AlchemyToday

Twitter’d Sunday morning:

Prediction: The bailout bill will go to the floor with the idea that it’s got substantial House GOP support, but they’ll vote against it.

There’s no reason for the House GOP to vote for the bill (none of the credit and all of the blame from challengers) and every reason to oppose (run reelection campaigns against the bailout and government waste and away from your record).  On top of that, although Blunt and Cantor (the GOP whip and deputy whip) eventually voted for the bill (reportedly, House.gov is currently out of service as millions of international financial officers scramble to figure out who the hell is in charge over here, anyway, and make some calls), they spent all day yesterday and this morning bemoaning it, and boy is this ever a compelling call for help from your caucus by Minority Leader Boehner:

In a closed-door session with House Republicans Sunday evening, Minority Leader John A. Boehner called the $700 billion financial rescue deal a “crap sandwich” — then said he plans to vote for it.

From The Page:

On “Fox and Friends,” McCain aide Pfotenhauer said McCain “very quietly behind the scenes” worked toward the financial package, then went straight to Friday’s debate. ” “No debate camp for him in Florida, he didn’t need it.” Said Couric offered Palin “a series of trap-door questions” and called Couric “one tough reporter.”

From Johnanthan Martin:

John McCain did a few hours of high-level debate prep in his Arlington, Va., condo last night with podiums and mock questions, a top aide said today.

After taping interviews for the evening newscasts, McCain returned home and practiced for his first faceoff with Barack Obama, a session that included aides tossing out potential questions and coaching his performance, Mark Salter said to the campaign pool reporter en route from Washington to Memphis. Apparently, the practice took place between phone calls, as McCain aides said last night he had been working the phones with congressional leaders and administration officials.

This was, by the way, after McCain “rushed” back to DC to first meet with John Boehner, then went to the White House meeting where he refused to say anything, then went home at 6:30PM after taping some interviews.  Urgency!

Jim Lehrer tried his damnedest to get any answer to this question:

What priorities would you adjust, Senator McCain, because of the financial bailout costs?

It was repeated over and over and addressed at both candidates.  He eventually elicited an across-the-board spending freeze proposal from McCain, but Obama missed a huge opportunity to knock McCain’s tax cuts again. I think that Obama drawing first blood on tax cuts was his best moment in the campaign, but he had a chance to revisit the issue and knock it out of the park by saying:

Jim, one proposal that I won’t have to adjust and will bring before Congress and the American people in my first 100 days is my tax plan.  I will cut taxes for 95% of Americans and roll back Bush’s tax cuts for the top 1%.  Independent analysts have looked at my plan and found out that it pays for itself… we actually make a little bit of money!  The same analysts have looked at Sen. McCain’s plan and found that it will cost hundreds of billions of dollars.  Specifically, John needs to address is exactly where he intends to find the money for his plan, and whether he thinks it’s better to spend money giving $300 billion to the richest Americans, or spend that money helping regular Americans who can’t pay their bills or afford health care or afford to retire with dignity.  If John McCain is elected President, I won’t vote for such an irresponsible giveaway to the richest Americans, and I don’t know many people in Congress or many people I’ve met across America who would support it, either.

ElectionTaxes.com is a collaboration between Quantrix and Jeffrey Gramlich at the University of Southern Maine that plays the same game as my ObamaTaxCut.com with a lot more rigor.  Being a bonafied Prof. of Accounting, Gramlich has run the numbers himself rather than relying on the overly coarse calculations by the Tax Policy Center.

At the bipartisan meeting at the Whitehouse to discuss the economic bailout package, McCain reportedly contributed nothing to the conversation other than throwing out this brilliant idea:

Towards the end, McCain finally spoke up, mentioning a counter-proposal that had been offered by some conservative House Republicans, which would suspend the capital gains tax for two years and provide tax incentives to encourage firms that buy up bad debt. McCain did not discuss specifics of the plan, though, and was non-committal about supporting it.

Tax cuts!  And not just tax cuts, but tax cuts for the richest of the rich.  Let’s ask the Tax Policy Center Who Pays Capital Gains Tax?

Assuming that everyone pays the 15% capital gains rate (very, very little of the tax is paid by folks at the 0%/5% rate), this chart shows that 83% of this cut will go directly to the pockets of the top 3% of taxpayers.  And, as far as I can tell, there’s no requirement that investors benefitting from this windfall invest in the United States, so it won’t even directly help American growth.

