Nov 12 2008
We can’t bail out everybody so where do we draw the line?
It looks like Congress could soon move to help America’s troubled auto industry. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants what she calls “emergency and limited financial assistance” for the industry. Pelosi wants the current lame duck session of Congress to come up with legislation that would make the automakers eligible for help under the $700 billion bailout bill that cleared Congress October. Pelosi says that Ford, General Motors and Chrysler are all in financial trouble, and if any of them fails it will have a devastating impact on our economy. President-elect Obama also wants to provide help for the auto industry.
I’m not denying that Detroit automakers are hurting, but where do we draw the line on all these bailouts? Which industries are we going to disappoint? How many corporations are the taxpayers going to eventually have an equity position in, and over the long haul, how is quasi public ownership of some of America’s heritage industries a good thing?
The airline industry is in trouble. Almost the entire durable goods sector of our economy is suffering. 700-billion dollars isn’t nearly enough to positively impact all the companies in the country that could use a bailout. Will we raise that sum? We’ll have to if we’re going to use public money, but somewhere along the line, we’re going to have to recognize that the United States of America is broke, and this extraordinary excursion into government ownership of private enterprise, is fundamentally wrong. We don’t have a dime of our own to apply to all these struggling industries. We have to borrow every dollar we invest already, and it has never been our way to have government take over industries.
We must not allow American industry to become dependent upon government. It will destroy us as a nation. I know that means that we’re asking for hard times, but unless we draw the line now, I’m afraid we’ll never have the good sense or the courage in the future.
(3 votes, average: 3.33 out of 5)
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Why do we have to bail out anybody? Answer, GEORGE W BUSH and his credit card spending. The man has ruined our economy and is working on the rest of the world’s. He got elected as a FISCAL CONSERVATIVE.