Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) has taken a page from John McCain's playbook, declining a debate invitation, fearing he will be in Washington having to work on legislation bailing out the financial industry.
According to the Associated Press, Shuster will not attend an October 12 debate against Democratic opponent Tony Barr. A Shuster spokesman told the AP that the four-term congressman may need to be in Washington to work on economic assistance legislation.
Though reports indicate lawmakers are near an agreement on a bailout package, Shuster's move echoes strategies adopted upticket by party leader McCain, who suspended his campaign yesterday, and proposed postponing Friday's scheduled debate against Barack Obama.
Shuster, who represents Pennsylvania's 9th Congressional District, is not expected to be seriously challenged by Barr.
The chorus of conservatives trying to keep John McCain from backing the $700 billion bailout plan keeps growing.
"If John McCain supports this bailout, he will lose all of the goodwill and support he has gained from conservatives by picking Governor [Sarah] Palin (R-Alaska) as his running mate," wrote conservative direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie in a blast e-mail.
Viguerie said that the bailout for banks would be followed by more bailouts for carmakers, credit card companies and other troubled businesses.
"It's a death spiral for the American economy, and conservatives refuse to go along for the ride," he said.
A GOP House member added that McCain's possible support of the bailout bill is "terrible."
"McCain would do well to remember that Americans don't like the Paulson plan and Republicans and conservatives hate it," the member said.
Conservative bloggers on The Corner, RedState and elsewhere have already weighed in on the plan, and they don't like it.
Barack Obama makes like its 1992 and criticizes trickle-down economics in a new campaign ad.
"For eight years we've been told that the way to a stronger economy was to give huge tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest. Cut oversight on Wall Street. And somehow all Americans would benefit," Obama says in the spot. "Well now we know the truth. Instead of prosperity trickling down, pain has trickled up."
Obama's campaign said the ad will run in targeted states, but it did not say which states and how much it will spend to air it.
The focus on the middle class and the "trickle-down" theory is reminiscent of ads in 1992, when both Democratic candidate Bill Clinton and independent candidate Ross Perot railed against Republican economic policies.
Read the transcript and watch the ad below.
For eight years we've been told that the way to a stronger economy was to give huge tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest. Cut oversight on Wall Street. And somehow all Americans would benefit.
Well now we know the truth. Instead of prosperity trickling down, pain has trickled up. We need to change direction. Now.
I'm Barack Obama. Here's what I'll do as president: End the Wall Street free for all with commonsense safeguards that put homeowners and struggling families first -- not corporate greed and CEO bonuses. Jumpstart our economy with a middle class tax cut, paid for by closing special interest group loopholes. Get serious about energy independence. A 10-year mission to create millions of good paying jobs by investing in made-in-America energy and infrastructure. You can read my whole plan to rebuild our economy on our website, Barackobama.com.
The recent wave of Wall Street collapses marks a "sink-or-swim" moment for America, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) writes in an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal.
"This is a sink-or-swim moment for America. We cannot simply catch our breath. We've got to swim for the shores. We must address the conditions that set the stage for the turmoil unfolding on Wall Street, or we will find ourselves lurching from crisis to crisis," Clinton said.
Clinton called for broader reforms than the current $700 billion bailout proposal, including a new Home Owners' Loan Association (HOLC), reminiscent of the original association created in 1933, to purchase mortgages from failing banks and modify their terms.
The current crisis demands fundamental economic fixes to protect taxpayers and keep homeowners from facing foreclosure, Clinton said.
Barack Obama said that he would pledge to end malaria deaths around the world by 2015 if he becomes president.
Obama made his remarks Thursday via satellite at the Clinton Global Initiative, the annual summit of world leaders in the public and private sector in New York.
""It's time to rid the world of death from a disease that doesn't have to take lives," Obama said. "The United States must lead, and when I am President we will step up our focus on prevention and treatment around the world to get this done."
Each year, more than one million people die from malaria, most of them children in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Obama said he would increase funding for bednets that help keep mosquitos from infecting people with the disease, for the training of doctors and nurses and for the development of vaccines.
Obama added that governments and businesses around the world would have roles to play.
A explosive new ad says Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) supports legislation giving terrorists the same rights U.S. citizens enjoy in courts, depicting captured al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as an example.
