Comment & Debate
Change to Win Leadership Council – Now, the Bush Administration wants us to pick up the tab to bail out Wall Street, with no strings attached. Congress should not give the Administration a blank check. It needs to structure a bailout plan that will actually work to stabilize the financial sector without leaving taxpayers holding the bag. And it needs to provide relief to the real victims of this crisis — the working families whose homes are now at risk of foreclosure. Accordingly, Change to Win believes that the following principles must govern any bailout plan, and that Senator Dodd’s proposal provides a good starting point.[1]
AFL-CIO – Our nation is facing a real crisis and we should move swiftly, but we cannot afford to compound our problems with bailout legislation that is hasty at the expense of thoughtfulness and common sense. We want our tax dollars to provide a hand up for the millions of working people who live on Main Street and not a handout to a privileged band of overpaid executives on Wall Street.[2]
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. – And I don’t know what is going to happen, but I can tell you, you add a trillion here and a trillion there and you’ve got a lot more debt on the American people. And that’s what I’m concerned about. And we’ve been down this road before through the thrift bailout. The cost to the American taxpayer, billions of dollars. This is the mother of all bailouts. And we don’t see the end in it yet.[3]
Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky. – “The Paulson proposal is an attempt to do what we so often do in Washington, D.C., throw money at a problem. We cannot make bad mortgages go away. We cannot make the losses that our financial institutions are facing go away. Someone must take those losses. We can either let the people who made the bad decisions bear the consequences of their actions, or we can spread that pain to others.”[4]
Lloyd Dogatt, Democrat Representative – The people asked to clean up all the broken furniture, they didn’t even get invited to the party. They’re very angry they’re being asked to contribute to this bailout.[5]
Reality Check at The New York Times – I hope they are planning to weight the impact of this bailout on the 1% of Americans who control 90% of its wealth. These are the Americans who benefited most from Wall street excesses and who should carry the majority of the cost.
Ordinary Americans are already paying the price is foreclosures, lost equity, reduced savings, job loss and threatened retirement.
Let the people best able to absorb this mess step forward for the sake of the nation.[6]
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor – “If you think the Bailout of All Bailouts…won’t saddle American taxpayers with billions, if not trillions, of risky obligations, you don’t know politics… Never before in the history of American capitalism has so much been asked of so many for…so few.”[7]