Good point John Brown. I've been hearing for years how hedge fund managers are getting gazillion dollar bonuses. Evidently, it was all at my expense.
Let those rich arseholes dig their own way out. They enjoyed the boom time...let them enjoy the bust as well.
Here's what Ron Paul sez: http://www.ronpaul.com/2008-09-24/ron-paul-on-the-bailout-proposal/
Message from Ron Paul to the Nation: Dear Friends, Whenever a Great Bipartisan Consensus is announced, and a compliant media assures everyone that the wondrous actions of our wise leaders are being taken for our own good, you can know with absolute certainty that disaster is about to strike. The events of the past week are no exception. The bailout package that is about to be rammed down Congress’ throat is not just economically foolish. It is downright sinister. It makes a mockery of our Constitution, which our leaders should never again bother pretending is still in effect. It promises the American people a never-ending nightmare of ever-greater debt liabilities they will have to shoulder. Two weeks ago, financial analyst Jim Rogers said the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made America more communist than China! “This is welfare for the rich,” he said. “This is socialism for the rich. It’s bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters.” That describes the current bailout package to a T. And we’re being told it’s unavoidable. The claim that the market caused all this is so staggeringly foolish that only politicians and the media could pretend to believe it. But that has become the conventional wisdom, with the desired result that those responsible for the credit bubble and its predictable consequences - predictable, that is, to those who understand sound, Austrian economics - are being let off the hook. The Federal Reserve System is actually positioning itself as the savior, rather than the culprit, in this mess! • The Treasury Secretary is authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets at any one time. That means $700 billion is only the very beginning of what will hit us. • Financial institutions are “designated as financial agents of the Government.” This is the New Deal to end all New Deals. • Then there’s this: “Decisions by the Secretary 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.” Translation: the Secretary can buy up whatever junk debt he wants to, burden the American people with it, and be subject to no one in the process. There goes your country. Even some so-called free-market economists are calling all this “sadly necessary.” Sad, yes. Necessary? Don’t make me laugh. Our one-party system is complicit in yet another crime against the American people. The two major party candidates for president themselves initially indicated their strong support for bailouts of this kind - another example of the big choice we’re supposedly presented with this November: yes or yes. Now, with a backlash brewing, they’re not quite sure what their views are. A sad display, really. Although the present bailout package is almost certainly not the end of the political atrocities we’ll witness in connection with the crisis, time is short. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow. With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it. Call them! Let them hear from you! Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity. The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care? When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media? Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be. In liberty, Ron Paul
But even if the math was true it would still be a TERRIBLE idea.
AIG has it's fingers into many things that if it were allowed to go under the economy would suffer more than the bail out, which by the way is designed so that the govt, and therefore the public, makes a profit. Bush won't get the credit for the drop in deficit, the guy in power will take the credit, but that's politics for ya.
Have you heard of a sugar rush or sugar high? What happens just after the sugar rush? Yup, it's a sugar crash.
Now apply that same situation to the financial markets if we did get $425,000 each. Can you imagine the inflation rate? OMG $10 gas would look cheap. And then there's the DEPRESSION, not recession, that would follow.
Oh, and John Brown, you are free to move to Canada or an island in the Pacific or anywhere else they'll take you. See that's one of the good things about the good ol' USA you are free to do whatever you please.
Dr. Hess wrote: Here's what Ron Paul sez: http://www.ronpaul.com/2008-09-24/ron-paul-on-the-bailout-proposal/
Sour Grapes?
I think Ron Paul would make a better president than McCain. I disagree with his views on MANY things but he had pretty good policies relating to tech and privacy (better than Obama's at this point), he's not a Bush clone and he's a straight shooter. Everything McCain claims to be, but for real. I think the US could have used him for one term, but only in the same sense that a frozen engine in the arctic could use a fire lit under it for a while.
carguy123 wrote: AIG has it's fingers into many things that if it were allowed to go under the economy would suffer more than the bail out, which by the way is designed so that the govt, and therefore the public, makes a profit.
this is the plan, at least, as one economist points out:
"In 1992, hedge-fund manager George Soros made $1 billion betting against the British pound. In 2007, John Paulson's Credit Opportunities fund correctly bet against subprime mortgages, clearing $15 billion for the year and $3.7 billion for him. Warren Buffett is now hoping to make big money on Goldman Sachs.
