Why even have an economic bailout?

I'm by no means an economist, but doing this $700 billion bailout for the banking industry, Wall St., etc. makes no sense to me. These companies made bad decisions by their own judgment and now they don't have to pay the consequences. What good is freeing up credit with this bail out if they are just going to give credit to people who can't afford it again? The problem is that right now people are foregoing paying debt to pay for necessities. They're just perpetuating it and we'll be right back where we are in a couple of years.

The bailout should go to the tax payers. Based on the Census Bureau there are 350 million people in the US. If you divide the $700 billion for the bailout (which is coming out of taxpayers pockets anyways) that would give each taxpayer $2,000. That is $2K per person to pay back lenders for car loans, mortgages, school loans, credit cards, etc.

At this point even if half the people in the US used this money to pay off some debt our economy would start doing much better. It just seems to me that the government is trying to do the best thing for big business and not the people. Am I the only feeling this way?