CORRECTION: I fired without aiming on the blogpost below, which I saw as a quick afternoon blog hit. A conservative in North Dakota whom I trust read my piece and writes:
“calling this a bailout is a mistake. This bill was in the works long before the drop in oil prices, and the infrastructure it addresses is needed. I have some issues with it, but it is most certainly not a bailout.”
My subsequent reading has confirmed that I shouldn’t have called it a bailout — at least not without more reporting. Since I’ve already stepped in it, I’m going to leave this alone for now. Below is my original blog post, retained for transparency’s sake.
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Falling oil prices are great — unless you’re in Western North Dakota, where oil has made the economy.
And free enterprise is what “pro-business” politicians want — until their favorite businesses start failing.
Lawmakers in North Dakota are basically unanimous that the state needs to send hundreds of millions of dollars — or a billion — as a bailout stimulus to oil country, which is reeling as oil prices crash.
Here’s the Grand Forks Herald’s report on the debate, which isn’t about whether to send bailout money to oil country, but how much money, and in what form:
