Sense on Cents

Who does not respect John McCain? Despite what one may think of McCain’s political views, his personal character and courage are unquestioned. His “straight talk express” did not carry him to the White House, but it gained him the respect of many people from both sides of the aisle.

Today, Senator McCain shares a recent experience which highlights the rage boiling in America at this very moment. The Wall Street Journal provides a forum for McCain in a CEO Council Report entitled, “How to Rebuild Global Prosperity.” I thought so highly of this entire report that highlighted it in the Newsworthy section of Sense on Cents.

I thank The WSJ for producing such a comprehensive report, and I welcome sharing Senator McCain’s thoughts and opinions which were included in the Economy and Finance section of the report:

JOHN McCAIN: I’d like to tell you what I think is happening in Arizona and across America.

I have never seen anything like I am seeing in America today. My home state of Arizona is the second hardest-hit state. We have real unemployment around 17%. The level of anger and frustration and the anger is directed at what we do in Washington and what you do on Wall Street.

Every day, I encounter somebody who is a small-business person who not only can’t get a line of credit but they’re losing a line of credit.

Now, you may say that you’re trying to get credit to small business; you may say you’re trying to help small business. I’m telling you, they don’t believe that. They don’t believe that at all.

They’re angry and they’re fed up and they’re going to elect people in 2010—mostly Republicans because it’s a Democrat administration—and they’re going to be protectionist and they’re going to be anti-capitalist and they’re going to want change and they’re going to want regulation and they’re going to enact legislation that is going to be harmful to you.

Our community banks are going under and continue to go under, and people are losing their homes, their jobs.

I had a town hall meeting the day before yesterday in Kingman, Ariz. A young woman stands up, tears streaming down her face. She has two kids; she and her husband lost their job; they’re moving out of their house that day.

I have never seen anything like it. And all I can tell you is that unless something changes pretty quick, you will see an election in 2010, the likes of which we have not seen probably since 1982 or 1994, when there were bigger changes. And this will be bigger than that. So my urgent plea to you is, think of the small-business person who is the engine of the economy, who creates jobs in America, who is literally unable to get a line of credit anywhere.

Is Washington listening? Do they hear this message? Do they have the courage and character to rid themselves of the waste and incest embedded in the political and financial systems in order to help America?

LD

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 3:45 PM and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.