Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Friday, October 03, 2008
Kind ‘torn’ over bailout vote; challengers critical of pork
Though unapologetic over his vote for the failed financial industry rescue package, U.S. Rep. Ron Kind is torn over a version of the bill that the Senate returned Wednesday laden with pork.
Meanwhile, the La Crosse Democrat’s 3rd District opponents are looking to leverage votes on his support of the unpopular bailout package.
Libertarian candidate Kevin Barrett on Thursday served Kind with a symbolic pink slip on behalf of “we the people.” Actually, the former university lecturer — wearing a plastic mask and flanked by a pair of Internet videographers — handed a homemade termination notice to Kind’s Wisconsin chief of staff, Loren Kannenberg.
Kind was on a flight to Washington, D.C., where the House was expected to vote today on the Senate’s modified version of the bill that representatives narrowly voted down Monday.
“This is the granddaddy of jams,” Kind said, referring to $100 billion of new spending the Senate added to the bill, which he still considers essential to pass quickly. “The way the senate did it was out of bounds.”
“I’m really torn,” he said, “(but) I know the importance of getting this rescue plan done.”
Wisconsin’s senators split on the revised plan, passed Wednesday night. Herb Kohl voted for it, while Russ Feingold was among the 25 no votes. Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama both voted for it.
Republican candidate Paul Stark said predictions of a credit crisis are overblown and that banks are simply restricting loans to those who can afford them.
“It seems that there’s some sort of coverup,” Stark said. “The sky has not fallen.”
Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s affordable-housing agency stopped making loans for single-family homes, saying it is having a hard time raising money for mortgages.
The crisis isn’t really affecting people yet in Western Wisconsin, said University of Wisconsin-La Crosse political science professor Joe Heim. Still, he said, most Democrats and Republicans think they have to do something.
At a taping Thursday morning of WLSU’s Newsmakers radio show, Barrett blamed the flagging economy on the war in Iraq. He suggested a better plan for solving the credit crisis would be to abolish the Federal Reserve and to allow the U.S. Treasury to make direct loans to businesses, cutting out “parasitical middlemen” bankers.
Heim noted this week that those voting against the bailout tended to face tough races in November, while Kind, a six-term incumbent, is relatively secure.
Stark accused Congress in general and Kind in particular with being out of touch.
“Ron Kind feels so secure that he will be re-elected that he can vote against the people it shows a huge amount of arrogance,” Stark said. “He is supposed to represent the people of the 3rd District. And he is not doing it.”
The people of the district are angry, Kind said, “But I don’t have the luxury of representing angry people right now. I have to make a decision that’s in the best long-term interest of the country.”
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