Mark Winston Griffith
It’s the Stupid, Economy: Thoughts on a failed bailout attempt
"This is a huge cow patty with a piece of marshmallow stuck in the middle of it. And I'm not going to eat that cow patty."
- Republican Congressman Paul Brown
As I write this, the stock market is in a free fall after the news that the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), the proposed bailout program authorized by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008l, died in the House of Representatives. For the sake of all of us whose fortunes may prove to be tethered to the capital markets, I am hoping the pain will be minimal.
But even before the vote failed today in the House, I've been having serious reservations about this bailout plan. To support it means having to go along with yet another the-sky-is-falling maneuver by a presidential administration that can't ask Americans to follow him without employing lies, fear or a reckless combination of both. To paraphrase conservative commentator Monica Crowley, liberals and progressives haven't believed anything Bush has said before, so why is the Congressional left following him now?
The truly scary part is that I find myself aligned with House conservatives who, say what you will, are sticking by their principles, not to mention their constituents, in opposing a massive market intervention by the government. Of course it doesn't get much stupider and misguided than the conservative caucus pushing for the elimination of the capital gains tax. And it also doesn't get much more spineless and infantile than the Republicans blaming a speech made by Pelosi for their nay vote.
But like the conservatives, and perhaps some of the ninety-five, mostly non-conservative, Democrats who also voted against it, I'm resistant to the idea of the bailout, rather than the particular features of the bill. To address what is truly ailing this nation, Congress needs to be having a conversation about the kind of investment we should be making in ourselves, not in corporate America. Unfortunately, by debating bailout vs. no bailout, progressives have already lost control of the terms of the debate, and now we are all collectively stuck on stupid.
I know the stakes are high, but now that Congress has decided, at least for now, that we are going TARP-less, let us as progressives liberate ourselves ideologically from this legislation, start from scratch and imagine the kind of investment in ourselves that we need – deep-tissue foreclosure relief, anti-predatory lending, a new regulatory mandate and affordable housing creation. Any other kind of government intervention is more than we all can afford.
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Posted at 4:30 PM, Sep 29, 2008 in
Economy
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