North Carolina’s new junior senator, Kay Hagan, has decided to support the bailout after she opposed it. Why does that sound familiar?
Hagan said President-elect Barack Obama provided her assurances that the new money [$350 billion in bailout funds] will be invested transparently and with accountability. Her vote on Thursday helped approve the bailout infusion.
“Another reason I’m looking very closely at this is because of the heavy investment of the banking industry in our state,” Hagan said in an interview, noting that there are about 154,000 jobs directly related to the financial industry in North Carolina. “It’s huge in our state.”
The Democrat from Greensboro was vocally opposed to the bailout measure during her campaign. She said at the time that Washington needed to be helping out regular Americans, not rushing to aid Wall Street leaders by “giving them our money and crossing our fingers.”
“It’s a fix for Wall Street, not Main Street, and this isn’t a situation where we can afford to only address half the problem,” she said in a statement at the time. Hagan avoided taking a position in October until after the Senate had passed the bill.
Sorry, the words “transparency” and “bailout” can’t go together It’s a universal law of government.
The Senate vote on releasing the bailout funds was 52-42. North Carolina Republican Senator Richard Burr also did a switcheroo – he voted against releasing the funds after voting in favor of the original bailout in the fall.
