in Barbados).
Expect "borrowing money from the Chinese and dropping it from helicopters" to be amended by these folks as we go into November to "borrowing money from the Chinese and dropping it from helicopters so that 12 million little Islamic Mexicans can swarm in and pick it up before we've even had a chance to abolish the IRS so that we can round em all up and deport them within the first 100 days of a Republican Presidency and cut taxes to zero and completely stiff the Chinese, our mortal enemies who we're going to borrow even more money from so we can afford even more helicopters which should be used for their God-given purpose of getting blasted to smithereens over the next 100 years in Iraq."
And get off my grass!
Really, I didn't suggest any of that. But if things turn out O.K., I'd be happy to take credit.
Posted by: John Thullen | February 07, 2008 at 02:03 PM
a dropbox in Barbados
The tax lawyer would like to point out that there's nothing wrong with dropboxes in Barbados. Nothing at all. Nope.
Posted by: Ugh | February 07, 2008 at 03:09 PM
Re: McCain and waterboarding.
If Sen. McCain made a public statement pledging to prosecute everyone involved in waterboarding (and sensory deprivation, "long-time-standing," hypothermia, stress positions, etc. etc.) for war crimes/crimes against humanity if he became president, I very well might change my mind about him.
I would be very surprised, naturally. But I would be most impressed.
Posted by: S.G.E.W. | February 07, 2008 at 09:37 PM
Cry me a river over KSM being waterboarded. He cut off Danny Pearls head, but then you have to realize, Pearl was a Jew, and his mother was a Jew, so that makes it all right because "Isreal" is almost as evil as US.
Posted by: DaveC | February 08, 2008 at 12:27 AM
Incidentally, I'd like to make clear, that not only am I antisemitic, but regardless, the Jewish people have authorized me to announce that we've authorized DaveC to speak on our behalf.
Eventually, he'll be so very authorized to speak for Jews, that he'll learn to spell the name of the Jewish State.
And that no intelligence professional believes KSM killed Danny Pearl.
I, myself, as an antisemite, however, don't care about the Jew Pearl's death. That's why I care about the rule of law, and not making the shades of the Gestapo and the NKVD proud of us. Because I don't care about Jews, or antisemitism, or Israel.
The best way to honor the Jewish people, and to speak out against antisemitism, is to speak up for the techniques of the Gestapo. Because if it's only done to 3 people, that's not so bad. The Talmud doesn't say that the death of an individual is the death of a universe, and that that's the importance of one individual.
In a little-known passage, which Jewish expert DaveC is familiar with, unlike so many, the Talmud has a superseding passage, which states "the death or suffering of up to three individuals, don't worry about it."
And don't worry about precedents, either. Us Jews never do, and we have no concern for, or history of, the importance of strict observance of the law, so why should you?
I just wanted everyone to be clear about modern Judaism, which DaveC now speaks for.
There, DaveC: I hope this response makes up for whatever bad it is that happened at home that you're acting out against here.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 08, 2008 at 12:59 AM
C'mon Gary: those three individuals had very small universes. Be an ubermensch about it, let it go.
Posted by: Anarch | February 08, 2008 at 02:10 AM
"Be an ubermensch about it, let it go."
This was a classic, by the way.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 08, 2008 at 01:37 PM
(:
Posted by: Anarch | February 09, 2008 at 12:34 PM
A golden thread, with just that touch of lead to make the gold shine more brightly.
I missed in Mr Thullen’s masterful account mention of trading our gold for the power to drive our economic engine into the ground along with our atmosphere and a few other incidentals, so that the kindly sheiks thus enabled are able to take the increasingly tedious New York banks off our hands, or at least help bear the burden. As they take more control they may be able to straighten out the mess somebody made on Wall Street.
Parenthetically, a conundrum. The US gets lots more oil from Canadians than Saudis. Why are there no Canadian sheikhs?
And perhaps above all we must raise a sigh of gratitude and relief that we are no longer obliged to look down on the rest of the world and have them looking back at and up to us with those damn big eyes and trusting looks. (Did they really trust us? Suckers.) The trade within developing nations dwarfs their trade with us allowing them to stand clear of our crumbling economy while still supporting what’s left. Capitalism has triumphed. I think. Just maybe not so well for us as it turns out. And it feels so good to no longer have people looking at us expecting us to be the conscience for the whole damn world. Now we can thrash and throw our diminishing weight around however we like, show how tough we really are.
The end of an empire. Maybe we can get back to being human and civilized now.
Mr. Thullen would say it far better of course. I hope he will and give us all a treat.
Above all I wish to declare my love for Prof hilzoy’s consistently rewarding writing and the thought it elucidates. Scott Horton is my candidate for Prime Minister of Blogland, and the kids over at Balkinization are really swell and all, but hilzoy is up there among the angelic doctors.
Ave.
Posted by: felixculpa | February 10, 2008 at 03:08 PM
"...so that the kindly sheiks thus enabled are able to take the increasingly tedious New York banks off our hands...."
How's that?
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 10, 2008 at 03:15 PM
Sorry if you were waiting...preoccupied... also it took some time to track this down.
Having apologized; this is from TomDispath for Jan.31 with a piece by Michael Klare. The quote occurs near the end of the article.
“Persian Gulf SWFs have acquired a significant stake in a number of prominent American firms, giving them a potential say in the future management of these companies. The Kuwait Investment Authority, for example, recently took a $12 billion stake in Citigroup and a $6.5 billion share in Merrill Lynch; the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority acquired a $7.5 billion stake in Citigroup; and Mubadala Development of Abu Dhabi purchased a $1.5 billion share in the privately-held Carlyle Group.”
Found">http://snipurl.com/1znnb">Found here.
Posted by: felix culpa | February 13, 2008 at 06:49 PM