Virginia Senate candidates weigh in on federal proposal

By Bob Stuart

Published: September 23, 2008

The two candidates hoping to succeed John Warner as a Virginia U.S. Senator mirror the growing partisan divide over the proposed $700 billion federal bailout of the country’s financial industry.

Republican Jim Gilmore said he is working on a free-market solution. Gilmore wants to see assessment of the value of the assets, and would like to see the free market buy and sell the loans.

The Republican Study Committee, made up mostly of conservatives and about half of Republicans in the House, similarly is seeking a free-market alternative. Gilmore and conservatives say the federal bailout plan gives Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson too much power.

“The best approach is to have a free market work on a proposal,’’ Gilmore said during a telephone interview.

Like Gilmore, Democrat Mark Warner, who is leading in the Senate polls, worries about the lack of oversight. Like fellow Virginia Democrat Sen. Jim Webb and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., Warner also wants limits on executive compensation, a notion resisted by Republicans.

Warner does not corporate executives walking way with “ridiculous compensation packages’’ funded by the taxpayers, Warner spokesman Kevin Hall said.

And the Democratic candidate wants to ensure the package does as much as possible to protect the taxpayers, so that if the value of assets bought by the government recovers, taxpayers can recover the money they put into the bailout.