McCain Loses Again In His Never Ending Battle Against Working Families

McCain, as much a slave to the special interests & their lobbyists as ever

Remember last year how some creepy old man tried to persuade the American people that what we needed was another 4 years of George Bush's and the Republican Party's catastrophic policies? That was John McCain who the American people buried in a rout (365- 173, with even stalwart Republican states like North Carolina, Indiana, Colorado and Virginia turning against the Party of Greed and Selfishness). But burying him wasn't enough. The creepy old man is still creeping around-- and still pushing Republican nostrums for disaster and continued failure. This morning, under the guise of an anti-earmarks amendment, McCain tried to prevent cash-strapped families and communities which have been devastated by the policies he has been pushing and rubber stamping for decades from getting any assistance at all from the omnibus spending bill that passed the House last week. He lost that battle-- and lost it as soundly as he lost his grab for the presidency. He actually had the gumption to propose to the Senate that they freeze all spending at Bush levels.

Hypocritically, even a few Republican obstructionists with massive earmarks in the spending bill-- like Miss McConnell-- voted with McCain, although he was defeated 63-32, one simpleminded Democrat, Claire McCaskill, buying into his anti-earmarks yowling, while 9 Republicans of all ideological stripes voted with the rest of the Democrats.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that McCain proposed another special interest-oriented sham bill. That's one old dog that's not learning any new tricks. A far better and more constructive proposal can be expected from Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the Senate's most outstanding member. He's introducing a bill today that requires disclosure of the financial institutions that have received more than $2.2 trillion in taxpayer-backed loans and other financial assistance from the Federal Reserve. In a committee hearing he was all over Bernanke for refusing to tell senators who's getting all these billions of dollars. "Do you have to be a large, greedy, reckless financial institution to apply for this money?" he asked the stonewalling Bernanke.

In a testy exchange at a hearing before the Senate Budget Committee, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who usually votes with the Democrats, said he found it "unacceptable" that the central bank risked taxpayer money without detailing where the funds went.

"My question to you is, will you tell the American people to whom you lent $2.2 trillion of their dollars?" Sanders asked, referring to the size of the Fed's balance sheet.

Expect McCain to vote "no," of course, along with the rest of the special interests Republicans. Thank God we didn't elect him. Barack Obama looks more and more like a visionary to me every day. Could you imagine someone like John McCain ever giving a speech like this?