True Colors
When it comes to the bank bailouts, we see the true colors of the major parties: both enthusiastically favor spending $500 billion, $700 billion, $1 trillion that the government simply doesn’t have (the budget deficit is already around $500 billion).
In Saturday’s radio address, Barack Obama said:
“We need to help people cope with rising gas and food prices, spark job creation by repairing our schools and our roads, help states avoid painful budget cuts and tax increases, and help homeowners stay in their homes,” said the Illinois senator. “And we must also ensure that the solution we design doesn’t reward particular companies, or irresponsible borrowers or lenders, or CEOs, some of whom helped cause this mess.”
Surely the fiscally responsible Republicans would see it differently, right? McCain’s take:
“This financial crisis requires leadership and action in order to restore a sound foundation to financial markets, get our economy on its feet, and eliminate this burden on hard-working middle-class Americans.”
Both parties then went about squabbling over the minutia to make it appear as though there were differences. McCain wants more “government oversight”. Obama wants to add additional “assistance for the middle class”. But fundamentally, they both agree: the right fix is a huge and enormously expensive program by the federal goverment.
I often run into people who say they’d vote Libertarian, but they just don’t want to see candidate X get into office. They vote for the “lesser of two evils”. Well, who do you vote for if you don’t want to see another $1 trillion or so of good money (over $3700 per american man, woman, and child) thown after this bad debt?
(If you’re curious about the Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr’s position on all this: see http://www.lp.org/news/press-releases/another-federal-bailout-“i-told-you-so”-says-bob-barr )