Letter to Lisa

Okay, I did better after I left here earlier. I used my limited energy to email Lisa a brief letter about the Big 3 "Bailout," i.e., loans. Here's the text:

Senator Murkowski -

I write in support of loans to the domestic auto industry. I am appalled at the job loss we have suffered in the last quarter and at the numbers (rumored to be well in excess of half a million) of American workers who have given up looking for work. Cutting off the "Big 3" at this point will only add tens of thousands more hard-working middle-class homeowners and taxpayers to those rolls.

I believe that the administration's response to the economic situation is completely misdirected and inadequate. Pumping billions of dollars into the financial sector that has driven the losses in every other sector has been, at this point, a miserable failure.

The auto industry, despite its recalcitrance and refusal to look ahead, has been responding to market demand in the past couple of years - I was delighted to park my compact import (bought used!) between two hybrids here in Anchorage just this week!- but it is now suffering mostly because of the loss of jobs and credit freeze that can be laid squarely on the shoulders of the financial industry, to which the Treasury is handing money like it was breath mints.

Those auto workers are the middle class. They are the citizens who pay their mortgages and their taxes and we need their jobs. They support tens of thousands more jobs in the service sector; jobs we cannot afford to lose.

In my perfect world Congress would approve the loans without any stipulation other than a dramatic increase in the gasoline tax, thereby accomplishing two goals; a market drive for more fuel-efficient vehicles, resulting in lower prices and greater availability, and a pool of money to be used for much-needed infrastructure improvements, which will generate thousands of well-paid, much-needed jobs.

Sincerely,
Susan Reilly