SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) -- John McCain wants to leave the door open to a wide array of proposals to address the turmoil in home financing.
"I will not play election-year politics with the housing crisis," the certain Republican presidential nominee said in remarks prepared for delivery Tuesday to local business leaders south of Los Angeles. "I will evaluate everything in terms of whether it might be harmful or helpful to our effort to deal with the crisis we face now."
McCain seemed to suggest he would be open even to potential solutions that, perhaps, stray from the Republican party line, saying, "I will consider any and all proposals based on their cost and benefits" and "I will not allow dogma to override common sense."
But the small-government advocate and four-term Arizona senator also put restrictions on how far he was willing to go.
"I have always been committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers," McCain said. "Government assistance to the banking system should be based solely on preventing systemic risk that would endanger the entire financial system and the economy."
Showcases economy. In the midst of a weeklong western fundraising swing, the GOP's next standard-bearer was using the event in the Republican stronghold of Orange County to showcase his grasp of the country's economic troubles - and counter the notion that he's not up to the task of leading a nation on the brink of recession.
McCain has acknowledged in the past that he knows less about economics than he does about national security and foreign policy, and Democrats have seized on such remarks to argue that the Republican is a novice on bread-and-butter issues that voters care about most.
In recent weeks, the Democratic party has sought to portray McCain as in lockstep with President Bush on the economy, out of touch with challenges facing working families, and lacking a plan to help families struggling to stay in their homes.
McCain is seeking to prove his economic credentials - and to continue to generate buzz about his candidacy - as Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton continue to fight for their party nomination.
With the outgoing chief executive of eBay Inc. (EBAY, Fortune 500), Meg Whitman, alongside him, McCain was opening the meeting with a nuts-and-bolts explanation of the conditions that caused the housing crisis and financial market problems.
"A lot of Americans read the headlines about credit crunches and liquidity crises and ask: 'How did we get here?"' McCain said.
Seeking to provide an answer, McCain said lenders became complacent as housing prices continued to rise, lowering their standards and lending money to people who couldn't pay it back. Some consumers, he said, bought homes they couldn't afford, betting they would reap the benefits later of higher home prices. Meanwhile, he said, the housing market lacked accountability and transparency, and "the initial losses spawned a crisis of confidence in the markets."
Temporary assistance. Looking to the future, McCain said any government assistance to alleviate the housing crisis must be temporary and should be accompanied by reforms that aim to make the system more transparent and accountable to prevent a repeat of the crisis. He said no assistance should be given to speculators, or people who bought houses to rent or as second homes.
In the short term, he called for the country's accounting experts to meet to discuss current accounting systems and said the country's top mortgage lenders should pledge do everything possible to help their cash-strapped but creditworthy customers.
"They've been asking the government to help them out," McCain said of lenders. "I'm now calling upon them to help their customers, and their nation, out." See Also
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