Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that both of the presidential campaigns are reacting responsibly to the government plan to rescue mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
"Yes, I think Barack Obama and John McCain are saying pretty close to the same thing," Schumer said on CNBC Monday. Schumer was responding to praise in the same interview by former Treasury Secretary John Snow for both presidential candidates, whom Snow sees as looking for a "real solution" to the crisis that won't hurt taxpayers.
Schumer added: "They might, should each be president, have a different solution -- somewhat different solution. But I think they realize and just about everybody realizes that the first job is to stabilize these markets."
Schumer also said that the plan to stabilize markets will have broad congressional support.
"[Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson went out over the weekend to reassure all of us that there is not some grand scheme as to what should be put in place after the markets are stabilized; that they were going to, if you will, punt that to the next administration," he said.
Schumer also said that the first job of the government right now is "to prevent this recession from heading further south."
"I think there's a broad middle here," he said. "There'll be some on the far left who say, you know, 'Just go after the high-ups,' and there'll be some on the far right who say, 'Get the government out now to let things crash.' Neither of those would serve us very well right now as a country, as a world, and as citizens, bond holders, mortgagers or taxpayers."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (R-Nev.) blamed Republicans for holding up the housing bill and causing a delay that is hurting homeowners.
"The Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for causing the pain and suffering to the American people that they have," Reid said Friday at a news conference.
Reid and Democrats are pressing Republicans to allow passage of the bill, which would provide relief for homeowners facing foreclosure and for embattled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The legislation, which the House has passed and the president has said he would sign, would also strengthen oversight of the two government-sponsored mortgage companies and increase access to home loans in high-cost areas.
Reid said Friday that this week's reports of slower home sales and increased foreclosure filings show the import of the bill. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill Saturday.
"The stalling that has taken place for 18 months is evident in this housing bill as much as in any other one thing they've done," he said. "Six of their almost 90 filibusters have been on this one bill. And during this period of time, hundreds of thousands of people have received foreclosure notices, and thousands and thousands have had their homes foreclosed upon. It's damaged neighborhoods. It's devastated local governments and state governments with the tax revenues. And it's made the banking industry very, very shaky."
Explaining the current economic downturn to a closed-door fundraiser last week, President Bush said, "Wall Street got drunk."
"There's no question about it," Bush said. "Wall Street got drunk, that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras. It got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments."
Bush made the remark at a closed-door fundraiser for Republican Pete Olson, who is challenging Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Texas).
No cameras were allowed in the fundraiser, but an ABC affiliate in Houston acquired the video and posted it on its YouTube page Tuesday.
Last week, Bush indicated that he fears YouTube moments such as this making it to the web.
After asking a room of 400 supporters gathered for a fundraiser in Tucson, Arizona to turn off any recording devices, Bush said, "I don't know a lot about technology, but I do know about YouTube."
UPDATE: Sam Youngman reports that the White House will continue to keep fundraisers closed to the press.
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) lit into a Washington Post reporter Thursday, seeking out the reporter at a press confernce to accuse him of writing a "foundless story."
On Tuesday, the Post reported that Rangel, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has solicited donations for a school named after him from corporations with interests coming before his committee.
Rangel opened the news conference by saying he normally advises fellow lawmakers to remember "you don't have as much ink as the printers do" when fighting a news story. But on this story, Rangel said, he intends to test "how much damn ink The Washington Post has."
Before opening the conference to questions, Rangel asked his staff to identify the Post reporter "since I don't know him or her."
After zeroing in on the reporter Rangel told those assembled, "I'm going to answer all of your questions, but I want to set a confrontational tone so that the other papers might be able to at least report that since it's such a boring thing to me."
Pointing to a document used to write the story that his staff handed out to other media outlets, Rangel asked the reporter, "as it relates to the solicitation of money in any of the letters that you had a chance to review, did you see anything that went beyond the paragraph that I read?"
