“Urgent.” “Quick.” “Promptly.” “Soon.” That’s the language of the bailout. But Americans are asking — why the rush?
The Bush administration is urging Congress to approve the bailout bill. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson repeatedly says “bailout quick.” First, the bailout bill was pushed on Congress to try and have an agreement by Sept. 26. John McCain and Barack Obama rushed back to Washington. The Bush administration applied more pressure. Then the House moved its vote to Sept. 29. The Bush administration pressed again. Then came the Jewish holidays. Now the rush date has been set for tomorrow. Quick, fast and in a hurry to bail out Wall Street?
Who invented this language of a quick bailout? The “crisis” did not happen overnight and the “crisis”cannot be solved overnight.
Amid fears that a global credit “crisis” could loom, the socialist European Union is using the same bailout language, urging America to “quickly pass” the bill.
Mr. Paulson said Sept. 21 that “we need this to be clean and quick.” Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd also said “We need to do it quickly.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is on the same page as the administration. On Sept. 19, after meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Mr. Paulson, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, Mr. Dodd and Mrs. Pelosi said: “We hope to move very quickly. Time is of the essence.”
Scott Fullman, director of derivative investment strategy, for New York-based institutional broker WJB Capital Group praised the economic intervention because it would help the banking industry as a whole. Whereas the government’s other bills have helped specific companies, such as Bear Stearns, AIG, and Ford, GM and Chrysler. Indeed, while Congress is literally fighting over what will and will not be included in the $700 billion bailout package, Republicans and Democrats have found bipartisan common ground in the language of the bailout.
However, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, Michigan Republican, does not buy the language and has not bought the bailout to solve the banking and credit “crisis.” “You will lose, potentially, your prosperity for a short period of time, at the expense of your long-term liberty,” he said. In other words, the American people can handle the prospect of a small recession, but no one wants to hand over their economic liberty by socializing the economy.
If Congress bails out Wall Street quickly, it will be bowling over voters who have already said no to corporate welfare.
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