Tuesday, September 30, 2008

The United States Congress

The only folks who have a lower rating than President Bush are the members of Congress. No wonder--they deserve it.

I'm retired, living on a pension and (what's left of) an IRA. Like many others, I am disgusted that our country could come so close to a financial meltdown after having learned the lessons of the Great Depression of 1929.

We have complained that Congress does not act until there is a crisis. The current Congress is showing us that they do not act, even when there is a crisis. When they get over their heads in a problem they do not understand, they spend most of their time critizing and blaming each other and other politicians, as opposed to solving the problem.

Members of the House of Representatives seem to be much more interested in fixing the blame than in fixing the problem. The members of the Senate are not doing much either.

Don't get me wrong, I'm don't believe that the bailout bill is a good piece of legislation. Like most of our representatives, I have not even read it. All I know about it is what I read in the papers. The facts are that the bill is not a cure for the nation's financial ills. It is a band-aid; one that may not even work. But it is needed.

Just as they did with the "comprehensive immigration reform" bill, some of our representatives are dumb enough to believe that one piece of legislation can solve all the problems. Democrats don't want to bail out the Bush administation that (they believe) caused all the problems. Republicans are calling for regulation to prevent the sloppy practices that began during the Clinton administration.

The fact is, that to the extent that they observed the problem as it developed and did absolutely nothing about it, that ALL of the politicians share the blame for the economic crisis.

The parallels to the "comprehensive immigration reform" are obvious. Both problems are complicated, and have many parts to them. The border fence is not the best solution, not necessarily an effective solution, and certainly not the only solution. The same can be said of the bailout. But in both cases, the "band-aid" can stop or slow the flow of blood while we take the time we need to solve the other parts of the problem.

So, Congress, write and pass a bailout bill that includes some congressional oversight and has safeguards to keep the greedy CEOs that cooked up this mess from profiting for their actions.

Then consult with some economists and business men to enact, or re-enact, some regulatory controls that will keep it from happening again. And stop wasting your time and our money working on your usual pork barrel politics.