Reality: We are observing eight years of a raid on the U.S. Treasury and taxpayers' dollars. Republicans came to power in 2000 with control of the House, Senate and presidency. In 2000, the United States had a budget surplus and headed toward zeroing the national debt.

Bush will leave with a budget deficit of more than $400 billion and a national debt of more than $9 trillion.

Reality: Republicans have given us a war we cannot end easily, bank failures, massive deficits, poisoned toys (pet food and pharmaceuticals), housing crisis, foreclosures, high energy costs, inflation, torture and more. I forgot the Katrina-failure-to-act.

Reality: Republican mantra is low taxes on the rich and no regulatory oversight. Now they want corporate welfare for the rich.

Wall Street's adventures in fraud and financial manipulations started by making bad mortgages. Then packaging them into exotic financial instruments with AAA ratings. They then diced, sliced, repackaged and resold these bad instruments multiple times, producing $46 trillion in bad debt.

Reality: Republican administration wants to bail out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion. Treasury Secretary Paulson (ex-Goldman Sachs) wanted the authority to carry out the bailout without limitation or accountability to anyone. We need accountability, justice and reclaim those stolen money.

Economist Paul Krugman in a N.Y. Times Op-Ed called the bail out "cash for trash."

Ike never could have guessed that the military-industrial complex he warned us about would have gotten control of our government.

Allan Fuller

Benton