If this is his view, I refuse to vote for Frank in the 2016 presidential primary.

Well, I guess Congress should forgo on legislation (since we all trust Obama; and a Repub congress trusts a Repub president) and accept letters from the administration about how they are going to do everything. Saves everyone time and effort passing legislation.

I agree- the baby boomers cannot be trusted. GenX to the rescue!

So basically, you're worried that as we plunge into the worst economic crisis since 1929, with two ongoing wars and an outgoing administration busily building an unprecedented series of bureaucratic roadblocks to action by the new one, a Democratic Congress is signalling that it will initially give a new Democratic president the same leeway and benefit of the doubt we always give new presidents and always give even old presidents in a crisis?

You're thinking that at this moment in history, Congress should, instead, be acting preemptively on the assumption that Obama is going to be as arrogantly stupid, high-handed, reckless, feckless, petty, small-minded, and utterly lawless as Bush's administration was? Tie his hands now based upon the unprecedented misconduct of his predecessor and then force him to prove he's worthy before they loosen the bonds? Maybe provoke a good old intra-party civil war and a consitutional crisis right here at the git-go?

That's what's keeping you awake at night?

As Progressives, we must reaffirm that we are a country of laws, not men.

We are not looking for a dictator, no matter how benevolent.

Oversight of the purse is one of congress' roles, and we should expect, nay demand, that they carry it out.

Progressives need to moderate this reflexive distrust of government. Y'all sound like a bunch of freakin libertarians.

Right now we need bold, decisive, and creative action out of our government. We worked hard to elect Obama and now we need to give him a chance to do what he promised.

I don't find it incendiary at all; this was pretty much my reaction. I don't want Congress to specify how all the money is to be spent, but I do want them to install more enforceable oversight mechanisms. At minimum, they should have had enough oversight that when Paulson said "we won't tell you how the money was spent, or who we hired to manage it, or what their conflicts of interest are, or..." they could say "yes, you will." I expect that these mechanisms will be unnecessary in an Obama administration, but that's no reason not to have them. Hope is not a plan.

Unfortunately, as our economy is crashing down around us, we need speed more than perfection. We simply need Congress to move as quickly as possible.

So far, the result of "Congress moving as quickly as possible" has been that $350 billion has been largely wasted, and more important, four months has been wasted from the time when we were told that Congress couldn't take more than a week to decide. Emphasizing speed above all else didn't get us speedy effective action, just speedy action.

I'm not looking for perfection, but having Congress throw everything out the window in the interests of speed got us crap. This isn't about the pursuit of perfection, it's about getting something that actually works, rather than being stampeded. I fully expect that the Obama administration will do a good job with this, but it's still not a bad thing for Congress to wake up from its Bush-panicked state and do its part, too.