Obama: No More Bailouts (Except to My Union Buddies)
Written by Brian Garst, Posted in Big Government, Economics & the Economy, Government Meddling
In his antagonistic, petulant, and stale campaign speech State of the Union address, President Obama said, “It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts.”
Oh, what fine rhetoric, Mr. President! Yet earlier in the very same speech, he said this: “On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen.” Just to be clear, he’s talking about his auto-industry bailout.
Beyond the fact that his premise is entirely wrong (the US auto industry as a whole was not on the verge of collapse, but a select few companies were and are still in bad shape despite what he says), it is telling that he deliberately avoided mentioning just what he did with the auto-industry: he bailed it out. More specifically, he bailed out his union buddies who were largely responsible for crippling those companies in the first place. And as for applying the same rules top to bottom, there is an exception again for his unions pals, who have been granted a majority of the waivers shielding them from the destructive impact of the government takeover of the health sector which those same unions supported.
The reason he was not open about his auto-industry bailout was because his intention was to be dishonest and give lip service to opposing bailouts. Like so much of this President’s rhetoric, you have to set aside the lies, and look at his record. Barack Obama is a statist and economic interventionist, and bailouts are an interventionists best friend.
I serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.