Posted on Mon, Apr. 14, 2008

'Mr. No Bailout' getting noticed

CRITICIZES AID FOR BUILDERS, BANKS

By Halimah Abdullah

HABDULLAH@HERALD-LEADER.COM

WASHINGTON --

It's no secret that Sen. Jim Bunning is deeply critical of how the Federal Reserve is run. The Kentucky Republican isn't exactly mum during his weekly teleconferences with reporters on how underwhelmed he is by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's job performance.

But the nation's mortgage meltdown, Senate passage of a recent housing bill laden with tax breaks for home builders, and the rescue of Bear Stearns by the Federal Reserve have Bunning practically fuming.

"How big do you have to be to be too big to fail?" Bunning asked during a recent Senate Banking Committee hearing on the Bear Stearns buyout. "Who let our entire financial system become so fragile that one failure jeopardizes the health of the entire system?"

Last week, national and international news media keyed in on the Hall of Fame pitcher-turned-lawmaker from the Bluegrass State.

Take for example this snippet from a Los Angeles Times blog, which dubbed Bunning "Mr. No Bailout" for his harsh criticism and vote against the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008, a measure that industry analysts say does more to help home builders than homeowners.

One blogger, Firesale, wrote: "I guess that solves it. BUNNING FOR PRESIDENT!"

Initially, Bunning was the sole senator to vote against even taking up the housing measure. After the bill's passage, he didn't make much ado about his vote against the measure, and he issued a brief statement.

"Instead of providing billions of dollars in bailout money to home builders and banks, we should be working to cut taxes and create opportunities for economic growth that will put more money back in the pockets of working families for them to spend on things like housing," Bunning said. "This bill hurts responsible homeowners and rewards those who made bad decisions. The federal government should not be in the business of bailing out homeowners and banks who gambled on home prices and lost."

In previous years Bunning was also deeply critical of Bernanke's predecessor as Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan.

Last week Bunning appeared as a guest on both CNBC's Squawk Box and on CNN to discuss the Senate housing legislation. In the past few weeks he has also rated mentions in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and several other publications.

Not all of the focus on Bunning's renewed visibility on economic issues has been positive.

"We are all familiar with backwoods U.S. politicians, but Bunning ... clearly completely fails to understand both the nature of free markets and the relationship between government and free markets, particularly in times of crisis when the stability of the market system itself is threatened," Chris Hamnett wrote in a column for the Guardian, a British newspaper.

Still, the news media attention has provided a public relations boost to a senator who has had his fair share of media run-ins. In 2006, Time magazine dubbed Bunning the "Underperformer," saying he had shown "little interest in policy unless it involves baseball." Bunning's office disagreed with the premise of the Time piece.

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