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EDITORIAL: Voting no, again
(Danville Register & Bee Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 5--The American people are angry, frustrated and confused over the Wall Street bailout. But the American people are also the beneficiaries of an economic engine that runs on the constant flow of credit.
Wall Street may get direct help from the bailout bill, but Main Street is the real winner.
If the bailout did not pass, what would happen when people couldn't borrow money to buy homes, cars, furniture and big-ticket electronics? How many Americans were ready to have their credit card limits dropped? What would have happened when established businesses with customers and healthy balance sheets couldn't borrow the dollars they need on the short-term loan market?
On Friday, 263 members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted for a bill they probably hated. But they did what they had to do. Our representative in Congress, Virgil Goode, did not.
This isn't the first time this year that Goode has voted against something that will benefit his constituents. He also voted against the tax rebate checks that people in the 5th District received.
Goode voted against the bailout Friday for the same reason he voted against those tax rebate checks -- because of the cost.
It's true that Washington is spending our money like it's growing on trees. But the bailout bill was designed to keep our economy operating.
That's not a bad thing, Rep. Goode.
Apparently, it didn't matter to Goode that business people from Danville and Pittsylvania County had asked him to support the bailout. Maybe those business people were worried about local people not being able to buy homes, cars, furniture and big-ticket electronics on credit. Maybe they were worried that the entire economy might collapse, or at the very least, the country might slide into a deeper recession.
They, like Goode, know that when the national economy catches a cold, the Dan River Region gets pneumonia.
We don't know who they were because Goode declined to name them. But he did ignore them. Did he do so because he thought the bailout bill already had enough votes to pass? Did he think he could let 263 of his colleagues do the tough work?
Americans are right to be concerned with runaway government spending and the rising national debt. But Goode has done his share of adding to that debt during his years in Congress. It's peculiar that he's worried about government spending when economists were warning that the entire system could have collapsed if the bailout bill failed.
Goode's supporters will no doubt pat him on the back for sticking to his principles, but that's not what he's done here. He has sloughed off the tough work to his fellow congressmen instead of putting an oar in the water and rowing the ship of state to calm waters. He has left the tough, unpopular work to others. He should have voted yes. We're all going to benefit from the political courage of the 263 House members who did.
To see more of the Danville Register & Bee or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.registerbee.com.
Copyright (c) 2008, Danville Register & Bee, Va.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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