Here I am, a regular voter who's almost 50 but only once written a letter to any of my representatives. Today, I wrote one to both my Senators. They're both republicans but I can't stand the thought of a bailout under the terms Paulson put out so I wrote. Whether they listen I have no idea. Given the ratio of folks to their Senate representative I've always thought of the folks being represented like pebbles in a playground crunched underfoot. It's hard for me to imagine the letter I submitted (below the fold) has an impact.
I am writing you, my Senator, because the news over the weekend about the financial industry bailout proposal submitted by Treasury Secretary Paulson and President Bush concerns me greatly. First - it makes me angry to think that we taxpayers are to be used as a way for investment gamblers to get bailed out of their massively risky investment decisions. They made the decision to leverage and re-leverage mortgage vehicles and repackage them into investment vehicles which bore little resemblance to the underlying mortgages and which greatly magnified risk. They need to suffer the consequences of poor decisions just as we citizens have to suffer consequences for our poor decisions.
Second, I take great exception to the following clause added to the proposal, "Sec. 8. Review. 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." I strongly object to this clause because I have had enough of the Bush administration's attempts at expanding executive powers through clauses that specifically and explicitly attempt to limit the power of other Government Branches. Our government was built on the principle of separation of powers based on checks and balances and I find it abhorrent that President Bush and his administration continually tries to debase the founding principles of our government.
The combination of a huge $700 Billion bailout with no oversight lends itself to a massive fraudulent boondoggle that makes the Iraq-Haliburton missing & unaccounted for Billions of our tax dollars pale in comparison. This proposal can't be allowed to go forward without massive changes to add oversight and accountability.
You Senator Cornyn (Hutchison), as a seasoned and principled member of the Legislative Branch, should understand the separation principle and oppose any clause that limits your power to oversee activities of the Executive Branch. As as a representative of the party that once stood for fiscal conservatism, you should also object to another blind grab at our tax dollars that adds to the massive burden already heaped on my grandchild and her generation by Bush's and Congress's massive debt increase these last few years.
Thank you for representing me faithfully by opposing the Paulson bailout.