Priorities

WASHINGTON - Congressional leaders and the White House agreed Sunday to a $700 billion rescue of the ailing financial industry after lawmakers insisted on sharing spending controls with the Bush administration. The biggest U.S. bailout in history won the tentative support of both presidential candidates and goes to the House for a vote Monday.

So let me see if I have this straight - because I think I do.

A while ago, Congress debated ad nauseam over a stimulus payment to taxpayers that amounted to anywhere from $300 per person to $600, plus $300 for each dependent child. Eventually, they gave it to us, but some had to wait much longer than what was scheduled, and some payments were sent to the wrong people.

Over the past couple of weeks, Congress debated (over a much shorter period) over a much larger amount of money - roughly $2,000 for each man, woman and child alive in the United States and $6,500 per family. None of the candidates for president suspended their campaign to debate the stimulus payment, but John McCain suspended his to attend the debates over the money for the failed brokerages. That should tell you who is really running this country.

"This is the bottom line: If we do not do this, the trauma, the chaos and the disruption to everyday Americans' lives will be overwhelming, and that's a price we can't afford to risk paying," Sen. Judd Gregg, the chief Senate Republican in the talks, told The Associated Press. "I do think we'll be able to pass it, and it will be a bipartisan vote."

Gregg probably didn't say the same thing over the stimulus payment. The one he voted no on. The one that was intended to help what he calls "everyday Americans". Aren't we all Americans every day?

Does anyone besides me think that our priorities are out of whack? I know it's important, but is it necessary for the government to get involved in bailing out banks and brokerages?

They can hardly run the government, let alone a banking business.

Sold to American taxpayers for up to $700 billion: an unprecedented plan to buy distressed banks' least desirable mortgage assets.

What started as a fairly simple three-page proposal giving the Treasury Secretary unchecked power to orchestrate a bailout of the country's financial system ended up as a complex rescue package, with enhanced congressional oversight, some added protections for taxpayers and a slap on the wrist to highly paid, underperforming executives.
The ultimate goal of the plan remains the same: buy bad mortgage-related bets from weakened financial companies so they can raise fresh capital and resume normal lending operations to businesses, municipalities and consumers.

Oh, you mean the same "normal lending operations" that got them into this mess, right?

If someone asked you, would you give $2,000 to buy into a bad loan? No. You probably wouldn't co-sign for an auto loan for your kids, let alone a bad half-million dollar mortgage for some deadbeat you don't know. Our representatives think we're stupid enough to believe this nonsense under the guise of helping our economy.

All it does is give bad business a hand and reward poor decisions.