Taxpayer Education
The average working person has no idea how relevant this financial crisis and the proposed bailout are to their lives and livelihoods. Before Treasury Paulson and the Bush Administration proceed they must provide a detailed projection of what the risks are to the American family, worker and taxpayer.

Regulatory and Oversight Provisions: Void the Blank Check
The Troubled Asset Relief Program, as currently proposed by the Bush Administration, would grant unprecedented power and authority to the Secretary of the Treasury. Language in the Paulson proposal includes: "Decisions by the Secretary…are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency".

As Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times commented: "The lack of transparency and oversight that got our financial system in trouble in the first place seems written directly into the proposed bill." Congress must assert far stricter controls and oversight over the Secretary's actions and decision than it is currently considering.

Address the underlying problem: Predatory Lending and Foreclosure
The most striking aspect of the proposed bailout is that if the government acted quickly and comprehensively in modifying the terms of troubled mortgages and aggressively averting foreclosures, we would not be in this position today.

The only responsible thing to do at this point in the crisis is to address the continuing foreclosure crisis, pass meaningful national anti-predatory lending legislation and create the kind of regulatory oversight and enforcement that would pre-empt this kind of system-wide consumer abuse from ever occurring again. This will not only protect the micro-economies of families and communities across the country, but it will increase the value of the trouble mortgages that the tax payer would presumably be saddled with under the Paulson plan.

One effective anti-foreclosure measure that progressive advocates have been proposing for over a year now, one that is now finally being seriously considered by Congress, is giving bankruptcy judges the authority to demand mortgage modifications on primary mortgages.

Nationalize the Profits
Having the taxpayer assume Wall Street's losses after watching financial institutions make record profits for so many years, is a perverse inversion of the capitalist promise. A better way to proceed would be for the government to replicate its bailout of AIG. Instead of simply buying troubled mortgages and letting financial institutions off the hook for trafficking in this bad paper, the government could make a loan to the financial institution, take an equity position in the financial institutions, and recoup its investment. Either way, any and all profits made as a result of the taxpayer intervention should be returned to the taxpayer.

Rein in Corporate symbols of corporate excess
The government has to address the outrage that the public is experiencing as they watch corporate executives receive exorbitant compensation packages after presiding over a failed enterprise. Although putting a cap on executive compensation for companies that accept the terms of a government bailout is a somewhat superficial gesture, it at least sends the message that the corporate gravy train will not proceed unchecked while on the taxpayer's watch.