I was scouring the Net today and all weekend trying to find actual details on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s $700 billion+ bailout plan.  I’m not encouraged by what I’ve found.

While I too agree that something needs to be done, I have some serious reservations about this plan. Aside from the dubious wisdom of handing over to the President even more unchecked power (this time over banking and the market), and aside from the very real question of how the government is going to do any better at fixing a value to these bad loans than the private sector, the question that is foremost in my mind is who’s going to pay?

As Newt Gingrich points out, Before D.C. Gets Our Money, It Owes Us Some Answers. He notes “Congress has an obligation to protect the taxpayer. Congress has an obligation to limit the executive branch to the rule of law. Congress has an obligation to perform oversight.”

There are are other options besides writing the government a 700 billion blank check of taxpayer’s money. Economists have proposed a number of other options beside the Paulson plan, such as having the government order banks to cancel dividend payments and require healthy banks to issue new equity.  Another potentially much less risk option is to have the government simply buy an equity stake in the banks themselves instead of trying to figure out the value of all those bad loans.

But as both the Republicans and Democrats in congress already seem sold on the proposal now on the table, the fundamental question  that none of them seem to be asking is Who’s going to pay?

Perhaps at this moment in history, no one better exemplifies the need for truly independent voices in congress, and why I’m running with no party affiliation, than Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who is one of the few elected officials in Washington D.C. honest enough to actually answer that question:

“This proposal as presented is an unacceptable attempt to force middle income families (and our children) to pick up the cost of fixing the horrendous economic mess that is the product of the Bush Administration’s deregulatory fever and Wall Street’s insatiable greed. If the potential danger to our economy was not so dire, this blatant effort to essentially transfer $700 billion up the income ladder to those at the top would be laughable.

Let us be clear. If the economy is on the edge of collapse we need to act. But rescuing the economy does not mean we have to just give away $700 billion of taxpayer money to the banks. (In truth, it could be much more than $700 billion. The bill only says the government is limited to having $700 billion outstanding at any time. By selling the mortgage backed assets it acquires — even at staggering losses — the government will be able to buy even more resulting is a virtually limitless financial exposure on the part of taxpayers.) Any proposal must protect middle income and working families from bearing the burden of this bailout. “ 

And, in case anyone has forgotten, the United States has a national debt that is currently over a  $9.7 trillion dollars (as of this writing: $9,733,011,228,509) that is growing by 2 billion every day. And now, we’re about to add hundreds of billions more with no relief in sight, and yet neither presidential candidate nor the leadership of either major party has made any realistic proposals to raise the revenue necessary to pay for all of this. In fact, both Senators McCain and Obama are still proposing tax cuts!

I guess I may be one of the few candidates out there who still actually remembers those famous last words “Read my lips, no new taxes!”  

It’s time to face the truth: America can no longer afford to try to spend it’s way out of debt.

Anyone who is proposing more tax cuts while the United States is trying to maintain a military empire overseas and heroically buying up all of Wall Street’s bad debts is either lying to you to get your vote, or just incapable of basic math.

It’s time for a real change…