Here's Why McCain Should Oppose the Bailout

Amanda Carpenter | September 23, 2008 11:39 AM

There are a lot of good reasons to oppose the bailout, but McCain has already drawn a bright-line on oversight so I'll go with that.

Here's Section 8 of Paulson's 3-page version

of the bailout (for God's sake did he write this thing on a cocktail napkin?) that was being discussed in the comments on my bailout post below:

Sec. 8. Review.
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

That's called a blank check made out to a guy, Paulson, whose buddies on Wall Street caused this whole mess to happen in the first place. Do you trust him? I sure don't.

Granted, this isn't the final version of the bill. Congress has to get their fingers in it, too. But John McCain should schedule a trip to the Senate floor without delay to bash this section to death and to knock down any Republicans who might consider handing over such unprecedented power over to Treasury. What do you guys think?

I actually think both candidates will end up opposing this thing, but for different reasons. McCain will say it doesn't have any oversight and Obama won't like it because it doesn't bailout every homeowner with a bad credit score.

I think that makes for a fine starting point for the debate Friday.