John Sununu on Budget & Economy Republican Senator; previously Representative (NH-1)

Raising taxes is last thing needed during financial meltdown

"Where has John Sununu been on those issues? He's been in Washington for 12 years--5 years on the Banking Committee," she said. "He's been missing in action when it came to cracking down on those practices that led us to the crisis that we're in today." In response, Sununu's campaign maintained Shaheen is the "last person N.H. needs in an economic crisis" because her "first inclination" is to raise taxes. Shaheen seems to anticipate the tax-and-spend criticism. She said she balanced three budgets when she was governor and when revenues were lagging, she cut spending.

Sununu has been promoting three priorities: protecting taxpayers' interests, implementing strong oversight of regulatory markets and promoting policies that encourage long-term growth.

Sought more financial regulation; keep taxpayers off hook

Jeanne Shaheen countered that "the lack of oversight and the lack of accountability that George Bush and his allies like John Sununu in the Senate supported have really brought us to where we are today." She pushed for tighter regulations and liquidity-disclosure requirements as well as a consolidated oversight system.

Sununu parried back aggressively, telling how he had long sought to beef up regulation for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the ailing public-private mortgage finance companies seized by the government this month. "That's an issue where I've led the effort not just in the past year, but going back five years," Sununu said. He also said taxpayers should be kept off the hook for Wall Street's failures.

Difficult to say that fundamentals of our economy are strong

But the parallels aren't exact. For one, Sununu declined to agree with a McCain line that generated flack earlier this week, proclaiming that the "fundamentals of our economy are strong." Asked during the conference call, Sununu replied: "I think it's very difficult to make a statement about the fundamentals," he said, citing the pace of change.

To make their case against Sununu, Democrats point to Sununu's vote as a congressman for the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999. That bill, co-sponsored by Gramm, removed New Deal-era restrictions on mergers between financial institutions. Democrats have circulated a news story saying the law "helped pave the way for AIG and Lehman Brothers to become behemoths laden with bad loans."