Mortgage Grapevine

Political: Actual letter I got from my Congressman (I hope his feelings spread!)

Here is an email that I just received from my Congressman:

The Commonsense Approach Normally, you and I receive our daily dose of bad news by turning on our television, plugging in an internet connection, or walking to the end of our driveways to pick up a newspaper. However, these times are different. Today it is delivered by a best friend who has lost his job and can’t sleep at night because he fears he will lose his home, or by one of our children graduating from college and quickly discovering there is no job market, or by someone with whom we work or attend church who has received the life transforming news of a major illness.

Last week, I received the news from my nephew that he had just watched his house burn to the ground. When I arrived, I looked into the eyes of a man who worked multiple jobs to keep his family going, and I watched as his children sifted through ashes to find the charred remains of memories they can never replace. No words were needed; it was a picture I will never forget. I stared in the face of a family I love, who was experiencing the realization that they had lost in a matter of moments every material item they had worked for, received as a gift, or built for over a lifetime.

Across America today there are families just like this who worry when the quietness overtakes them that this economic crisis burning across the globe could overwhelm them with a similar fate. Individuals expecting to retire see those hopes dashed in a moment. People working multiple jobs to keep their families afloat lose their jobs in an instant. Young people with their entire lives before them recognize that their hopes and dreams may be lost because they either cannot afford to attend college or cannot find a job once they graduate.

That is why we need a bold plan of action, perhaps initially led by government, but not totally dependent upon it. It has to be innovative, but most of all it has to be an effective solution – not just effective rhetoric. In this effort, Americans have been far ahead of their politicians. They realize that a bold plan is not measured by its costs, but rather by the strength and wisdom of its ideas. They also know it is not measured by what the editorial writers or TV pundits say. And they know it is not measured by its complexity. Instead it is measured by a single criterion – does it work?

In order to work, it must have accountability and transparency, and it must pass the simple commonsense test.

The simple questions we can all ask are these:

1. Have you received your check from any of the bailouts yet? I can assure you many of the CEOs on Wall Street have.

2. Are you able to borrow more easily today than you were six months ago before all of these bailouts began?

3. Are you less worried about your future now than you were before the bailouts began?

4. If the government asked you if you would feel better about your economic situation by keeping $6700 for your family, or sending it to the government and asking them to spend it however they would like, which one would make you feel better?

I am one of only 16 out of 435 Members of the House of Representatives who has voted against every single bailout and stimulus package in the last two years. I did so because the packages lacked those critical principles of accountability, transparency, and effectiveness. Unfortunately, even many of the original proponents of the programs admit that they have not worked and that they will not work. However, it is our grandchildren who will be paying for many of them, years after we are gone.

Commonsense tells us that if we are trapped in the woods with a wild animal attacking us and we have only one gun and five bullets, we have to act fast, but effectively. How foolish we would be to fire all five bullets in the air without aim, in our haste to act suddenly. We would soon be out of ammunition. Instead, we would carefully target our shots because we may not get a second chance.

These bailout programs have been more like randomly shooting in the air than a targeted attack.

This week we voted on the biggest stimulus package yet. It is the most expensive single piece of legislation Congress has considered, and the total cost of this one piece of legislation is almost as much as the annual discretionary budget for the entire federal government in 2007. I voted against the $819 billion stimulus package because it, like all of the others, failed to meet those three principles of accountability, transparency, and effectiveness. Here are some things you should know about the stimulus bill that came before Congress this week that your children and grandchildren will be paying for.

● It spends an average of $222,972 for every job it creates, with the average salary for those jobs in Virginia being just over $35,000.

● The legislation contained 152 separate spending lines. Only 34 of those spending lines went directly towards saving jobs for Americans, like highway construction projects. 117 had no job saving estimate associated with them at all, like $1 billion for the 2010 census or $800 million in funding for Amtrak.

● To impact our current recession, any spending must happen fast. However, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said only $26 billion of the spending approved in the package is capable of being spent in fiscal year 2009, hardly providing the amount economists say is necessary to have a meaningful impact on our economy.

● The total cost of this package per family in Virginia’s Fourth District is nearly $6,700.

I will continue to work for the opportunity to develop a bipartisan solution for the families we all love, but this is not the time to shoot aimlessly in the air and hope we hit our target. America is too great for that – our destiny too important. We must succeed, for the price of our failure is far too great.

Randy Forbes
Virginia






by Mortgage Crab February 2, 2009 3:55 PM

.....


so Randy thinks we need to do what?

I don't agree with the current strategy. I personally don't think is the governments place to meddle in the economic affairs of a "free market", but what do i know?
by Donktard Borker February 2, 2009 4:08 PM

Randy is not one of those that believes all things are solved by government. He is opposed to all things that grow its size. Here his timid support is aimed solely at a limited, highly targeted action with transparency, and accountability. Otherwise he is opposed. I, for one, am for utter failure. To place this burden on not only my shoulders but those of my kids and grand kids is not on amoral (TJefferson) but unconscionable. The time is quickly drawing near where the silent majority is waking up. We are a distracted lot, but get us focused and things will change.

(I found my feathers.....Just where did I put that roofing tar again?)
by Mortgage Crab February 2, 2009 4:46 PM

Typical Republican rubbish. Just go with the Limbaugh directive.
Idiots got us into this mess, now refuse to take any blame, but quick to protect us from the Democrat sponsored attempts to save America.
And you crab, are an insult to arachnids everywhere for using your six legs to dance the Limbaugh Mambo.

by festerbestertester February 2, 2009 4:58 PM

"It spends an average of $222,972 for every job it creates"

Yeah...you really ought to fire this moron...what state do you live in...?
I enjoy sending letters to ignorant legislators...
by anchochilly February 2, 2009 5:12 PM

Crab, I want to thank you for sharing this. I do not care if you are Republican or Democrat. The solution needs to be worked out as one.
by Tripletdad February 2, 2009 5:13 PM

There you have it, festers amazing insight to a very complicated issue.

Of course, the answer is more "shotgun" spending because Bush and the Republicans did it first.


by NG February 2, 2009 5:16 PM

we need 419 more just like him
by kathy88 February 2, 2009 5:19 PM

And, Kathy, we need them to go to a dance club together and learn to dance something other than the Limbaugh Mambo.
by festerbestertester February 2, 2009 5:26 PM

FYI:

Crabs are not arachnids. They are Crustacea, the only common link is they are both classified and Arthropods.

Love, Peace, and Chicken Grease!
by Mortgage Crab February 2, 2009 5:40 PM

Oh this is Nancy Pelosi's bail-out. Rude dudes on this post. Can you learn to be polite or are you just naturally inarticulate?
by boundlessloans February 2, 2009 6:26 PM

As long as the party bashing and blame game continue WE WILL ALL continue to get the shaft. Both parties are to blame then and now.
by kathy88 February 2, 2009 10:36 PM

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