For $250 billion, taxpayers deserve shares

IF anyone in Washington wants to know why this is the most hated Congress ever, and why President Bush is less popular than Richard Nixon, the $700 billion bailout provides an excellent example.

For nearly two years, this Democratic-controlled Congress has done nothing but waste time. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's promise to drain the swamp turned out to be all wet.

Remember Republican Congressman Mark Foley, who tried to hit on a page? That scandal was the straw that broke the electorate's back and ushered in a Democratic Congress.

This week, ABC News reported that Democratic Congressman Tim Mahoney, the fellow who succeeded him, had an affair while he was campaigning for the job. ABC News reported that he paid the woman $121,000 in hush money.

What is in the water in the 16th congressional district in Florida? Viagra?

Now then, the Democratic plan was to run out the clock, get a Democratic president, and party like it's 1979.

Meanwhile, two years are lost. While Congress voted repeatedly on de-funding the war in Iraq and held hearings on why oil companies are making money, this financial mess grew.

Washington slapped together a plan to spend $700 billion that no one has to bail out a financial industry that gave mortgages to people with no incomes, no jobs and no assets. I am told they go by the acronym ninjas.

Washington probably needed to do this. I don't know that for sure. This became the law of the land without any public discussion, any committee hearings, and certainly any input from anyone outside of the White House and Congress.

And shades of 2002, when President Bush said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and senator after senator took the floor to tell voters - a month before an election - that there were more WMDs than Bush said.

Everyone knew this, because everyone said Iraq had WMDs.

Now six years later, Bush says we need to act now. Don't delay. If we take the time to discuss this rationally, it will be too late.

And senator after senator is saying it is worse than Bush let on. Everyone knows this because everyone is saying this.

Ditto global warming.

Everyone says we need to regulate the banks. But I thought we already regulated the banks.

What happened to those regulations? If the old regulations didn't work, what's to say any new regulations will?

Taxpayers are on the hook. The government wants equity (shares) of the banks for the $250 billion they will get from the bailout.

Fine. That works out to nearly $2,000 per taxpayer.

But instead of letting the government hold the shares, let's give each taxpayer $2,000 worth of stock in the banks that we are bailing out.

The government is terrible at handling its money. Taxpayers do better.

The government's debt is so high that it had to add a digit to the clock that keeps track of the growth in the national debt.

I am not like my government. I have a net worth in the positive numbers.

Most people do.

My 401(k) may be tanking, but who cares?

It has tanked before. It will tank again.

I have no problem with that. Twenty percent drops in the Dow Jones Industrial Average are called corrections.

They happen.

Halley's Comet is more rare. And a Chicago baseball team winning the World Series is more rare than the comet.

But everything travels in a cycle. Eventually a Chicago team wins, as the White Sox did in 2004.

Stocks will go up again.

Up or down, by the time I retire, I will have more money in my 401(k) than I put in, and if I am lucky, Congress will give me a senior citizen's discount on my taxes when I withdraw the money.

Most taxpayers are, like me, far from being millionaires. But we are sensible people. We may elect fools, but that doesn't mean we are fools.

I'll take $2,000 worth of stock in whatever banks I'm bailing out.

And I will read my proxy statements. And I will do my darnedest to make sure that the bank loans no money to any ninjas.

Taxpayers cannot screw things up any worse than the president, the Congress and the bureaucracy have done.

http://www.dailymail.com/Opinion/DonSurber/200810160191