It is never a good sign opening up an article entitled, Senate Sends Big Spending Bill to Bush with a picture of these goons attached. For those that cannot pick out their Congressmen in a line out, that is from left Ted Stevens, John Barrasso, Larry Craig, and Sheldon Whitehouse. What, was Mark Foley on the next elevator? And no, the bill had nothing to due with the much ballyhooed bailout package that has been talked about for the last week. Nope this is a separate bill that gives $25,000,000,000 of taxpayer money. Also included was a record setting 70,000,000,000 to the Pentagon while the Defense Department (um, isn’t the Pentagon defense?) got a six percent increase to 488,000,000,000. Gotta pay for those wars. And despite all the talk on earmarks on Friday, the bill also contained 2,322 pet projects costing taxpayers $4,900,000,000. The article also had this to say,“Democrats also wanted to avoid an election-year clash with Bush that would have played in his favor. They are willing to take their chances that Democrat Barrack Abeam will be elected president in November and permit increases for scores of programs squeezed by Bush each year.”
And yes I copied and pasted that, the typo isn’t mine.
But I want to go on the record that I am completely against the bailout plan for Wall Street. You know, the one that was quickly thrown together by George Bush (who has been sporting an “Is it January yet” face all week) and the Senate Democrats. You know when those two entities agree on anything it cannot end well on principal alone. It was interesting that when John McCain called out Barrack Abeam for being the most liberal person Obama shot back that he was just voting against Bush’s boneheaded ideas yet he was quick to get on board with Bush on the most important legislation of his tenure in the Senate.
To get off track for a second, what is with this “call me if you need me crap”? Say what you want about John McCain but at least he showed up to do his job that he was elected to do. The people of Illinois, Arizona and Delaware did not elect these guys to run for president. Why is Congress the only place in America where if you do not show up for work not only do you not get fired but you may get a promotion for skipping. Congressmen have successfully cut their work week down to three days while taking six week vacations after every four weeks of work.
If you are running for president and are still collecting $169,300 of our tax payer money per year, you better show up for work. Which of course none of them actually do. In my life time only Bob Dole had the common courtesy to actually resign from the Senate to run. Speaking of Senators McCain and Obama doing what they are paid to do, both in the past days said they had previously warned on the floor of Congress of the impending economic crisis. Well you are both legislator, if saw this coming why didn’t you write any legislation to stop this from happening instead of grandstanding in front of Congress. Well I guess we know why Obama wasn’t willing to write legislation to regulate Freddie, Fannie and AGI because he was number two in donation received from both. Then you have Chris Dodd number one and he is the Finance Committee Chair who just happens to be the lead Senate Democrat in trying to rush bailing out those that were so generous to him.
But back to this horrendously stupid bailout plan. Having Bush and the Dems actually agreeing as a sign of a horrible things to come, I am against it because it benefit two types of people: the greedy and the stupid. The greedy is obvious, these fat cats gambling with your savings in hopes to buy a third yacht. But one group of people you don’t hear about is the stupid because the Congress doesn’t want to put blame the people that will be voting in about a month.
To clarify the stupid, these are the people that kept on accumulating debt (college loans, mortgage, car payments, credit cards) but instead of paying those off debts you thought that buying an HDTV, sound system and a Playstation 3 would be a better investment than paying off stuff you already owe. And because you all just had to have a bigger house than you could I am stuck with a $24,000 bill which is how much each American will have to pay when you divie up the 700,000,000,000 bail out figure tossed around, even though I paid off my student loans ahead of time, on the path to doing the same for the mortgage I’m paying, pay off my credit card in their entirety all the while being what the government likes to label as poor.
Seriously people, it is not hard to create a budget. The next (or first) time you buy a house take you current income, subtract all you monthly debt you may have (loans, credit card minimums), factor in monthly expenses like grocery and if the number is bigger than the suggest monthly mortgage payment then go ahead and buy. If not, keep house hunting for something more in your price range, and if that number turns out to be less than zero, it may be time to cancel your Netflick subscription and get out of the red (I know someone whose phone number changes every other month because she cannot pay the bill yet has yet to cancel her Netflick, so I know very well just how stupid people are when they come to their finances).
Keeping a budget is simple third grade math people, it isn’t hard. Or maybe this is why a show called Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader is so popular. I do understand that some people were unable to keep up with their mortgages for various reasons and they do deserve help, but a majority of that 700,000,000,000 is just people who feel they should live in houses bigger than they can actually afford.
What is really scary is the people behind the bailout plan are keep on trying to sell their plan by saying that the American taxpayers can actually make money on all the bad mortgages over time. Are these people serious? This would be like losing your life savings at the blackjack table, having your parents bailing you out only to go to the roulette table and telling your parents they may get they money back with interest This bailout cannot happen and certainly cannot be handled by the likes of George Bush and Chris Dodd.
And just when you think it couldn’t get worse for Americans last week, on Thursday Fred Durst announce that he was getting Limp Bizkit back together. God help us all.
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