There's No Lipstick On The Senate Pigs

The three big pigs and their bailout bills. My version. We started with a three page bill from the administration's little pig, Treasury Secretary Paulson. It was made of straw. The big, bad wolf of a House huffed and puffed and blew it off.

Then they morphed into pigs themselves and build a bill of wood. The problem was they couldn't decide on what grade of wood; solid or full of knotty holes. So they huffed and they puffed and blamed each other and blew it off. Their bill had grown to 116 pages.

Now it's the Senate's turn. Being a wise, deliberative body, they noticed the pig shtick didn't work so they morphed into hogs and produced a bill of brick. 451 pages long!

Hub had the PDF waiting for me when I got home from errand running. Every lobbyist in the world that wanted to get something into a "must pass" bill got into this one.

Here is the said purpose of the bill:

The purposes of this Act are—
(1) to immediately provide authority and facili-
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ties that the Secretary of the Treasury can use to
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restore liquidity and stability to the financial system
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of the United States; and
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(2) to ensure that such authority and such fa-
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cilities are used in a manner that—
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(A) protects home values, college funds, re-
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tirement accounts, and life savings;
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(B) preserves homeownership and pro-
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motes jobs and economic growth;
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(C) maximizes overall returns to the tax-
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payers of the United States; and
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(D) provides public accountability for the
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exercise of such authority.

Here are some of the provisions:

Subtitle A—Renewable Energy Incentives

Subtitle B—Carbon Mitigation and Coal Provisions

TITLE II—TRANSPORTATION AND DOMESTIC FUEL SECURITY
PROVISIONS

TITLE III—ENERGY CONSERVATION AND EFFICIENCY
...and on and on. I don't like to cut and paste but did so to give you an idea of where this is going.

I'm sorry but this bill should not be passed nor should the President sign if it is. Here we are agonizing over the result of what we've been told is greed from the home buyer on up to our largest financial institutions. It has and will have an effect on our lives for a long time to come. The purpose is to borrow from the taxpayer to re-establish liquidity within our financial institutions; not to fund every pet project under the sun!

Now is the opportunity for both candidates to shine. I'd like to hear them defend or discredit, provision by provision, every provision in this bill that has nothing to do with the bailout. Yes. It would take hours. It would also mean they would have to actually read it. That would be novel.

Gentlemen?