Keith Fitz-Gerald

No Paulson Plan, but it's Still $700 Billion to You and Me

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Did U.S. taxpayers dodge a bailout bullet?

Maybe not completely.

To be sure, under the $700 billion credit-crisis bailout plan proposed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. "Hank" Paulson Jr., there were some decidedly scary codicils.

For one thing, there was a near complete lack of taxpayer protection. To see what I mean, just take a look at the part of the plan that reads: "Decisions by the [U.S. Treasury] Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

No courts?

No administrative agency?

No kidding …

As Jason Linkins writes in The Huffington Post, Section 8 of the Paulson plan allows for a "consolidation of power and an abdication of oversight authority that's so flat-out astounding that it ought to set one's hair on fire."

Section 8 (an ironically appropriate term for the plan, as I'm sure anyone familiar with military jargon – or the TV series "M*A*S*H" -- would agree) would have established Paulson as the de facto financial dictator-at-large, included no oversight as to financial operations, and consolidated power in an unprecedented fashion.

Sanity Comes to Washington?

Thankfully, some lawmakers balked. If they hadn't, and the plan passed into law unaltered, I realized that we soon would be welcoming U.S. taxpayers to the new "Democratic Socialist Republic of the United States." Maybe, I thought to myself, we'd even get to address Treasury Secretary Paulson as "His Lordship."

Although Congressional lawmakers yesterday (Thursday) reached an agreement on the principles of a new bailout deal -- an accord that addresses some of my concerns about a lack of accountability -- they reacted a bit too slowly and in too self-aggrandizing a fashion. When they should have been hammering out a deal, congressional leaders were, instead, literally tripping over one another as they elbowed their way to the TV cameras, after which they wrung their hands and looked worried on cue, posturing in their thousand-dollar suits in front of a fawning Washington press corps.