Cheney Acknowledges Passing The Buck On GM: Bush Didn’t ‘Want To Be The One Who Pulled The Plug’
Am I reading this wrong? It appears to me as if Cheney is saying that he would rather GM had gone bankrupt rather than have the government own part of the company and that Bush put together a package to hold GM together just long enough for Obama to come to power and be forced to do the dirty deed which Bush didn't want on his own hands.
CHENEY: Well, I thought that, eventually, the right outcome was going to be bankruptcy. … And the president decided that he did not want to be the one who pulled the plug just before he left office.So, bankruptcy was "the right outcome" but the Bush regime wanted to hand Obama the political shit stick and hoped that they could force him to be the one to close the doors on so many American jobs.
VAN SUSTEREN: Why?
CHENEY: Well, I think he felt, you know, these are big issues and he wouldn’t be there through the process of managing it, but in effect, would have sort of pulled the plug on GM and that was one of the first crises the new administration would have to deal with. So he put together a package that tided GM over until the new administration had a chance to look at it, decide what they wanted to do.
VAN SUSTEREN: But it’s cost us billions to get — I mean, you know —
CHENEY: It has. … And now the government owns a big chunk of General Motors. That bothers me. I don’t like having government own those kinds of major financial enterprises. I think it’s — it does damage to our long-term economic prospects when we get government involved in making those kinds of decisions.
Class, Dick, real class.
Hat tip to Thinkprogress.
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4 comments:
I do think you are misreading this. He was saying that it would be quite impolite to make some massive decision about how to deal with the inevitable collapse of GM right before giving the keys to the next guy. I don't believe Obama would have wanted that either, since I highly doubt he would have agreed with whatever Bush decided to do.
If you look back at TARP, Bush clearly left a lot of funds floating there to give Obama options, and he did a very nice job of giving Obama a smooth transition, which is more than I can say for Clinton. There may be some cowardice underlying this, but if there is, I think it has more to do with wanting to be on Obama's good side in case of any calls for investigation.
I take your point, SP. It would not have been proper for Bush to make that kind of a decision with a new administration in the wings.
However, I still find Cheney's preference for bankruptcy to be extremely odd.
Why? What did you think his position would have been?
I know that he thinks that the market is always right, despite what we have witnessed happening in the markets recently, but bankruptcy would have thrown tens of thousands of people out of work. How can anyone - other than an utter ideologue - call that "the right outcome"?
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