If Congress gives Paulson the bailout money the Bush Administration is trying to extort from the American people - the $700+bn - without punitive conditions attached to its use, we may as well just line up to claim our status as serfs and turn over our country to the overlords. Listen to (or read) what

Dean Baker
BAKER: Well, essentially, what the President has asked for is a $700 billion blank check. He wants Congress to hand over $700 billion to Henry Paulson to use to buy, you know, bad originally mortgage-backed securities. <...>

And let me just make one point that everyone should be very, very clear on. This was not an accident, in the sense that this is like a hurricane. This was a totally predictable event. So when President Bush or Henry Paulson say, you know, we have to come to the rescue, it is because of their incompetence, because people who understood the economy—and putting myself among those, but there are others—we were warning about this a long, long time ago. This was a totally predictable event that brought us here.

Robert Sheer,
ROBERT SCHEER: Yeah, well, the point is, when Bush and McCain and Paulson, who was head of Goldman Sachs before he was head of the Treasury, say they don’t know how this happened, they designed this system. We had a regulatory regime in place ever since the Great Depression to prevent this kind of meltdown...<...>
And then, in 2000, hours before the Christmas break, Gramm introduced
legislation. I’m holding it in my hand. This smoking gun is available on the internet; you can read it. <...>

JUAN GONZALEZ: Bob Scheer, the issue also of this rush to pass this legislation—I’m reminded somewhat of the PATRIOT Act after 9/11: an immense tragedy occurs, and immediately they try to rush through legislation without many of the members of Congress even having a handle as to what it really contains.

ROBERT SCHEER: Oh, it’s absolutely outrageous, and we can’t let them get away with it. I mean, consider that Paulson was the head of Goldman Sachs, OK? He knew about credit swaps. He knew about hybrid instruments. He knew all of this stuff. And now he’s the guy that says Congress has to give him a blank check, it has to be a pure bill? Nonsense!
This is our money. <...>
... but, I mean, the idea that they didn’t know what was going on,well, this is a Ponzi scheme of their creation, and they thought they would bail before it hit the fan. That’s what they thought. They’d be gone, and someone else would be blamed. They’d have their golden parachutes. I don’t know why we’re not considering criminal charges against these people. They have done more to hurt this nation than bin Laden could ever dream of.

and Bernie Sanders
AMY GOODMAN: And the climate in your House and the Senate right now, Senator Sanders? What do you think is going to happen? You have this enormous rush.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: <...>I have not been, to tell you the truth, overly happy by some of the responses that I’m hearing. <...>

So I think the Democrats have got to stand very tall on—I think on everything that I have told you about, who should pay out—pay for this bailout. I think you’re going to have overwhelming support from the American people. The American people understand that, under Bush, they have been ripped off. Their standard of living is declining, while the people of top have made out like bandits. And now is the time to say, “Sorry, we’re not going to pick up—we’re not going to pick up the damage done by these folks.”

AMY GOODMAN: <...>How is this political?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, there’s going to be—believe me, they’re going to be spinning every other minute. Right now, as you know, John McCain, who is, as I hope all listeners know, is very close to Phil Gramm, and one can argue that Phil Gramm was the leading exponent—he was the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, the leading exponent of deregulation. He is the guy who got the so-called Enron loophole through. He is the guy who certainly led the effort for deregulation in financial services. He was McCain’s key economic adviser, and there was some talk that he’d be Secretary of the Treasury under a McCain administration. Now—of course, that was yesterday. And now we find McCain, the great trust-buster, the great fighter for regulation, the guy who’s going to take on Wall Street.
And that’s what Karl Rove and the Republicans do very well. They assume that the American people don’t remember yesterday, and you just start off, you know, with today. I hope that the Democrats do a good job in exposing that. I think Obama is getting that word out.

I think the message for this campaign is that we have had eight years of right-wing extremist ideology. We have given incredible tax breaks to the very wealthiest people who don’t need it. We have worked aggressively, and Bush and McCain are working on it today, for unfettered free trade, which has meant the loss of millions of good paying jobs. We have done an enormous amount of deregulation, so that you can end up in the situation we’re in today. And that’s obviously McCain’s philosophy. And if the American people understand that and they understand what a disaster Bush’s policies have been, it would seem to me that Obama should win with a very comfortable vote.

had to say.