First Principles

What a disgrace that John McCain voted for the Senate’s bailout version yesterday.  The core – the heart and soul – of his domestic economic policy is to oppose wasteful spending, and to give no quarter to those who sneak in absurd and unrelated spending measures that give millions to their constituents and allow the tendrils of Federal power to spread where they were never intended to go.  And then he went and voted for this novel length, pork laden nightmare.

I got an E-mail a couple days ago from the McCain campaign, telling me inaction was not an option, and citing the following sob stories:

Sonic Corporation, a drive-in restaurant chain based in Oklahoma, learned on Thursday that one of its lenders, GE Capital, had stopped extending new loans to the chain’s franchisees. That will block plans to rebuild restaurants, add equipment and open new locations.

I guess I missed where in the Constitution the Federal government is empowered to ensure fast food chains could build new franchises.  Notice that it doesn’t say they will all close, just that they can’t “add equipment.”  Oh, the horror!!!  Clearly, 25% unemployment is just around the corner.  And where are all the health nuts who want to sue McDonald’s for making us fat, or that think the government should ban trans-fats?  Shouldn’t they be happy about this development?

It goes on:

When financing dries up, students can’t get loans. In Wisconsin, more than 100 Milwaukee Area Technical College students couldn’t access private loans to fund their education. Fortunately the school was able to come up with emergency loans, but this temporary arrangement cannot continue. Markets need to work so that people can get financial help and students can be educated.

And 100 students had to adjust their loan status.  Clearly, armageddon is afoot.  Now, I’m more sympathetic to the danger to students, who need cheap loans and haven’t had time in their lives to save up or build good credit.  But then focus the bill just to help the students!

It reminds me of a bill to forgive law school loans that passed in Washington State.  It was justified because there were not enough public defenders or prosecutors.  But instead of focusing loan forgiveness just on the people who entered those particular jobs, money was given to anyone who worked for any non-profit or government agency.  Highly competetive jobs like law clerks, and partisan (in al but name) political organizations like the ACLU and the NRA, are now unecessarily subsidized by taxpayers – people who may or may not even benefit from the “public service” those jobs provide.

McCain had an opportunity to take this unpopular measure on and insist on real reform.  But instead he fell for the “We have to do something – ANYTHING!” panic that will do nothing to solve the economic issues, and will in fact only make them worse, and ignored a popular political issue sure to get votes to boot.

Worse, he took away one of his singular issues on the wasteful spending.

To call it frustrating is an understatement.