Cleveland Families Challenge McCain’s Ties to Subprime Housing Corps.

Ben Waxman, national AFL-CIO Ohio state director, sends us this report from Cleveland.

Union activists from the North Shore Federation of Labor gathered outside a campaign event for Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) this morning to deliver a clear message to attendees: McCain is doing nothing to solve the housing crisis and help families in trouble keep their homes.

Debbie Kline with JwJ

In the past two years, more than 14,000 Cleveland families have lost their homes to foreclosure, leaving entire city blocks abandoned. But this morning, McCain came to town peddling the same corporate-friendly, anti-worker agenda President Bush has been pushing for seven years.

McCain has deep financial ties to corporations at the center of the subprime storm. When it comes to the housing crisis, McCain offers more of the same inaction and failed policies we’ve seen from Bush. 

North Shore Federation of Labor Executive Secretary Harriet Applegate, who led the action, says Cleveland’s working families are looking for real solutions to the housing crisis, not more corporate rhetoric. 

Every day, working families are being forced out of their homes by greedy subprime lenders who care more about corporate profits than people. Not only has McCain offered no help to working people in need, he’s taking campaign contributions from the very predatory lenders who caused the subprime mess to begin with. 

The Cleveland event is the first of a series of nationwide actions to expose McCain’s true record on working families’ top issues.

The housing crisis is so bad in Cleveland, the city is suing 21 prominent financial institutions, including large groups such as Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial, accusing those corporate giants of knowingly plunging the city into a financial free fall. 

McCain has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from many of the very same subprime lenders being sued by the city of Cleveland, including more than $100,000 from Citigroup and Citibank and nearly $52,000 from Wachovia. In all, he’s taken more than $6 million from the finance, insurance and real estate industries. McCain leads among presidential candidates for bundlers from the real estate and commercial banking industries.

Wachovia CEO and President G. Kennedy Thompson is a McCain bundler. These ties paint a troubling picture of a candidate who offers more of the same failed economic policies that pad corporate profits at the expense of working families.

Applegate said it’s the labor movement’s responsibility to expose the real John McCain on working families’ issues.

Today was just the opening salvo. Working people aren’t giving John McCain a free pass on the issues that impact our lives. We’re going to be out in force between now and November to make all working families know about McCain’s record and what’s at stake in this election.

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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

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