Mourdock’s response to Supreme Court ruling
Howey has Mourdock’s response to the Supreme Court’s rejection of his attempts to delay the Chrysler bankruptcy deal:
“I am disappointed to have learned that the U.S. Supreme Court has lifted the stay in the Chrysler bankruptcy case thereby allowing the company to be acquired by the United States government so it may distribute its assets as it directs. The future ramifications of the court’s decision on the capital markets remain to be seen. From the onset of the case, I have fought for Indiana’s retired teachers, retired state policemen, and Hoosier taxpayers. I have no regret for having done so and for having carried this case to the door step of the nation’s highest court.”
Mourdock’s supposed defense of the retirees was a big theme yesterday. The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette had a piece on Mourdock’s defensiveness, based on an interview he gave just before the Supreme Court’s ruling was announced, which contains this revelatory little gem:
Mourdock conceded that Chrysler’s prospects might be harmed if he were to succeed before the Supreme Court. But he said it might not end in disastrous liquidation, either.
“Frankly, that’s not my role to answer that question,” Mourdock said earlier. “It’s my role to look out for the retirees.”
Has he thought of what would happen to Indiana’s retiree pension funds (and the Major Moves fund) if Chrysler was liquidated? Surely that is a concern for the Treasurer, who must have seen the estimates that liquidation would cost them more than $20 million.
If the financial well-being of the retiree pension funds (and the Major Moves fund) was his concern, why is his statement more concerned with the general state of our “capital markets”? It’s not a new concern, as he addressed it before the ruling came out:
If the Supreme Court upheld the arrangement, Mourdock said, investors could lose confidence in the U.S. legal system and take their money overseas.
Does that sound like a Treasurer who’s putting the interests of Hoosier taxpayers ahead of his own political philosophy?