On top of the basic unfairness of a plan that McCain’s apparently seriously considering, the effects on Federal revenue would be disasterous.  Without this plan in effect, the government would receive between $200 and $300 billion in revenues from capital gains taxes over the next two years.  With the plan in effect, it will receive $0 in revenues, and smart investors will undoubtedly cash out post haste to realize gains within the two-year window.  That means less capital gains revenue than expected once the two-year law sunsets and the pressure to sell during the window will probably lead to unnaturally low prices.

Yes, McCain, let’s seriously consider Rep. Cantor’s retarded idea for a few days so that you can bail on a debate.

Apparently, the surest evidence of suspending one’s Presidential campaign and reaching across the aisle is by arriving in Washington, DC with your campaign manager (a financial industry lobbyist) and meeting with these guys:

“McCain left his office and took the subway to the capitol. He is now in Minority Leader John Boehner’s office with Sens. Jon Kyl, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman. [Campaign manager] Rick Davis was on the subway with McCain but I don’t know if he went into Boehner’s office.”

If you’re keeping score at home, that’s three Republcan congressman and an independent (who happens to be a co-chair of McCain’s campaign).  Remeber: the first step in sidestepping partisan gridlock is huddling with your team and figuring out your strategy for entering negotations.

Update: McCain will be assisted by a campaign aide tonight at his White House meeting; Obama will be accompanied by his Senate counsel.  Who else came to DC with McCain after suspending his campaign besides Rick Davis and Doug Holtz-Eatkin?

From McCain’s leaked talking points yesterday:

John McCain is calling on the President to convene a meeting with the leadership of both houses of Congress, including himself and Senator Obama.

From George Bush’s remarks last night:

There is a spirit of cooperation between Democrats and Republicans and between Congress and this administration. In that spirit, I’ve invited Senators McCain and Obama to join congressional leaders of both parties at the White House tomorrow to help speed our discussions toward a bipartisan bill.

Leaving aside the fact that neither Senator McCain nor Senator Obama is in a leadership position in Congress, the only explanations for McCain and Bush’s statements are:

1. Collusion between them
2. One is lying
3. Coincidence

Can’t imagine what it might be.

I’ve seen a number of folks make comments along the lines of, “What does McCain mean by suspending his campaign?  He still had an interview on CBS, is speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative, and met with Lady Lynn de Rothschild yesterday… what parts of his campaign are suspended?”

Fair point, but it misses what’s really indicated by this apparent inconsistency: it’s clear that McCain first seriously considered and then decided on this course of action within a maximum of 7 hours.  My proof assumes that the McCain campaign operates in a logically coherent manner respecting some self-evident rules of running a campaign, which might be overgenerous.  First, the relevant timeline:

1. McCain releases two web ads unrelated to the economy yesterday (picture from JohnMcCain.com at 8:34AM 9/25):
   
2. McCain’s campaign held a conference call to discuss an ABC News poll at 10:30AM yesterday.
3. McCain met with Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild sometime after 8:30AM yesterday.
4. McCain proposed the campaign suspension to Obama at 2:30PM yesterday.
5. McCain announces campaign suspension at 5:30PM yesterday.

Under the assumption that McCain’s campaign is not completely broken, it should be a rule that, when considering totally suspending your campaign on the basis of finishing a bill to forestall economic disaster, you would avoid events unrelated to said economic meltdown.  There are three documented activities yesterday by McCain, McCain’s ad team, and McCain’s polling/press staff above that are completely unrelated to the Wall St. bailout.

Based on these observations, it’s clear that neither McCain nor his press/polling/advertising operations were seriously considering the prospect of a campaign suspension until after 10:30AM yesterday.  This means that, in the absence of any earth shaking developments in the financial markets, McCain started considering and then decided on this path within just a few hours.  I understand that McCain prides himself on being decisive, but there’s a better word for his actions yesterday: rash.

It’s simply mind-blowing to think that our next President could be so totally unprepared in a situation that’d been developing for weeks at least (Obama’s been consistent on this for years, but let’s ignore that for now).  The President needs contingency plans to be ready to spring into action for a billion different things, and the McCain campaign’s off-the-wall, incoherent response here is really startling.  McCain was clearly operating through the first half of yesterday under the assumption that he was  campaigning as usual and then completely reversed course with zero intervening events of note.  If McCain were President today and had given the speech that George Bush gave last night, there’d be an odds on chance that he’d show up on TV tonight and announced TVA 2.0 to drag us out of depression, or announce an end to the bailout and the beginning of survival of the fittest on Wall St. — who knows?