Waiting for 1.20.09

Two days ago the Bush administration requested “unfettered authority”—a blank check, essentially—for the Treasury Dept. to spend up to $700 billion in salvaging our supposedly free-market system. This would raise the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion and “would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress, granting the Treasury secretary unprecedented power to buy and resell mortgage debt.”

And today, irked that Congress is actually deliberating, weighing, and suggesting some accountability (rare in this administration—consider DOD contracts in Iraq, the unprecedented frequency with which the White House has claimed executive privilege in order to avoid explaining itself, and especially Cheney, to the American public), George “The Decider” Bush is fretting that his plan must be passed as-is, and quickly.

This sounds familiar.

The Patriot Act (I can scarcely type those words in connection with the horrific legislation they represent) was foisted on us within weeks of 9/11, while sentiment was still running strongly enough that lawmakers who should have known better still realized that a vote against the act would mean sure defeat in the next year’s congressional elections. And so we were gifted with unfettered executive powers with only the thinnest accountability. (Is there a theme here?) Not to mention our country being spent into trillions of dollars of debt fighting the wrong people, the wrong way, for the wrong reasons.

Pray let Congress do its job—that is, deliberate—in an attempt to compensate for Dubya’s belief in his imperial presidency. Two and a quarter centuries after our revolt against a British George III, our nation and our Constitution are in dire need of being rid of our own George III.