Seventh-day Adventists United Against the Wall Street Bailout

Seventh-day Adventist congressional representatives Roscoe Bartlett (R – Maryland) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D – Texas), in the face of dire warnings from both President George Bush and Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, voted against H.R. 3997, the financial markets bill that would have bailed out collapsing private financial institutions using $700 billion of taxpayer money.
“As I said last week, you can’t privatize profits and socialize losses,” Bartlett stated in a news release yesterday. “You can’t reward bad behavior… This revised proposal made improvements. However, it still amounted to trading private debts of unknown value for a $700 billion loan from taxpayers in the hopes that the taxpayers’ money would eventually be paid back. “
In her speech from the floor of the House of Representatives in opposition to the bill, Lee argued that the bailout plan did not include sufficient enforcement provisions and oversight, failed to address problems of criminal malfeasance on Wall Street, and offered no relief to homes and small businesses on Main Street. “America needs a second opinion”, Lee said. “This is a bill that hands out. It doesn’t hand up.”