Open letter to:
All United States Senators
All United States Representatives
RE: The latest Senatorially-created nightmare:
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.
Dear Congressmen:
Regarding your even more destructively massive, nationally suicidal, $810 BILLION financial bailout:
as Paul Newman’s character, Sully quipped – in Richard Russo’s novel-made-movie “Nobody’s Fool” when asked if he would have tea to drink – “NOT NOW. NOT EVER.”
The American populace, now being offered arsenic (a lá Cary Grant, for you movie aficionados) rather than tea, is loudly telling you to vote NO. No Way. No How. Not Now; Not Ever – on the current “Wall Street Bailout” bill. You can ask that it be dubbed “rescue” if you must, but just who is being rescued? Certainly not capitalism; certainly not democracy; certainly not the tens of millions of Americans who daily play by the rules; certainly not the small banks and businesses across the nation who do so as well.
Please oppose or continue your opposition to any such form of bailout. Or “rescue.” Or Emergency Economic Stabilization Act – of whatever year, of whatever mood swing.
Please be an exemplar of what Congressional leaders are supposed to be – stalwarts of representative democracy; the voices of their constituencies. Constituencies which, by the way, as perhaps as never before, are overwhelmingly against and diametrically opposed to any such legislation – especially one which Treasury Secretary Paulson admits is not a fix, and by unavoidable implication, warns is merely a band-aid.
What is Congress going to do if the wound becomes infected, made virulently septic by the medicine? Ask for more money? Make more excuses? Again blame someone other than themselves and government malfeasance? Socialize some other aspect of the economy? Apologize(?) – “Well, golly gosh, and gee whiz folks, we’re really sorry.”
As if Treasury Secretary Paulson’s unsubstantiated, pulled-out-of-the-blue $700 Billion, three-page request to the press wasn’t sufficiently absurd on its face considering his ties to Goldman Sachs where he was once CEO, and where the former chairman of Senator Obama’s vice-presidential candidate vetting committee, James A. Johnson, sits on the board of directors despite his earlier tenure at Fannie Mae; and as if its subsequent replacement by a 100-page, $700 Billion dollar bailout plan wasn’t a fatal financial fiasco pointed at the heart of America; now the Senate has engineered, virtually overnight, a 450-page, $810 BILLION “rescue” package chock-full of an additional $60,000,000,000 in pork barrel congressional district “sweeteners” which surely have no business even being imagined if there actually is a crisis, an emergency which is real, dire, and imminent.
Is this legislation actually supposed to instill confidence in the financial markets? Is it meant to instill a belief that there exists, in the District of Columbia, selflessly dispassionate, deeply thoughtful, non-partisan consideration of factual matters facing the country? Is this legislation actually intended to instill confidence by Americans in their elected representatives?
Not now. Not this way. Not ever.
And as an aside, just out of curiosity, is it odd that Secretary Paulson (whose personal net worth has been reported in the vicinity of $700 Million), is it odd that a man so formed by and invested in Goldman Sachs has recently overseen the destruction and liquidation of three of its largest rivals – Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch. Just asking. But isn’t “mark-to-marketing” really great?!
As South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint (R) [and I am heartily sorry I cannot say the same for South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham (R)] urged from the Senate floor Thursday, please help Congressional membership stiffen their individual spines (and their collective spine will take care of itself); demonstrate Constitutional and democratic leadership, will, and courage; and once again defeat this travesty of the quick and easy, the pass-the-buck, spend somebody else’s money “solution.”
Foisting Constitutionally-enumerated, Congressional responsibility onto an unelected federal agency of lifetime bureaucrats, and for all intents and purposes sidestepping Congressional legislative function and duty, then instead substituting in their place the judgment (whims?) of a single man – Secretary Paulson, who will be gone in three months time with the inauguration of a new president – is not the way to demonstrate any of the virtues mentioned above while pointing directly to the vices.
Americans are neither stupid to oppose this absurd bailout bill, nor are they nearly as uninformed, naïve, foolish, nor unintuitive as California Senator Feinstein feels are the 85,000 constituents who called her office voicing opposition and urging her to actually represent them by doing the same. Naturally, she did not. She is a liberal Democrat. She knows more than they do.
Congress may, for all I know, be filled to the brim with economic geniuses who have been hiding in closets since the Jimmy Carter Administration started the slow roll of what has seemingly now become an economic tsunami. It may harbor dozens of officials who graduated with honors from Evelyn Wood speed-reading courses. There may even be a few Congressmen who don’t care if they are ever re-elected. Nevertheless, I am certain virtually no one in the Senate gave this legislation more than cursory attention in the extraordinarily few hours that passed between the House-defeated 100-page bailout bill and the creation of its monstrously ballooned, 450-page, illegitimate brother – other than to make sure a little more pork got added to the barrel so that they could point to the “good” which came from it for their own district, if nothing else.
If ever anyone wished to see a rush-to-judgment in action, this entire bailout fiasco is a classic example. Which Senator personally took time to read, time to digest, time to consider and seek counsel regarding this 450-page black ink jungle?
Which members of the House of Representatives will do so before it is presented to that body for a vote tomorrow?
Daniel Mitchell recently observed in an article for National Review, “Capitalism without bankruptcy (or losses), is like religion without Hell.” Similarly, one might suggest that Congress without scapegoats is like war without death.
Is there a crisis? It would seem so. Is rushing headlong into socialism in order that a few sleep-deprived Congressmen might retain their elective thrones a bit longer, worth trying to solve a 30-year-in-the-making problem with such an expensive band-aid?
Nope. Not now. Not ever.