PHILADELPHIA — Senators John McCain and Barack Obama warned Sunday that there should be more oversight built into the government’s $700 billion plan to stabilize the financial markets but said the potentially enormous expenditure would not force them to scale back their ambitious governing agendas. þþMr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, and Mr. Obama, his Democratic rival, agreed in separate interviews that steps should be taken to ensure taxpayer dollars are not used to enrich the executives of troubled financial firms bailed out by the government. They echoed each other in assessing the threat from the financial crisis as severe enough to warrant government intervention.þþBut Mr. McCain said in an interview here with CNBC and The New York Times that he would press on with his plan to extend the Bush tax cuts and to cut others. Contrary to the warnings of fiscal analysts, he said he believed he could do so and balance the federal budget, which was falling deeper into deficit even before the financial crisis, by the end of his first term.þþ“I believe we can still balance the budget,” he said. “I think that it is restraint of spending, and I think it’s growth of government and the economy, and the recovery of our economy. And anything you do that would take more money from the American people who are hurting more now, I think, would be a serious mistake.” þþMr. McCain also stuck by his support for allowing workers to invest a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes in stocks and bonds, an approach that Democrats call privatization and that Mr. Obama has used to suggest Mr. McCain would subject retirees to excessive market risk.þþIn a separate interview earlier in the day, Mr. Obama said that despite the huge new government obligation, he would press ahead with his plans to overhaul the health care system to insure more people, make college tuition more affordable, give a tax cut to the middle class and raise taxes on those making over $250,000 a year. þþ“The problem that we have,” Mr. Obama said, “in part has to do with wages and incomes that have been flat. And so homeowners and ordinary families out there have been working very hard, but it’s tough for them to pay the bills and stay afloat with rising gas prices and health care.þþ“So if we don’t address our long-term competitiveness, if we don’t address some of the inequities in the tax code, if we’re not addressing some of the things that weakened the family budget, then we’re not, over the long term, going to solve these larger problems in the financial markets.”þþMr. McCain has made speeches and broadcast television commercials recently that highlight Mr. Obama’s ties to former leaders of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the mortgage giants at the center of the financial crisis. þþMr. McCain has struck a notably populist tone in addressing the crisis, and in the interview, he set a specific limit on compensation for executives at firms that receive federal assistance. “But the major point,” he said, “is that no C.E.O. of any corporation or business that is bailed out by us, that is rescued by American tax dollars, should receive any more than the highest paid person in the federal government.”þþMr. Obama continued to assail the philosophy of excessive deregulation that he said was the root cause of the crisis and made clear that the aftermath should include a new regulatory approach. þþThe deepening financial crisis and the shifting government response to it have challenged both presidential candidates for more than a week, as they struggled to react to a situation that seemed to change each day. In the interviews, they gave some of their most detailed views of the crisis to date.þþMr. Obama warned that the bailout should not be a “blank check” and called for tighter regulation of the financial industry, suggesting he would support imposing federal capital requirements on investment firms. He also emphasized that the plan would have to include more relief for homeowners and distressed communities, a demand being made by Democrats in Congress.þþ“Regardless of how we got there,” he said, “we now have a situation where people’s jobs, people’s savings, people’s retirement accounts, their job security, all that is at risk. And so we’ve got to take some firm and decisive steps.”þþMr. McCain, like Mr. Obama, said an oversight board should be created to monitor how the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., administers the bailout, which calls for the federal government to take toxic assets off troubled financial firms’ hands. þþ“I respect and admire Secretary Paulson, but as far as I can tell, we’re placing all those responsibilities in the hands of one person,” Mr. McCain said. “I think we need to appoint an oversight board of the most respected people in America, such as maybe Warren Buffett, who’s a Obama supporter; Mitt Romney, Mike Bloomberg, so that there can be some kind of oversight of, instead of just putting all this responsibility on a person who may be gone in four months.”þþMr. McCain, who has been trying to distance himself from the Bush administration while proposing to continue many of its economic policies, tried Sunday to strike several bipartisan notes. þþIn a separate interview on “60 Minutes” on CBS, he mentioned that he would like to see Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat who is the attorney general of New York, take over as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission from Christopher Cox, whose ouster he has called for. þþHe also said on “60 Minutes” that he would remove the political operation from his White House and put it in the Republican National Committee.þþThe financial crisis and the proposed bailout have become fodder for a heated back and forth in the presidential campaign. Mr. Obama has cast Mr. McCain as a longtime proponent of the kind of deregulation that he says led to the crisis; Mr. McCain has cast Mr. Obama as lacking in the leadership qualities needed in a time of crisis. þþMr. Obama offered guarded praise of how Mr. Paulson is handing the crisis. He stopped short of pledging to keep him in place in an Obama administration, but he said that the gravity of the turmoil in the nation’s financial markets was so serious that continuity was important to avert further crisis. þþ“Getting a new person to start juggling those balls is going to be tricky,” Mr. Obama said. “Regardless of who wins the election, the issue of transition to the next administration is going to be very important. And it’s going to have to be executed with a spirit of bipartisanship and cooperation.”þþ
Source: NY Times
