Topic: Federal Reserve Bailout
Barr blasts Bush on Iraq, Bailout bill

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The Libertarian candidate accuses the Bush administration of alarmism, paranoia, misleading Americans, and making things “much worse.”

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by George Dance
(libertarian)
Tuesday, October 7, 2008

On October 7, in his strongest statement to date on the bailout bill, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr accused the Bush administration of alarmism, paranoia, and misleading Americans to pass the bill, and claimed that its intervention "has made things much worse."

In related news, politics blog Third Party Watch reported that the Libertarian Party has begun radio advertising against the bailout, and is "committed to 2,000 spots per week over the next 29 days."

In the statement posted on his campaign website, Barr compared the tactics the Bush regime used, in its push to pass the bailout bill, to those used in its rush to war with Iraq five years ago: "In 2003, the Bush administration said that if we did not act immediately in Iraq, Americans faced imminent threats, and conjured images of mushroom clouds and terror attack. Americans, trusting that our government officials knew what they were talking about, went along with the panicked calls for action, only to be bogged down in an occupation of Iraq for the last five years."

In the same way: "When financial firms began feeling the impact of years of irresponsible lending, Bush, along with Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, began invoking similar apocalyptic scenarios -- like the Great Depression -- justifying immediate government intervention in the economy,"

"We've gone from threats of mushroom clouds and alleged vials of anthrax, to threats of massive unemployment and no credit for student loans," Barr scoffed. "And who is responsible for this alarmism and paranoia? Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, just to name a few people. Senators McCain and Obama are not friends to the taxpayers. They are two faces to the same problem: big government."

Campaigning in Ohio on Monday, Barr hammered home the same points in an interview with NBC 4 in Columbus. On the Iraq war, he stated:

The war was a mistake. It was sold to those of us in the Congress, and the American people, as something very, very different from the reality of it. The administration engaged in a very clear bait and switch, scared the American people, and urged Congress to vote for something that was not well founded. And then they took a vote to remove Saddam Hussein [and turned it] into a vote for a five-year, or possibly more, occupation. That's irresponsible. It is also irresponsible to be spending upwards of more than $400 million every single day propping up the government of Iraq. That money needs to come home to America.

As for what he called "the bailout from hell": "It was a bad bailout to begin with, it was made worse by the House's action, and made tremendously worse still by what happened in the Senate, led by Senator McCain, as the cheerleader for taking this bad piece of legislation and making it even more costly for the American taxpayers."

The result, as noted in today's statement: "Now, taxpayers are $700 billion in the hole, and the economy is continuing its downward slide."

Barr pointed out in an October 6 Huffington Post article that, after the bill's passage, the "U.S. stock market promptly dropped. Over the weekend the financial crisis threatened European banks, and stock prices across Asia and Europe tanked. So much for the argument that the bailout was necessary to calm the markets." An October 7 Los Angeles Times report, which linked to Barr's newest statement, also observed that "the U.S. stock market is down" again, while "World financial markets are in free fall."

Barr's conclusion: "The Bush administration once again misled Americans into believing extreme danger was imminent and extraordinary U.S. government intervention was required to save our country. And, once again, the intervention of the Bush administration has made things much worse."

His recommendation:

No longer should Americans look to the government as the fix to today's problems. American voters should throw out all of these politicians who hyped the danger and put taxpayers on the hook for what will amount to more than a trillion dollars. No longer can we stand for an alarmist government, which approaches our problems with a quick fix rather than a reasoned solution.

Bush, McCain and Obama should have taken a deep breath, and stayed out of the way as the market continues its painful adjustment process. Instead, they took a bad situation and made it worse -- with taxpayers picking up a huge debt.... More government is not the answer.

"It is time for a change," Barr concluded: "A change to keeping government small, and the taxpayers protected from the government's greedy hands. This change will not come from big-government types like Senators McCain and Obama. It will only come from outside the political establishment. Only through a vote for Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party will America return to a society with less government, fewer taxes and more individual freedom."

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Sources

"Bush Administration Hypes Danger to Justify Intervention" (press release), Bob Barr 2008, Oct. 7, 2008.
http://www.bobbarr2008.com/press/press-releases/155/bush-administration-hypes-danger-to-justify-intervention/

"Libertarian Party starts radio ads," Third Party Watch, Oct. 7, 2008.
http://thirdpartywatch.com/2008/10/07/libertarian-party-starts-radio-ads/

"Raw Interview: Bob Barr," NBC 4i (Columbus, Ohio), Oct. 7. 2008. http://www.nbc4i.com/midwest/cmh/news.apx.-content-articles-CMH-2008-10-07-0006.html

Bob Barr, "Economic Chaos Increases After Congress Passes Bailout," Huffington Post, Oct. 6, 2008.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-barr/economic-chaos-increases_b_132195.html

Johanna Neuman, "Did Wall Street bailout make things worse?", Los Angeles Times blogs, Oct. 7, 2008.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/presidentbush/2008/10/bailout-bad.html

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Also read:

Bob Barr on the Bailouts

http://www.nolanchart.com/article4946.html

Barr campaign builds on Bailout issue

http://www.nolanchart.com/article5124.html

©2008 George Dance, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Last modified: Friday, October 17, 2008

The views expressed in this article are those of George Dance only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. George Dance is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

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