Bi-Partisanship Be Damned - Do the Right Thing !!!

So here's the way the deal (didn't) go down: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson comes to Congress with a two and a half page Bill that he exclaims that Congress must pass, "without clutter" as soon as is humanly possible. Congress is taken off-guard and in their stunned state agree that there is a CRISIS and begin to work with what Sec. Paulson handed to them (mistake number one - they should rather have taken a few deep breaths, sat down and looked at the financial situation). This is especially true since the Bill contained language as cited below:["Decisions by the Secretary [of the Treasury] pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." Talk about a recipe for a disaster. (emphasis mine).]

At that point the Democrats should have called upon their best minds and gone to their drawing boards and crafted a plan of their own - a plan that would include a bailout for people who are about to lose their homes because of lousy loans that they signed, but may have been presented to them in suspect terms at the onset. All the while, we can't forget to point to the source of this fiasco. That is the Republican Party, specifically the Bush/Cheney administration who are responsible for this disaster. So that was the Democratic congress's second big mistake, but the good news is it is not too late to correct it. Rather, the ball is in the Democrats court and I suggest that they go for an overhead slam,. It will be an easier sell now that they have tried to walk the bi-partisan path and for their efforts they got a one huge Bronx cheer.

The Dems need to see this as a fabulous opportunity, not something about which to throw up their hands. The GOP owns the mess - the Dems need to own the solution. They need to create a Bill that is palatable to most Americans - give a break to those who are about to face foreclosure, they need to give bankruptcy judges the power to rework people's balance sheets so that their debtors get something (which is almost always better than nothing), and give people a way out. All of this needs to be done before Congress ever even turns its attention to the fat cats on Wall Street. In fact, giving the people of this country those tools and that kind of flexibility just might solve the problem or at least buy us enough time to work on the credit/financial big money trouble that we all see is out there.

If ever there was a time for the Democratic Party to stand up and stand tall and take the reigns and show the country who the true leaders of this country are, now is the time. They need to put a cap on CEO pay, not take up the mantle of the government, thereby putting the true conservatives in a bind - I don't believe that they want to see the government involved in the market place any more than the Democrats want to interject themselves on behalf of the government (which may I remind you is still the Bush/Cheney administration.) So the Dems need to place the problem squarely where it belongs and that is in Bush, Cheney, and Paulson's lap.

So what we need in this bill is to regulate the industry whose gross excesses got us into this mess. Regulate, regulate, regulate. Got that Dems? Democrats - YOU ALL have a majority - use it. So it may not pass the Senate, at least you'll be working from your perspective, NOT THEIRS. You can point to the Republicans as the roadblocks, the obstacles, the PARTISANS :D Get to work Democrats and if you need us you know where to find us... out on Main Street.