Car WHAT????
The US House of Representatives passed a bill to bail out the automobile industry last night. One of the more "interesting" parts of the bill was the creation of a brand new cabinet level position...the "car czar".
The Senate is not so high on this bill, but for some the reason is not as obvious as you might think. Our "Republican" Senators from Utah are both opposed to this bill, but only because it does not make government intrusive enough!
THIS is the problem with today's Republican Party. It has become a party of intrusive big government just like the Democrats. How can they campaign on being the party of "small government" when our politicians are voting for more government spending in a recession! HELLO - where is the money for this new bureaucracy coming from guys?????
They just don't get that not only do they not have the money, but with Bank of America being the latest to announce job cuts (35,000 as announced today) THE TAXPAYERS DON'T HAVE IT EITHER!!!! We can not continue to print money like it was Monopoly money. At some point in time the government has got to start CUTTING back on their spending like the voters are. Otherwise our money will be about as valuable as the peso.....
A car what???????The US government could own equity stakes in the country's ailing car manufacturers under the terms of a sweeping bail-out plan being considered by the White House last night.
The draft "auto rescue" bill submitted by congressional leaders would see the government receive equity warrants (options to buy shares at a set price) equal to at least 20% of the $15bn (£10bn) in emergency loans it gives to General Motors or Chrysler. The "car tsar" could, the bill added, even demand warrants of a "greater percentage".
The Senate is not so high on this bill, but for some the reason is not as obvious as you might think. Our "Republican" Senators from Utah are both opposed to this bill, but only because it does not make government intrusive enough!
Bennett, along with Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, say they want to support an auto bailout, but the current proposal doesn't give the car czar the necessary authority.
THIS is the problem with today's Republican Party. It has become a party of intrusive big government just like the Democrats. How can they campaign on being the party of "small government" when our politicians are voting for more government spending in a recession! HELLO - where is the money for this new bureaucracy coming from guys?????
They just don't get that not only do they not have the money, but with Bank of America being the latest to announce job cuts (35,000 as announced today) THE TAXPAYERS DON'T HAVE IT EITHER!!!! We can not continue to print money like it was Monopoly money. At some point in time the government has got to start CUTTING back on their spending like the voters are. Otherwise our money will be about as valuable as the peso.....
Labels: Senator Bob Bennett, Senator Orin Hatch
posted by The Lady Logician at
8:00 PM
4 Comments:
If only the auto industry could figure out a way to pay the executives and not the workers, Congress would be falling all over themselves to bring on a bailout.
So, Lady, you approve the no-strings-attached handout of money because after all, strings/oversights/financial controls are just to expensive?
By
Anonymous, at 9:41 AM
Yes, cutting federal spending in the middle of a recession. President Herbert Hoover did that, and took the country into a depression.
That's all Bush needs to complete his legacy-- Great Depression 2.0.
By
rmwarnick, at 10:49 AM
I'm amazed that someone could get the message completely backwards here. The position stated was the there should be no bailout - that we can't afford it. What she is arguing is that our Senators are right to oppose the bailout, but that they are doing it for the wrong reasons.
By the way rmwarnick, the fact that we are in a recession may make cutting federal sending more politically unpalatable, but the recession does not change the fact that the federal government is perpetually in a state of severe overspending and that the never-ending cries for more government programs (more spending) is inherently the wrong approach for the future of the nation.
Those who want new spending need to do it with real money - not deficit overprinting. That's especially true in good times.
By
Anonymous, at 11:55 AM
The Lady has it spot on. I can only hope that the senators in question were grossly misquoted and taken out of context, though that appears to not be the case.
Executive salaries, exorbitant though they may be, are a small portion of the total cost of the company. From the news:
"GM says its total hourly labor costs are now $69, including wages, pensions and health care for active workers, plus the pension and health care costs of more than 432,000 retirees and spouses. Toyota says its total costs are around $48. The Japanese automaker has far fewer retirees and its pension and health care benefits are not as rich as those paid to UAW workers."
Is it any wonder they're having financial troubles as they try to compete? I'm not saying I'm for or against unions or workers... I'm just looking at the numbers.
As for a cut in federal spending being the cause of the Depression, while that may have been a contributor, there were larger triggers. One reality of the Depression that is beyond dispute is that just prior to "the Crash", the Fed contracted the money supply.
Just like expanding money leads to inflation, contracting it leads to de-flation. (When you can only sell goods and services today for less than what you paid for them yesterday, your economy will collapse.)
So, when FDR rolled out the "New Deal" with all of the new government spending, one reason it "worked" was because in the process of new "government program spending" the Fed was expanding the money supply...and that expansion was correcting their earlier screw up of contracting the money supply.
That's why the bailouts wont work today and why you cant compare what is happening today with the Great Depression: Today's problems start with a government that is already expanding the money supply by continually spending money they don't have...so "new government spending" this time will only make it worse.
One final note. A UCLA study
recently concluded that FDR's policies that "rescued" us from the Depression actually extended it by 7 years.
By
Lynn Taylor, at 10:07 PM
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