It is said that hindsight is 20/20. And, passing the $700 billion dollar bailout is one vote that many Republicans wish they could take back. Not only have the TARP funds done little to alleviate the financial crisis, many economists believe government action may have prolonged the suffering.

Then, there is the fact that the vote opened the "Pandora's Box" of bailouts.

As Congress rushes to approve the "stimulus" package, they are rushing to raise the government's commitment to fixing the financial crisis to almost $10 trillion dollars—the value of nearly two-thirds of all production in the United States last year, reports Bloomberg News.

Yes, $9.7 trillion of taxpayer-backed funds.

It makes you think.

Just who is getting rich, and who is getting fleeced? Well, we know taxpayers are getting fleeced, but we don't know who is getting rich from these funds.

Why? Well, only a small percentage of these funds have actually been voted on. The rest are all programs created through the Fed and the FDIC—without voter approval or knowledge. To make matters worse, the Fed refuses to publicly name the recipients of billions and billions of public dollars.

What have we done?

“We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country,” Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan stated last week in the Senate. "Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose. How much from the FDIC? How much from TARP? When? Why?”

Welcome to what SC Governor Mark Sanford calls a 'savior-based economy.'