Now that he is the presumptive Republican vice-presidential candidate, Rep. Paul Ryan's views are getting intense scrutiny. And so it has come to pass that last year's Constitution Day address broadcast to Hillsdale College has caught the attention of the WSJ Law Blog. Ryan, the only non-lawyer in either major party's ticket, lays out his rule-of-law philosophy, including examples of "how the rule of law in this country has been degraded over the past few years, and replaced by the rule of man."
An example of special interest to Michiganders -- the auto industry bailout:
[I]t was disappointing when the Bush administration approved the use of TARP funds for the bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler. This entrenched the idea that TARP could be used as a slush fund for just about any kind of economic intervention, regardless of the fact that the original bill charged the program to, quote, “purchase . . . troubled assets from any financial institution.”
That was bad, but the greater damage came later, when the Obama administration used that bailout to trample the rights of Chrysler’s secured bondholders — including state pension funds — in order to give politically favored groups a better deal than they were entitled to receive under the bankruptcy law, making it less likely that institutions tasked with safeguarding people’s life savings will invest that money in ways that create jobs in the United States.
