Both candidates pledge to vote on plan
After suggesting they might skip it, both presidential candidates committed Monday to returning to Washington to vote on the controversial mortgage bailout plan that the Senate will consider as soon as Wednesday.
Jill Hazelbaker, the campaign communications director for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), told Fox News: “He’ll be there to vote on the bill.”
“He expects to be able to support this bill, but we need to see what emerges from the Senate,” Hazelbaker said. “We have not heard much from Barack Obama. We still do not know whether or not he intends to come back to Washington.”
But a spokesman for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said he, too, will return to Washington for the historic vote.
On Sunday, McCain said on ABC’s “This Week” that congressional negotiators deserve “great credit” for the bipartisan deal. “"It wasn’t because of me,” McCain said. “They did it themselves.”
But Hazelbaker, like senior campaign adviser Steve Schmidt on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, said the deal would not have happened “without Sen. McCain.”
“Sen. McCain interrupted his campaign, suspended his campaign activity to come back to Washington to get Republicans around a table,” Hazelbaker said. “Without Sen. McCain, House Republicans would not have appointed a negotiator, which would not have moved this bill forward.
“It’s really Sen. McCain who got all parties around a table to hammer out a deal that hopefully is in the best interests of the American taxpayer.”
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Both candidates pledge to vote on plan
By MIKE ALLEN | 9/29/08 11:52 AM EDT
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