Mitch McConnell Suddenly Determines That When It Comes to Bailouts and Stimulus Packages, More Time Is Better Than Less

Nick Gillespie | January 5, 2009

Back in the fall, when a Republican president and Treasury secretary were pushing an ill-defined, low-oversight bailout of the financial sector (and everything else but the kitchen sink, although the fixtures at Goldman Sachs are probably getting upgraded under TARP), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was all for it, with great haste. You know, we were running out of time before everything exploded.

Indeed, McConnell praised his big house colleagues for passing a bill loaded with "sweeteners" that would get a recalcitrant House to change its original no vote, saying "I think a good vote coming out of the Senate will certainly be helpful over on the House side."

Now, staring down the possibility of a ready-to-sign stimulus package costing at least $750 billion for President Barack Obama come Jan. 20, McConnell is finally urging a wait-and-see approach:

"What I worry about ... is the haste with which this may be done," McConnell said on ABC's This Week. "This is an enormous bill. Do we want to do it with essentially no hearings, no input ... from Republican senators. I don't think that's a good idea."

More here.

Well, good for McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate and a staunch foe of the abridgements to constitutional speech usually praised as "campaign-finance reform." We've been stimulatin' the economy like nobody's business for a long time now, and it's worth calling for a cool-down period before moving into the next phase of the 1,000 fingers Magic Touch. Can we wait for, I don't know, maybe two or three quarters before figuring out the next massive intervention into the U.S. economy?

However, McConnell's change in attitude seems suspiciously unprincipled and mostly partisan. I'm all for divided government (here's hoping it delivers gridlock), but one of the problems with unprincipled pols is that, well, they don't have principles. Which means they will flip the moment they get enough goodies promised them to go one way or the other. And if the experience with the financial sector bailout is any indication, expect the second (and third, and fourth, and so on) bills to be even worse than the awful first draft. And expect McConnell sometime soon to be on the other side of the vote, the one with all those shiny, happy Democrats yapping about how they just guaranteed a car in every pot and two chickens in every garage by funding bullshit infrastructure programs in every ZIP code in the country.

Comments

|1.5.09 @ 8:55AM|#

Mitch McConnell, an unprincipled partisan?

|1.5.09 @ 8:57AM|#

LOL, that idiot just looks like he is as corrupt as the day is long doesnt he? What a joke. He should go have another cheeseburger! LOL

Jess
www.web-privacy.pro.tc

|1.5.09 @ 9:31AM|#

That was a great post Nick. You should do a daily Bailout Bullshit column. Or at least a weekly one.

robc|1.5.09 @ 9:32AM|#

KY's other senator, and baseball hall of famer, has taken a consistent principled position on the bailouts. He has railed against them like the crazy old coot that he is. Good for Bunning.

|1.5.09 @ 9:43AM|#

Bunning was ahead of the curve on Greenspan, too. I remember seeing him on CNBC one morning, several years ago, ranting about how Greenspan was fucking up the economy. Turns out, he was right.

|1.5.09 @ 9:45AM|#

It's entirely possible Bunning was right for the wrong reasons, of course...

|1.5.09 @ 10:07AM|#

At this point, I'll settle for being right for the wrong reasons, and obstructing the next big handout on unprincipled, partisan grounds.

|1.5.09 @ 10:16AM|#

Where is our twenty-first century Professor Wagstaff?

"No matter what it is or who commenced it, I'm against it!"

Jason Johnson|1.5.09 @ 10:44AM|#

Random non sequitor followed by a warm turnip in my cornhole! LOL!

Jess
www.web-pervacy.pre.tc

thoreau|1.5.09 @ 10:46AM|#

The logic of checks and balances is that they don't require angels to operate. Flawed, sleazy, vindictive hypocrites are sufficient.

|1.5.09 @ 10:52AM|#

Flawed, sleazy, vindictive hypocrites are sufficient.

Well, then, mission accomplished!

Xeones|1.5.09 @ 11:44AM|#

Yo, fuck Mitch McConnell.

alan|1.5.09 @ 12:42PM|#

Very curious indeed

|1.5.09 @ 1:13PM|#

I read from the top down so I come to this thread after earlier I posted this in a later thread.

J sub D | January 5, 2009, 12:34pm | #

Happy New Year, Reasonoids!

I warned these dumbass Bush acolytes that they were going to be unhappy with the precedents they set while the retarded son was POTUS. Now they expect to convince an overwhelmingly Democratic congress to take the power away from the golden boy president (after the executive semen is wiped from congress's collective chin, of course)?

Good luck with that, you shortsighted retards.

It's just as appropriate here.

duster|1.5.09 @ 1:19PM|#

Zardoz?

Salvius|1.5.09 @ 1:52PM|#

Holly?

B|1.5.09 @ 5:47PM|#

And Mitch McConnell is supposed to be unique or something? Is this supposed to even be news? Nearly every politician in both parties is like this.
Now if only we could find a hidden cache of racist newsletters "ghost-written" by McConnell somewhere. 75% of the people on this site would then be hailing McConnell as a hero.