"O2B Candidate Burner on the Bailout Bill" (with video)

mcjoan (front paged on Kos):

Orange to Blue candidate Darcy Burner has joined those Democrats who recognize that the financial crisis needs to be addressed, but that bailing out the financial industry to the tune of $700 billion without helping Main Street isn't the way to do it.

From an e-mailed statement:

Darcy believes we need to do something to strengthen our financial markets but as she said this morning prior to the vote she did not support this current bailout package. She felt it did not do enough to protect taxpayers and amounted to little more than a wealth transfer from the middle class to the very wealthy. It did not do enough to limit out of control executive pay. And it did not address in an effective way the deregulation and lack of oversight over the financial markets that has been responsible for putting us in this situation in the first place.

More from the Seattle Times

Eighth Congressional District candidate Darcy Burner said this morning that if she were in Congress, she would have voted against a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry that the House of Representatives is considering this morning.

"We need to do something," she said. But she said the compromise package being pushed by Democratic leaders in Congress doesn't go far enough to protect taxpayers.

Burner said it doesn't fix the underlying problems that caused the financial crisis, namely too much deregulation of the financial industry. And she said it doesn't do enough to limit executive pay.

Which is what she said on September 20, when the $700 billion Bush proposal was announced.

Burner, like a lot of candidates and a helluva lot more Americans, want this thing done fairly. This bailout package can be restructured in a way that protects taxpayers, that helps to actually stem the financial crisis that all of the people who've lost their homes are in the middle of, while it also addresses Main Street. It can be done. It has to be done.