Congress gave Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson $700 billion -- more than the United States has spent on the war in Iraq to date -- to address the crisis in our economy. Then they gave him the unilateral power to decide how that huge amount of money should be spent. Now he is seriously considering spending our money to shore up credit card companies. And, because Congress gave him unilateral power, Americans have to watch this bait and switch and can't do a darn thing about it?
Wake me up from this nightmare.
Wake me up to a world in which U.S. taxpayer dollars (or, more accurately, billions of dollars borrowed from the Chinese) are spent to shore up some industry -- any industry -- that will help create wealth.
Not debt, wealth. Actual dollars. Cash. Wealth made by Americans that will stay in America so that we can rebuild our country.
Since Paulson has scrapped the original bailout plan, the Democrats have taken the opportunity to propose that the money be used to aid the auto industry. Now, I'm not so sure that industry deserves to be rewarded for its decisions. They've spent the last several years making and defending gas guzzlers, while foreign car companies were building cars that run more efficiently and rely less on rapidly dwindling fossil fuels.
But at least the auto industry employs Americans -- by some estimates, up to 13 million Americans. It's a wealth-generator, not a debt-generator. Whatever the industry that is the beneficiary of the bailout, it should be one that contributes to the material wealth of the American economy, not one that manufactures debt.
Instead, credit card companies will walk away with millions, if not billions, of U.S. taxpayer money. And that scares me. Because when I listen to the pulse of our economy, I hear a giant sucking sound: the sound of American dollars maintaining the credit card industry.
You know, the same industry that gouges small businesses; that charges interest rates that were labeled "usury" in Old Testament times; and that is part of the banking industry, which only employs a total of 1.6 million Americans (and that's in all sectors of the banking industry, not just the credit services sector). It's unclear to me why the tax dollars we invest in bailing America out of this crisis should go to the credit card industry.
I hope I'll wake up in the next week to learn that America's representatives in Congress have prevailed on Paulson to reverse course. Unfortunately, since they already sold him the farm, I doubt they will be able to prevent his decision. I just wish we'd had more say in the process, and I just wish that I could see a path to a stable, prosperous American economy again. That would be a dream from which I'd happily awake.
Moira Smith is an Anchorage attorney. She is a former credit card customer and a current owner of an American car.
By MOIRA SMITH