New record for irresponsibility
Posted on Friday, October 3, 2008
The actions by the U. S. House in even
temporarily rejecting the financial rescue package is the
single most irresponsible act I have witnessed in 45 years of observing Congress up close. Everyone had a part in this travesty, but Republicans must assume the lion’s share, two-thirds of them putting pure self-interest and ideology above the nation’s well being. Democratic leaders and a handful of their rank and file who joined in voting no aren’t far behind. Actually, the leadership on both sides of the aisle was pathetic.
Voter retaliation for these people should be swift and contempt lasting. Unfortunately that won’t be the case and many of them will be returned to Capitol Hill next month where a partisan, contentious atmosphere grows more poisonous and counterproductive with every two-year cycle. The reason, of course, is that many of their constituents had a role in the House’s foolish action, railing against Wall Street as though it was some alien entity that should be left to implode.
This shows a total lack of understanding that, as Pogo said, “the enemy is us.” Our pensions and 401 (k ) plans and our employers’ ability to pay us and indeed our very jobs, the credit we need for buying a car or a house, the security of our bank deposits and the value of our money are all tied in one way or another to the fortunes of Wall Street. Should those who make the nation’s financial decisions be overseen and regulated closely ? Certainly. Has that need been neglected ? Yes. But there was never any doubt the rescue plan would include those protections as well as a cap on executive pay of those who participate.
As the experts in the Treasury and Federal Reserve and banking system labor to unfreeze credit and get us back on a sound financial track, it is time to assess why this could happen. Did many of those lawmakers who voted against the “bail-out” —an unfortunate term for it—have a hand in getting us there ? You bet. Every time they loaded down an appropriations bill with money for personal projects or went over budget by billions of dollars or voted to increase entitlement benefits without paying for them they were helping cause the meltdown.
Republicans were supposed to be the party of fiscal restraint. Yet their spending was utterly unrestrained through the years they controlled the Congress. Coupled with President Bush’s refusal to veto anything, the result was a huge boost to fiscal insolvency.
Finally emerging from his “sound economy” delusion, Bush has discovered it may be too late. He has little influence on anything and can only hope that his name hasn’t become a synonym for incompetence as well as for a player with minor talent.
Unhappily, many who looked to the GOP for temperance have found a party more dedicated to cultural and moral considerations than tackling the complexities of a global economy. Statesmanship is an abandoned concept. One-issue lawmakers and the narrow special interests that control them wag the dog.
It often seems that in the House in particular votes are cast in accordance with whomever from back home the representative talked to last. No one has the courage to stand up against lobbies that tolerate no divergence from doctrine.
Well, to paraphrase the great humorist Will Rogers, “the best Congress money can buy” has proved also to be the least responsive of our institutions to the precepts of good government. We can only pray that the rescue plan as it is finally applied will help us stave off the kind of economic devastation we were subjected to from 1929-40. Those of us who were born in the Great Depression would hate to spend our last few years in a recurring nightmare of that experience, although that still is a possibility for some of us.
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