Apparently, our boy George W. is making good use of his lame duck status.. Today, he decided to give a $17.4 Billion dollar bailout to the 3 big failing auto manufacturers. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=2008-12-19_D955VSMO2&show_article=1&cat=breaking
How does this enrage me? Let me count the ways.
(1) I am not sure how our country got so far off track that the federal government can be used as a money lender to companies just becuase they are friendly with politicians!
(2) If the auto companies are going under, that is their own fault and a sign that they are not generating sufficient revenue to maintain their costs. It sounds to me like the consumers have already decided that these companies need not be around. (If they thought otherwise, the companies would not be in serious financial straits.)
(3) It is absolutely absurd that a bill which failed in the senate can be simply revamped as an executive order (fiat) by the president. (Nowhere in our constitution is there allowance for executive orders; making laws is what the legislature is for!) If the president can command anything s/he wants into law, then what is the whole point of congress??!
(4) Bush states that the motivation for this bailout (handout, you mean?) is a failing and ailing economy? If that is so, what sense does it make to take money from most of us to give to an isolated few that - it seems to me - have been offering the general public nothing that they want to buy for years? (It would be like giving money to companies that produce nothing and arguing that the justification for doing so is the saving of jobs. THAT only helps the economy if the jobs being saved are economically beneficial. Since no one is buying Fords, I can't see how saving the jobs of Ford's employees is helping the economy.)
(5) Per what the House and Senate talked about, this bailout (er...handout?) comes with strings attached. Barack Obama said, for instnace:
"The auto companies must not squander this chance to reform bad management practices and begin the long-term restructuring that is absolutely necessary to save this critical industry and the millions of American jobs that depend on it, while also creating the fuel efficient cars of tomorrow."
Can you read between those lines? Obama is saying that now that we are paying these companies good money, they are expected to do (x), (y) and (z). How are we so far gone that government officials are telling businesses how to run??
(6) Haven't we already given enough government "loans" (loans in theory, as they have never and will never be paid back) to the auto industry? It is time to give up. If they can't make it by now, they CAN'T MAKE IT!
Those are a few of the ways in which the bailout (there I go again, misspeaking) makes no sense and actually hurts the American tax-payers (the ones who are struggling in a bad economy and AREN'T recieving their own bailouts because they can't afford to give government officials gifts).
To close, Bush suggests that "The time to make hard decisions to become viable is now, or the only option will be bankruptcy." Maybe what he should have said was, "The time to make hard decisions to become viable is long past and the only option IS bankruptcy."
But then again, he never was too good at that economics thing.
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