GOP Sens. cringe at B-word

Call it an “investment.” Call it a “stabilization plan.” Call it a “structured rescue plan.” Just don’t use the B-word: “bailout.”

To congressional Republican leaders like Sens. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Jon Kyl (Ariz.), labeling the $700 billion financial plan coming to Capitol Hill a bailout is “unfortunate” and “inaccurate.” To rank-and-file members like Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), it’s “inflammatory.”

{mosads}Not everyone in the party agrees with that description. To point men like Sen. Richard Shelby (Ala.), it is absurd to call the Bush administration’s proposal to shore up U.S. financial markets anything but what it is: a bailout.

The resulting effort by GOP leaders to re-frame the language says much about the heartburn among House and Senate Republicans and the heat they are receiving from constituents back home.

The birth of the “bailout” debate took root last weekend when the Bush administration rolled out the idea. By the time Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson sat down with GOP senators on Tuesday afternoon, lawmakers in the closed-door meeting lectured him against using the term, according to several participants.

The reason, say GOP senators, is that they are hearing an earful from constituents back home who don’t understand the complexities of the plan. What they do understand is the word “bailout.” And Republicans say the one-sided label is inaccurate because solving the fiscal crisis will ultimately help middle-class Americans just as much as Wall Street executives.

Republican leaders are trying to urge members to resist using that word and instead choose terms that reflect a more comprehensive — and positive — description.

“My constituents aren’t calling and asking me to help their brokers,” said Minority Leader McConnell. “If this economic stabilization plan was nothing but a bailout for Wall Street bankers, I wouldn’t have anything to do with it.”

“It’s not a bailout, it’s a structured rescue plan,” said Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.). “We’re trying to save the system, not bail out people who made bad decisions.”

“ ‘Bailout’ is certainly a little inflammatory,” said Murkowski. “I don’t think anybody thinks of a bailout in a positive sense. We need to be careful about the words that we use.”

All of this is ridiculous to Shelby, the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee’s ranking Republican and a critic of the plan.

“I call things what they are: It’s a bailout,” said Shelby. “What are they calling it? An investment? People view it as basically a bailout.”

In the House, conservative members are no less flummoxed over what to call the proposal.

“It depends on if you’re for it or against it — if you’re against it, it’s a great word; if you’re for it, it’s a terrible word,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.). “You can make an argument either way. It is a bailout, from my perspective, because the government is buying assets that otherwise have no market. It’s an accurate term.”

{mospagebreak}Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) disagreed with his colleague. “The messaging on this is terribly important. When my constituents call me, they say, ‘Don’t support the bailout.’ I know what they’re talking about.”

Democrats are watching the Republican struggle over language with bemusement. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), for example, both laughed when told of the Republican division over the “bailout” term.

“It’s the Bush bailout,” Emanuel said.

{mosads}“What ought to rile them up is the disastrous policies that have been pursued by this administration and put the economy in the position where a bailout is necessary,” Hoyer said.

Republicans say they had already lost much of the rhetorical debate by Monday morning, after a weekend’s worth of the “bailout” term being splashed across TV screens and newspapers’ front pages.

“A lot of information got thrown around in the early days about this that’s really not appropriate,” said Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (Tenn.). “I’m doing my best to call it an economic recovery act, because it’s more descriptive of it.”

For his part, Kyl calls use of the term “unfortunate.”

“Because the object here isn’t to do what was done over the last two weeks with some Wall Street companies and bail them out,” he said. “The object here is to save a system in which we all participate, some of us indirectly, some of us more directly.”

Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the GOP’s chief deputy whip, is one of several lawmakers who say a flood of complaints from constituents is behind the need to re-frame the language.

“That’s about a 99-percenter with our constituents out there … that’s how they perceive it,” Thune said. “The way this is communicated is really important. You’ve got to put it in ways that people can understand, so it’s perceived as not just about Wall Street, not just about CEOs.”