Barack Obama and John McCain Answer Questions on Political System Reform

Obama and McCain on Political System, Lobbying and Ethics Reform

Excerpts from an AARP hosted, live Q&A session with Senators Barack Obama and John McCain at the Annual AARP Member Event in Washington D.C., September 4 – 6th.

Barack Obama says it is the President’s responsibility to set a new tone. He said he would invite leadership of the other party to regular meetings to sit down and tackle big problems, and everyone would need to recognize there will have to be compromises, and we won’t all get our way.

He proposes some specific ideas to allow the American people to hold their elected officials accountable.

1. To improve transparency, he proposes live meetings, broadcast on C-Span, where all relevant parties involved in a particular issue would meet to collaborate. He used health care reform as an example, proposing that you call together a meeting where everyone gets a seat at the table: AARP representatives, hospital administrators, doctors associations, drug and insurance companies, congressmen, etc. With the meetings broadcast on C-Span, people can see how their elected congressmen are interacting, and what issues they are truly representing.
2. As an additional way of creating transparency, Barack suggests using Google for Government as a means to post every single dollar of federal spending, for all to view.

In this way, Barack said,

"If you see someone is spending money to build a bridge to nowhere, you can find out who that is and use that money to build a bridge to somewhere."

Barack Obama’s website contains additional details on his plans to restore fiscal discipline.

McCain said he had never seen bipartisanship and gridlock as terrible as it is today. He humorously commented,

“We may have reached rock bottom. In case you missed it the approval rating of congress lately is about 9% - when you get down to that level you’re down to paid staff and blood relatives.”

He brought up the point that he was not elected Miss Congeniality this year, and that he has a track record of working across party lines. He mentioned specific examples such as his work on immigration reform with Ted Kennedy, campaign reform with Russ Feingold, and the establishment of a 9/11 commission with Joe Lieberman.

McCain emphasized that he has the experience necessary to initiate political reform.

John McCain’s website contains additional details on his ideas about reducing government spending on pet projects, creating limits on campaign funding from corporations or individuals with huge checks, and reducing or increasing the transparency of perks provided to Congress by special interest groups.

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