Progress Illinois

There's contrarian and then there's just silly. Speaking to WLS's Don Wade and Roma early this morning, Time editor-at-large Mark Halperin lauded House Republicans for protecting American taxpayers during the negotiations surrounding the mammoth -- and now defeated -- Wall Street bailout bill. Listen:

Internal mp3

HALPERIN: The House Republicans are kind of like the beleaguered, red-headed step children of our political system right now. They are the minority in the lower house. But if it weren’t for them, I think we would have had a deal passed that would have had less oversight, more money, more dictatorial powers. And so we're in a better place than we were, but it still ain't a great place. 

DON WADE: Are we marking down Mark Halperin: friend of House Republicans?

HALPERIN: A staunch backer in this case. I really think they did the public a lot of good because the House Democrats weren’t crazy about what the White House proposed.  But if House Republicans had stepped forward and said "We're in line, Mr. President.  We're going to vote for this," the thing would have passed probably largely the way the administration would have proposed it.

Where to start ...

First off, it's a bit ironic that hours before the House Republicans balked on the bailout and then blamed it on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for delivering what they deemed a "partisan speech" prior to the vote (you be the judge), Halperin tells Don Wade and Roma that it was Republicans who had the best interest of the taxpayers and nation at heart. House Finance Committe Chairman Barney Frank said it best: "[B]ecause somebody hurt their feelings they decide to punish the country."

What's even more ludicrous is Halperin's contention that it was House Republicans who made the bill more palatable to taxpayers by providing oversight and a "better chance of the taxpayer to recover money." According to The Hill, the major Republican proposal called for "the removal of regulatory and tax barriers to help facilitate the use of private capital to produce liquidity; temporary tax relief provision to help companies free up capital; and temporary suspension of dividend payments by financial institutions." This was the "let the markets crash" theory of governance. Nowhere in this approach is there a discussion of either topic considered.

Perhaps Halperin should read the work of his own colleagues. On Thursday, Time's Justin Fox wrote that Rep. Eric Cantor's plan to insure, rather than purchase, the bad mortgages "wouldn't be a markedly better deal for taxpayers than [Treasury Secretary Hank] Paulson's," but would be "significantly more complicated to administer." He also called the competing House Republican Study Committee proposal "a joke":

It calls for a two-year suspension of the capital gains tax to "encourag[e] corporations to sell unwanted assets." But the toxic mortgage securities clogging up bank balance sheets are worth less now than when they were acquired. Meaning that no capital gains tax would be owed on them anyway. If you repealed the tax, banks would have even less incentive to sell them because they wouldn't be able use the losses to offset capital gains elsewhere. Seriously, where do these people come up with this stuff?

To be clear, the bailout bill was cetainly flawed and it's arguable whether or not progressives should have supported it at all. But if anyone added oversight to the bill, it was House Democrats. Republicans did nothing at all to protect taxpayers. Extending them credit is beyond silly.