Kucinich: Bankers partied as economic crisis hit

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Kucinich: Bankers partied as economic crisis hit
11/25/2008
Filed by Nick Cargo and David Edwards

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), an outspoken critic of the Iraq occupation and the recent cash infusions into failing banks, sat down with Dina Gusovsky of Russia Today to discuss the state of the nation and extend a hand of friendship to Russia.

"The United States economy is in deep trouble," he opened. "It's in deep trouble because we have permitted banks to go unregulated, we have engaged in deep deficit spending for war that was totally unnecessary. The war against Iraq should have never been prosecuted."

"Our whole way of life is changing," the Congressman said, with the country spending over $600 billion a year on the military at the same time people are losing their homes, jobs, pensions, and retirements. "It clearly calls for a totally new approach."

The state of the economy will get worse before it gets better, Kucinich added, unless changes are made. These changes include keeping people in their homes and creating jobs. "There's millions of people out of work today in America," he said. "We have to put people back to work, remembering what our president Franklin Roosevelt did many years ago."

In 1935, Roosevelt, as part of the New Deal, created the Works Progress Administration (later the Work Projects Administration) to provide close to 8 million jobs during the Great Depression. Funds for the WPA helped establish adult education and arts programs, build new roads, bridges and other public infrastructure, and provided food, clothing and housing.

"We need to do the same thing," Kucinich said, "putting millions of people back to work rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our water system, our sewer system--rebuilding our infrastructure." Implementing wind and solar energy technology, he added, would employ millions more, and reduce our carbon footprint.

Kucinich also called for pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan, along with a stop to threats on Iran. "We need to pull back from this position of empire--of unilateralism." Working with Russia is key to global security, he said, by way of eliminating the use of nuclear weapons. The nation, as well, needs to stop positioning itself as an aggressor, he added. "We don't want to go back to the days of the Cold War," he continued, "where both of our countries saw our economies stressed because of all the money that was spent for military buildups."

Taxpayer money, at the same time citizens are suffering job losses and financial hardships, is seen going into the pay and bonuses of CEOs. Corporate executives are "holding parties while the house is burning down," Kucinich said of the ongoing Wall Street bailout effort, citing a decline in confidence in Congress. He has previously called the bailouts a 'perfect financial storm' and 'immoral'.

"The world community ought to be talking about what's going on economically," he said. "The United States has made some decisions that have implications for the entire world. We have to look at the level of debt that we're gathering. We have to look at our ability to repay people who have loaned money to us. We have to look at our spending patterns that are causing debt to rise, such as war and military buildups."

The same banks that helped lead the country into its current economic state should not be left in control as efforts are made to reverse the effects, the Congressman added. "This is the mistake that [Treasury Secretary] Paulson made this week by simply saying, 'Well, we're going to give the money to the banks, and they'll make the right choices.'" The banks are hoarding money, he charged, and using it to buy other banks and maintain a credit freeze that affects the consumer's ability to conduct one's everyday life.