The direction of the Bush Bailout - and most especially the insistence that it be passed without amendment - troubles me more by the day. There is first the question of the wisdom of the bailout itself, but I am willing to accept a general idea of it as the tourniquet to staunch the bleeding. But second is the way it is being handled - drawing yet more power into the Executive Branch. George Will has up a new column which succinctly summarizes the main problems with the current process.
Rep. Barney Frank, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, says: "No one in a democracy, unelected, should have $800 billion to spend as he sees fit. ... That's not the way to run a democracy." Frank is properly punctilious about a fundamental principle of American governance -- legislative control of public funds. But a fundamental principle of American political economy is that no elected person should exercise virtually unfettered discretion with such sums of taxpayers' money.Are we really ready to entrust this level of social control to the Bush administration and the Fed? I am not sure I'd trust this much unchecked power in the hands of my best friend or even my own mother. How much less an unelected bureaucrat?