yes, good article. thanks
Opinion Bernie Sanders was for the auto industry bailout before he was against it
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-ol-sanders-auto-bailout-20160307-story.html
Jon HealeyJon HealeyContact Reporter
Sanders and Hillary Clinton are facing off Tuesday in two states: Mississippi, where Sanders is expected to be shellacked, and Michigan, where his chances look increasingly slim. There, in addition to the high percentage of Clinton-friendly African American voters in both states, Sanders has to deal with the accusation that he opposed the federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler (gasp!) that almost certainly saved the auto industry and the tens of thousands of jobs it provides in the state.
Unfortunately for Sanders, his defense has been a variation of the "I was for it before I was against it" argument that proved so damaging to Kerry in his 2004 campaign against President George W. Bush.
At Sunday's Democratic presidential debate in Detroit, Clinton surprised and stung Sanders by saying he voted against the auto bailout. That's because Sanders voted in October 2008 against the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, which dedicated $700 billion from the federal Treasury to a new Troubled Asset Relief Program to save the U.S. financial industry (and avert a bigger crisis globally).
Not a soul in Congress wanted to vote for TARP. But you would have been hard pressed to find a mainstream economist in October 2008 saying there were any better options.
At the time of its passage, no one saw TARP as the solution to the auto industry's deepening troubles. There was one connection -- General Motors' financing arm, General Motors Acceptance Corp., which somehow managed to lose a ton of money on subprime mortgages -- but that wasn't exactly obvious.
In fact, the first time anyone tapped TARP to save the auto industry was in December 2008, when the lame-duck Bush stretched the rules in order to lend $17.4 billion to GM and Chrysler. Bush did so only after Republicans in the Senate successfully filibustered a bill that would have extended $14 billion in loans to the two companies.
Sanders' campaign pointed out Monday that he had voted in favor of the $14-billion "aid package." The campaign went on to say, "When that bill ran a Senate Republican roadblock, the White House turned to a separate Wall Street bailout fund for loans to the auto industry." (See what they did there? The proposed auto industry measure was an "aid package," which is good, right? The other was a "bailout," which is obviously evil.)
What the campaign failed to mention was that Sanders voted the following month with Republicans in a failed effort to cancel the second half of TARP's funding, which would have stopped the Obama administration from using $350 billion in bailout dollars. That sum had $4 billion earmarked for the auto bailout, but arguably included most of the $80 billion that ultimately was lent to the industry.
So in other words, Sanders was following in the footsteps of Kerry, who famously tried to hold himself out as an opponent of the Iraq War by noting that he'd voted against a bill to fund it -- after previously voting for the measure.
Granted, Sanders isn't guilty of so blatant a flip-flop. But his position on the auto bailout and TARP illustrates one of the drawbacks of being so ideologically pure (or rigid).............................
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