Sens. Specter, Collins and Snowe Will Sentence Us to $9.7-Trillion Hell

Thanks Senator's:

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.

The Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have lent or spent almost $3 trillion over the past two years and pledged to provide up to $5.7 trillion more if needed. The total already tapped has decreased about 1 percent since November, mostly because foreign central banks are using fewer dollars in currency-exchange agreements called swaps. The Senate is to vote early this week on a stimulus package totaling at least $780 billion that President Barack Obama says is needed to avert a deeper recession. That measure would need to be reconciled with an $819 billion plan the House approved last month.

Only the stimulus package to be approved this week, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program passed four months ago and $168 billion in tax cuts and rebates approved in 2008 have been voted on by lawmakers. The remaining $8 trillion in commitments are lending programs and guarantees, almost all under the authority of the Fed and the FDIC. The recipients’ names have not been disclosed.

“We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country,” Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said on the Senate floor Feb. 3. “Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose. How much from the FDIC? How much from TARP? When? Why?”

When Byron Dorgan is asking questions, you know it's not good for anyone.

Read that again, 90% of mortgages could be paid off using the money these elected officials have blown but then they couldn't grease palms for the next election now could they?

Talk about a stimulus; give people actual money with the intent on paying down their mortgages--the largest debt anyone has and the largest chunk of money paid out monthly. If the American public could cut their debt in half, the banks would start lending again, money would flow from more free spending and tax coffers would grow in no time. But that would require fiscal sanity and we are well past that point.

Go ahead senators, vote for this and enjoy the fleeting huzzahs from the Democrats. Just know you've sentenced the rest of the nation and our children's children to a life of paying for it all. Maybe Obama will invite you to the White House and pat you behind the ears.