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Rodriguez says no to bailout, but hopes it works
Rep. Ciro Rodriguez (D-Texas) voted against the bailout.
Twice.
He still hopes it will work.
"I didn't feel comfortable with it," said Rodriguez, who was in Fort Stockton Saturday evening as part of a campaign swing through the 23rd District. "Let me put it to you this way - I hope it works, because it's a lot of money. But I really believe that the administration could have done a lot more from the very beginning to send a good message in terms of confidence. I'm glad he's doing it now."
The Bush administration finally arranged a meeting of finance ministers and other economic officials from G7 countries in Washington Saturday, and Rodriguez said that's a positive step, because it's not just a U.S. problem, but also a global problem.
Tuesday morning, President Bush announced a $250 billion plan to buy stakes in several U.S. banks in an attempt to restore confidence in the banking sector, with the funds to be drawn from the $700 billion bailout. The move follows similar steps taken in the United Kingdom and other European countries.
Rodriguez said there was no doubt how people in the 23rd District felt about the bailout. They were dead-set against it, and media reports and polling data indicated that a vast majority of Americans were against the bailout.
So how could the Senate and the House, which needed a mulligan, vote to approve spending so much of the taxpayers' money?
Simple, Rodriguez said.
"When it went to the Senate, they put a lot of goodies in it and the lobbyists got behind it," he said. "They put in a lot of different tax cuts benefiting one group or another. Some were good, actually, like the alternative minimum tax was put on there, impacting 25 million Americans."
After that, Rodriguez said, the tone of the calls to his office changed somewhat. There were more people asking him to back the financial rescue plan.
But, he said, a lot of those positive calls were lobbyist generated. He said it was the same with emails received by his office.
"In spite of that, the number that still said 'no' were a lot," Rodriguez said. "The ones that were knowledgeable, even the ones who did say 'yes,' ... wanted to see some degree of accountability, some degree of holding these people responsible, making sure we change some of the governance structure. And a lot of that didn't happen."
Rodriguez cited accountability as one of his chief concerns with the bailout. The process is far from a done deal and he said he would like to see those responsible held to account, perhaps in court.
Federal investigations into Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are ongoing, Rodriguez said. But the private sector must also be scrutinized and, if warranted, brought to justice.
Rodriguez said he also would have preferred a solution that aided the majority of Americans rather than targeting Wall Street. He said 96 percent of mortgage holders in the U.S. are paying off their loans; the 4 percent that aren't could have been the focus of a program to renegotiate their loans.
"I really believe that instead of going to Wall Street and giving them the money, we could easily have gone to work with the little guy," Rodriguez said. "When you go to the stock market, you can be bailing out a bank in China or a bank somewhere else. The president wanted, also, basically to just give them the money."
Rodriguez said Congress did add some restrictions. In the end, they just weren't enough for him to feel good about voting for the financial rescue plan.
Particularly, he said, when many of the same people who will be responsible for implementing the plan were the ones who allowed the financial crisis to happen in the first place.
"I don't particularly like the fact that some of the people involved with this thing were there on the switch when the whole thing fell," Rodriguez said. "We've got to get some new people, and there are some companies, some investment bankers that have done the right thing. Those are the ones we ought to start putting in charge.
"But it's still going to cost us - big time. And, I hope it doesn't, but it could easily fall apart on us."
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