CT Blue

From the New York Times:

The Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., on Tuesday rejected pleas to use money from the $700 billion bailout program to help homeowners avoid foreclosure or to stave off bankruptcy by Detroit’s Big Three automakers.

Facing a barrage of complaints from Democratic lawmakers that he was ignoring the will of Congress, Mr. Paulson dug in his heels and said he wanted to put money only into financial institutions.

It would be a fun parlor game for political junkies to sit around and try to remember all the occasions during the past eight years that the Bush Administration has essentially told Congress to “trust us” by granting it sweeping, ill defined and easily abused powers.

I can’t remember them all. The Iraq War comes to mind, as does the semi-authorization to torture, as does the “Patriot” Act, as does the FISA fiasco.

Each has one common feature. No matter the subject matter, each time the Bush Administration has been handed power of any sort, it has abused it. The more broad the grant of authority, or the more loosely drawn the legislation, the more the abuse.

So how can it be that our illustrious Congresspersons are shocked that Paulson too has abused the authority he was given. How can they be surprised that he has declined to use, or even abuse, authority he was given that he does not choose to use-such as the authority to help individual homeowners in lieu of the rich that are alone deserving of aid? Was there ever any reason to believe that the classic Bush pattern would not prevail. And I say this knowing full well that Bush himself is now largely irrelevant. The pattern and practice remains the same, whether Bush is involved or not. The ethos of corruption and abuse of power runs too deep in this administration. It is, as Obama would say, what they do.

There was never any reason to believe that Paulson would administer this bailout in good faith, by attempting to achieve all of the objectives Congress had in mind. He might not have done those things even if the legislation required him to do so. We will never know, because everything was optional. It was absurd to think that one of the most corrupt administrations in history would not go out in style after it was given almost total discretion to spread $700 billion in taxpayer dollars wherever it chose. Why would anyone think it would break with past practice and put the money where it might do some good.

I hope Joe Courtney read the Times article. If he did, it could only have reinforced his conviction that he did the right thing. His vote against is looking better by the day.