I recently received the following email from Senator Schumer. The letter is reproduced here in its entirety, for your enjoyment. I have changed the addressee (that's me), as indicated by italics, to protect my anonymity, in case the democrat storm troopers want to come after me.
"Dear smarterthancongress:
Thank you for writing and sharing your thoughts about America’s financial crisis. I agree with you that giving the Secretary of the Treasury authority over a $700 billion dollar fund to stabilize the financial system, without any checks on his authority, or oversight of his actions, would have been a grave mistake. However, the severity of this economic crisis forced the Congress to act in order to save Main Street from further financial pain. If we had not acted when we did, small businesses trying to fill orders and meet payroll, students looking to pay for college, consumers looking to buy cars and so many others would have faced even greater economic hardships, which would have been disastrous for household wealth and jobs in our country. That is why I made the difficult decision to support the administration’s rescue plan after insisting on changes to the program to ensure that taxpayers will share in the rewards of recovery, that executives of these mismanaged financial institutions would not be enriched with taxpayer money, and that there would be effective oversight of the program. When the economy recovers, taxpayers should be able to recoup most, or all, of this money because the federal government will earn a return from any investments it makes in banks needing assistance. To hold the banks’ executives accountable, the bill requires that all companies that benefit from government assistance limit how much they pay their top employees and, in many cases, eliminate golden parachutes entirely. And to guarantee effective oversight of the rescue program, major oversight mechanisms were written into the legislation, including the creation of a new Inspector General and Congressional oversight panel. Finally, we forced the Administration to add protections for homeowners into the bill that address the eye of the financial storm – the foreclosure crisis. Of course, this is only one part of a comprehensive solution needed to get our economy back on the right track. Congress stands ready to deliver a broad-based economic stimulus package to invest in Main Street, create new high-paying jobs, and keep the engine of our economy going. Again, thank you for contacting me on this important issue. Please do not hesitate to contact me again if I can be of further assistance on this, or any other matter.
Sincerely,
Charles E. Schumer
United States Senator
Please do not respond to this email. To send another message please visit my website at http://schumer.senate.gov/SchumerWebsite/contact/webform.cfm . Thank you."
There is no need for me to nitpick this letter. You can do that yourself, since you are
smarter than congress. However, please notice that there is no (zero, zip, zilch, nada) acknowlegement of Congress's share of responsibility for the recession. You know what I mean:
democrat cronies like Frank Raines running Fannie and Freddie into the ground with the encouragement of Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank; democrat/environmentalist policies blocking American oil production; CAFE standards, etc. And Schumer is up to his neck in this, and shows not one scintilla of introspection, apology, or responsibility.
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4 comments:
Maybe he doesn't acknowledge Congress' role in this recession out of fairness to the Republicans, who controlled congress for all but two years this decade.
But when the Republicans controlled Congress, they spent my money like drunken democrats. And look who got the biggest campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie: Dodd, Frank, Obama. And trust me, Uncle Chuck has never done anything out of fairness to Republicans.
Fortunately campaign donations had nothing to do with the collapse. The collapse was caused by the commitment to deregulation of people like Bush, Cheney and McCain.
All you've proven is that the Republicans like to talk about spending less while not actually doing it. They just spend differently.
If that really is what's most important to you, then you need to admit to yourself that you're a libertarian.
Now, it's not going to be easy to deal with that realization. I completely agree that libertarians are annoying, but we can get through this. Maybe it's just a phase.
I do not defend republicans. The collapse occured because too many people had mortgages they could not afford (and the banks that lent them the money were enabled by Fannie and Freddie, and them Democrats that encouraged those 2 entities. So, Fannie, Freddie, Barney, Chris, Barack, Chuck and the rest were the enablers. No doubt, Republicans were involved also.). The trigger for the foreclosure crisis was the spike in gas and oil prices, and no one has claimed responsibility for that, but it sure would have helped if we had more control of the oil supply.
The underlying philosophical problem is that of trying to use Gov't to solve everybody's problem, i.e., lowering mortgage standards so that the poor and minorities can buy houses. Sounds noble, but it is a strategy that is doomed to fail. The new administration wants to spend another trillion or so to get us out of the recession. To quote Dylan, they will end up making it "a thousand times worse." Just like FDR did.
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