"My fellow Americans, with the rest of you I have watched the events of the past week astounded by what has transpired in our financial markets. In the face of the challenges that confront us in rescuing our financial system, we must adjust our policies and the assumptions that underlie them. My administration has stood against tax increases, but now in the wake of this catastrophe we accept it is necessary to find new revenues, not least because if we merely add the cost of this bailout to our already burgeoning budget deficit we will further burden international markets, weaken our economy, and prolong the pain. Therefore, I not only am willing to sign, but actively support, legislation to be passed by Congress that would raise taxes to pay against the cost of the bailout. Moreover, I recognize that fairness dictates these higher taxes should be paid by the people best able to pay them."
If Bush can't say these words, the Democrats shouldn't pass the bailout.
It's not enough that the Democrats include a measure financing the bailout. It's not enough that the White House merely consent to it, with Bush like a truant child dragged to the table to sign it like the Democrats did his father in 1990. It's sadly typical Republican demagoguery to create a situation where all parties admit that grown-up action is needed, all accede to support a "bipartisan" compromise, and then for ideologues in the sorry mold of Jim Bunning or non-incumbent wingnuts to exploit the good faith everyone else exhibited in taking care of the problem that after all is only there by virtue of their irresponsibility in the first place.
And it's most definitely not viable to leave the gigantic cost of this bailout lingering until January 20, 2009 for Barack Obama to step up to the plate and be a man about it, or to allow it to hang like a stormcloud over the economy during his first term, so that Fox Business and the Wall Street Journal will spend 2009 and 2010 whining about the poor economy the "Obama tax increases" have wrought.
No. No. No. No.
This crisis, created by Republican deregulative policies, left to simmer for over a year by Republican unwillingness to bail out the homeowners whose troubles precipitated this whole mess, should not be left lying around for a Democratic president to take the political hit of either the tax hike necessary to pay for it, or the outstanding debt left to choke the economy by consuming the available credit that otherwise would go to finance new businesses, new homes, new college educations.
So there should be a bailout, alright. But the political hit for that bailout and its enormous cost has to be paid for by the administration that produced the need for it. It should not be passed on so as to tarnish an Obama administration. So Pelosi and Reid should demand that the bailout be paid for, and not paid for next year, and that they should demand that the president propose it. On camera. Before the nation. And that it be agreed to in principle by the Republican caucuses of the Senate and House.
And after all, if the situation is so dire. And there's no time to lose, surely the Republicans would not let such a detail dissuade them from the urgent work of saving the country's economy.
Probably, judging from the other diaries tonight I should have read Naomi Klein's work long before now. But really, all I've written here just comes from the fact that I remember the Republicans' actual behavior around the 1990 budget agreement. It's not really that theoretical. This is their recent history. It's their M.O.
Sorry for a short and opinion-rich, fact-poor diary, but I really had to say this.