Wednesday, September 17, 2008

McCain on ABC 'Good Morning America': Transcript (9-17-08)

Read the full transcript.

ROBERTS: You talk about Congress and, of course, you’ve been there in Washington...

J. MCCAIN: Yes. Sure.

ROBERTS: ... for all these many years.

J. MCCAIN: Yes. Yes.

ROBERTS: And you’re saying that a little bit asleep at the switch.

J. MCCAIN: Two years ago I gave a speech and argued on several occasions that Fannie and Freddie were in trouble, that they were carrying out unsafe and unsound and even corrupt practices. And I said this has got to stop.

And I have fought for reform all the time that I’ve been in Congress. I’ve taken on my party; I’ve taken on the other party. I’ve taken on the president.

Senator Obama has never taken on his party on any major issue. This requires a reformer. That’s my record of reform. And we have to fix it, and we will fix it. And it’ll never happen again when I’m president of the United States.

ROBERTS: When you say...

J. MCCAIN: And we’ve got to grow the economy and create jobs. That’s the best way out of this.

ROBERTS: And how do you go about it? Because yesterday when you were talking to Chris Cuomo, you said that you perhaps would form a kind of 9/11 Commission. And talking with folks here, like you did, they said enough with the commissions, enough with the talk, what are the real solutions? What are the, you know, the practical solutions not the talk?

J. MCCAIN: Well, first of all, you need to get the best minds in America together. I mean, this is a crisis. This is one of the most severe crises in modern times. So you got to get the best minds in America together to say, “Look, not only did this happen, but we’ve all got to work together, Republican and Democrat.”

I mean, this calls for bipartisanship. This calls for patriotism.

J. MCCAIN: This calls for saving the economy of the people here, the Lipps family on this farm. They’re the heartland of America.

So, clearly, we have to have transparency, we have to have oversight, we have to combine these regulatory alphabet soup organizations. We have to make them work. They need a chief executive who knows how to crack the whip and knows how to reform Washington and reform the way that we do business, and, frankly, brings these people to account, hold these people to account that are responsible for this. And if many of them broke the law, then maybe some of them should be in jail.

ROBERTS: People hear you saying that and believe in your commitment to wanting to do that, but, Senator, they’re saying if you’re in office, they want something tangible. When they hear that they’re like, what’s the first thing that you will fix? What (inaudible) first thing you will change?

J. MCCAIN: The first thing I’ll fix is make sure that their taxes are not raised. I’ll make sure that they -- available and affordable health insurance. We will grow jobs.

We will get off alternate energy that -- frankly, this family who uses a lot of gasoline. We’ve got to get off that dependence on foreign oil. I know how to do that. (inaudible) I have a concrete plan to fix our economy.

And I’ll make their health insurance affordable and available, a quality education for their kids, and I’ll keep taxes low. They don’t need a tax increase in this very difficult time. And I will be opposed to that and I will make sure that it doesn’t happen.

But we can restore our economy again, but we’ve got to clean up this mess that -- and drain the swamp that’s causing so many problems and having so many innocent bystanders from being harmed by it.

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