10th District: Bob Dold Supports Bank Bailouts

-By Warner Todd Huston

Of the Republicans running for the 10th District seat, Bob Dold is one of four, the others being Beth Coulson (the party favorite), Bill Cadigan (endorsed by former State Senator Steve Rauschenberger), and Dick Green.

Dold recently participated in a short phone conversation with Jeff Berkowitz of the Public Affairs Show the upshot of which seems to show that Dold supports the Bush/Obama bank bailouts.

Dold told Berkowitz that he thinks government needs the “ability to make sure that we’re stabilizing the banks.” Now, a conservative would far more likely say that no bank or business is “too big to fail” and that the only way to truly stabilize the banking system is to let banks that make bad choices suffer the consequences of their choices, not buoy them up and give them free money from the taxpayers so that they are insulated from those bad choices.

If I spend my mortgage money on the horses, will someone come running to save my house because I gambled it all away? Not likely. But here Dold is saying that banks shouldn’t ever have to deal with the consequences of their shoddy practices. He’s saying that the taxpayers should have to save the rear-ends of bankers that gamble their depositors money away.

That doesn’t seem very American to me, Mr. Dold. In America we are held to account for our mistakes, Mr. Dold.

There was a bright spot in the short interview with Berkowitz, though. Dold said he did not support the $787 billion stimulus. Dold is 100% right on that one at least.

The websites for the 10th District Candidates:


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