‘Step to right terrible wrong’

Beloit Daily News OPINION – While politicians treat our current economic situation as a game in which to score points, for retirees it is the difference between a bright future or wondering how we will survive.

Retirement plans we paid into all our working lives are being undermined. For public employees, the legislators did not invest our retirement funds but rather used them to pay for pet projects. Private employees’ funds were gambled away by the banks.

People saw their homes as a secure investment that could provide for their life in retirement. But, the financial institutions gambled with the housing market, producing first a bubble and then a collapse. Now their homes will be snatched away from them or are of much less value.

Legislators who used our retirement funds for other purposes should now make the hard, but responsible decision to replace that money, but some politicians want to end retirement programs and destroy Social Security. Wall Street banks got us into this economic mess but want to foreclose on tens of thousands of homes.

After the Depression we put in place regulations that would prevent the financial institutions and corporations from gambling with our money. These protections were quietly removed as lobbyists for the financial institutions and large corporations wined and dined our legislators.

Those who cooperated with these schemes to take the money that we thought was being safely invested must be held accountable for their failure to do their job.

Rep. Tammy Baldwin introduced a resolution in Congress (HCR 85), calling on the Justice Department to oppose any deal that includes immunity for the big Wall Street banks. That is a first step in righting this terrible wrong. We need to support Rep. Baldwin as she attempts to insure that we can once again know that our retirements are safe.

Letter to the Editors of Beloit Daily News from Robert Fizzell, Beloit.

• Check out the Letter to the Editor in Beloit Daily News on @TammyBaldwinWI's move to block immunity for banks: