Today, New Deal Democrat wrote a diary containing the full text of the financial patriot act that is about to be rammed down our throats.
I very highly recommend this diary - and hope you rec New Deal's diary up.
Upon reading NDD's diary, I was inspired to write the following letter to both of my congresswomen (am from WA). Please feel free to use this letter yourself. You can easily email your congressional representatives here.
Dear Senator ____:
I am writing in very deep concern over the Wall Street Bailout Act, currently entitled as "LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL FOR TREASURY AUTHORITY TO PURCHASE MORTGAGE-RELATED ASSETS".
This is, to say the least, a deeply troubling bill. Specifically:
1. There is little to no oversight. Furthermore, section 8 ensures that any oversight is crippled from the start, as it states, and I quote from the text of the act: "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."
2. The floating amount controlled by the Secretary of the Treasury is $700B is effectively a blank check as there is no hard limit.
3. It appears that the power of the Secretary extends to no-bid contracts.
4. It provides no restoration of the provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act, modernized or otherwise, that were stripped away by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. It does absolutely nothing to change the fundamental problems that led us to this situation.
I strongly urge you to vote against this bill. I know that we need to prevent the complete disintegration of our economy, but this is not the solution. This is a blank check to the executive; it is the abdication of the financial powers granted to the legislative branch in Article 1, Section 8 of the constitution.
Sincerely,