Delegation of authority - sound familiar?

The $700 Billion bailout bill, at least the original version (and the only version I've yet to find on the web) basically says that Congress will delegate authority and responsibility for use of up to this money (equivalent to more than one-quarter of last year's total federal budget!) to the Treasury secretary, to use as he sees fit.

I'm don't want to suggest that the government shouldn't act quickly and dramatically, but this sounds eerily familiar. The Constitution gives the power of the purse to the Legislature, and this bill delegates that power to the Treasury secretary, at least to the tune of $700 Billion. The idea is that the secretary needs authority to take action without a bunch of bureaucratic approval. There's an almost direct analogy to 2002, when Congress, who the Constitution gives the authority and responsibility of declaring war, gave the President the authority to act in whatever way he saw fit, up to and including the authority to take military action against Iraq.

Could someone please tell me why we should have absolute faith in any single person's ability to lead us out of this mess? And even if it's necessary to have a single leader, a czar, so to speak, and Henry Paulson is the right guy, the truth is that he's a short timer. We don't know who the next president is going to be, much less the next Treasury Secretary.

2 years is too long for Congress to let someone have that much power and control over that much money. At the very least it should be for a shorter term and require periodic renewal of the authority. And the actual text of the bill needs to be available for citizen review (at least for a few days) before Congress votes. $700 Billion dollars ($2300 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.) cannot be taken lightly.

$700 Billion bailout needs scrutiny

Every American should read the actual text of the proposed bailout bill. The first draft, published Saturday by the New York Times, was less than a thousand words. It gives unprecedented authority to the Secretary of the Treasury. Citizens should have first-hand knowlege of what it being discussed.

$700 Billion (the amount specified in the draft bill) is more than one-fourth of the annual federal budget. It is equivalent to $2,300 for every man, woman, and child in the country. Before giving the Secretary control over this much money we should educate ourselves about what we're about to do. The draft is only two pages long. Read it!

Here's a link to the (original) draft from Saturday, September 20th. This is already out of date, but I haven't found an updated version.:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/business/21draftcnd.html