How convenient that seemingly everyone in the liberal blogosphere, and even at many points to the right, got to use Jim Bunning as a scapegoat. The venom of the attacks suggests that the maverick Republican senator from Kentucky provided a welcome alternative to the real villains: bankers much closer to the centers of power. As if Bunning's denial of unanimous consent to a stopgap extension of unemployment insurance -- easily overcome, as was demonstrated Tuesday night -- is at the root of our economic crisis.
It isn't, and it is vicious nonsense to transform Bunning, who has a long record of opposition to the bipartisan policies that caused America's financial mess, into a poster boy for economic heartlessness. The issue was not one of extending aid for another month to those whose benefits had run out but rather holding the government accountable for the means of payment.
Bunning's action was a sideshow, a boneheaded symbolic gesture that backfired with slight consequences. Yet the senator was made to look the dangerous fool in media accounts while many of those who enabled the financial catastrophe continue to be treated as reasonable experts after being rewarded for their folly with the highest posts in both the Bush and Obama administrations.
The real issue here is the banking bailout, a bipartisan swindle that Bunning opposed and that has led to a dangerously spiraling deficit without providing relief to ordinary folk. It is the same issue that carried Texas Gov. Rick Perry to victory Tuesday in his state's Republican gubernatorial primary, in which he defeated U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in part because of her support of the bank bailout.
As with the January defeat of the Democratic candidate in the Massachusetts election for a U.S. Senate seat, the message from voters is loud and clear: The political establishment cares only about the fat cats and not the people who are hurting. Bunning's gesture was not intended, as his critics insisted, to increase that pain but rather to hold the government accountable for the money it is spending. He has consistently blasted the bailout as a shameless gift to the Wall Street hustlers and urged that the money being wasted on them instead be spent to aid homeowners and other victims of their greed.
This is not the first time that Bunning has stood alone in Congress. He was the sole member of the Senate to vote against the nomination of Ben Bernanke to be head of the Federal Reserve. That appointment came from Republican President George W. Bush, and yet it was Republican Sen. Bunning who warned that Bernanke as a Fed governor had been allied with then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan in his disastrous policymaking.
That was four years ago, when Greenspan was still being lionized by most Democratic and Republican politicians as well as by much of the media. On Jan. 28 of this year, Bunning once again rose in the Senate to challenge Bernanke, this time after President Barack Obama had nominated him for a second term:
"Chairman Bernanke ... bowed to the political pressure of the Bush and Obama administrations and turned the Fed into an arm of the Treasury. ... Instead of taking that money and lending to consumers and cleaning up their balance sheets, the banks started to pocket record profits and pay out billions of dollars in bonuses. ... So if you like those bailouts, by all means vote for Chairman Bernanke. But if you want to put an end to bailouts and send a message to Wall Street, this vote is your choice."
He is right to point out that enormous sums always seem to exist to aid Wall Street but that assistance to average Americans has consistently been only an afterthought. And he does have a point in noting that if the latest spending extension was felt to be so important, why wasn't it funded in a timely manner or in an orderly procedure by his congressional colleagues from both parties who are now trouncing him?
The money is always there when they want it, as we have witnessed throughout the banking bailout when enormous sums have suddenly been made available to those who least need it. The Treasury Department managed to find $200 billion last week to deposit with the Fed to increase the purchase of toxic mortgages to $1.25 trillion to make the bankers whole.
But the level of vituperation unleashed against this senator is so disproportionate to his role in the economic catastrophe as to raise questions of motive. The overreaction to Bunning's protest was never anything more than a ploy for Democratic and Republican leaders to profess great sorrow for the folks on Main Street while they continue to coddle Wall Street.
He had nothing to lose in telling the truth this time. He is not running for re-election, he is retiring. Kind of like a death bed confessional....that people should have listened to more carefully without looking at the messenger.
I would very much like to understand why Senator Bunning did not put a hold on Bernanke's re-election then, instead of holding funds for the unemployed now.
Kudos.
We have entered a classic fascist state, and fascism unfortunately can lead to revolution.
This attitude should have been clear when Senator John Kyl, in support of Bunning, said that unemployment benefits dissuade people from job-hunting "because people are being paid even though they're not working." Then he said, " In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work...I'm sure most of them would like work and probably have tried to seek it, but you can't argue that it's a job enhancer. If anything, as I said, it's a disincentive."
The Republicans orchestrated this and supported Bunning. What Republican repudiated Bunning on principle? Oh, certainly they were upset with him, but only for the political problems it caused them. Why choose unemployed folk, victims of the economic largess Scheer decries, as the place to draw a line in the sand?
5 unemployed for every job available. What part of that equation does the GOP not get?
Criminal action - not a "boneheaded" move. He meant what he did.
Moi
Veteran Wiseacre and Editior of imnotimpressedwithyourwebsite.com
You seem to be focusing on the "messenger". It's the "leadership" and a whole host of other factors that are to blame. For example, why hasn't the Obama Administration released the over $500,000,000,000 of stimulus money that is still not spent?
STIMULUS money should be spent QUICKLY and COMPLETELY in order to... wait for it..... S T I M U L A T E. Stimulus money should be providing for JOBS by now. IT WAS PASSED OVER A YEAR AGO. But the Obama Administration is holding the money back. Why? ...I suggest that it is the Obama Administration, therefore, that is the "cause (of) suffering among a group of people who through no fault of their own are now about to be pushed off the edge of a very high cliff.".
Got a comment about that?
1. Of the total $787B provided in the act, $288B was tax cuts (to make Republicans happy, although not happy enough to vote for it). These get "spent" as people and companies file their taxes, eh?
2. $224B was in the form of "entitlement subsidies", mostly transfers to state governments so they could continue to provide services (e.g., $87B for Medicaid, $44B to school districts, $40B to extend unemployment insurance through end of 2009, $20B for food stamps, $25B for partial subsidy of COBRA premiums, etc). These are, again, ongoing expense items. They show up as "spent" when people actually receive payments. About half of this has been spent.
3. $275B was for "contracts, grants, and loans" -- the "stimulus" stuff you are talking about (and that we libs would have liked to have seen more of). $200B of this has already been awarded (although only $79B has been paid out -- projects take time to complete).
So the amount of funding that the administration has "held back" is $75B, not $500B.
Cheers.