The Financial Crisis is the Result of Bush's Failed Republican Rule

Turn on the TV and you'll be told that we're on the brink of imminent crisis—and the only solution is for Congress to turn over vast power to the Bush administration and trust they'll use it wisely. Sound familiar?

This time, it's not to authorize war in Iraq. Bush wants taxpayers to give his administration a $700 billion check with no strings attached, which they'll then hand over to the same Wall Street firms that got us into this mess.1

It's clear something needs to be done to deal with the disastrous Bush economy, but Bush's blank check proposal is not the answer. Yesterday, Barack Obama laid out key principles for dealing with this situation. Obama's main point: Main Street must be put ahead of Wall Street, and no blank check for the Bush administration.
Members of Congress are trying to figure out what to do, and they need to hear from the public. Can you sign this message to your members of Congress today, supporting Obama's principles?

"The Bush economy is in crisis, and giving Bush a blank check is not the solution. Congress must act by putting Main Street ahead of Wall Street."

President Bush wants Congress to give his Treasury Secretary (Henry Paulson, a former Wall Street executive) $700 billion with no congressional or court oversight. That amounts to $2,000 for every single American.

Would it help families struggling to keep their homes? NO. Do taxpayers get any share of the firms we're bailing out, so we can benefit from any eventual profit? NO. Would the firms we're bailing out be required to stop paying their executives multimillion-dollar salaries? NO. This is a pure giveaway of epic proportions.
Even some Republicans are admitting this is crazy. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) asked, "Just how long can the poor beleaguered taxpayer be expected to bear all the losses and bear all the risk? Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio) said, "I'm getting a lot of calls from my district, with people saying, why are you bailing out the big guys and not us?"

 

September 21, 2008
Administration Is Seeking $700 Billion for Wall Street
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/business/21cong.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


WASHINGTON — The Bush administration on Saturday formally proposed a vast bailout of financial institutions in the United States, requesting unfettered authority for the Treasury Department to buy up to $700 billion in distressed mortgage-related assets from the private firms.

The proposal, not quite three pages long, was stunning for its stark simplicity. It would raise the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. And it would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress, granting the Treasury secretary unprecedented power to buy and resell mortgage debt.

“This is a big package, because it was a big problem,” President Bush said Saturday at a White House news conference, after meeting with President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia. “I will tell our citizens and continue to remind them that the risk of doing nothing far outweighs the risk of the package, and that, over time, we’re going to get a lot of the money back.”

After a week of stomach-flipping turmoil in the financial system, and with officials still on edge about how global markets will respond, the delivery of the administration’s plan set the stage for a four-day brawl in Congress. Democratic leaders have pledged to approve a bill but say it must also include tangible help for ordinary Americans in the form of an economic stimulus package.

Staff members from Treasury and the House Financial Services and Senate banking committees immediately began meeting on Capitol Hill and were expected to work through the weekend. Congressional leaders are hoping to recess at the end of the week for the fall elections, after approving the bailout and a budget measure to keep the government running.

With Congressional Republicans warning that the bailout could be slowed by efforts to tack on additional provisions, Democratic leaders said they would insist on a requirement that the administration use its new role, as the owner of large amounts of mortgage debt, to help hundreds of thousands of troubled borrowers at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure.

“It’s clear that the administration has requested that Congress authorize, in very short order, sweeping and unprecedented powers for the Treasury secretary,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, said in a statement. “Democrats will work with the administration to ensure that our response to events in the financial markets is swift, but we must insulate Main Street from Wall Street and keep people in their homes.”

The ultimate price tag of the bailout is virtually impossible to know, in part because of the possibility that taxpayers could profit from the effort, especially if the market stabilizes and real estate prices rise.