House Rejects Bailout Package

Principled Stupidity

You have to admire people who live by the sword and then die by it. You just wish that they'd acknowledge the dying part. The House voted down the bailout package.

WASHINGTON — In a moment of historic import in the Capitol and on Wall Street, the House of Representatives voted on Monday to reject a $700 billion rescue of the financial industry. The vote came in stunning defiance of President Bush and Congressional leaders of both parties, who said the bailout was needed to prevent a widespread financial collapse.

The vote against the measure was 228 to 205, with 133 Republicans turning against President Bush to join 95 Democrats in opposition. The bill was backed by 140 Democrats and 65 Republicans.

Supporters vowed to try to bring the rescue package up again as soon as possible, perhaps late Wednesday or Thursday, but there were no definite plans to do so. A former Treasury Department official predicted that the administration would try to get another House vote before the end of the week, and with only “tiny tweaks” to the package, given the relative closeness of the vote.

Stock markets plunged as it appeared that the measure would go down to defeat, and kept slumping into the afternoon when that appearance became a reality. By late afternoon the Dow industrials had fallen more than 5 percent, and other indexes even more sharply. Oil prices fell steeply on fears of a global recession; investors bid up prices of Treasury securities and gold in a flight to safety.

The vote was a catastrophic political defeat for President Bush, who tried to muster national support for a recovery plan in a televised address last Wednesday, then lobbied wavering Republican legislators in intensely personal telephone calls on Monday morning.

“We put forth a plan that was big because we got a big problem,” the president said afterward. “And we’ll be working with members of Congress, leaders of Congress on the way forward. Our strategy is to continue to address this economic situation head on.”

I've hardly ever sided with George W. Bush on any issue, but this was a rare instance I could see the point. Even many of the Democrats saw the point. The Republicans who saw the point, knew it flew against their credo of small government and not spending up big deficits, but voted for it. That leaves the Republicans who simply said "no, it's socialism, and that's un-American".

I'd like to say, "For fuck's sake, you're playing with the worlds economy and most of the world is 'un-American' - as in not of the USA - so why let that get in the way f a good deed?"

I've been keeping a close eye on this because it augurs for the marketplace for films that I work in and this is a disaster. The last thing I need in my life now is a 'Great Depression II - The Return of the Hunger'. This is giving me the shits today, along side other aggravations in life.

Of course then these back-biting idiots start playing partisan politics with it, mostly because they ca, at other people's expense.

Immediately after the vote, many House members appeared stunned. Some Republicans blamed Ms. Pelosi for a speech before the vote that disdained President Bush’s economic policies, and did so, in the opinion of the speaker’s critics, in too partisan a way.

“Clearly, there was something lacking in the leadership here,” said Representative Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia.

Democrats, meanwhile, blamed the Republicans for not coming up with enough support for the measure on their side of the aisle.

Members of both parties, doing a quick political post-mortem, said those who voted no had encountered too much hostility for the bill among their constituents, and were worried that a vote in favor would be political suicide.

Get that? Instead of doing what's right for the country, and by extension the world economy, they chose to sit on their meal tickets - and blamed the other side for the failure.
This is actually worse than the Yankees not making the post-season.