House Republicans That Supported Auto Bailout Tonight
Posted by redvirginia on December 10, 2008
Here is a list of those House “GOP” Socialists that supported the auto bailout tonight. Let their names be posted on every lamp pole across their districts and feel the fear of God for supporting such legislation:
Barton (TX)
Buyer
Camp (MI)
Capito
Ehlers
Emerson
English (PA)
Frelinghuysen
Hoekstra
Hunter
King (NY)
Knollenberg
LaHood
LaTourette
Lewis (KY)
Manzullo
McCotter
McCrery
McHugh
Miller (MI)
Murphy, Tim
Porter
Ramstad
Regula
Rogers (MI)
Ryan (WI)
Smith (NJ)
Souder
Upton
Walsh (NY)
Young (AK)
This entry was posted on December 10, 2008 at 10:05 pm and is filed under Big Government. Tagged: Auto Bailouts, Big 3 Bailouts, Big Government, Big Government Republicans, Communism, Congressman Camp, Don Young, Government Bailouts, Paul Ryan, Socialists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
bmo said
“Socialist” is right on TDC!
TDC <— remember actually tuning your car?
Thanks for the post!
cominius said
I refuse to refer to this as auto bailout, or auto company bailout. This is a UAW bailout only. If this doesn’t pass the UAW goes bye-bye.
pccapitalist said
Surprising no Cantor?
Dan said
Paul Ryan is my congressman in the first district of Wisconsin. While I strongly disagree that he supported the auto bailout and the 700 billion dollar bailout, I received an e-mail from his site showing a strong stance against the Fed and it’s recent near 0% interest rate cut. So maybe there is some hope still. This is what it said:
The Fed Opens the Spigot
By Paul Ryan
Representing Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District
December 29, 2008 10:17 am
The Federal Reserve has been navigating unchartered waters for more than a year now, but the most recent Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) statement signaled that our central bank is fast approaching the “final frontier” of monetary policy, with potentially dangerous economic consequences down the road.
In its latest bold move to combat the credit crunch and the worsening economic recession, the Fed lowered its target for the federal funds rate from an already-low 1 percent to essentially zero. In normal times, cutting its benchmark short-term interest rate is the Fed’s preferred, and most effective, tool for stimulating bank lending and lowering economy-wide borrowing costs for consumers and businesses. That, in turn, tends to encourage greater economic activity. But these are not normal times.
The level of fear and uncertainty in financial and credit markets is still such that banks are wary about extending new loans to borrowers with even solid credit ratings. Investors, meanwhile, have pulled back from a wide variety of securitized debt, which has restricted a key channel of financing for consumers and has increased borrowing rates on everything from car loans to credit cards, and even student loans. The bottom line is that the Fed can encourage lending by lowering interest rates, but it cannot force such activity.
Left with no more room to cut rates, the Fed has signaled that it is prepared to use other “nontraditional” means to resuscitate the economy. Our central bank still holds the ultimate trump card – the power to print money and flood the economy with cash. In some sense, it has already started to do just that. The Fed has been using its substantial balance sheet to extend loans to private businesses and establish various credit facilities for financial institutions and investors. Over the past three months alone, the asset side of the Fed’s balance sheet (which records such loans and liquidity facilities) has more than doubled from just over $900 billion to $2.3 trillion. The Fed’s most recent commitments to begin purchasing large amounts of mortgage-backed securities and provide financing for a wide variety of other asset-backed securities means that its balance sheet will likely exceed $3 trillion by early next year.
Where does that money come from? The Fed simply creates it by ramping up the money supply, which is recorded as an offsetting liability on its balance sheet. (Economists typically refer to this deliberate increase in the money supply by the central bank as “quantitative easing.”)
It is important to note that this strategy is an explicit departure from the Fed’s policies of the past. Previously, the Fed had been “sterilizing,” or neutralizing, the lion’s share of its liquidity measures in order to prevent a sharp increase in the money supply. This was typically done by selling Treasury bonds in the open market. Essentially, the Fed was providing liquidity to certain segments of the financial markets with one hand, while taking cash out of the system through the sale of Treasury bonds with the other hand, which meant that the net supply of money in the overall economy remained relatively steady. (The Treasury facilitated this sterilization process through the creation of a temporary “Supplementary Financing Program” in September. The intent of this program was to sell extra bonds on behalf of the Fed in order to support the central bank’s increasing balance sheet.) Now that the Fed has essentially abandoned its efforts to sterilize its increasing balance sheet, the monetary spigots are wide open and the flow of liquidity will be unfettered.
