government power grab: We must do something to address this crisis. This legislation is something; therefore, we must do this.
Days prior to the vote, FreedomWorks delivered our letter of opposition to the Hillâa âkey vote notice.â This is a powerful tool in the arsenal of grassroots groups. Organizations like ours issue these on almost all major pieces of legislation. They outline our argument for or against a bill and let the members of Congress know we will track their votes and let all of our members know exactly how they voted. Itâs one of the ways we help our members hold their representatives accountable and, we think, make our democracy function better by increasing transparency.
We were alarmed by how few of our erstwhile allies issued similar statements. Shortly before a vote there is usually a flurry of such letters, and it is usually many of the same groups taking the same position. We saw far more letters on far less significant bills.
The usually reliable Heritage Foundation ended up endorsing the TARP legislation. On September 29, 2008, Heritage vice president Stuart Butler and former attorney general Ed Meese coauthored a brief entitled: âThe Bailout Package: Vital and Acceptable.â âThe constitutional questionability of some provisions is worrying 23 , as is the centralization of power,â the authors argued. âNonetheless, the situation is so grave that we must take unusual measures now and accept some negotiated arrangements that remain very troubling, provided they are limited in extent and time and are not accepted as a permanent part of our government.â
Perhaps some found the words of the Heritage Foundation in favor of the bailout more persuasive than our words against it.
Other groups decided not to get involved. How they could claim to be staunch defenders of limited government and not get involved was beyond us. But what surprised us the most, along with the Heritage Foundationâs endorsement, was the endorsement of the House bill by Americans for Prosperity (AFP), an organization whose Web site claims they âengage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets.â
AFP released the following statement on the Economic Emergency Stabilization Act (EESA), the bailout bill that included TARP:
AFP R ELUCTANTLY S UPPORTS EESA
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act is far from a perfect bill, although some of the worst aspects of earlier drafts have been removed, including the so-called affordable housing trust fund, the say-for-pay rules, and proxy access provisions. Still, the EESA does nothing to address the causes of the current crisis and it carries a frightening risk of permanently increasing the role of government in the economy, which could lead to worse market distortions and future crises. We shudder at the thought of Congress and bureaucrats controlling our countryâs credit markets. Interest group politics could be injected into every aspect of economic life. . . . The current crisis, however, is grave. There were other options that deserved greater consideration, but the choice today is the EESA or inaction, and inaction is not a good option 24 .
It was one of the strangest, most intellectually tortured endorsements we have ever seen released by a self-described free market organization. While Americans for Prosperityâs endorsement of the bill helped provide the political cover Republicans would need to switch their no vote to a yea, the statement was at least prescient. The legislation has failed to address the fundamental problems responsible for the crisis. In fact, at best, the program is a poor attempt to hold harmless bad actors accountable and delay the necessary corrections the economy requires. And the frightening risk of expanding the governmentâs control of the economy has proved to be very real. The bailout program continues, and the Treasury Department has virtually unlimited discretion
Days prior to the vote, FreedomWorks delivered our letter of opposition to the Hillâa âkey vote notice.â This is a powerful tool in the arsenal of grassroots groups. Organizations like ours issue these on almost all major pieces of legislation. They outline our argument for or against a bill and let the members of Congress know we will track their votes and let all of our members know exactly how they voted. Itâs one of the ways we help our members hold their representatives accountable and, we think, make our democracy function better by increasing transparency.
We were alarmed by how few of our erstwhile allies issued similar statements. Shortly before a vote there is usually a flurry of such letters, and it is usually many of the same groups taking the same position. We saw far more letters on far less significant bills.
The usually reliable Heritage Foundation ended up endorsing the TARP legislation. On September 29, 2008, Heritage vice president Stuart Butler and former attorney general Ed Meese coauthored a brief entitled: âThe Bailout Package: Vital and Acceptable.â âThe constitutional questionability of some provisions is worrying 23 , as is the centralization of power,â the authors argued. âNonetheless, the situation is so grave that we must take unusual measures now and accept some negotiated arrangements that remain very troubling, provided they are limited in extent and time and are not accepted as a permanent part of our government.â
Perhaps some found the words of the Heritage Foundation in favor of the bailout more persuasive than our words against it.
Other groups decided not to get involved. How they could claim to be staunch defenders of limited government and not get involved was beyond us. But what surprised us the most, along with the Heritage Foundationâs endorsement, was the endorsement of the House bill by Americans for Prosperity (AFP), an organization whose Web site claims they âengage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets.â
AFP released the following statement on the Economic Emergency Stabilization Act (EESA), the bailout bill that included TARP:
AFP R ELUCTANTLY S UPPORTS EESA
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act is far from a perfect bill, although some of the worst aspects of earlier drafts have been removed, including the so-called affordable housing trust fund, the say-for-pay rules, and proxy access provisions. Still, the EESA does nothing to address the causes of the current crisis and it carries a frightening risk of permanently increasing the role of government in the economy, which could lead to worse market distortions and future crises. We shudder at the thought of Congress and bureaucrats controlling our countryâs credit markets. Interest group politics could be injected into every aspect of economic life. . . . The current crisis, however, is grave. There were other options that deserved greater consideration, but the choice today is the EESA or inaction, and inaction is not a good option 24 .
It was one of the strangest, most intellectually tortured endorsements we have ever seen released by a self-described free market organization. While Americans for Prosperityâs endorsement of the bill helped provide the political cover Republicans would need to switch their no vote to a yea, the statement was at least prescient. The legislation has failed to address the fundamental problems responsible for the crisis. In fact, at best, the program is a poor attempt to hold harmless bad actors accountable and delay the necessary corrections the economy requires. And the frightening risk of expanding the governmentâs control of the economy has proved to be very real. The bailout program continues, and the Treasury Department has virtually unlimited discretion
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