Progress in bailout talks; GOP credits McCain

[Ron Burgundy]

Congressional negotiators are reporting progress on a financial-markets bailout deal as House Republicans continue to pursue a two-track strategy: Shape the plan to their liking, and make sure John McCain gets some of the credit.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said that progress was being made and that he expected the principals – Sens. Chris Dodd, Reps. Barney Frank and Roy Blunt, and Gregg himself — to meet Saturday afternoon and work together until they have a deal. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he hoped that a deal would be announced Sunday – with the possibility of votes being taken before the markets open Monday.

Staff for the House and Senate negotiating team met until 1:40 a.m. Saturday morning and are back at the Capitol now.

McCain arrived back in Washington just before dawn Saturday, and his campaign said he planned to “resume negotiations with the administration and Congressional leaders from both parties to forge a bipartisan solution to our economic crisis.”

Republicans are clearly worried that their presidential candidate’s first effort to engage in the bailout negotiations didn’t come off as well as they might have hoped – that in the public’s mind, a deal was close until McCain parachuted in, a White House meeting collapsed and McCain left for the debate in Mississippi with the various factions farther from a deal than they’d been before.

House Republicans are now trying hard to recast those events.

What actually happened, they say: By not taking a stand on the modified version of the Treasury Plan that Democrats, Senate Republicans and the White House seemed nearly ready to support, McCain gave House Republican the time they needed to force a better deal for taxpayers and homeowners alike.

During a brief session in the Capitol on Friday, McCain reminded a small band of Republican leaders that he had given them a political opening in the landmark legislative fight.

 

According to people present, McCain then told his congressional colleagues, “Now, go get something.”

McCain had swept into town Thursday morning like a conquering hero, poised to save the economy – and, by turns, his presidential campaign.

Democrats derided his decision as a blatantly political – and completely unnecessary – maneuver.

House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) joked that McCain’s gesture reminded him of the late-comedian Andy Kaufman doing his famously understated rendition of the Mighty Mouse theme, “Here I Come to Save the Day.”

"We are making very real progress," Frank said at the time. "This is a stunt. I hope people will be able to ignore it. He doesn't bring anything to it."

While McCain greeted his top allies on Capitol Hill, lawmakers were working toward a compromise deal in a bipartisan, bicameral meeting. When that meeting ended, both Dodd, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Sen. Bob Bennett, a Republican from Utah, said that negotiators had agreed on a plan that could pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the president.

Gregg, a Republican from New Hampshire, told Politico Friday that the compromise wouldn’t have come together so quickly if Democrats didn’t know that McCain was on his way. “We wouldn’t have had as much movement [Thursday] as we did have, if he hadn’t come to town and some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle wanted to upstage him,” Gregg said.

With the deal struck, Republicans in the House believed that the trap was set, not so much for McCain as for their own leader, Ohio Rep. John A. Boehner.

As House Republicans saw it, Democrats and the White House were close to a deal and just needed McCain to sign on so they could roll Boehner under the bus and claim a bipartisan victory.

Boehner himself had emerged from a brief meeting with McCain earlier that day in his Capitol office unsure what the presidential candidate would do.

But if the Democrats and the White House were ready for a game of “ganging up on Boehner” – as the minority leader said later – McCain didn’t play along.

At the White House, Bush beseeched lawmakers to join him in announcing progress toward a deal. According to one report, the president asked, "Can't we just all go out and say things are OK?"

But McCain said little during the White House meeting. And when it ended, neither he nor Bush nor Barack Obama said anything at all to the reporters waiting outside in the rain.

In a statement, the McCain campaign said the meeting “was spent fighting over who would get the credit for a deal and who would get the blame for failure.”

source: Politico - http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080927/pl_politico/14015 [link]