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Bailout Should Be Used Only For Most Vital Purposes

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 13, 2008

Updated: 11/13/2008 08:25 am

The American public, with great reservation, agreed to a $700 billion bailout to prevent a national financial catastrophe. A portion of that money has been spent, but everyone seems to be haggling over what to do with the rest of it. Most of the ideas are bad ones, and our leaders must protect the public from wasting the bailout money.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Wednesday that the money won't be used to buy "bad" assets, as the public had been told. The stock market didn't respond well to his announcement. He says the money will be used to secure credit markets, which was part of the plan, but it's still unclear how that will work, and he's said it will be used to stem foreclosures.

Paulson also said the bailout plan was never intended for U.S. automakers that are going down the tubes. We understand everyone's concern about the automakers, and hope there is a way to save them, but public money shouldn't be handed over to them. Their problems are self-inflicted. They obviously are making cars that people don't want to buy. Their competition isn't having this problem.

American taxpayers can't be in the business of bailing out industry after industry. Besides, who's to say that the automakers would not be failing three months from now even if they were given a few billion to hold them over? Then what would we do?

The American people grudgingly went along with a bailout to save our economy. It wasn't supposed to be windfall for any one entity. It is and was a safety net and we are depending on smart people to make intelligent decisions on how it's used.

Congress needs quit finding this and that to spend it on. If Democrats want a two-year ride out of town, just start using the bailout money as a big Christmas bonus for every special interest in the country.

As much as we want all American businesses to survive and thrive, it should never be up to taxpayers to make sure that happens. Free enterprise has its downfalls and we're seeing it now. What we can't have is our government stepping and believing it can save every industry because taxpayers can't afford it.

Let's hope sanity returns, and our nation's best and brightest minds decide how to use the bailout money to prevent the worst, but also let the market to correct itself - even if it's painful.

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