John McCain: The Fundamental Deregulator

Earlier this week John McCain sat down for an interview with New York Times reporter John Harwood on the economy, and when asked about the current meltdown, McCain delivered an emphatic prescription for fixing the ailing system: "We need to take the regulatory agencies and merge them together in one effective agency," he said. "We need to combine the regulatory agencies, and...give them some more authority."* McCain wants regulation, and he wants it now, though three months ago he sung fairly different tune. At various press conferences, the RNC, and in interviews, the top of the GOP ticket repeated his free market mantra: "less government, less regulation." To be fair, he said a bit more than that. In April 2008, for example, he explained that what our economy really needed was to raise "increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting, and tax impediments to raising capital."

-Marissa Colón-Margolies

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