Congress keeps bailing out the criminal element that caused the mortgage crisis: greedy banks.  In addition, it continues to approve these bailouts that Bush and his flunkies demand even when its elected members know that the Bush administration's deregulatory and no regulatory policies helped cause this debacle.

As the economist, Dean Baker writes in The Guardian: "It now looks as though Congress will pass a housing bailout bill that will provide $300bn worth of loan guarantees. The main beneficiaries will be incompetent bankers, who issued mortgages during the housing bubble that are now going bad by the bucket. The government will save these bankers billions by guaranteeing new loans that will pay off the existing loans at considerably above their market value.

"Congress is running to the rescue of the bankers because, unlike autoworkers or textile workers, bankers have real power. When an autoworker or textile worker faces the prospect of losing their job, their house, the ability to put their kids through school, the politicians will feel their pain. They might even give a few good speeches. But they will not put out policies that will actually help US workers keep good-paying jobs.

"So when it comes to workers' pain, we are told that there really is nothing that can be done. What about the pain of incompetent bankers? Well, we can't let incompetent bankers suffer. Congress, the president and the Fed will move heaven and earth to make sure that the bankers are not allowed to sink just because of their bad business decisions.

"That was why Fed chairman Ben Bernanke was so quick to tell the creditors of the major investment banks not to worry that that Lehman Brothers or Citigroup might be following Bear Stearns in going belly up. He promised that the Fed would throw out as much money as was necessary to make them whole. There was little concern for moral hazard or the incredible waste of taxpayer money to bail out the extremely rich. (Guarantees are real money – if anyone ever tells you otherwise, ask them to sign a guarantee note for your mortgage or student loan.)

"The guarantees, plus the below market loans from the Fed's discount window, was just round one. Round two is the bailout package that is about to pass Congress. This bill is being sold as a bailout of homeowners. The big problem with that story is that the government guaranteed checks go to banks, not homeowners. Furthermore, the banks get to decide which loans get placed in the programme.

"This is simple Econ 101. Banks are sitting on several hundred billions of dollars of really bad loans. They can go through with the foreclosure process, but this is costly. In addition, house prices have fallen so much, and the market is so glutted in many areas, that they will get be able to recover relatively little of the original value of their mortgage through foreclosure.

"So, along comes Congress with a big bag of taxpayer money and offers to guarantee new mortgages that will allow the banks to recover a much larger share of the original value of their mortgage. Who knows, with an exaggerated appraisal (ever hear of exaggerated appraisals?), they may even be able to recover most of their money.

Of course Congress sells this as a bailout of homeowners...

"OK, no one expects politicians to have any backbone, but where are the economists? These are the folks who get apoplectic about a 20% tariff on steel imports. Why are they so quiet about the much larger waste associated with this bailout?

Baker states that "no one expects politicians to have any backbone..."

Mark Ash has a piece at Truthout that addresses this unfortunate reality. "For those who thought Tom Delay's departure would really change anything in Congress, this past week was a strong cup of coffee. On Capitol Hill, politics and greed still trump the good of the nation, still trump the Constitution, still trump all.

"While nothing that happened in Washington this past week was new or should have surprised anyone, we were nonetheless served clear notice, anew, that this is a democracy under siege. 

"In one week, Congress authorized one hundred and sixty two billion US taxpayer dollars to extend for another year the illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq, and rewrote federal law to specifically pardon criminal actions by the nation's largest telecommunications companies. No one really noticed that a retired US general bluntly accused the Bush administration of war crimes. He could just as easily have accused Congress of the same. They are just as guilty.

"It's often said that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. False. The vast majority of honest public servants in Congress are Democrats. However, it would not be safe to say that the majority of Democrats are honest public servants. About half of the Democrats and a small handful of Republicans take seriously their sworn oaths. The rest would be arrested in any other walk of life."

"Today this US Congress stands in opposition to the Constitution, and in opposition to the American people. The American people might well be expected to stand in opposition to Congress as well."

This is a sad but realistic commentary and the reality, that Congress continues to thumb its nose at the people...the government of, by, and for the people, should be unacceptable to the American voters, especially Democrats.

They need to identify and elect real Democrats not the Wussacrats and corporatist Republican lites that currently fill many of the seats on Capitol Hill.  These arrogant senators and representatives who stand against the Constitution and the American people must be replaced.  Let's begin with the so-called Democratic leadership in both chambers.