Gingrich urges vote against ‘stupid’ Paulson plan

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Tuesday that any lawmaker who votes for the Bush administration's $700 billion bailout package, which he called a “dead loser,” will face defeat in November. 

Gingrich (R-Ga.) said he thinks Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is trying to scare lawmakers into passing the bailout plan quickly and without thorough study.

{mosads}“I think what Paulson hopes to do is say, ‘If you don’t do exactly what I want you to do, the whole world’s going to collapse on Tuesday’,” Gingrich said.

The former Speaker, talking to reporters at a lunch, added that he expects Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) to back the plan. He predicted that, if Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) ends up opposing the administration proposal, there will be an overnight “emergence of a McCain/reform wing of the Republican Party.”

Gingrich said that occurrence would turn the election on its head, with Republicans running ads that feature Obama with President Bush on the same team in pushing for a “nightmare” bailout plan.

The former Speaker said that by November, the flaws in the plan will be apparent, and voters will “break against anyone who votes for it.”

Gingrich said he came out against Paulson's plan after looking at the absence of specifics and the focus the plan puts on giving such an enormous amount of money to the federal bureaucracy.

“I thought if [Russian Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin had written that, I’d understand it,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich predicted that, if the plan does not pass through Congress by Friday night, it will fail because the weekend will give Republican lawmakers and voters enough time to look at the plan that they will come to oppose it.