We as Americans like to believe that those who lead us are truly looking out for our well-being, and for the better part of our short history this belief was well warranted. Yet today, politicians in Washington are scrambling to pass the biggest blank check in history, not for our tired and poor or for those huddled masses yearning to breathe free, but for the cancerous CEOs of Wall Street.

Since March, Congress has spent (including the Big Bailout) over $1 trillion bailing out these corporations that hold no regard for accountability or (gasp!) responsibility.

The banks and insurance corporations that are failing across the board have made untold millions from our own money, money we trusted them to protect and respect. While their assets and portfolios were falling apart, the CEOs of these rampantly greedy conglomerates sat atop some of the largest salaries in the world.

So why save them from their own greed-induced mistakes?

Because if they don’t get their way, and more importantly if they don’t feel confident that someone else will cover for their mistakes, then the entire credit and banking industry in America will collapse. This in turn will cause other global markets to fail, as we are already seeing in the foreclosure of a relatively few European banks.

Confidence forms the backbone of the credit industry: confidence that debts can be collected, confidence that the government is backing them with the FDIC, and confidence that they can continue to fleece the common man.

Yet these companies give no confidence that they won’t make such ignorant mistakes again.

Last Saturday, in the heat of the media frenzy over how the Bailout will break America’s financial back, Congress passed a $600 billion bill that, among other things, gave any automotive manufacturer or company within the auto industry that has maintained a plant or office within the U.S. for the past 20 years almost $25 billion.

Another part of the bill also nixed the prohibition for offshore drilling on the East Coast, as well as an appropriation of emergency funds to keep the Bush Administration functioning until the next presidency.

Where is this money coming from?

Washington’s answer is to give Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (who just happened to have previously been the Chairman of Goldman-Sachs before joining Bush’s cabinet) an ownership stake in the bailed out corporations, effectively giving Paulson control over the majority of the credit market.

That in itself is tantamount to ending the divide between Washington and Wall Street, and, to my eye, a death-knell for democracy.

That one man should control the credit industry is appallingly un-American, and egregiously oligarchical. Newt Gingrich even came out of his cynical cave and denounced Paulson according to the AP, saying, “I think Paulson has terminally misunderstood the nature of the American system. Not just no review, no judicial review … Give me $700 billion, $700 BILLION! ‘I’ll be glad to spend it for you.’ That’s a centralization of power that is totally un-American.”

The media has been obscenely quick to point out how much this will hurt the American taxpayer, yet nothing is being made about the myriad and out-of-control spending going on behind the scenes in Washington.

The money that has been spent by Congress, without including the Big Bailout, on corporate and industry bailouts exceeds $1 trillion.

That’s $1,000,000,000,000.

There is deceit here, and there is corruption. We may never know the truth, but we will know that this is when things began to change, and change they will.