Published: October 09, 2008 10:04 pm            

Pizza and Politics

$700 billion bailout: Everyone will pay $2,500, Chandler says

Rep. Ben Chandler, D-6th District, shared a piece of pizza and a piece of his mind Thursday with Eastern Kentucky University students at a “Pizza and Politics” event presented by the EKU Department of Government.

About 70 students listened to Chandler speak about issues including the recent government bailout of financial institutions, the upcoming presidential election and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Chandler began by comparing the 2003 governor’s race to the current presidential election.

Democrat Paul Patton was governor at the time Chandler was campaigning against Republican Ernie Fletcher.

“Patton, at the time, had a very successful governorship, but in the last year or two he became very unpopular because of this scandal he had gotten himself involved in,” he said. “As a result, people in the state wanted change. I tried to position myself as the best person to provide that change, but the trouble was that I had a ‘D’ by my name rather than an ‘R’. I was of the same party as the sitting governor and think that that contributed dramatically in the results of the election.”

Chandler said that Americans are looking for that same kind of change in the presidential election, and that could make things tough on Republican candidate John McCain.

“We have a Republican president who has served there for eight years, and by all polls that you see, he is very unpopular,” he said. “We have a couple of wars going on, at least one of which is quite unpopular, and now, we have an economy that has been crushed and all under the watch of this particular Republican president. The public wants change.”

Another topic Chandler mentioned was the recent $700 billion government bailout that he voted against.

“None of the experts could demonstrate to me to my satisfaction that the thing would work,” he said. “It was such a monumental amount of money. When you start talking about figures that large, it’s hard to grasp. It is more money than we have spent on the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan. We’re spending about $330 million dollars a day on those wars.”

The bailout is ultimately going to be paid for by the American citizens, he said.

“We have to come up with about $2,500 apiece to pay for this and that’s pretty rough,” Chandler said.

Sophomore Zac Caldwell asked him if he could go back and change his vote on one particular issue, what would it be?

After a long pause, Chandler began referring to the war in Iraq.

“I was not there for the Iraq War vote, but had I been there for that vote and had I been involved at the time with how that thing was sold, I think I probably would have voted for that, and I would have sincerely regretted that vote,” he said. “I think that’s one of the worst foreign policy decisions this country has ever made. Our standing in the world declined dramatically as a result of that passage. We’ll probably be paying for it for years to come.”

Senior Chris Eden asked Chandler if it was the responsibility of the government to save those who signed mortgages without reading the fine print.

“It is not the government’s fault,” he said. “It’s their fault. The people who followed the rules and are just trying to make it and work to pay for what they buy, those people are going to see the value of their property decrease. The people who made mistakes are going to have to be given a break in order to protect those who played by the rules.”

Chandler expressed strong views about those on Wall Street and how they have been more of the problem rather than the solution.

“The greed (on Wall Street), I don’t have enough words to be able to properly express my disgust with the amount of money and greed that these people were involved in,” he said. “It’s scandalous, irresponsible behavior and people ought to be held accountable. I hope that we look into laws that prevent that sort of thing from happening again in the future. It makes you want to throw up.”



Ronica Shannon can be reached at rshannon@richmondregister or 623-1669, Ext. 234.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.