But these are small-time deals. My analysis suggests that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (a former investment banker, no less, not a trader) may pull off the mother of all trades, which could net a trillion dollars and maybe as much as $2.2 trillion -- yes, with a "t" -- for the United States Treasury.
Here's what's happened so far. New technology like electronic trading meant that Wall Street's bread-and-butter business of investment banking and trading stocks stopped making much money years ago. So investment banks took their enormous capital and at first packaged yield-enhanced, subprime mortgage loans into complex derivatives such as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). Eventually and stupidly, these institutions owned them for themselves -- lots of them, often at 30-to-1 leverage. The financial products were made "safe" by insurance products known as credit default swaps, a credit derivative from companies such as AIG. When housing turned down, the mortgages and derivatives were worth a lot less and no one would lend Wall Street money anymore.
Then the piling on started. Hedge funds could short financial stocks and then bid down the prices of CDOs stuck on Wall Street's balance sheets. This was pretty easy to do in an illiquid market. Because of the Federal Accounting Standards Board's mark-to-market 157 rule, Wall Street had to write off the lower value of these securities and raise more capital, diluting shareholders. So the stock prices would drop, which is what the shorts wanted in the first place. It was all legit.
There is a saying on Wall Street that goes, "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." Long Term Capital Management learned this lesson 10 years ago when it got its portfolio picked off by Wall Street as its short-term financing dried up. I had thought the opposite -- hedge funds picking off Wall Street -- would happen today. But in a weird twist, it's the government that is set up to win the prize.
Here's how: As short-term financing dried up, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's deteriorating financials threatened to trigger some $1.4 trillion in credit default swap payments that no one, including giant insurer AIG, had the capital to make good on. So Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson put Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship. This removed any short-term financing hassle. He also put up $85 billion in loan guarantees to AIG in exchange for 80% of the company.
Taxpayers will get their money back on AIG. My models suggest that Fannie and Freddie, on the other hand, are a gold mine. For $2 billion in cash up front and some $200 billion in loan guarantees so far, the U.S. government now controls $5.4 trillion in mortgages and mortgage guarantees.
Fannie and Freddie each own around $800 million in mortgage loans, some of them already at discounted values. They also guarantee the credit-worthiness of another $2.2 trillion and $1.6 trillion in mortgage-backed securities. Held to maturity, they may be worth a lot more than Mr. Paulson paid for them. They're called distressed securities for a reason.
Now Mr. Paulson is pitching Congress for $700 billion or more to buy distressed loans and CDOs from the rest of Wall Street, injecting needed cash onto balance sheets so that normal loans for economic activity can be restored. The trick is what price he will pay. Better mortgages and CDOs are selling for 70 cents on the dollar. But many are seriously distressed (15-25 cents on the dollar) because they are the last to be paid in foreclosures. These are what Wall Street wants to unload the quickest.
Firms will haggle, but eventually cave -- they need the cash. I am figuring Mr. Paulson could wind up buying more than $2 trillion in notional value loans and home equity and CDOs for his $700 billion.
So the U.S. will be stuck with a portfolio in the trillions of dollars in bad loans and last-to-be-paid derivatives. Where is the trade in that?
Well, unlike Mr. Buffett or any hedge fund, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve get to cheat. It's not without risk, but the Feds, with lots of levers, can and will pump capital into the U.S. economy to get it moving again. Future heads of Treasury and the Federal Reserve will be growth advocates -- in effect, "talking their book." While normally this creates a threat of inflation and a run on the dollar, and we may see dollar exchange rates turn south near term, don't expect it to last.
First, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley now operating as low-leverage bank holding companies, a dollar injected into the economy will most likely turn into $10 in capital (instead of $30 when they were investment banks). This is a huge change. Plus, a stronger U.S. economy, with its financial players having clean balance sheets, will become a safe haven for capital.
Europe is threatened by an angry Russian bear. The Far East, especially China, has its own post-Olympic banking house of cards of non-performing loans to deal with. Interest rates will tick up as the economy expands -- a plus for the dollar. Finally, a stronger economy driven by industry instead of financials means more jobs, less foreclosures and higher held-to-maturity payouts on this Fed loan portfolio.
You can slice the numbers a lot of different ways. My calculations, which assume 50% impairment on subprime loans, suggest it is possible, all in, for this portfolio to generate between $1 trillion and $2.2 trillion -- the greatest trade ever. Every hedge-fund manager will be jealous. Mr. Buffett is buying a small piece of the trade via his Goldman Sachs investment.
Over 10 years this could change the budget scenario in D.C., which can also strengthen the dollar. The next president gets a heck of a windfall. In the spirit of Secretary of State William Seward's purchase of Alaska for $7 million in 1867, this week may be remembered as Paulson's Folly.
Mr. Kessler, a former hedge-fund manager, is the author of "How We Got Here" (Collins, 2005)."
Yeah, and I've got a bridge to sell ya'!
All I know is that Chuck and I had to perform the financial equivalent of being on Ninja Warrior to qualify for our mortgage loan, and we bought well below what we were qualified for, so we didn't have anything to do with it. 
carguy123 wrote: Bush won't get the credit for the drop in deficit, the guy in power will take the credit, but that's politics for ya.
Drop in deficit? After causing more deficit spending than any President in U.S. history? He's got a lot of deficit spending to attempt to rectify by Nov if Bush wants his administration to leave office with the nation in the black.
Less gov't and fiscal responsibility my aching arse. Bush spends money faster than a cocain fueled drunken frat boy who comes from at least two generations of oil drenched family money! Oh wait...
carguy123 wrote: ...See that's one of the good things about the good ol' USA you are free to do whatever you please.
Eh..that's debatable too.
Course, you are free to leverage your investment bank into oblivion while paying yourself a fa-billion dollars in bonus. Then, if all your bets are bad you can ask the gov't to bail you out! Thanks Mr. Main St. Tax payer! You don't even have to sell your mansion in NYC or the Ferrari! The U.S. is a GREAT COUNTRY.*
*to be rich and politically connected in.
Xceler8x unless I'm sadly mistaken there is a Democratic controlled Congress and House and they determine most of the spending not the Pres.
As one Republican said on TV today, the Dems control the House and Congress and can pretty well put into place whatever plan they want to, they're just not doing anything.
What I am saying is that due to the length of time from implementation of policies and when the benefits accrue, WHEN, not if, these profits start appearing the person in power will take the credit. Bush will have begun the process but someone else will get the credit. Who knows who that will be. Some will accrue during this next term others will be accrue later.
It's like some of those graphs that pop up periodically that show the dems spend less than the Republicans. Usually it's due to the policies the Republicans put on place that matured under a Democratic pres that makes him look good. Conversely many of the Republicans were saddled with Democratic spend policies and their regimes looked as if they were spending loads of money when in fact they were trying to control bleeding.
carguy123 wrote: Xceler8x unless I'm sadly mistaken...
Stop right there. You are sadly mistaken. Stop watching Fox News and come out in the sun with the rest of us.
Bush has been in office for 8 yrs. He's had plenty of time for his chickens to come home to roost. Now they have.
Also, remember the federal SURPLUS we had when Clinton was in office? Name one time that occured under Bush. Can't? Yeah. It didn't. During his two wars, his tax cut for the wealthy, his deregulation of financial markets, and creation of two huge new bureaucracies. A surplus was never going to occur with that level of spending.
Don't get me wrong. I blame Congress too. They should've stopped him at every step. It's a crying shame what they've allowed to happen under their nutless watch. The only checks they are familiar with are from lobbyists. To them balances are numbers that get bigger and bigger in their money market accts. I agree with you in that they're just as much to blame.
