Cooney criticizes bailout plan by House

By Ashley Wioskowski
News Editor

(Judson Miller / Western Herald) Kalamazoo City Commissioner Don Cooney speaks to a crowd in front of the Federal Building on the corner of West Michigan and Park St. about the status of the American economy. On Sept. 30, Cooney will take part in an energy forum at Sangren Hall.

Don Cooney, a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Michigan’s sixth district, spoke to Kalamazoo residents about the $700 billion bailout and how it’s opposition supported his concern for the national economy.

As Cooney was speaking to his audience at the Federal Building on the corner of West Michigan and S. Park the bailout was being rejected at the United States House of Representatives in a 228-to-205 vote.

“I believe our economy should work for people, not people for the economy, which is literally the Bush Administration’s request,” Cooney said in his media release for the event.

Joe Hawver, Cooney’s campaign manager, said that Cooney reported the poverty rate in Kalamazoo for children to have been over 40 and over 60 percent for black children. Cooney also said that poverty has been an increasing aspect of Kalamazoo and the nation for a while and no alarms were set off before.

“Then when Wall Street says they need 700 billion dollars, they get it in a week,” Hawver said.

One of Cooney’s points in his lecture was how President George W. Bush vetoed a $7 billion bill to increase health care for children but not the bailout. Cooney also said that under the Bush Administration the national debt has gone from $5.7 billion to $9.2 billion and the deficit in this year’s budget is about $450 billion.

Cooney talked about how at “the table” there were government officials, bankers and financial investors, but nobody from the working class was represented to help fix “this recklessness on Wall Street.”

Cooney said his solution to the economic problem would be to bring in the best economists in the world like Joseph Stiglitz, an economists and professor at Columbia University, Jared Bernstein, who serves as one of Barack Obama’s top economic advisors and more.

Also, Cooney also wants to bring in homeowners and working class people and gather everyone together for what Hawver calls a “diverse coalition” to find a solution.

“More voices need to be heard, we’re all stakeholders in this,” Hawver said. “There needs to be accountability, this didn’t happen by accident.”

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Posted by HeraldAdmin on Sep 30 2008. Filed under Local, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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