Let's send legislators home now for failing

It is truly amazing to watch our legislators in both houses of Congress work through the issues surrounding our present financial meltdown. In one body they want to blame everyone not of their party persuasion - in the other they came together to offer even more incentives and tax cuts that will ultimately cost our economy even more. It must be an election year.

What is so unbelievable is the fact that these legislators have practically as much culpability in this mess as those greedy mortgage bankers who perpetrated the underhanded manipulations that ultimately has led to this demise in our economy for their own self-gain.

Strange enough, the legislation that opened the doors to this quagmire was really enacted with good intentions in the Clinton Administration. The concept was to allow those in the lower financial strada an opportunity to participate in the American dream and possibly become homeowners - not an unreasonable program. The unfortunate part of all of this is that greed has raised its divisive head once again at the expense of all the taxpayers - and it will be our children and our grandchildren who will have to carry the bulk of the burden.

Perhaps the dialogue should end and the votes tallied to voice the damage that has been done to American confidence regardless of partisan politics. Any incumbent who has been in either the House or the Senate since the latter part of the 1990s should be sent home after this election is over. The reason: Failure to live up to the job that each of them was charged to do for all Americans. This problem didn't happen overnight and it was done on their watch. The American people deserve better civil servants than those with the longevity and intelligence to know better.

Carl Gregorich

Lisle