This Must Not Pass

Congress will be deciding, presumably this week, on a “rescue plan” for the economy as presented by the Bush Administration. As did the horrendous Military Commissions Act, this one contains a clause which renders every portion of the government outside of the Presidential Enclave irrelevant,

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Once again, the Bush Administration lays low until a crisis erupts that is so bad that it can go to Congress with a gun in one hand and a prewritten piece of legislation in the other, lay the legislation on the desk, and force Congress to sign the legislation at the point of the gun. Of course, with recent Congresses, the gun is hardly necessary; it needn’t be loaded and seldom has been.

Regardless of the rest of the content of the bill, with the above clause in it that bill must not pass. Our constitution is structured on a basis of checks and balances, and to give that raw unchecked and unreviewable power to one man goes against our constitution in the most fundamental way. That clause need not be replaced with any specifics of reviewability, those are spelled out in our constitution and are inherent in the offices themselves. That clause merely needs to be removed.

As to the rest of the bill, any action that is taken in haste as the result of panic is highly likely to result in more rather than less chaos, and that is particularly true of legislation. The Bush Administration played this specifically to create panic in Congress with its Thursday night meeting to spell out the shape of the coming apocalypse. No opposing viewpoints as to the degree or nature of the coming storm have been permitted, and once the Bush plan has been outlined no alternative plans have been considered or even suggested. Time does not permit consideration of alternatives, we must act now to prevent Armageddon.

Democrats are demanding that they get some input, and even McCain is chiming in with “reform” additions to the plan. There must be no parachute payments to executives of firms receiving help. We’re talking about the Jamestown flood, here, and they’re worried about where an eyedropper full of water goes. They want homeowners to get their mortgages refinanced, which is fine but has little to do with the meltdown of the economy.

No one seems to be questioning the basic validity of the plan itself, except for economic experts who are not in government. Those experts say that removing the bad debt will still leave the actual problem, which is the shortage of liquidity. But Congress prefers the advice of the person it is giving the money to, rather than the experts outside the con game who are saying not to do it.

Nobody is questioning the haste of this activity. Nobody is saying, “Let’s draw a breath and consider what is the best thing to do here.”

Certainly Section 8, the unaccountability clause quoted earlier, must be removed, but is this the only possible plan? Is it the best plan? Is it even a good plan?

There are more than a few voices answering “No” and “Oh, hell no” to those questions, and nobody seems to be listening to them. Just like nobody listened to another question six years ago, on a plan brought to us by this same administration.

“Is it really a good idea to invade Iraq?”