It riles me when I hear a Bush apologist trying to white wash what W has done to the nation. It wasn't Clinton's fault. It's not Congress's fault as, like you said, they haven't done anything. Stand up. Grab your nuts. Be a man. Then say "We were all wrong. Bush is an idiot who believes he should be emperor. The sooner we are done with him the faster we can get back to being the United States."
One more thing:
carguy123 wrote: Conversely many of the Republicans were saddled with Democratic spend policies and their regimes looked as if they were spending loads of money when in fact they were trying to control bleeding.
Crackah please. That's some serious Bullshiate. It's a given to anyone with a brain that Reagan and Bush Jr. were supply siders. Even by their own admission. Supply Sider means they spent money to, hopefully, make money. The deficit grew at exponential rates under both their 8 year administrations.
Then Clinton took office and we balanced the budget and somehow found a surplus. Wow. Imagine that.
I find it funny that the dems all agree on a bill and they have the majority in both houses and a President that wants the same as they want, but they won't pass this bailout bill because some GOP house members don't like it. Why can the dems never have any balls? They can say things like this is the most important thing ever and this bill is needed right now or we are all doomed, but why then won't they put it to a vote and send it to the Pres for signature with or without the GOP dissenters? They have no balls.
Not sure if that is better or worse than the GOP and their lies. Telling us they are for smaller government and not being the world's policeman and then running up the biggest deficits and fighting not one but two undeclared wars.
We are getting what we deserve since we are the ones that sent these idiots to DC.
But he did leave Bush with a lot of Democratic policies that HAVE come home to roost.
And the Dems don't want to put together a bail out because that would be credited to Bush. Let's keep things stirred up so we can garner some votes and then wait until after the election to author a bill.
Fortunately the election is close. Let's see what McCain does in January.
As soon as McCain rode into DC on his white horse to save the day the bailout was doomed because the Dems were never going to let it appear that McCain saved the day.
So, in my book McCain while trying a political stunt saved the day by stopping the bailout and biggest waste of taxpayer dollars of all time.
The whole Clinton surplus myth gets me too, but facts almost always become secondary when discussing politics.
Is there anyone out there who didn't vote for Ron Paul in their primary who now wishes they did?
Thank you, Datsun 1500 and TJ. I can't believe how no one ever questioned that one.
Clinton surplus???
How did we go from bad deficits to surplus overnight without any in-between?
It couldn't have had anything to do with taking the Social Security burden off-line and calling it an asset instead of a budget line debt item, could it?
Nah. 
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/27/clinton.surplus/
September 27, 2000 Web posted at: 4:51 p.m. EDT (2051 GMT) WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Clinton announced Wednesday that the federal budget surplus for fiscal year 2000 amounted to at least $230 billion, making it the largest in U.S. history and topping last year's record surplus of $122.7 billion.
You can read the rest of the article.
Here's a chart that shows, at a glance, what happened. Federal Reserve numbers here. I know it's not Fox News numbers but these I find more unbiased. That big spike during the years of 93-2001 indicates years when he paid the deficit down. Normally you have to have a surplus of money to pay down a debt. The precipitous slide after that is what happens when you spend more money than you take it. It's called deficit spending. Care to check out the years that occurred? Quick clue - it's the last 8 years or our nation's existence.
The point of all this is that Bush spent money like the mythical Democrat some of you revile. Bush created more government and took away personal freedoms. These are all things that the Republican party is supposedly AGAINST. And still you carry the flag.
..and yet..none of you are man enough to admit those simple facts. It's all there and yet you persist in saying "...bbbbut the emperor has clothes!"
It's just not true.
Back on subject...
The Bailout.
It's a bad idea. Are we Socialists? The Republicans are against handouts - Unless it's for the Rich evidently. But that's no surprise is it?
Bush enacted tax cuts that benefited the very wealthy. Here's a NY Times article on it.
