The Republican presidential candidate who took the economic bailout so seriously that he suspended his campaign last week stayed quiet when it came time to vote on it.
Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama, his Democratic rival, both left the campaign trail Wednesday and returned to Washington to vote in favor of the historic $700 billion bailout.
Obama used the opportunity before his colleagues and TV cameras to lay out his rationale and explain his economic vision.
“This will not solve all our problems,” the Illinois lawmaker said on the Senate floor. “This is what we need to do right now, to prevent the possibility of a crisis turning into a catastrophe.”
Before the roll was called, Arizona’s McCain dined in Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s office.
When the series of votes were called, McCain did not acknowledge Obama as he passed by; Obama later initiated a handshake.
The bill, which passed 74-25, now goes to the House, which is expected to vote Friday.
McCain has struggled to strike the right balance between being involved in the crisis without appearing to exploit the situation for political purposes.
“He was working hard with his colleagues to ensure that this package moved forward,” said Mark Buse, McCain’s Senate chief of staff. “He didn’t see the need to speak on the bill.”
Earlier Wednesday at the Truman Library and Museum in Independence, Mo., McCain said, “If we fail to act, the gears of our economy will grind to a halt.”
The House on Monday rejected an earlier version, a move that sent the stock market into a 778-point dive.
Wednesday it was the Senate’s turn. In rare agreement, leaders of both parties presented a rewrite with a variety of sweeteners for lawmakers reluctant to vote “aye” a little more than a month before Election Day.
Obama urged any lawmakers on the fence to “step up to the plate.”
“Let’s do what’s right for the country at this time, because the time to act is now,” he said on the Senate floor.
Lawmakers from both parties said Wednesday that the changes made the bill more palatable. McCain, in Missouri, said he was pleased that the bill includes taxpayer protections, limitations on executive compensation and sufficient protections for people’s bank accounts.
In La Crosse, Wis., Obama vowed that his administration would “create new rules of the road to prevent another crisis” and said “financial institutions will do their part and pay their share, and American taxpayers will never again have to put their money on the line to pay for the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street.”
After McCain’s campaign initially blamed Obama for contributing to Monday’s failure in the House, McCain avoided attacking, or even mentioning, Obama in his speech in Missouri.
Instead, McCain stuck largely to promoting the broader points of his economic plan and promised that his administration would “apply new rules to Wall Street, to end the frenzies of speculation by people gaming the system and to make sure that this present crisis is never repeated.”
