McCain Camp: Stop Whining

[Omaha Steve]

Click to view video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73rqn36XVJQ&NR=1
Watch Sen. Barack Obama's response to Phil Gramm, national co-chair of John McCain’s presidential campaign.

In short, says Gramm: "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession....We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet."


Phil Gramm is the national co-chair of John McCain’s presidential campaign.

When he called us a nation of “whiners” and said we’re in a “mental recession,” rather than a real recession, McCain tried to head off a media storm by distancing himself from Gramm.

But the truth is, the former U.S. senator from Texas has been McCain’s chief economic adviser for many years and is on McCain’s short list for Treasury secretary.


Here’s part of what Gramm told the Washington Times this week:

"You’ve heard of mental depressions; this is a mental recession....We have sort of become a nation of whiners....You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline....We’ve never been more dominant; we’ve never had more natural advantages than we have today.... We have benefited greatly" from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years.

In February, McCain told the Houston Chronicle: “He’s probably the smartest—not just economist, but politician—there is.”

In January, McCain said in an interview with the New York Post, "I would rely on the circle I have developed over many years of people like Jack Kemp, Phil Gramm, Warren Rudman, Pete Peterson and the Concorde Group" (a right-wing think tank).


As soon as Gramm's comments hit the airwaves, blog world and headlines, McCain began backing away from Gramm faster than a falling Dow Jones stock. He claimed Gramm doesn't speak for him and said he didn't agree with the comments. But in an interview with Fox News in April, the candidate himself said he thinks the recession is all in our minds, "A lot of our problems today, as you know are psychological—the confidence, the trust, the uncertainty about our economic future, the ability to keep our home."

Along with sharing a penchant for playing shrink to voters worried about the economy, the McCain-Gramm pair shares pretty much the same economic philosophy and love of deregulation, especially in the banking and energy industries. In April, the Washington Post credited Gramm with creating the legislative highway for the subprime lending crisis that is causing foreclosures on the home mortgages of more than 3 million working families:

“Gramm’s aggressive efforts when he was chairman of the Senate Banking Committee to deregulate the banking and financial services industry...culiminated in the passage in 1999 of a sweeping financial services law that tore down the Depression-era Glass-Steagall wall separating regulated commercial banks from largely unregulated investment banks....To many liberal economists, Gramm’s efforts set the stage for the current crisis.”

If, heaven forbid, McCain takes the White House, you can bet, because he's said so many times, that the McCain administration's economic policies will be straight of the Gramm playbook. Pretty scary, eh?

Help spread the word by forwarding this message to your family and co-workers. We've got to stop that from happening.

In solidarity,

Working Families e-Activist Network, AFL-CIO

P.S. How can you help? By taking part in our Million-Member Mobilization for the Employee Free Choice Act to build power for workers. We can't reach our goal of 1 million signatures without you. Sign the petition now and tell Congress it's time for a change!

http://www.freechoiceact.org/page/s/aflcio?source=aflciomg

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[Deja Q]

1. No recession, yet banks and businesses and homeowners are going under.

The only thing mental is Gramm's apparent inability to see the obvious, please forgive me.