A Progressive Plan To Rescue Americans, Not To Bailout Wall Street

A group of progressively-minded Democrats are sick of letting Republicans and Wall Street get their way by setting the debate over a bailout for the wealthy. This afternoon the Congressional Progressive Caucus is talking about helping Americans with oversight for Wall Street and real relief for everyone else that has suffered from the greed of the financial industry over the last few years. The press conference is going on live from Capitol Hill right now.

Here is their initial statement:

U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (OR-04), an outspoken critic of the Bush/Paulson bailout, along with Rep. Kaptur (OH-09), Rep. Scott (VA-03), Rep. Cummings (MD-07), Rep. Doggett (TX-25), Rep. Holt (NJ-12), Rep. Edwards (MD-04) and Rep. Hirono (HI-02), will introduce legislation today to address the failures in the financial markets. DeFazio believes that the Paulson/Bush proposal is based on a flawed premise: if the American taxpayers spend $700 billion to buy Wall Street's toxic assets - a plan pundits are calling "trash for cash" - it will create liquidity in our financial markets and will somehow trickle-down to Main Street.

DeFazio's plan is not in any way based on the Paulson/Bush plan. Instead of throwing taxpayer dollars at the program and crossing our fingers that the plan work, the measure will direct the Administration to take five simple steps, suggested by noted economist and former head of the FDIC, William Isaac, to re-regulate the markets and move America towards a healthy financial future.

The legislation will be available at the press conference.

The media, if they do their job right will disperse the information given out by the Progressive Caucus so that the nation can talk about a new way, a better way to help all of us and not just the wealthy few. This is what America wants to hear, not Bush, Paulson and McCain's vision of socialist corporatism.

A Super Potomac-Styled Tuesday

As the night winds down and the delegate counts rise higher, it is interesting to see where the two Democratic candidates are speaking from. Barack is in Wisconsin tonight, speaking to the crowd that will be casting their ballots one week from today. Meanwhile Hillary is in El Paso, campaigning in one of her two "firewall" states. This looks a lot like Giuliani last month when the front runners would be speaking from either the state that voted or the next immediate state. Of course she is still polling well in Texas and Ohio, but who knows what the following twenty-one days will do to her numbers. Regardless of those delegate-rich states, the big news was another sweep by Obama in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Meanwhile on the Republican side, McCain also swept the primaries in these two states and one district. After having a sub-par weekend, the talk about his front runner status ahead of Huckabee has become increasingly solidified.

But enough about those four, the really big news was that Al Wynn just lost his Congressional seat in Maryland to Donna Edwards. Wynn was a "Bush Democrat" who voted against his party and for the special interests and many Republican measures. Despite Nancy Pelosi helping him in his primary fight, he succumbed to a true progressive. This is a huge night for a people-powered campaign and another great win for the netroots. The only bad news about this is for those incumbents out there that have been taking advantage of their constituents back home. It sends a powerful message to the corrupted in Washington that they better watch their back if they are screwing the people of their districts in the you-know-where.

Now that she has won it is an easy path to Congress this November, as the district leans heavily towards the Democratic party. The harder path is at the top of the ticket, one we must fight, fight, fight for. Democrats are doing a great job so far, so lets keep it up!

An Edwards I Can Still Support

John may be out of the Presidential race, but Donna Edwards has a primary fight a week from Tuesday down in Maryland.