Cooney: "Bailout is a $700 Billion Blunder"

Press Release

Cooney: "Bailout is a $700 Billion Blunder"

Kalamazoo City Commissioner and Congressional Candidate Says Congress Should Have Taken a More Deliberate Approach to the Problem

Just days after the $700 billion financial bailout bill was signed by the President - much-maligned by taxpayers - both foreign and domestic markets indicated their displeasure with the measure.

For the first time in four years, the Dow Jones Industrial average closed below the 10,000 mark on Monday, plunging 370 points. Tuesday, the market continued to tank, sliding 508 points. The market lost about 9 percent of its value in the past two days.

Stock markets in Brazil, Japan, India and all points in between recorded significant losses early this week, indicating that the economic crisis being felt in the United States is having serious global implications.

Rep. Fred Upton fully supported the bailout measure not once, but twice, never hesitating to vote for a piece of legislation that gave $700 billion of taxpayer dollars to Wall Street, but offers little help to average Americans struggling in this tough economy.

Upton's rash decision to side with the Bush Administration showed a lack of a willingness to take a more deliberate approach to stemming the economic crisis, which now seems to threaten the economy with a full-fledged recession.

By contrast, Kalamazoo City Commissioner Don Cooney said all along that Congress should have moved much more deliberately and created a broad coalition of stakeholders, including the voices of working families, the world's best economists and homeowners.

"This bailout didn't work, it put us in a weaker position," said Cooney. "Now we will be struggling to find the resources to help the very people who are most negatively affected by this crisis. As I've said all along, we need to bring everyone to the table and come up with a fair, equitable and effective solution to this economic crisis."

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