Washington – President Bush addressed the nation to tell the American people, “You will all be poor by Friday, Monday at the latest. Mark my words. The only way to avoid this is to throw your full support behind the plan Secretary Paulson has put forward to get this country on the road to economic recovery. Otherwise, there’s nothing that I can do for you. It’s over. You’re poor.”
Mr. Bush made the speech, shown during prime-time on all three major television networks, to address the anxiety many Americans feel about the current financial crisis. Unexpectedly, however, he confirmed their worst fears.
“This crisis isn’t going away, and Congress isn’t going to change that by mucking with this proposal,” Bush said. “Know this: You really only have one choice, which is to support this plan. If you do, you can rest assured we will use your money the way we see fit, without any oversight or restriction. If you don’t — Well, it won’t matter, because you’ll be eating socks in a few days. And they won’t be tasty. And that’s if you even have socks. You may not. You may have to steal your neighbor’s socks, by sneaking into the cardboard box where he lives now, and stealing them. You see, you just finished fighting with your family, in your cardboard box, over the last leg bone of what used to be your family dog. Trigger. Trigger was a good old dog. But now he’s stew. And everyone wants that meat. ‘Oh, give me some! Give me some! I see a…little morsel there! Please let me have it!’ So you have to give it to your kids. What can you do? They loved that dog. So now you’re desperate, and so you go steal those socks from the cardboard box next door. And, buddy, you can put all the condiments you want on those bad boys, but they aren’t gonna taste like filet mignon. They’re gonna taste like socks. So, see, this is what happens when you don’t support the financial rescue plan put forward by the Treasury Secretary. You either eat stew made out of your dog or your neighbor’s socks. Not exactly the Soup Plantation buffet, is it?”
Mr. Bush concluded by comparing the uncertainty of the rescue plan to what he sees as the alternative. “In conclusion, I’ll conclude,” he said. “And I’ll conclude this way: The choice we as Americans have before us is clear and it is simple. Well, not ‘we’ because I don’t have to worry about it, really. I have a lot of money. But you don’t. And that’s the point. If you don’t support this, you’ll have even less. You’ll have none. And that’s not a lot.”
