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Y! MyWebCOMMENTARY
Martin Gottlieb: Turner case on bailout not the conservative one
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
All the talk out of Washington for days had been that the Republicans in Congress who had a problem with the monumental bailout package were the conservatives.
So it was no surprise that, when the vote happened Monday, and the measure was turned down, the no votes included Reps. Jean Schmidt, Jim Jordan and Steve Chabot, from southwestern Ohio. Definitely conservatives all.
Meanwhile, David Hobson's name on the list of yes votes seemed to make sense. He's more moderate.
But why was Mike Turner among the no votes?
To be sure, he's too conservative for some people. But in Washington he is not considered one of the flamers.
Well, it turns out that the case he makes against the bailout plan isn't the conservative one. It isn't about big government and how it shouldn't be stepping into the marketplace, or about how the issue is "freedom."
(At least a couple of the conservatives who denounced the package in the House debate made clear that they weren't debating whether the plan would work; for them, it was the principle of the thing. When in doubt, err on the side of "freedom," one said.)
Turner is coming at the issue from a perspective that might even be called liberal, if it weren't better identified as simply the view of the congressman from an especially hard-hit area.
"My district has some of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation," he said, insisting that Dayton ought to have a special role in the whole discussion.
He says, in essence, that the bill in question would have done little about the facts on the ground, little to address the needs of the communities and the people who have been hardest hit by the predatory lending epidemic that is at the heart of the housing problem that is at the heart of the meltdown.
The bill called for gradually allocating $700 billion — if that much became necessary — to buy up housing-based securities. That is, the idea was to bail out financial institutions from the bad loans they have made on homes or on packages of home loans that they have purchased from others.
The plan called for reselling the securities when the market improves.
The main idea was to make sure that lending institutions didn't become so insolvent and frightened as to stop lending.
Turner said he opposed the bill because "it fails to hold accountable those whose actions imperiled our financial system and endangered American homeowners. (And) it does not prohibit the bad lending actions that led to this crisis. (It) provides no real relief for affected communities and loan victims."
He also made other criticisms, including that there was no "guarantee" the plan would work.
A symbol of Turner's posture:
He came up with a proposed amendment that would allow cities to get control of the houses in the packages the government buys up, rather than let those properties fester in federal government hands.
But he says that he found that another legislator was already pushing the same thing: Maxine Waters, the fighting liberal from a mainly Hispanic and black district in Los Angeles.
Turner wants his constituents to see him as somebody focused on this local problem and its real-world impacts. Where that leaves him with regard to the rest of his party is of less importance. At any rate, there really is no party position.
He is on weakest ground on the question, If not this, what? And when?
He says, "Action is urgently need to address this crisis." But he said Monday that he doesn't know when the issue will re-arise, or when it needs to be resolved by, or what the ultimately successful package will look like.
Will it start with a $700 billion bailout and proceed from there, or will it have some other basic structure? Unknown.
Other plans have appeared in opinion pieces in newspapers or been floated in Congress. But none has caught on as a real option. (One criterion is whether it can gather bipartisan support.)
If action is necessary, and if there's really only one plan on the table, then maybe you ultimately have to go with the plan.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News. He may be reached at 225-2288 or by e-mail at mgottlieb@Dayton DailyNews.com.
