Manchin Demanded Bank Bailout Before Slamming “Entitlement Mentality”
Manchin Demanded Bank Bailout Before Slamming “Entitlement Mentality”
The West Virginia coal magnate is threatening to kill the reconciliation bill on the anniversary of his pivotal push for a Wall Street bailout
On Thursday, coal-baron-turned-senator Joe Manchin threatened to kill his party’s climate, health care and anti-poverty legislation, telling reporters: “I cannot accept our economy, or basically our society, moving towards an entitlement mentality."
Manchin’s declaration comes almost exactly 13 years after he played a pivotal role pushing for a massive Wall Street bailout that funneled hundreds of billions of dollars of public money to the banks whose financial crisis destroyed the global economy and ravaged West Virginia with mass foreclosures.
The bailed-out banks quickly paid themselves huge government-subsidized bonuses and later bankrolled Manchin’s political campaigns.
“Congress Needs To Act Now”
On October 1, 2008, Manchin used his position as West Virginia governor to intervene in the contentious debate over the federal government’s response to the financial crisis, co-authoring a letter to senators demanding that Congress immediately hand over the cash to bank executives.
"There is a time for partisanship and there is a time for getting things done," Manchin and Texas Gov. Rick Perry wrote at the time. “No one likes the hand they've been dealt, and now is not the time to assign blame.”
They continued: “Americans across the country and in every demographic are feeling the pinch. If Congress does not act soon, the situation will grow appreciably worse. It's time for leadership. Congress needs to act now.”
“Governors, Business Lobbyists Up Pressure for Bailout Bill,” read the headline of the Associated Press story about the letter, which helped create momentum to pass the measure in the Senate that same day.
As the bailout enriched Wall Street executives, the Center for Responsible Lending reported that regulators’ failure to curb abuses in subprime mortgage lending would result in more than 15,000 West Virginia foreclosures and nearly $350 million of lost home equity in the state.
A few years after the bailout happened, Manchin’s wife was named to the board of a mortgage bank.
Donors from Goldman Sachs — the bank which received $10 billion from the Manchin-backed bailout — would go on to collectively become one of Manchin’s biggest career campaign donors, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets.