McCain talks even tougher on financial crisis, says he would have sacked Bush's SEC chief
John McCain ratcheted up his increasingly populist language today, using a campaign event in Iowa to say he would fire Christopher Cox, the former Republican congressman and Bush-appointed head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
McCain, grasping for the right tone to express outrage at the week's financial meltdown, used his harshest rhetoric yet in an effort to distance himself from the unpopular Republican administration that has presided over the crisis.
"The Chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the President and has betrayed the public's trust," McCain said in Cedar Rapids, according to prepared remarks distributed by his campaign. "If I were President today, I would fire him."
McCain, reading deliberately from set remarks, didn't mention Cox, a former member of Congress from California, by name, but laid the blame squarely at his agency's feet.
"The primary regulator of Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission kept in place trading rules that let speculators and hedge funds turn our markets into a casino," McCain is to say. "They allowed naked short selling -- which simply means that you can sell stock without ever owning it. They eliminated last year the uptick rule that has protected investors for 70 years. Speculators pounded the shares of even good companies into the ground."
The regulators, McCain said, "were asleep at the switch."
Previewing a policy rollout, McCain also notes that tomorrow he will talk "in greater detail about the crisis facing our markets and what I will do as President to fix this crisis and get our economy moving again."
McCain, in his remarks in Cedar Rapids, didn't just limit his criticism to the Bush administration, though. He also used the appearance to light into Barack Obama, noting the Democrat's ties to the two failed government-backed mortgage lenders
"Senator Obama talks a tough game on the financial markets but the facts tell a different story," McCain is to say. "He took more money from Fannie and Freddie than any Senator but the Democratic chairman of the committee that regulates them. He put Fannie Mae's CEO who helped create this disaster in charge of finding his Vice President. Fannie's former General Counsel is a senior advisor to his campaign. Whose side do you think he is on? When I pushed legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Senator Obama was silent. He didn't lift a hand to avert this crisis. While the leaders of Fannie and Freddie were lining the pockets of his campaign, they were sowing the seeds of the financial crisis we see today and enriching themselves with millions of dollars in payments. That's not change, that's what's broken in Washington."
McCain also broadened his critique of Obama beyond the financial crisis, picking up on Joe Biden's comment this morning that it would patriotic of the rich to pay more taxes.
"Raising taxes in a tough economy isn't patriotic," McCain said. "It's not a badge of honor. It's just dumb policy."
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