Fall has only just begun. Nevertheless, a humongous green snow storm arose out of Washington D. C. last week. To save the economy, the president wants 700 billion dollars to buy up bad loans. The plan was simple. Give Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson the money, and let him spend it. And don’t bother him while he is doing it.
So what happened? Well, there were concerns about turning the highly important, direly necessary, magnificent, and profoundly wise bailout bill into a mere Christmas tree. That could not be allowed to happen. Surely, no member of Congress would be so dishonorable!!! So the congressional leadership borrowed an old magician’s trick. While they distracted us with one hand, they did their sneaky tricks with the other.
Automakers gained $25 billion in taxpayer-subsidized loans and oil companies won elimination of a long-standing ban on drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as the Senate passed a sprawling spending bill Saturday.
The 78-12 vote sent the $634 billion measure to President Bush, who was expected to sign it even though it spends more money and contains more pet projects than he would have liked. (from here)
Yep, while we worried about the 700 billion dollar bill they have yet to pass, Congress porked another bill.
Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group, discovered 2,322 pet projects totaling $6.6 billion. That included 2,025 in the defense portion alone that cost a total of $4.9 billion. Critics of such projects are likely to discover numerous examples of links to lobbyists and campaign contributions.
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On the Net:
Taxpayers for Common Sense: http://www.taxpayer.net/ (from here)
Congress and the American People have yet to learn their lesson.
When a senator at a recent hearing asked General Motors Corp. Chairman Rick Wagoner whether she should wait for the price of the Chevrolet Volt to go down before buying one, Wagoner had a ready answer: “The good news is we’re going to subsidize your purchase.”
So will the American taxpayer.
With the approval of $25 billion in low-interest loans Saturday, the U.S. auto industry has won the help it urgently needs to rework its vehicles. (from here)
Where does Congress get the authority to loan businesses money? Is that in the Constitution? I don’t think you can find such authority there, but politicians are like children. Politicians will do whatever they can get away with. Like parents should with their children, voters must hold politicians in check.
Consider again the 700 billion dollars we are being asked to spend. That debacle exists because Congress exceeded its authority and loaned money so people with bad or insufficient credit could buy homes they could not afford. So we are now hearing about the need for a bailout, and even some of Virginia’s conservative blogs are telling us the bailout is necessary (see here and here and please take note of my comments). If we don’t spend the money they say, the credit market and then the economy will collapse.
Unfortunately, as this bill shows, Congress still believes we can spend our way to prosperity. The same idiots who created the need for a 700 billion dollar bailout bill are still recklessly spewing our money all over the place. So long as we have people in charge who cannot distinguish between the problem and the solution, we will still have the problem.
