Brown, Ryan rip economic policies
Published 1:17 pm Wednesday, September 17, 2008
As investors wait to see how low the economy can go, two Ohio Congressional supporters of Sen. Barack Obama went on the offensive pushing the Democratic candidate in a conference call Tuesday with Ohio media.
Focusing on the issue of privatization of Social Security, Sen. Sherrod Brown and Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio’s 17th District, drove home the Wall Street debacle by discussing it in light of efforts by the Bush Administration to change the revered retirees’ program.
“John McCain and his advisers are clearly out of touch,” Brown said. “Imagine if George Bush and John McCain had gotten their way on privatization of Social Security … what would have happened to their dollars in these risky schemes that George Bush and John McCain had pushed. For that shows how out of touch McCain is.
“Barack Obama understands Social Security is a covenant between the people and the government. He would always fight privatization.”
However, Bush’s change was to be a combination of individual accounts with a government funded program.
Brown called the tumultuous financial crisis a culmination of “Bush-McCain policies. The contrast is clearer than ever before.”
The two politicians also focused their blast on McCain around the Republican presidential nominee’s earlier comments that he believed the U.S. economy was fundamentally strong.
Monday McCain on MSNBC and CNN gave explanations on his earlier statement.
“I was talking about the fundamentals of America, which is the workers, their productivity, their innovation, their incredible performance for many, many years,” he said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” show. “And what I was saying is and it’s clear if you look at my remarks and that is that Wall Street has betrayed us.”
In the conference call Tuesday, Ryan maintained the events of the past few days have gotten Ohio voters to rethink the election.
“People are becoming more and more open to Barack Obama,” Ryan said. “It is beginning to sink in that John McCain is going to make things worse. People are starting to take a closer look. They are becoming more disenchanted.”