Posted on 10/01/2008 7:41:01 AM PDT by DCBryan1
If the headline on a recent Associated Press dispatch failed to alarm you, you can’t have been paying attention.
“Bush confident sweeping measure will stabilize economy,” it read. That was scant hours before the House rejected Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s Wall Street rescue plan, thrashed out over a long weekend of intense congressional negotiations. As a rule, the more confidence that George W. Bush expresses, the worse things are.
How and why the administration allowed what even cautious commentators describe as “the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression” to worsen until stopgap emergency measures couldn’t wait would appear something of a mystery.
Even with a manifest incompetent like Bush in the White House, if there’s anything Republicans are expected to understand, it’s money.
Well, think again. In the short term, it’s actually not so mysterious. Until the impending failures of Lehman Brothers and American Life Insurance Inc. threatened a meltdown of the entire Wall Street credit market with potentially catastrophic effects on the U.S. and world economy, it appears that Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke were hoping to limp past the November election, after which a newly elected Congress and president-elect might deal with the problem in a less-fevered climate.
Instead, we get to watch our dysfunctional political system at its absolute worst. As recently as Sept. 15, GOP presidential nominee John McCain, who has manfully admitted that he knows very little about economics, was assuring audiences that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
On Republican talk radio, see, it’s been an article of faith for months that Democrats have been falsely talking down the economy for political purposes, so when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi correctly, if somewhat intemperately, under the circumstances, pointed out that Bush inherited budget surpluses, turned them into massive deficits and continued to preach deregulation even as heedless speculators turned the U.S. banking system into the world’s largest roulette wheel, GOP congressmen got petulant and killed the bailout plan.
The poor babies got their feelings hurt. Then they went running back to their districts to spend the Jewish holiday campaigning as champions of Main Street.
Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks got it right: In their “single-minded mission to destroy the Republican Party,” he wrote, GOP congressmen “have once again confused talk radio with reality.”
Live by Rush Limbaugh, die by Rush Limbaugh. In the bombastic radio host’s upside-down world, it’s not Paulson and the White House that are responsible for the bailout bill, but Democratic “thieves” scheming to use the crisis to raise taxes on the “little guy.” Is it necessary to point out that Paulson’s bailout proposal contains no taxes at all?
Meanwhile, here’s Republican vicepresidential nominee Sarah Palin’s contribution to the debate. It’s worthwhile quoting in full. Pressed by CBS’ Katie Couric, who asked if it might not be a better idea to help middle-class families than rescue the big financial institutions that created this mess, Palin responded as follows.
“That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the—oh, it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we have, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing, but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.”
In short, sheer gibberish. The woman has no clue. What with McCain donning his Mighty Mouse costume, pretending to suspend his campaign for all of 36 hours and rushing to Washington to save the day by championing a three-page proposal that it’s been claimed by some he hadn’t actually read, his hand-picked vice-presidential candidate turns out to be somebody you wouldn’t hire to prepare your own tax return.
Not that the Democrats have covered themselves with glory. Pelosi ought to have known better than to schedule a vote on the bailout plan without knowing if she had the votes. It might have been smarter to let the Senate, where passage is all but certain, vote first. Barack Obama has been something less than scintillating, coolly keeping his distance while Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank do all the heavy lifting.
One thing’s clear: Republican ideologues have created yet another fiscal disaster; adult supervision will again be required.
•–––––—Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.
A complete moonbat wacko who believes the rightwing overlords control the weather and hide microphones under his bed.
Oh for goddsakes, why did I even bother to skim this idiocy?!?
I guess the money the government wants to use doesn’t come from taxes. It must come from their manufacturing business or the salary the government earns. Or maybe the government won the lottery or signed a big movie deal.
I'm sure this brainiac passes for intelligent in his leftist circles.
The author’s understanding of Republicans is that they are for “cutting taxes” and nothing more.
The more amusing thing is that I thought the GOP was supposed to be the handmaiden of Wall Street and of the rest of the big evil corporate interests.
So the House GOP members who voted against are idiots, but the 90 House Dems who voted against don’t exist.
As for the current crisis, blame clearly lies with left wing ideologues who pushed to prevent greater regulatory scrutiny applied to the GSEs.
Fannie and Freddie were essentially allowed to use their government guarantee to open the spigots of debt and create this bubble that has now burst.
Yet another genius socialist program which has threatened this nation’s fiscal and economic stability.
And lastly, it’s sad commentary on our nation as to how little the Constitutional objections raised to the Paulson Plan are considered as relevant. Again, I submit that most Americans would accept totalitarian government if it guaranteed them one free meal at Chili’s (or the other casual dining restaurant of their choice) per week.
The federal government exists today to make the people stupid and dependent upon it, while grinding down their constitutional liberties.
Is this where Baghdad Bob disappeared to?
Instead, we get to watch our dysfunctional political system at its absolute worst. As recently as Sept. 15, GOP presidential nominee John McCain, who has manfully admitted that he knows very little about economics, was assuring audiences that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
That lie again... the phrase was embedded in a statement acknowledging the difficulty of the situation.
“You know that there’s been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall St. And it is—people are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think still—the fundamentals of our economy are strong. But these are very, very difficult times.” - John Mccain, September 15, 2008
LYONS IS LYIN’
If he lies so blatantly about that, there’s nothing he says you can trust.
All great change in America begins at the dinner table.
Ronald Reagan
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