Bush orders emergency bailout of the auto industry

[ducks]

The autoworkers union complained the deal was too harsh on its members, while Bush's fellow Republicans in Congress said it was simply bad business to bail out yet another big industry.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/meltdown_autos

[clambake]

it's about time someone started a thread about this.

[Wild Cobra]

Well, if the report I heard is correct, GM and Chrysler will still end up in bankrupcy over this realtively small loan.

Unless...

I can see it in the future stars...

After the terms of the loan run it's course and the car makers are still in the red... The democrat-ick congress passes more above republican concerns and Obama is now president and willing to redistribute wealth to the democrat-ick friendly unions fat-cats.

[Yonivore]

it's about time someone started a thread about this.
What stopped you and, now that you've given your stamp of legitimacy, where are your responsive posts for the past 2 hours?

Thread started, clambake loses his thought...

[Winehole23]

Will suggests very reasonably that Bush's decision to dedicate TARP funds to the auto companies has no legal basis and is probably unconstitutional.

Weigh in, Spurstalk legal eagles.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.pjstar.com/opinions/x1623223929/Will-Auto-bailout-shows-Bushs-attitude-toward-Congress

By George Will
Washington Post
Posted Dec 21, 2008 @ 12:01 AM
Congress' marginalization was brutally, if redundantly, demonstrated recently when, after weeks of debate, it did not authorize $14 billion for General Motors and Chrysler. Immediately the executive branch said, in effect: Congress' opinions are, of course, interesting, so we shall listen very nicely - then go out and do precisely what we want.

The White House said it could give GM and Chrysler access to money that Congress explicitly did not authorize, taking it from the $700 billion Congress provided for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. What was portentous was the brazen assertion of a right to do it. If Congress had known that TARP, which supposedly was for scouring "toxic" assets from financial institutions, was to become an instrument for unconstrained industrial policy, TARP would not have been passed.


If TARP funds can be put to any use the executive branch fancies because TARP actually is a blank check for that branch, then the only reason no rules are being broken is that there are no rules. This lawlessness tarted up as law explains the charade of Vice President Dick Cheney warning Republican senators that if they did not authorize the $14 billion, the GOP would again he seen as the party of Herbert Hoover.
Surely Cheney, who consistently disparages Congress and advocates extravagant executive prerogatives, knew that the White House considered the Senate's consent irrelevant.


Evidence that casualness about legality is inherent in big government can be found in H.W. Brands' new biography "A Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt." FDR took office on Saturday, March 4, 1933. Banks were closed that day and the next, temporarily preventing panicked depositors from withdrawing their money. At 1 a.m. Monday, FDR ordered all banks closed for four days, hoping that the fever would break. His act may have been prudent. But was it legal? Brands writes:


"He cited a section of the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act as justification. The act had never been formally repealed, but a body of legal theory held that the law, along with other wartime legislation, had expired upon the signing of the peace treaty with Germany in 1921."


FDR had asked the opinion of his as-yet-unconfirmed attorney general, Montana Sen. Thomas Walsh, who gave the answer FDR wanted. Walsh never had to defend this: He died March 2 en route to the inauguration.


Now, as then, the expanding government entails an increasingly swollen executive branch and the steady increase of executive discretion. This inevitably means the eclipse of Congress and attenuation of the rule of law.


For decades, foreign policy imperatives of wars hot and cold, and the sprawl of the regulatory state, have enlarged the executive branch at the expense of the legislative. For eight years, the Bush administration's officials have aggressively wielded the concept of the "unitary executive" - the theory that where the Constitution vests power in the executive, especially power over foreign affairs and war, the president is immune to legislative abridgements of his autonomy.


The Bush administration has not, however, confined its aggrandizement of executive power to national security matters. According to former Rep. Mickey Edwards in his book "Reclaiming Conservatism," the president has issued "signing statements" designating 1,100 provisions of new laws - more than those of all prior presidents combined - that he did not consider binding on him or the executive branch.
Still, most of the administration's executive truculence has pertained to national security, where the case for broad prerogatives, although not nearly as powerful as the administration supposes, is at least constitutionally arguable. With the GM and Chrysler bailout, however, executive branch overreaching extends to the essence of domestic policy - spending - and traduces a core constitutional principle, the separation of powers.


Most members of the House and Senate want GM and Chrysler to get the money, so they must be delighted by the administration's disregard for Congress.


History, however, teaches this about political physiology: It is difficult for Congress to be only intermittently invertebrate.

[Winehole23]

Another interesting take:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/breakingviewscom/3852742/Bushs-Detroit-bailout-looks-like-a-path-to-bankruptcy.html

[LnGrrrR]

When has something being illegal ever stopped President Bush?

[Winehole23]

When has something being illegal ever stopped President Bush?


yeah the WH and the fed have been doing whatever they pleaseExpedience is king, no doubt. Congress is content to let Bush be on the hook for the bailout, institutional prerogatives be damned.

[BacktoBasics]

Surely Blake finds the actions with legal merit.

[TheProfessor]

Expedience is king, no doubt. Congress is content to let Bush be on the hook for the bailout, institutional prerogatives be damned.
It's disturbing, but also humorous since the precedent for this was set long ago with this administration, and only now do arch conservatives get up in arms. Give anyone a blank check, and they'll run with it as long as possible. Hopefully there will be enough contention built up between the executive and legislative branches from the last eight years to restore some semblance of checks and balances. Keeping Biden out of Dem caucus meetings was a good first step...

[Winehole23]

It's disturbing, but also humorous since the precedent for this was set long ago with this administration, and only now do arch conservatives get up in arms.There's a few who've been complaining all along. I'd count myself in that group. It's admittedly pretty small. Most people don't know what a republic is, or even care.


Give anyone a blank check, and they'll run with it as long as possible. Hopefully there will be enough contention built up between the executive and legislative branches from the last eight years to restore some semblance of checks and balances.God I hope so. We'll see.


Keeping Biden out of Dem caucus meetings was a good first step...Symbolic, yes; portentous, maybe.

[Winehole23]

^^^A supine Congress deserves a fair share of the blame for the Iraq debacle. They didn't have the guts to declare war. Shame on them, too.

[Wild Cobra]

^^^A supine Congress deserves a fair share of the blame for the Iraq debacle. They didn't have the guts to declare war. Shame on them, too.
Yes they did. They gave president Bush the authorization. Since when do you have to use the word "declare" to take an action? They voted to let president Bush do as he did!

[Winehole23]

Yes they did. They gave president Bush the authorization. Since when do you have to use the word "declare" to take an action? They voted to let president Bush do as he did!AUMF the same as a declaration of war? I doubt it. But yeah, I see your point. Mine was that the Iraq War is a consensual affair. Republican or Democrat, it's one big happy war party.

[Winehole23]

Will suggests very reasonably that Bush's decision to dedicate TARP funds to the auto companies has no legal basis and is probably unconstitutional.

Weigh in, Spurstalk legal eagles.In this vein:

http://www.rgemonitor.com/financemarkets-monitor/254802/the_big_three_and_tarp_what_happened_to_democracy

[Nbadan]

But yeah, I see your point. Mine was that the Iraq War is a consensual affair. Republican or Democrat, it's one big happy war party.

Maybe consensual insofar as replacing Saddam Hussein but not a open-ended occupation...

[Winehole23]

Maybe consensual insofar as replacing Saddam Hussein but not a open-ended occupation.....remains to be seen. I'll believe it when the troops come home.