Maybe I’m misunderstanding this. Someone tell me if I’m missing something.
If we disband Congress now, think of the money we could save. They’re not doing anything useful.
This is an easy one. Bush is allocating most ofthat money from the TARP funds which Congress has already voted for and legally authorized to be used with fairly wide latitude.
There is nothing wrong with this.
I thought that money was authorized for “major financial institutions.”
Unless you think maybe Bush ought to listen to what Congress is trying to tell him, in which case, there’s maybe something a little bit wrong with it.
It was. Bush issued an executive order declaring that he was disregarding that part of the law.
That has been the position of Paulson from the start. But it has now changed. I do NOT have the law in front of me … however, from discussions on TV with the talking heads, they claim that the bill gives Paulson fairly wide latitude in how to use the funds.
Source: Troubled Asset Relief Program - Wikipedia
In simple terms, it’s another case of Bush acting without authority, Congress doing nothing about it, and the American People too stupid to care.
Which leads right back to the question in the OP.
Well, they could impeach him, but honestly, that would probably be a waste of time at this point.
Well, they don’t seem to have much else to do…
You want to make them work on the Christmas recess? Man, that’s just mean.
Does anyone here have any doubt at all that if Bush refused to do anything with these funds, that it would merely be a waiting game until Janunary when the new Congress comes in?
The terms then would probably be much mroe favorable to both the corporations and the unions. I suspect Bush and the Republicans saw some small opportunity to have at least some of their concerns heard this way.
Congress is usually still working on the budget into the lame duck session. If they’ve got that done and aren’t willing to act against Emperor Bush’s latest outrage(s) then hell yeah, let them adjourn sine die.
Probably the first GOOD thing Bush has done in his entire tenure as President…
Bush and the republicans in congress are playing good cop/bag cop with the unions… IMO
Remember that the Congress Republicans opposed the bank bailout too.
What you’re missing is that the failure of the auto bailout wasn’t that of “Congress” as a whole – there’s ni such animal. Rather, Congress is made up of 535 individuals, including a very few asswipe filibustering Republican senators who killed the bill that everyone agreed was both necessary and wise (including plenty of House GOP members). They did this, and in so doing got hundreds (thousands?) of autoworkers laid off right before Christmas in order to advantage the non-unionized plants of foreign manufacturers located in the South. So the solution is not to disband Congress, but to get rid of a handful of GOP senators who are willing to put Americans out of work and risk another Great Depression because they don’t like the things that come with unionization – like a living wage and worker safety. And we already did that – we just have to wait two more weeks for them to be sent home.
–Cliffy
But it was only a minority in Congress that opposed the auto bailout. How would that minority impeach him for something the majority was in favor of? In fact, Congressional leaders (ie, Democrats) have been begging Bush to do this.
Well, the impeachment wouldn’t be for bailing out the car companies. The impeachment would be for bailing out the car companies using money he was statutorially required to spend in another way.
So employees of Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, and other such companies don’t get a living wage or work in safe conditions?