What's In The Crap Sandwich?

Now that the Senate passed the Bailout Crap Sandwich, that puts an enormous amount of pressure on the House to pass it, too. It sounds like that vote is going to happen either late tonight or sometime tomorrow. As you decide whether or not to support the crap sandwich, let's take a look at what it does.

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh talked at length about some of the provisions in this bill, and he sums it up better than anyone. Take a look (emphasis mine):

You might recall this whole thing started as a three-page outline written by the Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson. It's now ballooned to 451 pages, and I'll give you just a little bit of it here, from the beginning. But first, something from DeMint's office. Apparently what the Senate is doing is adding some tax cuts, tax breaks, AMT relief and other things that are designed to appeal to Republicans in the House to get them to vote for this, and the Democrats are adding a mental health and addiction bill named after the late Senator Paul Wellstone in order to attract House Democrats so as to put this thing over the top. Now, DeMint's office, "What's all this have to do with the bailout?" Nothing. But the tax package is quite popular with renewable energy incentives largely supported by the GOP and the mental health bill is popular and largely supported by Democrats. So take the most unpopular bill in years, wrap it in two popular bills from the left and the right, and dare anybody to vote no. DeMint's office says this is what the Senate is doing today. Weren't the candidates and The Hill leaders just promising a few days ago that the bailout shouldn't be used as a Christmas tree for unrelated programs?

[T]here's no question that 451 pages, this Senate bill's gotta be loaded with a bunch of stuff that doesn't have much to do with the bailout. Here is section two of the Senate bill, Purposes. "Purposes of this act are to immediately provide authority and facilities that the secretary of the Treasury can use to restore liquidity and stability to the financial system of the United States." Now, what exactly is the financial system of the United States, and why does one man get the job of restoring it? As if it needs to be restored. For example, does this mean that Secretary Paulson could impose tax cuts? Can he impose tax increases? "Provide authority and facilities for the secretary of the Treasury to restore liquidity and stability to the financial system." Number two, purposes of this act: "To ensure that such authority and such facilities are used in a manner that, A, protects home values, college funds, retirement accounts, and life savings." Really? I think tax cuts would accomplish that. But the Senate bill authorizes the Treasury Secretary to "ensure the protection of home values, college funds, retirement accounts, and life savings"? The Treasury Secretary's part of the government. He's not elected, but nevertheless the government's going to ensure all this stuff?

I take you back to the preamble of the United States Constitution where it says protect the general welfare, not ensure it. Folks, there's a word for this. It's called socialism. When the federal government's going to ensure all these things for you and make sure that there's no risk, make sure that you're never going to lose any value here, which they can't do. I mean physically, financially it's not possible. They could not accomplish this. But the fact that the bill says that he's got the authority to do it puts a lot of power, useless power, by the way, could do a lot of damage, but nobody can guarantee the value of everybody's home, investment, or what have you. What if you have a home that gets termites and you don't take care of it? I could give you all kinds of examples here that would make this impossible. I don't know how any one person could do this. What if I don't repaint my house? What if I didn't fix a hole in the roof, do I simply call the Treasury Secretary and say, "Hey, I need the hole in the roof fixed because the property value's going to go on down here if I don't get it fixed, and your job is to ensure this." Well, my home is part of the financial system of the United States. That's not defined, either.

Section B of Purposes number two: "Preserves home ownership and promotes jobs and economic growth." So the Treasury Secretary has the authority to preserve home ownership and promote jobs and economic growth. Now, how do you preserve home ownership? I'm not trying to be a simpleton here, folks, but the way you preserve home ownership is to pay your mortgage. So does this mean that if you can't pay your mortgage, you call the Treasury Secretary and ask for a mortgage payment in order to ensure the financial system of the United States? I know it's happening, and this is the problem! How's the Treasury Secretary going to create jobs? Preserve home ownership and promote jobs and economic growth. We're putting all this in the Senate bill, and the House bill did the same thing, in the hands of one guy. Now, we know it's going to be Paulson through January 20th, but we don't know who it's going to be beyond that. What if it's Franklin Raines [the guy who left Fannie Mae under suspicion of corruption after paying himself almost $100 million...also, he's Obama's housing adviser]? What if Obama wins and puts Franklin Raines in there as the Treasury Secretary? How's he going to preserve economic growth? If somebody had figured out the trick to that, there would never be any downward cycles, would there? It cannot happen, folks. It's simply not possible.