Tax Cuts Offer Most for Very Rich, Study Says
The Bailout is nothing but Welfare for the wealthiest Americans. Aren't Republicans against handouts? Did that change when they decided freedom for the people was inconvenient and big government really is pretty damned good? Why not use $700 Billion to perform some good for us?
Forbes asked the same thing. Their 7 better uses included trade, education, health care, etc. Forbes article on 7 better users for $700 Billion dollars.
To hell with that. Bush says we need to forget about the two wars his administration is bankrupting the country with and "HURRY! HURRY! HURRY!" to bailout his rich buddies in New York CITY!
The two times we rushed into something like this, with a minimum of public disclosure that is a trademark of the Bush Administration, we ended up in Iraq and repealing the Bill Of Rights. Oh wait...sorry. That was the Patriot Act. Because we all know that you can't be a patriot if you value freedom from illegal searches and seizures or value privacy.
So hey...write lengthy discourses on Clinton and how it was a vast conspiracy announcing he created a surplus. Whatever Fox News tells you is true, I guess. But the facts bear out that a Democrat did more for the long term financial health of this country than 8 years of your idiot Golden Boy.
Then, write about how Bush is good because he's against abortion, supposedly fears God, and "ain't that stupid". Then start talking about how he really couldn't have been reponsible for all this stuff because he's just not smart enough.
Truth is...all this happened under his watch with the assistance of his administration. If the Bush administration didn't agree with it they sure haven't come out in opposition have they? The two wars we're currently fighting. The erosion of Civil Rights. The creation of yet more governmental agencies. The corruption of the Justice Dept. And now...Welfare payments to Wall St.
Yes Virginia. It did happen. Putting your head in the sand and saying "It just can't be true!" won't make it go away. Be man enough to admit it and move on.
Chris_V wrote: this is the plan, at least, as one economist points out: Mr. Kessler, a former hedge-fund manager, is the author of "How We Got Here" (Collins, 2005)."
That is the upside to the gamble. Now how about the downside of throwing a trillion or more dollars into this gamble? I haven't talked to any group of people that have explained in the same way how the $700 billion could help the economy. Frankly, I think no one really knows what will happen. This could be a coup that rebounds the economy, clears the bad debt and restores confidence to the market, or this could be the heroin shot that gives the addict his high and ratchets up the eventual crash another notch, increasing the eventual damage of the collapse when inflation or our foreign creditors come after us. We're in a dangerous situation and I don't like the path the government has chosen.
MGAMGB wrote: and assassinate whomever decided we should be the world police.
Well, we decided that after realizing that ignoring people like Hitler beforehand leads to even larger problems afterward. Smaller wars on foreign turf are better for us in the long run that letting would-be Hitlers come to power long enough to start a larger worldwide conflagration.
Would we have been better off just to continue to ignore Hitler because he hadn't actually got here yet? Same with the Russian threat afterwards? Hard to say, as the minor battles with the Russians kept us from having a major nuclear battle, which would have been a Bad Thing, but it also made for a lot of the current mess in the Middle East (aside from the backing of Israel, of course, which went back to the Hitler thing again).
Call it a surplus if you want, but when the national debt got bigger in my book that's not much of a surplus. Besides to even call it a surplus they took the money from social security didn't they?
The bailout is just about the worst idea ever. There really is no way to permanently fix a system that is based on a crappy foundation without fixing the foundation. If we keep the Federal Reserve as it currently stands this problem will just recur again and again. Where we are now is clearly not where the founding fathers wanted us to go.
Does anyone out there have a congressman or senator that actually responds to emails or letters?
TJ wrote: I find it funny that the dems all agree on a bill and they have the majority in both houses and a President that wants the same as they want, but they won't pass this bailout bill because some GOP house members don't like it. Why can the dems never have any balls? They can say things like this is the most important thing ever and this bill is needed right now or we are all doomed, but why then won't they put it to a vote and send it to the Pres for signature with or without the GOP dissenters? They have no balls.
