Paulson’s Bailout Was a Scam

National Review editor Rich Lowry, who mistakenly supported the financial system bailout because he trusted the Bush Administration, now realizes that he was deceived by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen, and that the bailout was sold to the public under false pretenses.

Having promised to use bailout money to buy up troubled assets, the Bush Administration instead used the money for completely different purposes, and now wants to use some of it to bail out an entirely different industry — the automakers.  The Bush Administration reads the bailout bill as giving it almost limitless discretion as to who to bail out and how.  That interpretation of the bailout statute should be rejected, because such a vast grant of discretion would be unconstitutional.

The proposed bailout of the automakers would itself be a grave mistake, costing taxpayers billions while avoiding the painful reforms to the auto industry needs to enable its long term survival and failing to make inexpensive deregulatory reforms that would allow the auto industry to recover.  The bailout would repeat the mistake England made in the 1970s, when it completed the ruin of its failing auto industry by attempting to bail it out, at a cost of billions of pounds, making it uncompetitive and dependent on welfare instead.