The Senate will take up the Financial Bailout Bill sometime tomorrow evening.
The bill is better … there’s a couple of things thrown in that could help but it is STILL a long way off because the centerpiece of the bill is STILL a $700 billion dollar giveaway to Wall Street.
Let’s put that number in perspective … $700 billion …
- Since the beginning of the Iraq war … we’ve spent around $600 billion on it.
- With $700 billion dollars … you could give $2,293 dollars to every man, woman, and child in the United States of America.
- You can operate the entire U.S. Military for almost a year and a half for $700 billion dollars. This would include fighting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan … as well as counter-terrorist actions around the world. It includes recruiting, uniforming, training, feeding, and deploying all Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines. It includes the procurement of new weapons systems … it includes EVERYTHING associated with the operating and maintaining our military for a year and a half.
- The Marshall Plan … which rebuilt virtually all of Europe after WWII cost $13 billion. In today’s dollars … that’s about $100 billion.
- With $700 billion we could pay off EVERY mortgage in the United States worth less than $75,000.
What if the President announced that he was going to work with States to make major changes to the public school system in the United States … and was going to pump $700 billion dollars into the program? How much better do you think that would make our public school systems … even accounting for government incompetence in managing program initiatives of this size.
The 75-year Social Security Shortfall is $3.7 Trillion. If we invested $3.7 Trillion dollars today … we might be able to make projected Social Security payments 75 years from now. $700 billion isn’t enough … but DAMN … it would make a huge chunk of that!
Sometime this week … I have no doubt … we are going to see the Congress pass a bill to throw $700 billion dollars at Wall Street. They’re going to do it … because all but a few of them are too stupid to realize that we can relieve Wall Street much better by using other market based incentives like eliminating the Capital Gains Tax and vastly reducing our Corporate Income Taxes … which are some of the highest in the world.
Throwing money at this is NOT A GOOD IDEA.
The press, the President, the Congress … and many Wall Street leaders are screaming that WE HAVE to do something. They’re right .. but doing this is stupid. There are other ways that won’t bankrupt our children with high debt. Folks … this country WILL ENDURE hardship at some point in the future. It may be a Terrorist attack … it may be a nuclear attack on one of our cities. AT THAT TIME … WE WILL HAVE A NEED FOR $700 BILLION DOLLARS.
When your grand children are having their Social Security benefits CUT … or eliminated in the future – are you still going to be proud of the fact that we were “scared” of a little hardship and gave $700 billion to some Wall Street “Fat Cats” to prevent that hardship being visited upon us? And what “hardship” are we talking about here? Having to work a few more years before we retire? WTF people?? When did we STOP being Americans??
We will all look back on this … and realize that we spent it on incompetent Fat Cats on Wall Street. And we’ll recall it didn’t do a damn thing to relieve the crisis we have now.
Disgusting.
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