Ummm...didn't McCain also claim to be in favor of a "spending freeze except for VA and defense"?

Seems to me that Grandpa has pandered himself into a corner.

But at least he's "reaching across the aisle"...this time to Dennis Kucinich.

As someone who responsibly avoided taking out a loan I couldn't afford while I watched the real estate bubble inflate, I'm not inclined to bail out defaulting home loans any more than I'm for bailing out millionaire investment banking fraudsters.

THE ONE MIDDLE CLASS RESCUE PACKAGE NEEDED ABOVE ALL OTHERS IS TO LEGISLATIVELY SUPPORT THE PRICE OF HOME GROWN LABOR -- TO WIT:

Santa Fe’s $8.50/hr minimum wage ($9.50/hr now), according to a think tank dedicated to protecting the working poor from earning more, cost lower skilled workers a significant number of jobs (8.3%, adjusted for something -- nominal employment actually rose) many to higher skilled replacements.

Could such seemingly painful trade offs pose a dilemma for a USA hopefully on its way to raising lower wages across the board?

Simple (ask any minimum wage earner) resolution:
1) Even if lower skilled workers lose a percentage of jobs to a higher minimum, they should earn more over a lifetime because they will earn more when they are working -- which should be most of the time.
2) Higher skilled workers would be making enough more than enough extra to pay a bit more in taxes to fund some sort of welfare to cover the lower skilled.
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Quick lopsided income share tutorial:
At $186,000/yr, the average family income reported by the Census for top 20 percentile families may sound out of proportion -- your typical primary care provider earning well short of that these days -- but is about where it should be if we assume that family income growth matched per capita income growth reported by the same Census: doubled since 1968, when $95,000/yr was the top 20 average.

What is out of proportion is the same Census reporting 100% per capita income growth while reporting 67% (overall) family income growth since 1968 -- a 33% family income shortfall? The presumed missing 33% -- presumably hidden by the Census practice of "top coding" income over $1 million per family out of its survey -- would add an additional $111,000 to average top quintile income -- presuming family income has grown at the exact same pace as per capita income since 1968.

Family income may have grown more like 90% during those years: still leaving $85,000 hidden by the top code (not $111,000): still making 185% top quintile growth (not 212%), still comparing lopsidedly to 12%, 22%, 37% and 53% income growth reported for the lower quintiles. If we added enough dollars to lower quintile 2007 incomes to bring them into line with 90% growth: the four lower additions would add up to the missing top income, dollar for dollar (by mathematical definition).

If we could somehow throw a reset switch to share around 2007’s doubled income in 1973's fairer distribution, lower four quintile wage earners would still be in the same relative (skill/pay) bargaining positions vis-à-vis each other -- making for little expectation of added unemployment -- ditto for shaved-income top earners: my "Chinese snake dance" theory of labor price distribution.
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It is not under-priced labor -- in the sense of people here and abroad willing to work for less -- that is dragging American wages down and causing whole-segment (!) unemployment (see many American born cab drivers or fast food workers lately). It is under-pricing labor that is causing our Great Wage Depression (which description covers both lost pay and lost jobs).

If Australia had a 1000 mile land border with China -- open, Mexican/American style -- Australian labor would need powerful wage support legislation to maintain native pay standards: a solid (1/2 of the "real" average wage -- of $25/hr here) minimum wage plus modern labor legislation known as sector-wide labor agreements (Australian labor in its present state actually needs the latter as its once effective if eccentric wage support structure badly erodes).

America, the only modern OECD nation under the double whammy of globalization and ever mounting immigration, is the only modern OECD nation with next to no heavy legislative protection for its higher skilled (A.K.A., American born) labor.