Someone Get the Dems a Thesaurus

The Democrats just finished up their press conference regarding the auto industry bailout and there’s one thing I learned from it; if Nancy Pelosi is on your Christmas list get her a thesaurus.

The words of the day for the democrats were accountability and viability. Together they were said 27 times, Nancy Pelosi delivering them 20 times.

Overall, I liked the press conference; if it was delivered about two and a half weeks ago.

Basically the democrats said they wanted the auto industry to provide them with a report about how they would be, you guessed it, accountable with tax payer dollars and viable for the future. That makes sense to me, I’d like to know if the auto industry is going to be able to survive with a measly $25 billion; and, unlike the $700 billion bailout, I’d like to make sure they are accountable for the money they receive.

However, the democrats are a tad late. The auto makers asked for this money weeks ago. That’s when this press conference should have taken place. Instead they had Carl Levin draft legislation for the bailout, they had musings of taking it from the $700 billion, there was talk that they’d do it if they got an ownership stake in the companies, there was talk today that a bipartisan group had finished legislation, there was rumor that it would be voted on soon. The House and Senate leadership let rumors fly.

What’s the problem with that? Take a good hard look at the market. No one knows what the hell is going on in Washington, their teetering is creating massive unease on Wall Street. Had the democrats come out the day after the auto industry asked for the money, we would have had a clear message as to what the procedure was going to be. We would have known when the decision was going to be made, and we would have understood that Congress had understood the idea of “accountability and viability.”

By the way, as I’m writing this Carl Levin, my Senator from Michigan, is speaking to the press. I unmuted the TV to hear what he had to say, I then remuted it after hearing this line…

“Auto industries around the world including China and Europe are requesting loans from their governments because of the dramatic decline of the global economy and the drastic reduction in car purchases and the availability of credit.”

So Levin’s justification for a bailout of the auto industry is that everyone else is doing it. Since when did we follow communist China’s lead?

–jb