What are three things guaranteed to happen in any Federal government program? Waste, lack of accountability, and did I mention waste?
One of the reasons I strongly opposed the TARP bailout program is because the general panic from the Secretary of the Treasury and Congressional Democrats reminded me of someone who sees a fire and goes running downhill at top speed toward it with a couple big buckets full of water. You know what’s going to happen when they get there. They’ll be lucky to get there with a cup full of water to throw on the fire because in their haste, they sloshed most of the water out of the bucket and onto the ground. Well, that’s exactly what’s been happening thus far with the billions of TARP bucks Congress gave to Secretary Paulson without a single serious condition for tracking the money.
There was a lot of panic and running around and precious little clear-eyed and sober appraisals of the conditions and what the best ways to mitigate the worst effects might look like. We were told that unless we taxpayers immediately ponied up billions and billions of dollers, our economy would collapse. Well, it didn’t that weekend, nor the next, nor the one after that. Even as Congress filled Paulson’s buckets full of water and sent him screaming down the hill, spashing all the way, nothing critical imploded. It’s enough to make me wonder whether there really was a serious crisis at all.
After all, if there’s a crisis, surely the banks and our elected officials would be acting like there was one, wouldn’t they?
Tags: Big Government, Democrats, Government Bailouts, Hank Paulson