In ordinary times, this sharp increase in the monetary base (defined as bank reserves plus cash in circulation) would be highly inflationary. But the sharp slowdown in economic activity, combined with the ongoing credit crunch, means that this enormous increase in high-powered money is not circulating through the economy via normal lending channels as it normally would, and is therefore not putting upward pressure on prices — yet.
Eventually, as the economy recovers, and banks begin lending again, the Fed will have to quickly mop up this excess liquidity and ramp up interest rates to prevent a potentially nasty bout of price inflation. And, frankly, I am not at all optimistic that the Fed can get the timing right. In fact, past Fed policy was a factor in creating the mess we are in now. Earlier this decade, the Fed held interest rates too low for too long, setting the stage for a wave of mortgage borrowing that eventually led to a housing bubble. Led by Chairman Bernanke, the Fed has proven to be extraordinarily bold and creative in addressing the worst economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression, but its task ahead in timing and executing the reversal of these actions will be herculean.
Perhaps more important, the recent action on the part of the Fed could set the precedent for a dangerous interaction between monetary and fiscal policy going forward. For instance, the Fed also signaled last week that it is looking into the possibility of purchasing longer-term Treasury bonds as a way to bring down long-term interest rates and provide further support for near-term economic activity. But this measure is just a few steps removed in concept from one tempting, if entirely misguided, approach to funding our future fiscal liabilities. The Fed has the power to simply “monetize” the debt by printing money to meet these fiscal obligations. This is truly the nightmare scenario for anyone who cares deeply about sound money, a growing economy and fiscal prudence, as I do. I don’t believe we are heading down this path. But we do need to be careful not to mistake the unique policies the Fed is pursuing now in reaction to the current crisis as a viable template for securing long-term economic growth and fiscal sustainability.
Dan said
Yea Duncan Hunter is a “socialist”…sure thing…get a life.
Blazing Saddles said
Just look what’s happening with two Bills at the Virginia General Assembly -
SB 1410 Motor vehicle dealers; revises responsibility of manufacturers toward dealers.
Thomas K. Norment, Jr.
Summary as introduced:
Motor vehicle dealers; coercion.� Revises and clarifies responsibilities of manufacturers toward motor vehicle dealers in the event of termination of a dealer franchise.
The State Senate passed the bill 40-0.
A similar bill in the House passed 98-0.
HB 1778 Motor vehicle dealers; revises & clarifies responsibilities of manufacturers.
Clifford L. Athey, Jr.
Summary as introduced:
Motor vehicle dealers; coercion.� Revises and clarifies responsibilities of manufacturers toward motor vehicle dealers in the event of termination of a dealer franchise.
Now the Chief Lobbyists with VW leading the charge -
are sponsoring a Reception for all senators and delegates in the General Assembly on Monday. Will this be a strong arm tactic to change their votes? The chief lobbyists were all over GOP Delegates on Friday going from office to office. Those who looked hard at the legislation, the folks who produced that unanimous thumping of 138-0 heard the facts. More than twenty other states already have similar laws on the books in the event a manufacturer voluntarily quits making a line of vehicles like Saturn or Hummer. Those laws simply provide that dealers who relied on their agreements with manufacturers and then spent millions of dollars to build facilities, equip them, hire employees, advertise, and pay their bills (including employees wages) can get some measure of compensation when a manufacturer CEO rolls out of bed one day and decides he or she doesn’t to produce those cars anymore. In fact, under the laws of every state, manufacturers who breach their agreements with Virginia dealers can be liable for damages. These bills just sets some timing provisions to calculate those damages – which by the way – are coming fast! Is this Reception Custer’s Last Stand for the Auto Manufacturers and their highly paid Political Consultants?
PaulLivesOn said
I BLAME ELLMORE’s FORMER CAMPAIGN MANAGER FOR BEING SO CLOSE TO CHUCK SMITH AND FOR CHUCK SMITH VOTING TO RID THE PARTY OF JEFF FREDERICK! JEFF FREDERICK WAS THE BEST CHAIRMAN WE’VE HAD IN RECENT HISTORY AS FAR AS I’M CONCERNED! UGGGGGGGh