Taxpayers will be protected in bailout

As events on Wall Street continue to unfold, the House of Representatives is conducting investigations and finalizing legislative solutions that attempt to keep the Bush administration’s mess on Wall Street from crippling what’s left of America’s economy. I and my colleagues — including many Republican, s — are deeply upset at the administration’s handling of this crisis, but we also understand that inaction could mean no more loans for cars, homes, and businesses in our communities-which would plunge this country into an economic depression.

That said, Democrats and Republicans alike have rejected the Bush administration’s proposal to hand over a $700 billion blank check to Wall Street. Anything we pass will demand protections for American taxpayers that include extensive, independent oversight of the Treasury Secretary’s rescue package, guaranteed protections for ordinary homeowners, prohibitions on excessive compensation packages for the executives of financial firms, and provisions that give taxpayers an opportunity to recoup the money we spend on a recovery package.

The Bush administration, not surprisingly, has said that now is not the time to assign blame. But as Congress goes about cleaning up this mess, I believe it is appropriate and indeed necessary to look at how America was led into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. What has become clear is that years of willful ignorance and blind faith in Wall Street titans, overly-cozy relationships between regulators and CEOs, and aversion to reasonable government oversight have allowed Wall Street investment firms to make massive profits using money obtained through under-regulated financial maneuvers.

Having responsible rules in place does not constrain business in a free market, it enhances it. Rules and laws allow participants to make profits while preventing Ponzi schemes that punish all Americans when the house of cards collapses.

Conservative deregulation agenda

Yet the Bush administration’s hands-off approach represents the definitive culmination of a conservative deregulation agenda 20 years in the making. Indeed, Republican presidential nominee John McCain, in what has to be the most ill-timed statement in political history, wrote in the current issue of a Washington trade magazine that, “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.” Whoops.

Greed, ill-gotten profits at the expense of average homeowners, unregulated financial instruments, a shadow banking system — in the Republican-run financial system these aren’t failures, they’re features. Meanwhile, the Bush administration, which gave Congress just one week to approve a $700 billion banker bailout proposal, continues to fight Democratic efforts to boost education spending, provide middle class tax cuts, and expand children’s health care.

The corporate lobbyists who have their hands out and their allies in Congress should be more willing to work with those of us who’d rather spend taxpayers’ money on improving the lives of ordinary Americans instead of bailing out bankers. If that is the case, I look forward to working with my Republican friends in Congress on passing a Democratic proposal that seeks broader economic relief. This stimulus plan will create jobs through investment in our nation’s infrastructure, extend unemployment benefits for the growing number of Americans looking for work and providing more foreclosure assistance to families in danger of losing their homes.

The past eight years of Bush leadership has led us to where we are now, a country in financial crisis, a war seemingly without end, a surplus turned into deficit and a decline in the housing markets that puts our citizen’s futures at risk. American taxpayers deserve better from their government. Democrats in Congress are committed to fixing the years of deregulation policies that contributed to the mismanagement of the financial system, and we will ensure that this misfortune is not repeated in the years to come. We will protect American taxpayers first, Wall Street second.

X Ryan is the Democratic congressman from the 17th District.