Obama assails McCain’s foreclosure stance

washington – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama today slammed John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, for adopting President Bush’s “bad ideas” for solving the home foreclosure crisis – and for accepting the president’s fundraising help.

“We’ve had enough of the can’t-do, don’t-do, won’t-even-try approach from George Bush and John McCain,” Obama said during a speech in Las Vegas. According to the Obama campaign, 3.4% of Nevada homeowners went into foreclosure last year, three times the national average. Nearly 90% of those were in Las Vegas’ Clark County.

The Illinois senator met with Felicitas Rosel and Francisco Cano, two Bellagio Hotel employees who told him they were struggling to pay their mortgage. Sitting at the family’s kitchen table in their home 10 minutes from the Las Vegas Strip, Obama sympathized. “Look, this is a serious problem all across Las Vegas, all across Nevada, all across the nation,” Obama said. “A lot of this wouldn’t have happened if we would have done a better job regulating banks.”

Obama, speaking later to a crowd of about 75 homeowners in North Las Vegas, noted that McCain was to attend a private fundraiser with Bush in Arizona today. “John McCain is having a different kind of meeting,” Obama said. “No cameras. No reporters. And we all know why. Sen. McCain doesn’t want to be seen, hat-in-hand, with the president whose failed policies he promises to continue for another four years.”

Obama faulted the Arizona senator for failing to “come up with answers” to the sub-prime mortgage problem. “Sen. McCain is so out of touch with the struggles of working people that he gave a speech laying out his economic agenda last week, and he couldn’t even be bothered to talk” about the nation’s foreclosure problems, Obama said.

Arguing for what he called a fair tax code that would help homeowners, Obama assailed the Bush administration’s tax cuts. “John McCain is running for a third term of tax cuts that only shift the burden onto working people,” he said. “That might make sense to the Washington lobbyists who run John McCain’s campaign, but it won’t do anything to help families who are struggling.”

In a statement, McCain’s campaign countered that “whether it’s fighting wasteful government spending, addressing global climate change or advocating a more effective strategy in Iraq, John McCain has clear but respectful differences of opinions with the president. However, it isn’t surprising that Barack Obama is trying to disguise his lack of depth and weak leadership on economic issues with political generalizations and partisan attacks.”

 johanna.neuman@latimes.com

Times staff writer Maeve Reston in Denver contributed to this report.