I heard Barney Fife, I mean Frank, and he said that they need broad bipartisan support or the plan won't work. Essentially admitting that this whole bailout is essentially psychological warfare against the American people. The bailout will only work if we all think it will, but if we don't all believe in it then it won't be successful....gee, why don't they all tell to think good things about the economy for a week and not spend so much of our money?
Datsun1500 wrote: You quote a CNN article, and a chart from the White house an call it unbiased? I quouted hard numbers from the US Treasury, the people that know where the money is. Clinton did not have a surplus.
Well..yeah. I did. I beat your data two to 1.
My point is that Clinton curtailed growth of the national deficit. Much more than can be said for the "fiscally responsible" Republican administrations that preceded and followed him. Surplus or not he actually lowered the debt that future generations would have to pay. A far cry from the last 8 years. Are you going to tell me the sky is green nxt by disavowing that?
MGAMGB wrote: Hey, look it's a chart "proving" a point I'm trying to make!
Jealous much? Can't find data to backup any wild idea you heard from Bill "No Spin" O'Reilly?
MGAMGB wrote: Bush didn't make the planes hit the WTC. He didn't make China start buying everything. He didn't inflate the cost of oil. He didn't make people buy more house than they could afford. I say again, I really wish he was a brilliant mastermind that could orchestrate all these covert ops.
It's clear to anyone who views this with open eyes what his administration did. I've listed the problems he created or ignored. It's funny how you won't mention those. Care to lay responsibility where it should be instead of trying to point the finger at anything else you can think of? Whatever happened to the vaunted Republican ideal of personal responsibility? Does that only apply to the poor as well?
MGAMGB wrote: He's not not that smart.
That's too easy. I'll also agree that the opposing Congress and Senate have no balls. None. That has most definitely contributed to the mess we're in as well. Nancy Pelosi is f'ing SPINELESS
MGAMGB wrote: If you think any political party could have "saved" us from our current situation, you need to go back in time and change the American mindset of entitlement, over consumption, and assassinate whomever decided we should be the world police.
Entitlement? You mean like being entitled to $700 Bn dollars of taxpayers money to cover some fat cat NYC bankers bad bets on the stock market? Who's spearheading that massive entitlement? Your man, the winnah, George "Let's Hurry Up And Do This Thang!" Bush.
TJ wrote: Call it a surplus if you want, but when the national debt got bigger in my book that's not much of a surplus. Besides to even call it a surplus they took the money from social security didn't they?
Check the charts again. The guys with an R beside their name exploded the national debt much more than Clinton. Get used to it. Clinton did a better job than any Republican after Reagan at national fiscal policy by reducing our debt. Then Bush comes along and spend our money like it's his personal credit card.
TJ wrote: The bailout is just about the worst idea ever. There really is no way to permanently fix a system that is based on a crappy foundation without fixing the foundation. If we keep the Federal Reserve as it currently stands this problem will just recur again and again. Where we are now is clearly not where the founding fathers wanted us to go.
You're absolutely right there. How about we regulate those bastards like we did after the Great Depression. Wait a min...isn't there a certain party that has espoused the great benefits of letting rich people do whatever they want. Let's call it deregulation. What party was that?
Uh oh. Just went out to find some more charts and articles for MGAMGB and torpedoed myself.
Article stating Clinton and House Republicans working together to deregulate banks.
D@MN YOU TEFLON BILL!
Goes to show...you can't trust anybody inside of 395 aka The Beltway.
Bush still sucks. 
TJ wrote: Is there anyone out there who didn't vote for Ron Paul in their primary who now wishes they did?
This reminds me of a Cher song:
"If I could turn back time!"
I think that Ron Paul, aka Dr. No, would be the best medicine we could take.
TJ wrote: Does anyone out there have a congressman or senator that actually responds to emails or letters?
None of mine have responded...yet. 
I don't think Bush is evil or intelligent. He is a puppet. Richard Bruce Cheney is the devil behind it all.
