@JamesMorrison,
I agree, and appreciate the time and effort you take in expressing yourself. Especially on point are your remarks about out having become a "debt society", and the Federal governments constant juggling to maintain a stable, controlled growth. Philosophically we've dug a pretty deep trench that may now be caving in on us. Less important in my mind than assessing blame, is the daunting question of how best to handle the current crisis.
Many believe that Pres. Hoover might have averted, or at least mitigated the Great Depression, if only his administration had acted promptly with massive Federal funding to prop up the disintegrating economy. He didn't for sound Constitutional and philosophical reasons, and FDR's put the US on a different set of tracks. The world's economy and political structure staggered into chaos that resulted in WWII. I'm sure the administration in proposing this bailout sincerely wanted to avoid a similar meltdown and world-wide crisis. Whether it would work as planned or not is uncertain.
The Democratic Congress took a three page proposal and made it their own. The bailout almost certainly needed adjustments, revisions, and guarantees that the money would be effectively spent with the least risk to tax payers. The Democrats produced a Bill that the administration and the GOP Presidential candidate backed more as a matter of urgency than love. The Republican minority in Congress hasn't been convinced that the Bill as presented is the correct one for dealing with the crisis. We are told that constituents across the land are overwhelmingly against it. I believe there is an unaddressed risk of setting off an inflation that might be as damaging as the stabilization the bailout is intended to produce. It seems Congress itself has grave doubts about the Bill since a sizable number of representatives both Parties voted against it.
If things go badly over the next few days and weeks the voters may blame either Party, even though neither is completely without fault. If, as we all hope, the crisis does not deepen significantly, neither Party nor their Presidential candidates will have had much to do with that outcome either.
The situation certainly appears grave, but the nation has periodically undergone economic downturns many times in its history. In each instance, a lot of people suffered great loss. Sometimes those troubled times led to a new political ascendancy, and a period of chaos often ended with war. The nation always survived, and once the suffering was behind us positive elements would be found and nostalgically remembered. Still, we should all fervently hope that the current economic crisis will pass quickly and as painlessly as possible. No one, no Party should be trying to "make hay" of this challenge, but that's too much to ask.
