Rebecca Kelliher
Editor-in-Chief
The current economic crisis may have the public looking for a scapegoat, but the mass hysteria as of late is threatening to infect the very institution that is meant to calm the people’s outrage — the federal government, most notably Congress.
Congress as of late has started to point fingers at whomever appears responsible for the downturn in the economy. Politicians need to recognize the importance of governing with a cool, collected mind — not one flooded with passions.
When it was learned that employees of American International Group (AIG) shared in the company’s federal bailout with $165 million paid out in bonuses — rewarding the very people who had helped drive the company as well as the economy into distress — Congress was all too eager to respond. They immediately demanded the names of those who received the bonuses to be released publicly.
Yet, with AIG employees receiving death threats — one of which demanded executives and their families to be executed with piano wire — it is completely irrational for Congress to require the release of these names. Such an act would only provoke and antagonize an already unruly public.
Continuing to reflect their inability to separate rising emotions from cool, rational reasoning, Congress recently sought to pass a piece of legislation that would tax 90 percent of the bonuses employees received. However, taxing AIG employees so heavily would only lead top executives to resign. Thus, the tax could potentially hurt the economy even more, leaving the nation struggling to survive this crisis without the necessary leadership.
President Obama even realized that the tempers of Capitol Hill needed to be calmed when, in response to the 90 percent tax on bonuses, he said, “We can’t govern out of anger.”
This idea of slowing down legislation in order to govern with reason, not anger, is crucial when considering the fate of the nation. Nowhere is the danger of governing irrationally more evident as a threat to the American people as in the federal government’s new plans to expand their role in regulating the economy.
The government may soon have the power to take over floundering private financial institutions, completely blurring the line between the economy and government. There may be a fine line between under-regulating and over-regulating the economy, but that doesn’t mean the line does not exist.
A drastic expansion of regulation is deliberately stepping over this boundary between a free economy and an economy controlled by the government. Held as one of the tenants of our nation as implied in the Constitution, the separation of the government and the economy is the foundation of capitalism.
Without a clear delineation between the government and the economy, and with politicians acting upon impulses rather than upon reason, the emergence of a Big Brother government may be just around the corner. It’s a tired criticism, but a legitimate one.