The Fundamental Deregulator

David Sirota picks apart John McCain's record on financial deregulation: Where McCain really leaps to the fringe and differentiates his extremism from others is in his use of the deregulatory label to publicly define himself. That's how you can really tell what a politician believes in. This is not a guy who just votes for the corrupt legislation his Wall Street friends tell him to vote for - this is a guy who has staked his name on being "fundamentally a deregulator," as he recently described himself. On 11/19/93, McCain took to the Senate floor to support an early financial deregulation bill and decry what he called "the tremendous regulatory burden imposed on financial institutions." The guy who now claims to be the trustbusting Teddy Roosevelt back then lamented "the rapidly increasing regulatory burden imposed on banks is to cause them to devote substantial time, energy and money to compliance rather than meeting the credit needs of the community." Ten years later, McCain was bragging to the Associated Press that "I have a long voting record in support of deregulation," and to CNN that "I am a deregulator. I believe in deregulation." Read the rest at Sirota's blog.