McCain wants 9/11 Commission-style panel on Wall St.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain on Tuesday called for the establishment of a panel that would shed light on the current financial crisis. 

“We’re going to need a 9/11 Commission to find out what happened and what needs to be fixed,” the Arizona senator said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

{mosads}McCain made the rounds on the morning talk shows to address the financial crisis and defend himself from attacks by Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), who had blasted the Republican for saying in the midst of a Wall Street meltdown that the fundamentals of the economy were strong.

“I said the fundamental of our economy is the American worker,” he stated. “I know that the American worker is the strongest, the best, the most productive and most innovative.”

McCain also said that workers had been “betrayed” by “greed, corruption and excess” on Wall Street, a phrase he repeated at least twice in all of his morning interviews.

“I know how to fix it,” McCain said on NBC’s “Today Show,” adding that he is not universally opposed to regulation but that he objects to the “patchwork” of rules that is currently governing Wall Street.

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor, in commenting on McCain’s appearances on the talk shows, strongly criticized the GOP nominee.

“After nearly three decades in Washington, John McCain’s economic record is clear – he thinks the fundamentals of the economy are strong, he said he is fundamentally a deregulator, and that makes him fundamentally out of touch with the struggles facing everyone from Main Street to Wall Street,” Vietor said.

Meantime, Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden agreed that America’s workers had been betrayed, but the Delaware senator argued that the culprit was not only Wall Street but also “this administration's policies and the policies [McCain] has supported.”

“You want four more years of George W. Bush and the laissez faire policies of John McCain, with no regulation over the very people he's now calling predators, then in fact continue it,” Biden said on CBS’s “Early Show.”

“My Lord, take a look at who got us in this hole, whose policies,” he added. “This has been a Republican philosophy of letting Wall Street do what they want and the middle class be damned.

It’s about time we change it.”