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The Senate will soon vote on a bill passed last week by the House of Representatives.  The legislation contains a very significant expansion of a program that was created in the economic stimulus bill last year as a temporary program.  Now the temporary program is becoming quite a bit bigger, and Wall Street is working to make this program permanent. There’s not such a thing as a temporary program around Washington D.C. it seems like.
 
This program is called Build America Bonds, and it means higher underwriting fees for the Wall Street banks that underwrite the bonds compared to traditional tax-exempt bonds.  An expert analysis by Bloomberg News said Build America Bonds provide 37 percent higher underwriting fees to the large Wall Street banks, compared to the traditional tax-exempt bonds.  The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Wall Street banks have made more than $1 billion in underwriting fees on Build America Bonds deals in just less than a year, and that’s since the economic stimulus program took effect in 2009.
 
The taxpayers pay for those lucrative fees to Wall Street.  I’ve been speaking out and asking questions because the Build America Bonds program is portrayed by its congressional supporters and congressional leaders as somewhat of an easy way to help build schools and green energy facilities.
 
What congressional leaders leave out is that Build America Bonds is really just another spending program disguised as a tax cut; it’s getting bigger each year; and Wall Street takes a healthy share as you can see.
 
In an era of bailouts and disgust with government spending, congressional leaders should have to answer for giving yet more taxpayer’s dollars to Wall Street and foreign investors while Main Street is getting very little help.  Now House of Reprersentative members have cast their votes, and senators should understand the vote they’re about to take is dramatically expanding this so-called temporary program.
 
The focus and priority in Washington needs to be on helping create private-sector jobs and economic activity at the grassroots.  Taxpayer-funded recovery efforts have been far too tilted in the direction of Wall Street, at the expense of Main Street, and to let that continue happening with new legislation doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.