| Dear Friend, After the unbelievable risk taking and greed on Wall Street that drove our economy into a ditch and caused the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, you would think that Republicans would be embarrassed to flack for the big investment banks. You would be wrong. Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is running to the cameras charging that the Wall Street reform bill that Democrats are about to take up in the Senate will result in "endless taxpayer-funded bailouts." He is apparently referring to a fund that would be set up to pay for the costs of shutting down the next big bank when it fails. But what he doesn't tell you is that taxpayers don't put up the money -- big banks do. I can understand why these banks don't want to pay for their next round of reckless behavior. What I don't understand is why the Republicans think the American people will be fooled. But they are desperately following the script their spin doctor wrote months ago, when he advised before the bill was even written that "The single best way to kill any legislation is to link it to the Big Bank Bailout." It's the farthest thing possible from a bailout -- it's burial insurance. Sheila Bair is the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corportion. She is a Republican who was appointed to the position by President Bush. And she knows a thing or two about shutting down banks, since the FDIC closed almost 150 banks last year and nearly 40 already this year. As she told the American Banker last week, "The status quo is bailouts. That's what we have now. If you don't do anything, you are going to keep having bailouts....[This bill] makes them impossible and it should." She's right. This bill will put an end to bank bailouts, and make banks pay the tab for cleaning up any mess they create in the future. It will replace the "anything goes" approach of the Bush Administration with tough regulation, and it will shine a spotlight on the shadow banking system that caused so much of our troubles. It's not perfect. We need to make sure that the financial sector serves our economy rather than the other way around. We need a cap on the size of banks so that no institution becomes indispensable. We need to make sure that banks are not making big bets against their customers' interests. And we need to make sure that those customers have a consumer protection agency with real teeth to look out for their interests. You can count on one thing -- Wall Street will not go down without a fight. But are Republicans so audacious that they will filibuster even debating the reform bill? After the billions we've spent on Wall Street, and the billions they've paid themselves in bonuses, it's time for Wall Street to pay the price for its next round of mistakes. 
-Sherrod
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