Perry and the Bailout

In a blog post by Paul Burka, "What would president Perry have done?", he states that the bailout is an important issue to look at because many people believe that Governor Rick Perry beat Kay Bailey Hutchison in the last gubernatorial race because of the bailout issue. However, Burka himself believes that Perry would have won anyway, and I would agree with him on that account.


My problem with the article though is that Burka makes assumptions. First, he assumes that Perry is definitely going to run for President in 2012. While there are many rumors that Perry may indeed join the presidential race, you shouldn't count your chickens before they're hatched. Instead of saying that Perry might run for president, Burka boldly declared, "Perry’s stance on the bailout takes on added importance because Perry is going to run for president."


The next assumption that Burka makes is that if Perry was the president of the United States, he would have opposed the bailout and that would have held negative consequences. Yet it must be remembered that when Perry opposed the Texas bailout, he was representing his constituents: Texans. The majority of Texans supported his stance on the bailout issue. As an elected official, the governor's job is to represent his constituency, and Perry did indeed do his job. 


Burka tries to make the case that the bailout ended up helping America, but he was simply looking at short-term results which is once again making an assumption that what happens in the short-term is automatically a reflection of what will happen long-term. The much bigger question has to do with long-term effects. Is the bailout simply delaying an inevitable collapse of the American dollar and economy? It's too soon to know with certainty either way. 


Opposition to the bailout made common sense because spending over $700 billion dollars to fix the economy when our country is already trillions of dollars in debt is most certainly not a wise financial practice. That is why it is now an unfortunate necessity for Congress to debate over the debt ceiling. The problem is not that the debt ceiling is too low, but that the debt is too high. Perry was right to oppose the state bailout.