Corporate welfare

As the stock market plunges down and more and more firms go under, I am quite surprised and amused by the Bush administration’s handling of the crisis in the form of bailouts.

Here we have a “small-government” and “fiscally responsible” Republican president pushing for corporate handouts that cost the American taxpayers billions of dollars. Is this not welfare? According to the conservative philosophy, should these businesses not try to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and take personal responsibility for their past actions?

Certainly that’s the view that conservatives probably have on the poor individuals who have lost their jobs at AIG or Lehman Brothers and have been forced to draw unemployment. What about the CEOs? Will they continue to get a free ride off our tax dollars while the economy continues to slump and ordinary workers are having trouble making ends meet?

There is something very wrong and hypocritical about this situation.