About twenty years ago, I felt inspired by the election of a fired communist leader to the Moscow City Council over the objections over the Communist Party and USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev. So I wrote a satirical column about this new councilman defeating Gorbachev to become the leader of the Soviet Union. The new councilman's name was Boris Yeltsin, and I deeply regretted my not publishing my satire when Yeltsin was elected head of Russia and then got rid of Gorachev by leading a successful effort to disband the Soviet Union.
A few years ago, with the benefit of the Internet, my colleague Daylin Leach wrote a satirical column about a fictional legislator named Daylin Leach who introduced a bill calling for pilot program bailing out certain people with credit card debts. I have been unable to find it at leachvent.com, where I originally saw it, so I recite its details from memory. It was good enough to memorize, at least in its broad outlines.
There were three criteria for inclusion in this pilot program: first, one had to be born on the day that Daylin Leach was born. Second, one had to live in the same general area where Daylin Leach lived. Third, one had to have a name that rhymed with "Maylin."
A fictional old legislator (who sounds suspiciously like the great populist Bud George of Clearfield County) grabbed the fictional Leach by the throat when he heard the details of the fictional Leach's fictional bail-out plan.
"This is nothing more than a plan to pay off your debts with our money," the fictional old legislator said.
The fictional Leach waxes full of indignation when he hears this charge. "That is lie," he says. "ANYONE who meets the criteria of this pilot program gets the full benefit of it."
I eagerly await being informed of the details of this real life bailout, and hearing of the reaction of those with much, much more expertise than I have on the issues it raises.
I remain rather suspicious of it. Whatever it's details, it is clearly crafted to benefit a small group of businesses who are "too big to fail" because their failure would have grave national consequences. There is a case for any expenditure of money, but companies that paid executives millions of dollars a year in salaries, while laying off middle class employees to save money, rank low on my bailout prioiority list.
For instance, if Moe's Delicatessen, a local eatery on Frankford Avenue near my district which has gained a dollop of fame for being the first employer of former House Speaker John Perzel, got in over its head in debt speculating over lox, sliced roast beef, and corn beef futures, it would likely not be able to get any of the $700 billion.
The government would say to it, with all the majesty that the fictional Leach was able to summon," ANYONE who meets the criteria of this program gets the full benefit of it. You just don't meet the criteria."
My gut feeling is that it's too much money, spent on too few people, with benefits that too theoretical, for purposes that are too unclear. While it's tough for any member of Congress to vote against it, my guess that those who vote for it will be hearing about it in their next campaigns and long afterwards.
Many of their obituaries will include eulogies like this,"Rep. Jones was a great Congressman," his longtime chief of staff said yesterday. "He sincerely believed that voting for the bailout was the right thing to do. He was really stunned when his unqualified opponent, who had been defeated for the Vice-Presidency of the local PTA just five years earlier, defeated him on that issue. No matter how much money he made as a lobbyist in subsequent years, he regularly talked about how deeply he missed serving in Congress."
I believe governments at all level should spend public money for public purposes. I, and I suspect, many millions of other voters, am going to have to be convinced that the public purposes to be served here are so substantial as to be worth roughly one half of a year's total of federal expenditures at a time when the federal debt is rapidly approaching ten trillion dollars already.