http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/wa****ngton/politics-usa-politics-mccain.html
McCain Vows to Deal With Severe Economic Crisis
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By REUTERS
Published: April 5, 2008
Filed at 8:28 p.m. ET
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PRESCOTT, Arizona (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John
McCain said on Saturday he would not underestimate the severity of the
ongoing U.S. economic crisis and would keep open all options to deal
with it.
"When Alan Greenspan says this is the worst crisis since World War II,
we have a major challenge and we should never underestimate it, nor
exhaust all the measures that we need to put into effect," McCain
said, referring to the former Federal Reserve chairman.
The economy has become increasingly im****tant in the presidential
campaign, surpassing the Iraq war as the top concern of voters heading
into the November election.
A protracted downturn could bode ill for the Arizona senator, whom
Democrats are trying to taint with allegiance to polices of President
George W. Bush.
McCain, who will run in November against Democrat Barack Obama or
Hillary Clinton, spoke about the economy a day after a bleak re****t on
jobs convinced many analysts the economy was in recession. The
government re****t showed U.S. employers cut payrolls in March for a
third month in a row and the jobless rate jumped to a 2-1/2-year high
of 5.1 percent.
McCain told re****ters he would oppose any big government bailouts,
saying they had not worked in the past and would not work in the
future. But he expressed sup****t for the Senate's economic stimulus
package.
"We have got to restore confidence on the part of the American
consumer to invest, to save, to do the things that make our economy
run," the Arizona Republican said.
"We have got to find the floor on the cost of houses. When we find the
floor, then there will be people who will come in and purchase some of
these at bargain rates," he said.
A sharp downturn in the U.S. housing market has led to a full-blown
credit crisis that has reverberated throughout the U.S. financial
system.
Still, McCain said he was confident about America's economic future.
"The fundamentals of our economy are strong," he insisted.
Some Democrats have criticized McCain for advocating a less
interventionist approach to the housing and financial crises than
either Clinton or Obama. McCain said in a speech on the economy last
month it is "not the duty of government to bail out and reward those
who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers."
Both Clinton and Obama have said McCain's plans amount to little more
than sitting on the sidelines of the economic crisis. Clinton, a New
York senator, and Obama, an Illinois senator, have both repeatedly
hammered McCain over a comment he made in December that "the issue of
economics is not something I've understood as well as I should."
McCain said earlier this week that comment was taken out of context
and he had meant to say he was not as steeped in economic issues as he
was in foreign policy. A former Navy pilot and prisoner of war, McCain
has been outspoken on international affairs.
"I know economics very well, certainly better than Senator Clinton and
Senator Obama. So let's clear that up," McCain told CNN in an
interview on Thursday.
(Writing by Caren Bohan and Jim Vicini, editing by Todd Eastham)
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