Cars and Parts Springfield Swap Meet
Carroll Commencement
Fairborn commencement
Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > July > 16
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Editorial: Turner weak on case to amend Constitution
U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville: “With no apparent limit on the government’s ability to expand its ownership of business, the only solution is a constitutional amendment.”
Rep. Turner has submitted just such an amendment. Fifty words long, it would ban government ownership of any part of a private company, except through investments in pension funds.
He says he’s concerned that the country is “creeping toward socialism.” (In introducing the amendment to the House of Representatives, though, he didn’t use the S word.)
He is reacting to the government’s substantial ownership of General Motors and smaller stake in Chrysler.
That ownership is certainly troubling.
The Obama administration did not ask for ownership; rather, GM — under pressure to show it was taking a dramatically new course — offered it in return for forgiveness of $10 billion in debt.
Accepting the offer might have been a mistake. Widely criticized as GM’s leadership has been, nobody has seriously suggested that government ownership was the solution. (OK, almost nobody.)
As Rep. Turner notes, GM has private competitors. If Ford and GM both want a certain government contract, what happens? It’s a seriously awkward situation, one reason among others to see government ownership as a problem.
And yet, a constitutional amendment?
In saying that his amendment is the “only solution,” Rep. Turner is, in effect, saying that the forces that want to expand government ownership are powerful. But if they’re powerful, then a constitutional amendment is not the way to deal with them. It’s so easy to block.
Constitutional amendments simply do not pass if they are controversial. After all, they must be accepted by two-thirds of both houses of Congress and by 38 state legislatures (three-fourths of 50).
In every Congress, a hundred or two hundred amendments are proposed. But none has been ratified in 17 years. And that one said that Congress can’t vote itself a pay raise in mid-term; an election must intervene.
Rep. Turner says he is not out to prevent future bailouts of private corporations (though he’s opposed the current ones), just governmental ownership.
If people see the amendment as a move against bailouts, it’s dead. That’s not because anybody wants more bailouts. Their undesirability is one thing upon which left and right agree.
The left doesn’t want to be regularly helping corporate fat cats, and the right worries about helping undeserving unions, and about protecting its right to anti-government rhetoric.
But emergencies do happen.
Well, if bailouts are going to happen, how much does it actually matter if temporary ownership results?
At a congressional hearing, Rep. Turner asked Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke what he thought of the amendment. The chairman wanted to think about it. But he said that a bailout itself “essentially is a temporary ownership.” (A video is available at Rep. Turner’s Web site.)
He’s got a point. After all, when the White House forced out Rick Wagoner as CEO of GM, it didn’t yet have any ownership of the company. It was just a powerful creditor.
If the government’s majority ownership of GM causes some sort of calamity and/or doesn’t end reasonably soon, the case for a flat ban will improve.
To rush ahead now, though, is premature, an overreaction. The government is not interested in gobbling up struggling corporations. Any alarm about that is simply false.
What’s appropriate now is pressure on the Obama administration to make good on its promise to divest itself ASAP.
Permalink | Comments (31) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio politics
