WASHINGTON — They came, they spoke but made no promises.
That was the approach of senior advisers to presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama on key credit union issues during their joint appearance at a luncheon at NAFCU's Congressional Caucus last week.
Both Obama adviser Gary Gensler and McCain adviser Ike Brannon said they had not discussed the issues of risk-based capital or increasing the limit on member business loans with their bosses and therefore couldn't commit to a position on them.
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Credit unions did not come up in their opening remarks, but in response to a question, both men praised credit unions for not having contributed to the current financial crisis.
Gensler said Obama "hasn't been briefed on these issues" but promised that the candidate would evaluate this and related subjects in the future.
Brannon said McCain is "very supportive of credit unions and is very thankful that the problems keeping us up at night aren't caused by credit unions."
Brannon noted McCain's promise to comprehensively overhaul financial services regulation, including eliminating some of the overlap among agencies. But when he asked the attendees if they favored having credit unions regulated by the same agency as banks, every hand in the room went up in objection.
On broader issues, the men disagreed on how much tax cuts would stimulate the economy.
Gensler, a top Treasury Department official during the Clinton administration, said Obama wanted to get tax rates back to the level where they were at that time. This would mean raising rates on the highest income taxpayers in order to provide tax relief for the middle class, whom he said have been hurt by the Bush administration's economic policies.
Brannon, who worked on Capitol Hill and as an economist in the Treasury Department, said by keeping the tax cuts passed during the Bush administration, people would have more money to spend to stimulate the economy. He also said McCain favored cutting taxes on corporations as a way to encourage job creation.
The joint appearance occurred the Monday after the weekend during which Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of America and Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection. Both Brannon and Gensler said their candidates supported the Treasury Department's decision not to provide financial guarantees to Lehman Brothers that might have prevented the Wall Street firm from falling into bankruptcy.
They agreed that the situation was different than when the government infused Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with additional capital and placed them under conservatorship.
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