Bailout Plan Failure

The defeat of the bailout bill today in Congress was pretty much expected by yours truly. You can not dump $700 Billion on the backs of the American people and expect both parties to come to any consensus on it on the first round. Nancy Pelosi threw this bill to the floor without knowing if she had enough votes to pass it and that is shear incompetence. She trusted Republican leadershipt to get the votes needed on his side of the aisle and then she lambasted the bipartisanship effort by blaming Republican’s at the last minute in a floor speech before the vote?

Politics is a funny business and I’m thinking that the Democrats did not like the merits of the bill and this was not going to be a Republican slam dunk and it was possibly scuttled for political reasons. Pelosi delivered exactly 140 votes from Democrats to this bill which is what she promised the Republican leadership in the Congress. Republicans bailed on the bill once the vote started.

One of the reasons that both parties are not voting for this bill is the lack of judicial review and an omnipotence given to the Treasury Secretary. Our nation can not hand out $700 Billion for discretionary spending without knowing where the money is really going. Our government leaders should not back any blank check written out to Wall Street without being able to legally prosecute wrong doing if thing does go south!

Politically, this looks really bad for the Republican Party and John McCain who claimed he was “Suspending his campaign” to fix this issue. Then he prematurely injected into the media that the bill passed in a statement early today before the vote happened. You can’t fight the media on that point or for that matter John McCain himself. Politics is what it is and Republicans all over the media are bashing McCain and President Bush and their leadership faster than Democrats can. Representative Darrell Issa R-CA, on Chris Matthews Hardball slammed McCain and President Bush over and over again. Congressman Issa thinks there are better ways to do this and there probably is. The question has to be asked, what, how, and how soon?

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This situation will be fixed by the Congress, it just needs to be worded differently and more palatable to the members of Congress that have to get re-elected in five weeks. That is the politics of this situation in the nutshell. Holding your seat in the Congress is far more important than bailing out Wall Street and the American economy. A philosophy that more Republicans backed on this vote today than Democrats.

Anyone want to buy a used apple cart that my grandmother owned? It was only used once during the Great Depression. New tires, spinner hubcaps, new apples, updated with a GPS system that tells you how screwed you really are and where you are.

Papamoka