The Administration’s request amounts to the largest corporate bailout
in American history. Congress should act, but should act in a way that
protects the integrity of our free market and protects the American
taxpayer from more debt and higher taxes.

To have the freedom to succeed, we must preserve the freedom to fail.
Any solution to our present crisis must preserve our essential economic
freedom.

Congress should delay consideration of any legislation until the facts
and competing solutions can be fully debated, consider alternatives to
massive government spending and figure out how to pay for the solution
through budget cuts and reform instead of more debt or taxes.

Congress must not hastily embrace a cure that may do more harm to our economy than the disease of bad debt

Before any bailout is enacted, Congress must set itself on an
unalterable path to truly overhaul these Government Sponsored
Enterprises from the top down and hold those accountable, in and out of
government, who drove them, and our financial sector, to the brink of
bankruptcy. Some important work is already underway, but additional
reforms are needed. Even now, we read that the Treasury Department is
using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase many of these bad
mortgages while it seeks the authority to purchase them all. Congress
should also ensure that these GSEs can no longer pose a systemic risk
to the entire economy while placing them on a brisk schedule to be
fully private companies with no guarantee of taxpayer support in times
of trouble. And Congress should immediately repeal the Affordable
Housing Fund, which will actually siphon off capital from these
under-capitalized entities, in order to fund left-wing, third party
organizations.

Next, Congress must consider all available options to put our nation’s
economy back on its feet. There are no easy answers but there are
alternatives to massive government spending.

Indexing the Capital Gains tax to inflation (which the Treasury
Department can do without any help from Congress), or suspending it for
one year, would release an enormous amount of capitol into our economy.
Passing an energy bill that lessens the price of gasoline at the pump
through more domestic drilling, wind, solar, nuclear and conservation
would bring relief to family budgets and create American jobs.
Establishing an entitlement reform commission to develop bipartisan
solutions to the crushing weight of entitlements would strengthen the
American dollar.

These and other alternatives to a massive federal bailout must be fully considered and debated before Congress acts.

Finally, any new expenditure of taxpayer dollars should be paid for
with fiscal discipline and reform. If Congress decides to spend nearly
1 trillion dollars on a corporate bailout, it must find budget savings
to prevent that cost from being passed along to the American people.