Plight of the ignorant American public at the hands of an irresponsible government

After the "Emergency Economic Stabilization" act was passed today, someone that I consider to be fairly intelligent asked if it had been determined how much the plan would cost each taxpayer. I had heard earlier in the day that the "bailout" equated to something like $6000 per taxpayer. The math seems pretty close: $700 billion divided by about $136 million tax payers (although only about 100 million actually paid anything) comes to about $6K per filing adult. He then asked if I thought we'd have to pay it all in one year. I was dumbfounded. How many other people are thinking this way?

This law commits up to $700 billion to be used to purchase "troubled assets" and otherwise be spent as Secretary Paulson sees fit. Don't believe me?

“residential or commercial mortgages and any securities, obligations, or other instruments that are based on or related to such mortgages” determined by “the Secretary determines promotes financial market stability”

and

“any other financial instrument that the Secretary, after consultation with the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, determines the purchase of which is necessary to promote financial market stability, but only upon transmittal of such determination, in writing, to the appropriate committees of Congress.”

It's a commitment of funds. It's basically the same retarded logic that led consumers to take on mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and other debt they didn't have income to support.

The real fun comes later for Congress. Where will the money come from to pay for the purchases made by the new "Office of Financial Stability" (does that sound Orwellian to you?)

Get it? Spend the money then figure out how to pay for it.

But here's something nobody has mentioned. Contained in this Law is an increase of the public debt limit to $11,315,000,000,000 from about $10.6 trillion. WHOOPIE! MAMMA NEEDS A NEW PAIR OF SHOES!

There is some convoluted verbiage in the law that discusses charging premiums to institutions that participate in the plan to cover the requests for coverage. This is unrealistic if not down right stupid. If these companies had the funds to cover their debt they wouldn't need their troubled assets purchased.

So, to my dear friend, and I do love him, no, you will not have to send a check to Uncle Sam for $6,000 next year with "Emergency Economic Stabilization" written in the memo. BUT, make no mistake about it, your taxes will rise. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next year. But this law opened a big checkbook which will, without a doubt, be drawn upon. Having raised the ceiling for public debt Congress allowed this bubble to expand having doubled in size since 2000. This money will have to come from somewhere (foreign banks) and at some point we WILL have to repay it.