WITH THE MCCAIN MARKET MELTDOWN LEAVING AMERICANS' SAVINGS IN JEOPARDY, MCCAIN CLAIMS "FUNDAMENTALS

NEWS FROM THE FLORIDA DEMOCRATIC PARTY For Immediate Release: September 15, 2008 As Two Terms of Bush-McCain Economic Policies Result in the Failure of Two Major Banks and the Loss of Americans’ Savings, McCain Is Out of Touch Tallahassee, FL – This morning, headlines announced the failure of two of the four remaining major investment banks, yet by mid-morning, even as the stock market continued to plunge – and with it, Americans’ life savings and retirement – McCain was continuing to insist that the “fundamentals of the economy are strong.” McCain’s stubborn insistence that the fundamentals of the economy are strong shows that he, like President Bush, is disturbingly out of touch with what’s going in the lives of ordinary Americans and would simply offer more of the same failed economic policies which have Americans have suffered under for the past eight years. “John McCain doesn’t understand Florida’s economic struggles – in fact, he doesn’t even acknowledge them,” said Florida Democratic Party spokesman Eric Jotkoff. “Perhaps it should surprise no one that a person who doesn’t know how many houses he owns could wake up to headlines of a near financial collapse in this country and still claim that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. John McCain wants to continue the same failed Bush economic policies that got us into this recession in the first place. The Sunshine State can’t afford four more years of Bush-McCain economic policies.” Even as Americans struggle with decreasing incomes, mounting job losses, and rising costs – and now the consequences of the failure of Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers — McCain continues to offer the same out-of-touch rhetoric and failed Bush economic policies. Florida is in recession for the first time in 16 years, we lead the nation in job loss, are number two in foreclosures, and our state’s budget defects are ballooning out of control. John McCain’s answer is to do more of the same, with a plan to give away nearly $2 trillion in tax breaks for corporations over the next 10 years but provide no tax relief to 101 million families or to any small businesses. In fact, he’ll raise taxes by $3.6 trillion on health insurance for average Americans. And while Americans can barely afford a tank of gas, he’ll give billions in tax breaks to Big Oil. Even as McCain continues to deny Americans’ economic struggles on the campaign trail, his ads are highlighting the economic crisis. But McCain’s double-talk on the economy can’t conceal that, despite 26 years in Washington, McCain doesn’t get it on the economy – or that the Bush economic policies he supports have created an historic economic crisis. Instead, he continues to insist that the “fundamentals of the economy are strong” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. -###-