We better do something

I've been thinking about the bailout of the auto industry through the use of TARP funds, following the defeat of the loan package by Congress last week. I have mixed feelings about the entire thing; I am deeply concerned about the overall economic impacts of a collapse of the U.S. auto industry, and would perhaps lean, ever so slightly, toward providing relief were I in a decision-making position, in no small part because the people lined up on the other side of the issue are so incredibly dishonest and reprehensible. (Richard Shelby, I'm looking at you for starters.) But I'm in no way certain about this; we just don't have enough information and are blindly rushing in to solve something that we don't understand - again.

That being said, Congress already made a decision on this, and the proposal failed to get sufficient support. It's sort-of done. Or so it seemed.

But the President stepped in and used TARP funds to do through the backdoor what he couldn't do according to the rules. Arguably, that's a much needed exercise of leadership in this lamest of lame duck periods. Alternatively, it's just an attempt to push the timeframe for collapse of the industry into the Obama administration in order to shift blame for the collapse away from Bush. In any event, certainly preserving the jobs of working class Americans is a more noble pursuit than rewarding financial executives for their corrupt failures.

Nevertheless, whatever the merits of the proposition that the American auto industry, however poorly run, needs a life vest before it drowns all of the rest of us with it, we seem to have arrived at a short-term solution (or perhaps just a bigger bucket to that we can stay afloat just a little longer) through another presidential usurpation of constitutional authority. TARP, intended to save the financial services industry, is now being applied to heavy manufacturing. Both are important, to be sure. But it seems that this application of TARP funds is completely outside the scope of the original Congressional authorization of funds. (Not to mention that, if those funds were really necessary for the financial services industry, what happens now that those funds are being reapplied?)

Can we even excuse this exercise in presidential hegemony with the argument that the President has extraordinary wartime powers? Is the viability of Chrysler now tied to defeating al Qaeda?

Maybe it doesn't matter anymore - we're less than a month away from a new president and a new direction. And it's not like we're talking about a declaration of war or wiretapping.

But somehow I think it does matter.