by Mark Luedtke

Created on: January 07, 2009

Do you know how much money you make? I bet you know how much money you take home, but do you know your gross pay for each pay period? If you don't, take a look at your latest pay stub and check out the difference between your take home pay and your gross pay. Imagine how much different your life would be if you pocketed your gross pay instead of just your net pay, after government withholds your income and payroll taxes. But that'll never happen, right?

Well, that's exactly what Republican Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert is proposing. An idealistic second term congressman who hasn't yet been corrupted by Washington, Gohmert thinks Americans know how to spend the money we earn better than the politicians. And he's right.

Back in September, Treasury Sec. Paulson convinced President Bush that the sky would fall if Congress didn't hand $700 billion to Paulson to buy up toxic mortgage securities to unclog the credit system. President Bush made Paulson's case, and Congress, against the will of the people, rolled over and created the TARP program. But Paulson hasn't spent one dime buying toxic mortgage securities as advertised. He ditched that plan as soon as the legislation passed.

Diana Henriques reported in the The New York Times: "The head of a new Congressional panel set up to monitor the gigantic federal bailout says the government still does not seem to have a coherent strategy for easing the financial crisis, despite the billions it has already spent in the effort. Elizabeth Warren, the chairwoman of the oversight panel, said in an interview Monday that the government instead seemed to be lurching from one tactic to the next without clarifying how each step fits into an overall plan."

That's charitable. Sec. Paulson has spent $350 billion of borrowed money that taxpayers will have to pay back, with interest, inflating the stock portfolios of his personal friends on Wall Street and the very banks and mortgage companies who created this crisis. His pals at Citigroup alone received $306 billion in taxpayer guarantees. Despite Paulson's efforts, or more likely because of them, the stock market plummeted 2,000 points and continues to bounce like a ping pong ball, settling ever lower as we fall deeper into recession.

That was predictable. It's impossible that one man or a handful of men could have more knowledge to make our economy work than all Americans. Hank Paulson and his staff are not smarter than all 300 million Americans combined. This is a perfect example of

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