Cooney Blasts Upton for Vote on bailout
Press Release
Cooney blasts Upton for vote on bailout
By JULIE SWIDWA | H-P Staff Writer
While the U.S. House was voting Monday on a $700 billion financial bailout plan, a Democratic candidate for Congress from Southwest Michigan was leading a rally against it in his home town.
Don Cooney, a Kalamazoo city commissioner who is running for the 6th District congressional seat held by U.S. Rep. Fred Upton (R St. Joseph) said he's glad the plan failed. He said that in designing the plan, top-level lawmakers did not consider the voices of the working taxpayers.
"We understand that there is a huge problem and something has to be done, but this is not the answer. It's not going to solve the problem. If they put this money out there now, putting us further in debt, it's not going to solve the problem," Cooney said in a phone interview after the vote in Washington.
Upton, who voted for the bailout plan, could not be reached by telephone. In a written statement issued after the vote, he said that while the bill was not perfect, it would have protected Michigan's working families rather than the "fat cats on Wall Street." He claimed that the current financial crisis can only be fully understood by "members of the Greatest Generation."
Cooney said his biggest concern with the plan is that, to him, it's far too late. Also, he said, constituents in his district are outraged and insulted by Upton's support of the plan.
"We think there's been an economic crisis for a long time in this district, with people losing their jobs and with a poverty rate of 40 percent among children. In the year 2000, it was 25 percent," Cooney said. "Why wasn't there intervention then? Why is this all of a sudden a big crisis?"
Cooney said if he were in Congress, he would call in the best economists in the country and go back to the drawing board.
"In the meantime, the federal government should step in and temporarily ease the situation by making money available for loans to financial institutions and to ordinary people."
Source