For Immediate Release Thursday, August 28, 2008
“It’s time to say no to another raid on the Treasury,’ says Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate, as America’s money-losing automakers go to Washington asking for nearly $4 billion in loans, in what Barr says is just part of the $25 billion in loans authorized last year for building new autos.
Corporate executives say they will need at least $40 billion, “and maybe more,” says Barr.
‘Michigan’s Senators and Congressmen argue that an auto industry bailout would be another form of economic ‘stimulus,'” explains Barr. “We can’t afford more of this sort of ‘stimulus.'”
Barr explains that the market must be left free (to the extent it still is ‘free’) “to respond to its own ‘stimuli,'” which, over the long run, will move America’s automakers toward new products and innovative solutions.
“Government bailouts are always artificial and inevitably come with strings attached that will impede–not enhance–the ability of industry to productively meet new challenges,” explains Barr.
Barr believes American consumers will demand such changes in response to the high price of gasoline, and automakers “should not shrink from those challenges or hide behind the artificial prop of taxpayer bailouts.” Barr says that he and the Libertarian Party “have more faith in America’s automaker industry to meet such challenges than many in that industry appear to have in themselves.’
Barr says that “Congress keeps piling new obligations on the American people,” noting that the housing bailout could run $300 billion and the Federal Housing Administration is offering a new $50 billion mortgage insurance program.
“Bailing out housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could run $100 billion or more,” says Barr. “The Federal Reserve launched a $30 billion Wall Street bailout without congressional approval. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation wants a big loan. The Department of Education is planning to spend tens of billions of dollars buying student loans from private lenders,’ he further notes.
‘Even without an explosion of new bailouts, the deficit will run a half trillion dollars next year,’ Barr warns. ‘We’ve got a $9.5 trillion national debt. And then there are tens of trillions of dollars in promised but unfunded benefits for Social Security and Medicare.’
‘We can’t afford more of the status quo,’ Barr insists. ‘Barack Obama and John McCain are great at making promises, but they won’t tell us how they plan to pay for everything.”
Barr says that “it doesn’t matter how closely you listen to the parade of politicians at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions” because Americans won’t hear anyone promising to make the hard decisions necessary to bring the budget into balance. “You certainly won’t hear them offering to make sacrifices themselves; instead, they insist that everyone else make sacrifices so they can keep on spending our money,’ says Barr.
‘We can’t afford another four years of more spending, more promises and more red ink,” Barr contends.
Only Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party are determined to stop treating the federal government as a coast-to-coast soup line for the well connected. Only a vote for Bob Barr will be a vote for real change.
Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003.
The Libertarian Party is America’s third largest political party, founded in 1971 as an alternative to the two main political parties. You can find more information on the Libertarian Party by visiting www.LP.org . The Libertarian Party proudly stands for smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom.
