Dear George, Henry and Ben

Your bailout stinks. In a few months you'll be gone and you are handing the Democrats a federalized economy while you're still in office, what they planned for later on in the Obama years. You're not even going to make them work for it! I don't want to blame this all on President Clinton, because he had a Republican Congress to work with, but getting a home loan used to be very different before the mid-90s. It took 20% down, and our housing cost couldn't exceed 35% of our monthly after tax income. It's possible that since you guys are all rich, you've forgotten how we ordinary folks scrimped and saved and did without to pay our mortgages. Then someone brilliant decided we needed to move everyone into "the American dream," without considering who could or would pay. Then we got the NINJA loans, and even wealthy people took advantage of your lax no interest, no assets loans during the housing bubble. Yes, some minorities and poor people got into homes, most of which they couldn't afford. Again, I don't blame just the Democrats--I seem to remember something laudatory about this in the last State of the Union address.

You, President Bush, proposed in 2001 and 2003 the overhaul in the housing finance industry. It was blocked by liberal Democrats. That's a failure of leadership; we can't blame only the Democrats. Then Senator McCain with three other Senate Republicans tried to reform the government’s involvement in lending in 2005 and again that was blocked by Democrats. So he's not the "can't we all get along guy" that he thinks he is. And Obama? He was missing in action or not on board. (Why is this guy always out of the room when an important vote is taken? He's actually getting points for his absenteeism!)

Maybe you think I’m excusing you, but I’m not. You are the leaders. Why did you let the Democrats bamboozle us, and why put them in charge again when they've made such a mess? Now you are going to make the tax paying, honest, bill paying American pay for the mistake the two parties made together? Barney Frank and Chris Dodd are the reigning Democrats in banking and finance, and the rules were changed during the Clinton administration and it was former members of his administration who drove these GSEs into the ground and walked away with Golden Parachutes.

Tell me why, George W. Bush, should we bail out these bad, bad decisions made at the federal level by the Democrats in Congress and your administration?