I absolutely cannot believe I am writing this but Congressman-elect Jared Polis – a Democrat – is advocating a free market solution to bailing out the big 3 automakers!  In an extremely enlightening and frank piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, Mr. Polis lays it all on the line the way it needs to be. 

In part he says:

Our United States Congress of lawyers, doctors, diplomats, retired military officers and career politicians — along with their staffs of intelligent young political science majors and MBAs — now finds itself poring over “business plans” submitted this week by Ford, GM and Chrysler. People who have never before in their lives seen — no less implemented — a business plan are now trying to decide if these companies will succeed by means of a “capital infusion” with various imposed preconditions and negotiate what we taxpayers (investors) should be getting for our money. Something is wrong with this picture.

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By waiving the future capital-gains tax on all investments in the automobile industry, we enhance the projected return models and therefore the likely occurrence of a privately funded “bailout.” There are turnaround firms and funds, and they are experts at what needs to be done. Tax exemption for gains would certainly get their attention. It also wouldn’t cost taxpayers anything because it only forgoes future government revenues that wouldn’t exist absent this incentive.

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Most members of Congress and staffers on the Hill are smart people, but we should not pretend that we are better at what are so clearly other people’s jobs. One of the tremendously difficult tasks that we are ill-equipped to successfully orchestrate is restoring these three failing companies to health. As one of the members of Congress with a strong business background, I know what I don’t know in business. While I hold my colleagues in great esteem, I doubt their abilities as turnaround artists are very much superior to mine. Any pretension of a government bailout being a good deal for taxpayers should be abandoned for the insincere (or perhaps ignorant) rhetoric that it is.

Among the reasons I ran for Congress, one was to make government work. Let’s get government back to doing the work of government. Reading business plans and making investments is the job of equity funds and turnaround specialists, not members of Congress.

Absolutely extraordinary and I cannot applaud Mr. Polis enough not only for saying what needed to be said about Congress, but also for putting forth what is a truly sensible solution. 

I had the opportunity to trade emails with Mr. Polis right before the election and at that time I came away quite impressed.  I was actually a bit surprised at how positive I felt about him – My own fault for paying too much attention to the ‘R’ or ‘D’ after someone’s name.  This article simply serves to reinforce what I came away with from those conversations – Mr. Polis may be a fine representative for Thornton and Adams County.  To coin a phrase, “This isn’t your father’s Democrat.”  Way to go, Mr. Polis!

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