Citizen Tom

Congress and the president are at war over the housing bailout. 

House Republicans dragged the chamber to a standstill yesterday with procedural moves to protest Democrats’ attempt to ram through passage of foreclosure-crisis and war-funding bills, as President Bush threatened to veto both legislative packages and urged Congress to take up a compromise agenda.  (from here)

Nonetheless, Congress passed the bill, and Bush says he will veto it (see here).

With respect to the housing bailout, we should be asking two questions.

• Who is respecting the constitutional restraints on their powers?
• Who is on the side of the taxpayers? 

Remember that there are three groups that stand to gain or lose over this issue.

• The lenders
• The borrowers
• You and I, the taxpayers

Both the lenders and the borrowers want you and I to bail them out.  Our answer to that should be a flat NO!  Did we lend money to people we knew could not afford to pay it back?  Did we borrow money to buy a house we could not afford?  Then why are we being asked to bail these people out?  Consider where this nonsense is headed.

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, Missouri Republican, said the housing debate has turned into a “one-sided Democratic monologue” about how to reward real-estate speculators, bail out irresponsible lenders and force honest taxpayers to underwrite the reckless actions of others.

“The federal government is already the worst landlord in America, thanks to Democrats,” he said. “It’ll have a chance [now] to be the worst mortgage broker in America as well.” (from here)

Other Views

This story seems to be slipping off the Virginia blog radar.  Perhaps that is why Congress feels free to give away our money. 

Here are some older comments.

Virginia Virtucon Praises McCain (from here).

Raise Kaine reviews a cartoon (from here).

Bacon’s Rebellion praises a book (from here).