Dear Congressman Wamp,
Several days ago I was pleased to see that you took a strong stand against the bailout bill. You stated that “We simply cannot borrow our way out of debt, spend our way into prosperity or explain this bailout as anything short of an unacceptable intervention of the federal government into our private sector.”
Nothing about the revised bill that is now on that table changes any of that.
No amount of accountability will justify this sort of government intrusion into the private sector. No amount of accountability can justify an action like this, which attempts to subvert the natural process of the market by which businesses that make poor decisions reap the consequences for their actions.
There is no way around the fact that bailing out the institutions that got themselves into this mess sends a clear message to the financial sector that lending recklessly isn’t a big deal.
There is no way around the fact that institutions that did business in a responsible manner and lost business to the very institutions that are now in trouble will be penalized for their wise business practices.
Our government has been bailing out banks that loaned money recklessly since the aftermath of the War of 1812. Is it any surprise that the financial sector gets themselves into this mess again and again, when the government has shown a willingness to come to the rescue when the financial house of cards they have constructed collapses?
I am reminded of one of my mother’s cousins, who as an adult, spent most of his waking hours in a drunken stupor. He rarely tried to find a job, and when he did so, he naturally didn’t remain employed for very long. Yet time and again, when he needed money, or was in jail for some reason, his mother bailed him out.
In the end, Paul died in his singlewide trailer after he passed out on his bed and dropped his cigarette onto the mattress, and the building filled with smoke. Prior to his death, he had lost his driver’s license due to driving drunk, and his car had been repossessed.
Bailing out Paul didn’t help him in any way, shape or form. A wiser course of action would have been to let him experience the consequences of his actions.
Bailing out these failing financial institutions will not help either. Doing so will continue to send the same wrong message to them that we’ve sent for nearly 200 years: “Don’t worry, we won’t let you fail!”
It’s time to put a stop to this nonsense. I urge you to reconsider your support for the revised bailout bill, to vote against it, and publicly take the same sort of strong stand you took against the original.
Regards,
Jeremy Clifton
Chattanooga, TN



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