"Sir, it's my understanding that this was part of the fund-raising campaign in which you participated in meetings, in which money was asked for. Is that not right?" the reporter responded.
"Well, I thought the politicians were the ones that answered a question with a question," Rangel said.
After answering a few questions on the nature of the fundraising, Rangel then turned back to the reporter.
"Let me ask you one question," Rangel said. "Would you help me to get this before the Ethics Committee by asking The Washington Post to file the charges? Let me just ask them. They may not do it. Let the record indicate that the reporter from The Washington Post failed to respond."
"Sir, I think you carry more weight with the Ethics Committee than I do," the reporter responded.
"I think I carry more weight than you," Rangel said.
Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) slammed the plan to bailout Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as socialism on Wednesday.
"Nothing wrong with it, but we don't have socialism here in the United States," Bunning said on CNN. "And if you want to go to socialism, let's go to France."
Bunning has said that he would work to block the government rescue of the mortgage companies proposed by the Bush administration.
"Well, it's the government taking over all of the mortgage market and being responsible for it," Bunning said. "The same thing is happening in medicine, the same thing is happening in health care. So we are going -- instead of free markets and open markets, which this country was founded on, we are leaning towards 25 years ago in France when they moved to socialism. I'm not for that."
He added that the "right solution" would be to leave the two government-sponsored enterprises alone aside from creating a regulator that would require them to obtain more equity.
The senator blamed the current housing crisis on the Federal Reserve Bank.
"By keeping rates so low and keeping the money supply so plentiful, they have driven the value of the dollar and our mortgage markets into submission," he said.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) plan to lower gas prices Wednesday, calling her proposal "silly" and "absurd."
"Nobody's going to believe that any of these proposals they're talking about are real," McConnell said on Fox. "That silly proposal to open up 10 percent of the Strategic Reserve is about three and a half days worth of oil."
Pelosi asked President Bush earlier this week to release a "small portion" of the more than 700 million barrels of oil currently being held in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
McConnell, like Bush, favors a lifting of drilling bans offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
"We're sitting on a sea of oil, both onshore and offshore," McConnell said. "We know what to do. We need to go about it."
Pelosi has called the GOP plan to lift drilling bans a "hoax."
"It will neither reduce gas prices nor increase energy independence. It just gives millions more acres to the same companies that are sitting on nearly 68 million acres of public lands and coastal areas," Pelosi said Monday.
Put Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) down as a skeptic of the government bailouts of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee said on CNBC Monday that he has long been a critic of the government-sponsored mortgage companies and has tried to limit their activities for years.
"Fannie has -- and Freddie have all the benefits of being a private company with none of the risks," Ryan said. "And so, you know, I've been one of these GSE hawks for a long time, and now those chickens are coming home to roost. Now we don't have many options. We've got to get through this rough patch. What I'm worried about is, after the dust settles, what is it all going to look like?"He added: "Are we socializing credit risk in this country? Are we socializing investment risk? Are we going down that path? Are we going down the path of having this debt put on our books, a 50 percent increase in the public debt?"
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said that the crises of IndyMac bank and mortgage companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are "different situations entirely."
In an interview on CNBC Monday, Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, urged pundits and lawmakers not to lump the situations together. The Bush administration has called for bailouts of the three companies this past weekend. IndyMac is a private savings and loan entity while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored mortgage companies.
Dodd remained upbeat about Fannie and Freddie's futures.
"Fannie and Freddie are very solid institutions," Dodd said. "They have more than adequate capital based on federal law. They have access to the capital markets. Obviously the fear that has been generated over the last number of days is not helping matters. And I hope the actions taken over the end of the weekend by the Treasury and the Fed are going to calm those concerns and we get back to Fannie and Freddie doing the incredibly important job of providing liquidity in a very, very, very bad market."
Republican Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) responded yesterday to a proposal by Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) that would limit members' ability to post content on blogs and websites like YouTube by, ironically, releasing a video on YouTube.
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