McCaskill challenges your know-how on economy
Claire McCaskill
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., held a townhall meeting this morning in the St. Charles Community College gymnasium. On stage, she pulled questions written by the audience from a giant fishbowl, addressing criminal justice reform, gun rights, economic deregulation, illegal immigration and more.
The economy was clearly and not surprisingly on the minds of many. McCaskill pushed back at attacks on Congress and while acknowledging, “I know if feels like we’re printing money at a record pace and our grandchildren are going to choke on it.”
“It’s confusing, I get it. To most people, it seems like we’ve all lost our minds.”
Then McCaskill issued a challenge: How much do you really know about the economic package? Her office unveiled an online quiz that attempts to test voters and debunk and answer criticisms both of the Obama administration’s efforts as well as her own record.
The quiz is online at: www.mccaskill.senate.gov/issues/economicrecoveryquiz.cfm.
When asked how the crisis began and who should be blamed, she said that economic deregulation of financial investment firms caused problems as did avaricious sales and less-than-savvy consumers. Basically, everyone has a share in the blame. Now the trick is for government to strike “a balance between regulation and free market. That’s the hard part,” she said.
As for what to do, she generally backed Obama’s plans, saying they needed time to work along with transparency so taxpayers know what’s going on.
One example she gave: she likes the idea of deferred bonuses for financial company employees to be paid only after taxpayers are reimbursed for bailout funds. She added that the government shouldn’t be deciding salaries, “but if you take public money you’ve got to know that there will be strings attached.”
On another note, responding to a question about her philosophy on gun control, McCaskill mentioned her iPod playlist. She got laughs when she referenced the title of a Johnny Cash track she listened to recently: “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.”
I know the MSM - even the small market version - doesn’t do real reporting, but would it be possible for this source to indicate what else she said? Did Adam Jadhav ask her any questions that would, for instance, point out how she’s wrong? Would it be possible for Adam Jadhav to do that now with her quiz? Some of those questions don’t seem right.
“When asked how the crisis began and who should be blamed”
.
Community Reinvestment Act
Barney Frank
Chris Dodd
Franklin Raines
.
Just nine little words and she’d have gotten an A+
http://tinyurl.com/265e8c
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Here’s a challenge to McCaskill:
“Feels like we’re printing money at a record pace”
The challenge? Does she know ANYTHING about finance and economics?
The answer? No. She’s a career politician. She and all of them in Washington probably don’t know that the U.S. Treasury ran out of gold twice in 2008 because smart people are buying it up to hedge inflation…because of the “printing money at a record pace.”
I’ll bet they do a Nixon wage-and-price freeze.
Is she now pretending she read the bill? How arrogant of her to claim her constituents haven’t read the bill and should stop complaining when she voted for a pig in a poke.
And yes Senator, you all have lost your minds!
McCaskill should be more honest with the “blame game”.
Six months ago, she talked about how the financial firms [under the GOP] acted like teenagers with Mom and Dad gone for the weekend. For 8 years the Republicans screamed deregulate, get government off our backs, big bad government should leave the market system alone, etc. etc…Now suddenly the GOP thinks government has a role in protecting tax-payers and advocates law and order on Wall-Street….Where were these same Republicans when Wall-Street controlled the White House.
This picture of Bush Republicans cutting the “red-tape” should be included in every 401K statement.
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/09/financial-dereg.html
McCaskill should be more honest with the “blame game”.
— Garrison
9:52 am April 8th, 2009
And look in the mirror because she shares some of that “Blame.”
Where is the Senator’s outrage over the 100-200 Million Dollars in bonuses that the executives at Freddie and Fannie just received? She was up in arms about the AIG bonuses and thy have lost less than half of what these two congress control entities have over the last 12-18 months Oh, there is no outrage for the government to spend money. Wake up Senator. You should be all over the talk shows with the phony outrage on these bonuses as well. I guess the real difference is the MSM is in the pockets of the democrats and they do not want to rock the boat by bringing this info out into the public. Nice job of reporting Post!!!!!!!