Congress and the Bush administration bailed out Wall Street. The House, which on Monday rejected a deal amid public fury over rescuing reckless financiers, on Friday passed the biggest government intervention since the Great Depression. Senators had acted Wednesday. Senator Bernie Sanders voted no. "The Bush administration and Wall Street bankers got what they wanted - a $700 billion bailout with all the risk put on middle-income taxpayers," he said on Friday. "It is grossly unfair that the middle class, whose standard of living is declining, is forced to pick up the tab for Wall Street's greed and irresponsibility, and not the top 1 percent who have benefited from Bush's reckless policies. In the midst of the severe financial crisis facing our country it is clear that Congress must act, but this legislation does not accomplish what must be done," he said.

"In addition to saddling the middle class with the cost of the bailout," Sanders added, "this bill does nothing to stimulate the economy and create good-paying jobs by rebuilding our infrastructure; does nothing to undo the dangerous deregulation which caused this crisis; does nothing to address the ‘too big to fail' doctrine which will likely repeat itself. And it does far too little to solve the housing foreclosure crisis which is impacting millions of Americans, not only driving them from their homes but creating more and deeper problems for banks and financial institutions."

Sanders also questioned giving Treasury Secretary Paulson, an ex-Wall Streeter, billions to mop up Wall Street's mess. "Why we are giving $700 billion to…the former C.E.O. of Goldman Sachs, which, along with other financial institutions, got us into this problem?" he wondered. So do hundreds ofyou.

Who Pays?

To help bankroll any bailout, Sanders proposed a five-year, 10 percent surtax on families with incomes of more than $1 million year and individuals earning over $500,00 to raise $300 billion. In his Senate floor speech, he argued that if a bailout is needed the cost should not be shouldered by middle class Americans, and their children, and their grandchildren…

"If a bailout is needed, if taxpayer money must be placed at risk, whose money should it be? In other words, who should be paying for this bailout which has been caused by the greed and recklessness of Wall Street operatives who have made billions in recent years?

"I proposed to raise the tax rate on any individual earning $500,000 a year or more or any family earning $1 million a year or more by 10 percent. That increase in the tax rate, from 35 percent to 45 percent, would raise more than $300 billion in the next five years, almost half the cost of the bailout. If what all the supporters of this legislation say is correct, that the government will get back some of its money when the market calms down and the government sells some of the assets it has purchased, then $300 billion should be sufficient to make sure that 99.7 percent of taxpayers do not have to pay one nickel for this bailout."

What's Left Out?

Sanders opposition also was based on what was left out of the bill.

"This bill does not effectively address the issue of what the taxpayers of our country will actually own after they invest hundreds of billions of dollars in toxic assets.

"This bill does not effectively address the issue of oversight because the oversight board members have all been hand picked by the Bush administration.

"This bill does not effectively deal with the issue of foreclosures and addressing that very serious issue, which is impacting millions of low- and moderate-income Americans in the aggressive, effective way that we should be.

"This bill does not effectively deal with the issue of executive compensation and golden parachutes. Under this bill, the CEOs and the Wall Street insiders will still, with a little bit of imagination, continue to make out like bandits.

"This bill does not deal at all with how we got into this crisis in the first place and the need to undo the deregulatory fervor which created trillions of dollars in complicated and unregulated financial instruments such as credit default swaps and hedge funds.

"This bill does not address the issue that has taken us to where we are today, the concept of too big to fail. In fact, within the last several weeks we have sat idly by and watched gigantic financial institutions like the Bank of America swallow up other gigantic financial institutions like Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. Well, who is going to bail out the Bank of America if it begins to fail? There is not one word about the issue of too big to fail in this legislation at a time when that problem is in fact becoming even more serious.

"This bill does not deal with the absurdity of having the fox guarding the hen house. Maybe I'm the only person in America who thinks so, but I have a hard time understanding why we are giving $700 billion to the Secretary of the Treasury, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who along with other financial institutions, actually got us into this problem. Now, maybe I'm the only person in America who thinks that's a little bit weird, but that is what I think.

"This bill does not address the major economic crisis we face: growing unemployment, low wages, the need to create decent-paying jobs, rebuilding our infrastructure and moving us to energy efficiency and sustainable energy."

To read or watch the senator's speech, click here or here.

To take our poll on Secretary Paulson, click here.