McCain Bail Out??

McCain Stops at Senate en Route to White House

By M. Shear and Lori Montgomery
Sen. John McCain returned to Washington on Thursday after declaring that he has suspended his campaign, but he appeared largely detached from the flurry of negotiations on a $700 billion economic rescue package that appeared to be headed to a successful conclusion.

McCain's "Straight Talk Air" landed at National Airport just after noon, and McCain's motorcade sped toward the Senate. But by then, senior Democrats and Republicans were already announcing that a deal in principle had been reached.

That news appeared to be somewhat premature as House Republican leader John Boehner told his members that "no deal" had yet been reached. McCain arrived at 3:40 p.m. at the White House, where he and his rival, Sen. Barack Obama, were scheduled to meet with President Bush and congressional leaders at 4 p.m.

The leading Democratic negotiator on the Bush administration's $700 bailout plan accused John McCain of undermining the proposal and prodding House Republicans to lay out a wholly different approach that is opposed by the White House.

"This is the presidential campaign of John McCain undermining what Hank Paulson tells us is essential for the country," said Democratic Rep. Barney Frank, (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. "This is McCain at the last minute getting House Republicans to undermine the Paulson approach."

Republican leadership aides reacted incredulously to Frank's broadside, saying there was no way McCain's chief economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, could undermine a deal with House Republicans that has never had rank-and-file support.

Holtz-Eakin met this morning with Boehner, House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and House Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam (R-Fla.), but the GOP leaders did virtually all of the talking, and what they told him was how little support the $700 billion package had with their rank-and-file. When McCain emerged from the back door of Boehner's office in the Capitol, both Holtz-Eakin and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a key McCain ally, said they knew very little about the deal.

GOP aides familiar with the alternative proposal said that it had been in a draft stage for several days, with one adviser saying the lawmakers wanted to unveil it yesterday, but that McCain's entree into the deliberations actually made them wait a day.

The White House meeting was in part the result of McCain's stunning pronouncement Wednesday that he would stop campaigning to return to Washington, where he had urged Bush to convene a summit to address the crisis.

But for most of the afternoon, McCain has not visibly been part of the action on the issue. He was not present when House and Senate negotiators emerged from a two-hour meeting to declare success. That announcement was made by Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Robert F. Bennett (Utah) and Frank.

McCain, by contrast, spent some time in his office with several Republican colleagues, briefly stopped at Boehner's office, then left for lunch at the Capitol's Mansfield Room before returning to his office in the Russell Senate Office Building.

Republican Rep. Spencer Bachus (Ala.) said he had spoken to McCain yesterday, had breakfast with two McCain advisers this morning and spoke to McCain again immediately after today's meeting. But, Bachus said, "John's not trying to call the shots for the House caucus, I can tell you that. He's just opposed to the plan in its present form."

Frank reacted angrily to Bachus's statements, insisting that lawmakers were well on their way toward an agreement they could put to a vote, and that this afternoon's meeting at the White House was largely irrelevent.

"We'll be glad to go and tell them there really isn't that much of a deadlock to break," Frank said. "But I'm always glad to go to the White House."

McCain aides expressed cautious optimism, saying that there is "no deal until there's a deal," but McCain made no comments to the reporters trailing him around the Capitol.

Meanwhile, the status of the planned Friday night debate with Obama remained up in the air Thursday afternoon. Senior McCain adviser Mark Salter said, "We've got to see," when asked whether the debate would go on as planned.

McCain said on Wednesday that the debate should be postponed so that the two candidates, the president and the congressional leadership could lock themselves in a room for 100 hours to solve the economic crisis.

Obama arrived in Washington later in the afternoon, accompanied by one Senate staffer. Democrats cried foul when a White House list of attendees indicated that McCain planned to take a campaign aide, former Congressional Budget Office director Doug Holtz-Eakin, with him to the White House meeting.