The ad from Giffords's challenger, state Sen. Tim Bee, links the Arizona representative with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on legislation, including H.R. 2826, the bill the ad says would give terrorists rights in court.
"Pelosi supports Giffords's bill to allow captured terrorists to be tied in our courts with full legal rights of American citizens," the ad says, while depicting the famous photo of Mohammed, called the "principal architect of the 9/11 attacks" by the 9/11 commission reports.
The link to the al Qaeda leader is part of a larger ad seeking to tie Giffords to a number of other plans supported by Pelosi. The Cook Political Report rates the race "lean Democratic."
A new ad from an anti-McCain political action committee implies John McCain may be unable to serve as president because of his age.
The ad from Brave New PAC and Democracy for America features doctors' bleak assessments of McCain's health history while displaying pictures of scars resultant from melanoma surgery.
"John McCain is 72 years old and has had cancer 4 times," the ad displays in its opening. "Another bout of cancer for John McCain while he's president of the United States would profoundly impact his capacity to lead," says Dr. Michael D. Fratkin in the ad.
The ad additionally calls for a further release of McCain's medical records beyond what the media were allowed to inspect earlier this year.
The ad will begin running nationally on Thursday, according to National Journal.
Former President Bill Clinton pushed back against the suggestion that the current economic crisis happened under his watch.
Clinton was asked on NBC's "Today" to respond to President Bush's suggestion in his televised address Wednesday that the financial system's problems began more than a decade ago, during the Clinton administration.
Bush said: "Well, most economists agree that the problems we're witnessing today developed over a long period of time. For more than a decade, a massive amount of money flowed into the United States from investors abroad because our country is an attractive and secure place to do business."
Here's how Clinton responded:
Well, I think he's suggesting that, when we -- I signed a bill [the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act] that the banking industry wanted to let them get into securities issuance there. There are some people who believe that that bill enabled them to somehow participate in some of the riskier housing investments. I disagree with that. That bill primarily enabled them to, like the Bank of America, to buy Merrill Lynch here without a hitch. And I think that helped to stabilize the situation.
I think that the main thing that you could blame the Democrats for, maybe, is that we should have made more of the problems of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and maybe the -- and tried more aggressively to regulate derivatives. But this thing really took off when the SEC, under this administration, exercised less oversight and they got rid of something called the uptick rule, which enabled betting down... on housing stocks to go crazy.
Clinton, however, sounded reluctant to take sides in the debate over debates in the presidential campaign. When asked by NBC's Matt Lauer whether John McCain was playing politics with the economic crisis by suspending his campaign Wednesday and calling for a delay to Friday's debate, Clinton said that McCain wasn't.
First of all, I don't have a judgment about whether it would be a good or bad thing to do. But we know -- I mean, he wanted actually more debates, so we know he wasn't afraid of the debates.
I think he's probably looking for some way of, once again, to say to the American people, "Hey, I'm not a traditional Republican. And I do take this seriously." Because otherwise this makes it much, much more difficult for him to win because this is associated with lax regulation and the absence of economic activity in this period.
I think -- but I think, you know, they both issued a statement last night, which I thought was a good thing, their joint statement. Because I really do believe that if it looks like they're playing politics with this and there's a delay, then that's bad for the confidence.
I think, if it looks like -- they're going back to Washington, which apparently they both are... at the invitation of the president, to get their briefing, they will participate in the lawmaking, the work of their jobs, I think we'll be all right. They've been -- they've -- both of them have gone out of their way, I think, not let this whole thing get too much caught up in the politics.
A pair of New Hampshire polls show widely conflicting results in the state's Senate race, where incumbent Sen. John Sununu (R) hopes to fend off a tough challenge from former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen (D).
A Rasmussen Reports poll shows Sununu with 52 percent in the race, leading Shaheen, who draws in 45 percent. The poll, if accurate, would represent a major swing for Sununu, after trailing Shaheen in many polls, in one August poll by as much as 11 percent. The Rasmussen poll, conducted September 23, has a four percent margin of error.
Sununu was trailing Shaheen in a Granite State/MMUR poll conducted between September 14 and 21, a poll more consistent with previous surveys conducted in the race. Shaheen led Sununu 48-44 in that poll, which represented an uptick in support from the 46-42 numbers the candidates faced in the same poll from July.
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