mccain begs off

As deal drifts, House GOP releases alternative

House Republicans were left out of the morning deal making on the bailout and are already being blamed for derailing the bailout negotiation.

So now they've released their own set of "principles" in the 11th hour, relying on mortgage insurance, injections of private capital into the financial system and free market principles. Many of the ideas are tried and true conservative ideas, like loosening regulations in hopes of freeing up private capital. The thrust of the GOP alternative is essentially a private insurance plan for mortgage backed securities, but it's not clear if such a plan could go into effect quickly enough to salvage the teetering credit markets.

And yes, there's a "blue ribbon panel" proposal in their plan.

It's not clear if the top negotiators at the White House, the Senate or in the House will even give this a second look, but the House GOP alternative represent a loud yet important voice for fiscal conservatives in Washington and nationwide.

We've pasted their bullet points after the jump.

Here's the bullet points directly from the House GOP plan:

* Rather than providing taxpayer funded purchases of frozen mortgage assets, we should adopt a mortgage insurance approach to solve the problem.

* Currently the federal government insures approximately half of all mortgage backed securities. (MBS) We can insure the rest of current outstanding MBS; however, rather than taxpayers funding insurance, the holders of these assets should pay for it. Treasury Department can design a system to charge premiums to the holders of MBS to fully finance this insurance.

* Have Private Capital Injection to the Financial Markets, Not Tax Dollars. Instead of injecting taxpayer capital into the market to produce liquidity, private capital can be drawn into the market by removing regulatory and tax barriers that are currently blocking private capital formation. Too much private capital is sitting on the sidelines during this crisis.

* Temporary tax relief provisions can help companies free up capital to maintain operations, create jobs, and lend to one another. In addition, we should allow for a temporary suspension of dividend payments by financial institutions and other regulatory measures to address the problems surrounding private capital liquidity.

*Immediate Transparency, Oversight, and Market Reform. Require participating firms to disclose to Treasury the value of their mortgage assets on their books, the value of any private bids within the last year for such assets, and their last audit report.

* Wall Street Executives should not benefit from taxpayer funding. Call on the SEC to review the performance of the Credit Rating Agencies and their ability to accurately reflect the risks of these failed investment securities.

*Create a blue ribbon panel with representatives of Treasury, SEC, and the Fed to make recommendations to Congress for reforms of the financial sector by January 1, 2009.

Even if they aren't on the committee that handles this stuff, they will still have to vote yea or nay, and I hope they do so after spending hundreds of hours reviewing the impacts of this legislation [..]

I don't care if it accomplishes anything other than allowing him to devote all his time/energy in understanding the impacts of this bill so that it can affect his singular vote on the legislation.

I don't care if it accomplishes anything other than allowing him to devote all his time/energy in understanding the impacts of this bill so that it can affect his singular vote on the legislation.

We're talking about 700 BILLION dollars here, and possibly more in the future. Every Senator should be spending hundreds of hours in deliberation on this bill alone. This is the most important thing going on right now.

If this were October 31st, I would chastise him over this (at that point the election would be the most important thing), but being that we have 40 days until the election. There is nothing wrong with what he's doing.

WASHINGTON - Republican John McCain agreed to attend the first presidential debate Friday night even though Congress doesn't have a bailout deal, reversing an earlier decision to delay the event until Washington had taken action to address the crisis.

This is the first time I've seen this post and it was posted Wednesday? And it's got a lot of participants-- how do you find these threads when they don't come up on the screen. I know this is off topic, but I was languishing in the new able2know land.

"Neither Obama or McCain is an Economic genius" says Cyclopichorn. ... Senator Obama is a graduate of Columbia University, Harvard Law School and has taught at one of the best Law Schools in the country--The University of Chicago.

Cyclops, NOTHING happened yesterday. That is exactly the result I wanted. If NOTHING can continue to happen I'll be a happy voter.

And don't talk to me about early voting, nobody is forced to do that. If someone chooses to, then they know the possible consequences.

At 9:00pm, I'd hope they'd be studying as many of the effects that this bill could have on the nation, talking to people who are strong on the economy, talking to their electorate, talking to the CEOs of these coorporations, trying to ease the public's concerns, giving the massages to the guys who are losing sleep over this, helping out in any way shape or form to ensure that every single congressman knows exactly what the downstream effects are of this MASSIVE 700billion dollar bailout.

Don't you wish some Senators did that before the war, maybe Clinton would have read the intelligence estimate.

McCain and Obama's jobs, today, are to study the effects of this bill and the effects are far reaching. They should not vote yea or nay w/o doing the due-dilligence that this requires.

And yep, he's doing the debate, which we'll see is a waste of time and the same old crap will be thrown about like it has over the last 18 months.