There are cycles. And you can go to the -- a little oxymoron here -- you can go to the best-run central planning governments, you go to Cuba, you go to China, you go to Soviet Union of the past, you can go to any of these places and you tell me -- go to Korea, go to North Korea -- you tell me where economic growth is constantly occurring, even in the capitalist system that we have, or maybe had, the cycles were ever present, they are natural. Who is this miracle man, why is he given the power to do all this? This isn't his job, it isn't his business. It makes me wonder what the hell country we're living in.

Section C of Purposes number two: "The Treasury Secretary has the authority to maximize overall returns to the taxpayers of the United States." (laughing) If this could work, if this did work, it would have been done throughout the course of human history, and nobody would have ever lost their shirts or anything else. So we're now shareholders in the government. We didn't elect this guy, so how is he accountable to us? Can we fire him? What kind of statement is this? Maximizes overall returns to the taxpayer of the United States.

And finally, Section D, Purposes number two: "The Treasury Secretary will provide public accountability for the exercise of such authority." Well, we didn't elect him. There can't be any accountability. Anyway, this is what it is. Jon Kyl was just on Fox saying it's going to pass the Senate tonight, that there's not any doubt about this. They've put the sweeteners in it for the House Republicans and the House Democrats so that they will pass it. Both the presidential candidates received thundering applause when they announced that they would immediately be returning to Washington to work on this following their rallies and yada yada yada.

This is what your Reps will be voting on in the next 36 hours: unchecked authority to an unelected man who will be replaced by an unknown person in three months, with a direct link into an unlimited amount of your tax dollars.

How about you give them a call? Michelle Malkin lists all the Reps and their phone numbers here. Tell them that while something needs to be done, this is not it. It's closer, but still needs changes: keep the tax cuts, keep the FDIC increase, keep the mark-to-market suspension, but we do not need more government and less accountability!

Case in point from Michael Reagan:

Congress was deluged by a flood of phone calls and e-mails all warning that Americans were violently opposed to the bailout and would exact punishment at the polls next month from members who voted for it. The people spoke loud and clear, and their voices were heard on Capitol Hill.

As Colleen said to me, it just may be that we're smarter than those people in Washington and Wall Street who think we're a bunch of ninnies who they can con whenever they feel like it. We get it and we understand it.

They forgot what Abraham Lincoln advised when he said, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time."

This was one of the times they tried to fool all of us. It didn't work. Back to the drawing boards.

We looked at it and we saw fear-mongering — attempts to panic us into believing that the banks had no money to lend, and credit was dried up and loans were almost impossible to get — all being peddled from the White House, the Treasury and the Fed, and all the way down to the House and Senate, Wall Street and much of the media.

We knew that was untrue because our daughter, Ashley, had just qualified and easily obtained a mortgage on a $360,000 townhouse from a small local bank. The bank had foreclosed on the house and was stuck with a defaulted mortgage of $560,000. Ashley, who is 25 and a schoolteacher, got the townhouse for $200,000 under what the bank held in bad paper.

Home sales in California in August were up 56 percent over August a year ago. Why? Because now is a good time to get in. There are all kinds of bargains available. Now there are possibilities of making a profit on investments. The market was up Tuesday. Why? Because it was a good time to get in. Maybe America just got it right.

Monday the market went down 6.7 percent, and it was panic time. Back in 1987, when my dad was president, the market dropped 22.6 percent — a 508-point drop in one day — it was the largest single drop in the history of the market.

Did President Reagan panic? Were there calls for bailouts? No. Instead, my dad simply said hold the course — what goes down must in fact go up. He made sure that there was no panic. By remaining calm and steady he kept the nation and the market calm, and what happened? Since 1987, the market has been up as high as almost 12,000 points. Now it's down to a little over 10,000. In 1987, the market dropped all the way down to about 1786 points. And we didn't panic.

What's going on now in Washington is a panic-driven attempt to cope with a temporary problem. We seem to have forgotten the old adage about the foolishness of acting in haste leading to repenting in leisure.

In the words of the venerable Margaret Thatcher, "this was no time to go wobbly!" Keep up the pressure. If we go down, at least we go down fighting and standing strong on what we believe to be correct principles.

There's my two cents.