Since Secretary Henry Paulson (aka “King Henry”) told House Republicans in a private meeting about two weeks ago that America was facing the greatest threat to our economy since the Great Depression, I feel like I’ve been shot out of a cannon.

The days have blurred together as the level of public fear and Congressional concern mounted.  The pivotal moment for me occurred when Paulson told us at one of those meetings that he has “been making contingency plans for this emergency for the past year.”

Excuse me, Mr. Secretary?  What did you just say?

You have known about this emergency for one year, you never warned us, and you never did anything to try to limit the damage?  Insurance companies expected us to throw a blue tarp over the damage to our roofs from Hurricane Ike to keep it from getting worse.

This entire episode will rank as one of the most outrageous and disgraceful events in our nation’s history.  Never have so many people been driven so deeply into irretrievable debt.  The fast hustle that the Administration put on Congress to pass the bailout immediately just convinced me we needed more time to read the bill carefully and consider other options.

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