I’d like to thank my Congressman, Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Stafford, for having enough good sense and common decency to vote "no" on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. I urge him and all others in the House of Representatives to please continue to exercise aforesaid virtues when the Senate version comes your way.
I’m only 21, so I always wonder whether things are really as bad as they seem, or I just lack perspective, but $850 billion?
I actually said the words "Thank God for House Republicans" yesterday. I oppose this bill because it makes no sense. They added riders in the Senate including, among other things, a tax break for the makers of children’s wooden arrows. If they’re giving out tax breaks -and they shouldn’t – why not some for homeowners?
The issue for me is not that this bill is taking money from the taxpayer, because the problem is that the money isn’t coming from taxpayers. The government is going to imagine $850 billion into existence and put it on the national Visa card because no one in Congress has the moxie to say, "Look, our government is going bankrupt. We cannot afford to cut taxes. We need to raise taxes and cut back on a lot of stuff."
The concern doesn’t seem to be for the future of the country. The only concern is stuffing our faces full of delicious debt. Who cares if we’ll be using tax money for 50 years to pay the national debt?
I’ll tell you what, if the House of Representatives passes this bill, we will definitely need universal health care because they’re going to give everyone a nice, juicy ulcer.
In conclusion, here’s what you can do with that money: build several very large prisons staffed by people who’ve lost their homes, and fill them with the executives from Wall Street. How’s that for job creation? We’d probably have $848 billion dollars left over to spend helping out taxpayers directly.
It is not true that any bill in this circumstance is better than none at all. None at all is much better than the wrong one. We are trying to plug up the hole in the Titanic with chewing gum when we need to start organizing the lifeboats. If we don’t, we’re all going be living on an iceberg.
Toombs, a philosophy and communication junior, can be reached via [email protected]