While a signifigant improvement will prove a challenge for whomever becomes the next "President", we have seen that it is not impossible to make a signifigant decline in the average American citizens' life in just 8 years. Just like MGAMGB's sig suggests, few rights preserved. No offense intended.
Xceler8x wrote:TJ wrote: Call it a surplus if you want, but when the national debt got bigger in my book that's not much of a surplus. Besides to even call it a surplus they took the money from social security didn't they?Check the charts again. The guys with an R beside their name exploded the national debt much more than Clinton. Get used to it. Clinton did a better job than any Republican after Reagan at national fiscal policy by reducing our debt. Then Bush comes along and spend our money like it's his personal credit card.
Not disagreeing that Reagan, Bush 1, and Bush 2 have done the most damage to our national security by running up huge debts. Of course each of them only gets to sign a bill once the 435 member house and the 100 member senate pass it and send it to him, so they are not the only ones to blame. Just because I do not like Clinton doesn't mean I like Bush.
MGAMGB wrote: Let me check...yup, you missed my point. If you'll check my original post the key words are "finger pointers". I think the trendy hipster would say "smug much?"
Dude, don't make me take off my Buddy Holly glasses, get in my Prius, and come over there and emo you to death.
MGAMGB wrote: Many people don't like the bailout, especially taxpayers. Whining has gotten us where exactly? If you view politics and more so vote, by party alone, then do everyone a favor and move to Canada. Both Rs and Ds got us where we are today, that's why I'm an Independent. I vote for the guy least likely to screw things up and least likely to take my money.
I agree with you here. It's taken a team of jackholes to get us where we are. Voting for the right guy for the job may help us get out one day. Again, I reiterate, Congress and the Senate are just as much a party to this as Bush.
So far as a jump in taxes...we've been spending like we'll never have the check come for decades. Short of more efficiency in gov't we need more income to pay that bill. It sucks but the dollar is weak and we can't shore it up by borrowing, or giving away, more money. Finding efficiency in gov't is like finding a virgin at the local college. You can do it but who wants to? The task is so arduous that the returns may not be worth the effort.
Hence my point about paying down national debt. We're as dependant, if not more so, on borrowing foreign cash than foreign oil.
Then what riles me are the guys who still can't admit that the direction this country has gone in the last 8 yrs is wrong. We are not socialists. We value freedom for all people, esp citizen's. We don't kidnap people from foreign countries. We don't torture people. We also don't imprison someone without due process. We pay our bills. We live within our means. Compassion is an action not just some buzzword to be used for a campaign slogan. Our actions in the last 8 years betray those ideals.
TJ wrote: Call it a surplus if you want, but when the national debt got bigger in my book that's not much of a surplus. Besides to even call it a surplus they took the money from social security didn't they?
Check the charts again. The guys with an R beside their name exploded the national debt much more than Clinton. Get used to it. Clinton did a better job than any Republican after Reagan at national fiscal policy by reducing our debt. Then Bush comes along and spend our money like it's his personal credit card.
Not disagreeing that Reagan, Bush 1, and Bush 2 have done the most damage to our national security by running up huge debts. Of course each of them only gets to sign a bill once the 435 member house and the 100 member senate pass it and send it to him, so they are not the only ones to blame. Just because I do not like Clinton doesn't mean I like Bush.
The R's have held a majority in the Senate and Congress from 1994 - 2006. Clinton's "reign" (I figured you guys would like that term used here. 
) ended in 2001. Therefore you have 5 years, all of them under Bush, when Republicans had control of gov't. Congress, Senate, and the White house. Even now the houses of Senate and Congress only have a very small democratic majority. Not enough to override a presidential veto.
..and yet they're still not even whimpering when it would do us the most good. The FISA vote was complete crap. This Bailout is not even being talked about as to whether it's a good thing and should be done. The whole conversation is about how to get it done and who can do it first.
You're right TJ. We're taking it in both ends by two parties.
Also, my apologies. I thought my D buster's were R supporters and therefore Bush apologists/backers. My ASS-sumption was wrong. Thanks for setting me straight.
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