The bailout plan was rejected in Congress Monday, and I was personally happy about it.

Ever since the government bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, I’ve wondered when the government was going to bail out “Main Street” (as us regular folk are apparently now called). What about the people locally who can’t pay their energy bills? Or the people who are falling behind on their mortgages?

The $700 billion bailout plan will do nothing to help them, besides really adding yet another thing for them to pay for.

The bill failed 228-205 with 133 Republicans and 95 Democrats opposing, a slap in the face to Bush who even made personal phone calls to legislators up until the minute of the vote. The legislator that represents us, Jim Oberstar (D), voted for the plan, but the state evened itself out with four voting for the bailout and four against.

Why are so many Americans drowning in debt, when the big Wall Street firms—many of whom knew this was coming— get handed the money to make everything “okay.” Well, I’m glad it failed. Maybe a few CEOs will lose their Mercedes.

The only people who won’t get anything out of this deal are the taxpayers. All we get is some kind of promise that it will make “everything better.” Then there are the threats that we will no longer be able to get car loans, credit cards or school loans. What difference does that make to the majority of Americans who already have terrible credit the way it is? In order for the bailout plan to work, there needs to be some kind of benefit for the people who will be paying for it.

By the way, what exactly is $700 billion? I’ve never seen a million, rarely had my hand on more than $1,000, let alone even understand what $700 billion is. According to msnbc.com, we have spent $653 billion dollars on the Iraq war so far— that’s $255 million per day or a little less than $1.8 billion a week. That being said, $700 billion is still an unfathomable amount of money.

Many of the legislators that voted against the bailout supposedly did so because they’re up for re-election in a month. Constituents made many phone calls to their legislators telling them not to vote for the bill. So does this mean the people who represent us only listen to us around election time?

Most likely, some kind of bailout plan will pass. But let’s say one never does. Should we run to the bank and take out our money? Will we be waiting in line for gas (like people in the south already are)? Should we make plans to save the tinfoil from our baked potatoes so we can have Christmas tree decorations?

And I thought the economy was in great shape. Doesn’t it feel like we were told that up until about yesterday? And then when the truth that we all knew already finally did come out, Bush stepped onto national TV and begged taxpayers to hand over $700 billion, not counting the bank bailouts that have already happened.

The bailout plan just doesn’t make sense to most people because we wonder why a bailout plan should be necessary in the first place.

Isn’t there someone out there that is supposed to be protecting us from these situations? Oh, that’s right. That person is called “the president.”

And we haven’t really had one of those for the past eight years.