Right now, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson may be the most powerful person in America – and there’s a lot of discontent about that.

A large segment of the American public was not a big fan of that $700 billion bailout package, but amazingly, the Big Government Action still found a way to become Bigger Government Action very quickly.

It now appears to be at the level of Ginormous Government Action, to use the technical term.

Just think about it – in addition to the $700 billion bailout, there has been over $100 billion in loans for American International Group (AIG) and about $25 billion in assistance for auto makers (with more possibly on the way). Then, there’s talk of bailing out insurance companies, homeowners and who knows who else.

It's understandable that the structure of the bailout plan might need to change, given how quickly it was drafted and set into motion. But Paulson and his hand-picked administrator, fellow Goldman Sachs (GS) alumnus Neel Kashkari, have been able to make sweeping changes to the plan with very little in the way of oversight or questions.

Recall that when the bailout plan was originally constructed, its intent was to buy some of the ugliest-looking assets from banks in order to shore up their balance sheets, and give financial institutions overall the confidence to lend to each other. Thus, everyone hoped, the credit markets would thaw and the economy could start to recover.

But even before the bailout plan passed, Paulson and his folks decided that they wanted the government to take equity stakes in some financial institutions. It's been reported that they didn't say anything about the change of plans to Congress at the time because they didn't want to muck up passage of the bill.

Now, it’s migrated to insurance companies (which, to be fair, are also in the financial arena) and auto makers. The way things are going, companies in all industries should just try for handouts. What do they have to lose?

This change is surprising enough in itself, but it looks even worse because Paulson, who headed Goldman for a number of years, is in so tight with the guys he’s bailing out. These financial executives are his friends, and he has decided that the government will take stakes in these companies to help steady them.

Even though Congress beefed up the (initially nonexistent) oversight requirements for the bailout program, they might not be strong enough. Paulson and Kashkari should be accountable to somebody for some amount of oversight every time they make a major change in the bailout program. This is just too important to leave in the hands of one person – especially one so immersed in the old-boys club that helped bring about the crisis this plan is supposed to get us out of.

In a land where the Founding Fathers put in so many checks and balances on the different parts of government in order to stop any one from grabbing too much power, it's almost incredible to think that such an extraordinary set of events could be happening.

People were worried about "King Paulson" and sweeping powers when the bailout package was being constructed. But now that Paulson seems to be taking on even more powers than opponents of the plan had initially feared, people aren't really saying much. Maybe it's because everyone is watching the campaigns as Nov. 4 draws closer.

Or maybe it's that people feel it's inevitable no matter what they say, and have stopped trying to worry about it.

The old saying goes that it's easier to seek forgiveness than to ask permission. Paulson and Kashkari have ridden that philosophy to their strong advantage so far.

But even though there hasn’t been as much of an outcry as there was initially, they shouldn’t be surprised if it’s a slow burn.

The first indicator may be the election, and whether any legislators who voted for the bailout bill are ousted because of that vote. Then, over the next few months, we may see even more blowback. Americans may be a lot angrier than people in Washington realize.