Nobody Likes Bailouts!

PolitiFact on Mitch McConnell's Statements

 

(Mitch loves peace)

Dwight  Eisenhower once said, "Never question another man's motive. His wisdom, yes, but not his motives." This is still true today but it is getting more and more difficult to not question some peoples motives.  The political landscape today is much more toxic than when IKE was running the show and this toxic climate is no longer contained on the fringe of our political parties. It has gone mainstream.  Even the politicians themselves are regularly calling each other "socialists" or "un-American". Unfortunately this appears to be getting worse with no sign of changing in the future.
Our leaders apparently can't even read anymore.  Recently Sen. Mitch McConnell stated that the recent financial reform bill "will lead to endless taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street banks".  A simple reading of the bill lead the folks at Politifact to the following conclusion;

In ruling on McConnell's statement, that financial reform "actually guarantees future bailouts of Wall Street banks," we base our ruling primarily on the legislation. It clearly states that the intention is to liquidate failing companies, not bail them out. To do that, it creates a fund with contributions from financial firms, not from taxpayer funds. We do not see any element of the bill that expressly permits ongoing, "endless" outlays from the federal treasury. Is it possible that liquidation may cost the government money, potentially more money than is allowed for in the bill? Yes. But even so, McConnell is using seriously overheated rhetoric. Nothing in the bill "guarantees" future bailouts of Wall Street banks. We rate his statement False.

I truly hope that Sen. McConnell  is genuinely mistaken in his interpretation of the bill but I find that hard to believe.  Perhaps his staff fed him bad information or his definition of bailout is very very very broad (like including the FDIC). Whatever the case is I would urge all of our political leaders to stop with the rhetoric.  It may be helping your political campaign but it isn't helping the country.   In the era of "Death Panels" keeping up this type of angry hype can lead to nothing good.  I wish we had more men like IKE around today.