Obama “would be happy to look at” newspaper bailout bill

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - With the American people sick to death of corporate bailouts, one might think that the White House would avoid sounding the least bit interested in another plan to save an industry from itself. Apparently the Obama administration has not yet realized this, as Barack Obama himself sounded quite interested in Senator Ben Cardin’s (D-MD) plan to rescue the newspaper industry from its self-inflicted wounds. Instead of encouraging the broadsheets to develop a new business plan, Cardin would turn them into charity cases — and non-profits for the purposes of tax relief:

The president said he is “happy to look at” bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses.

“I haven’t seen detailed proposals yet, but I’ll be happy to look at them,” Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade in an interview.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, the so-called “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations. That bill has so far attracted one cosponsor, Cardin’s Maryland colleague Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D).