Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Idaho's split

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Perhaps they held their noses when they voted, but Idaho's U.S. Sen. Larry Craig and U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson acted correctly and wisely in voting for the $700 billion financial rescue legislation.

In the aftermath of the approval, they looked even more statesmanlike, as a global coalition of finance ministers put together similar plans to prevent an utter worldwide monetary catastrophe.

Idaho Rep. Bill Sali's opposition was just more knee-jerk, ideological naysaying. But U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo's "nay" vote explanation was the most disappointing.

In defending his vote, Crapo said in a statement that "this proposal fails the fairness test and left the taxpayers with too much risk. We have not spent any time determining if Congress has chosen the best response; there are many well-informed people who argue that we have not."

"Time" that Sen. Crapo wanted for study was not on the side of the country or Congress. A debacle of historic proportions was fermenting by the hour. If a barn had been burning, would Sen. Crapo have paused to study whether to use a large or small bucket of water to put it out?

Moreover, as a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee that conducts oversight of financial markets, Sen. Crapo and his colleagues surely had a vantage for detecting irregularities leading up to the meltdown. How did they miss it?

What really is needed is proportionately less study and more policing of government-regulated financial institutions to prevent future costly rescue plans that indeed put taxpayers at risk.