America: Not Socialist Yet!
Much to my surprise and excitement, the United States Congress voted today to defeat the $700 billion bailout plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Just last night, I was trying to describe the scope of this proposal to my 10-year old, and this is the best I could come up with: put $1 million dollars on the table every second; you will reach $700 billion by Christmas 2009… not 2008, but 2009!
Why did the bill fail? I give the credit to the American system of representative democracy. It appears that Congress was overwhelmed by the number of their constituents that expressed negativity about the proposal. I can say that I called my Congressman off and on all morning and I got nothing but busy signals. The system worked! Our voices were heard, and I couldn’t be prouder to be an American!
I am not naive enough to believe that this won’t make the short term (next couple of years) very difficult, but, in the long run, this is the right thing. For our children, this is the right thing. For the fundamentals of our economy, this is the right thing. This is short term pain for long term gain.
Of course, the spin out of Washington and the in-the-tank mainstream media is that the Republicans promised the votes and couldn’t deliver them, and that makes them weak somehow. My Congressman is accountable not to the House leadership or even his party leadership, he is accountable to me and the rest of the voters in his district. This is the way its supposed to work. In reality, though, the Democrats had all the votes they needed without any Republicans, and they “failed to deliver” 95 of their own party’s votes! I am thrilled that my party voted in the majority against this plan, once again confirming that the GOP is the conservative party (something I had begun to wonder about!).
What’s next? The President, House, or somebody will undoubtedly come up with another, more tolerable plan, and, probably, some sort of compromise will be passed. But, in the end, the American people have had their say and re-affirmed my faith in our democracy!