Wherein I Throw Up

After hearing Bush say yesterday "aw shucks, I guess the automakers won't survive" in truly Neroic fashion, Democrats blinked, accepting all of Bush's terms for an auto company rescue in exchange for... allowing his Treasury Department to steal more money?

Faced with staggering new unemployment figures, Democratic Congressional leaders said on Friday that they were ready to provide a short-term rescue plan for American automakers, and that they expected to hold a vote on the legislation in a special session next week.

Seeking to end a weeks-long stalemate between the Bush administration and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, senior Congressional aides said that the money would most likely come from $25 billion in federally subsidized loans intended for developing fuel-efficient cars.

By breaking that impasse, the lawmakers could also clear the way for the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., to request the remaining $350 billion of the financial industry bailout fund knowing he will not get bogged down in a fight over aiding Detroit.

Democrats are hoping Mr. Paulson will use some of that money to help individual homeowners avoid foreclosure.

This is ridiculous. I'd be angry, but maybe willing to tap those loans for retooling factories if it meant saving the industry in the short term. Why that would free up one red cent of the additional $350 billion is completely beyond me. I sincerely hope that's speculation on the part of the author. What they could have gotten in exchange is the economic recovery package that passed the House a couple months ago. That would be an actual compromise where both sides get something. This is something for nothing. Again.

When Bush signaled that he'd be perfectly willing to let the automakers die, along with his allies in the Republican caucus, many of them in the South who have non-union foreign auto plants in their states, it was obvious that nothing close to what the Big Three asked for was going to happen. I would have gritted my teeth and gone along with a "kick the can" maneuver that keeps them in business until we get a real President in 44 days. This is not that. It's yet another giveaway, the capstone to one of the most frustrating Congresses in recent memory.