House Rejects Financial Bailout Bill

By a vote of 225-208, the US House of Representatives voted down the “bipartisan” $700 billion rescue package for Wall Street. Just about everyone can take a family-sized portion of blame. That said, this is not a time to panic because some kind of bill will likely be passed before the week-end.

The White House came out of this looking as bad as it ever has. Mr. Bush wanted this bill because Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the nation needed it. Yet when the balloon went up, two-thirds of House Republicans voted against the president. Nor did the House Republican leadership shine at themoment of truth – they couldn’t deliver for their leader.

That leader of course is John McCain, who may well have lost the presidency in the last week. His grandstanding to “suspend” his campaign and his photo op stop at the White House on Thursday to seal the deal resulted in the deal blowing up. Monday morning with the cracks papered over, his people were cheering that he had been instrumental in getting the bill passed, only to see the bill fail.

The Democrats in the House covered themselves in whatever the opposite of glory might be. As the majority party it is ridiculous that the bill failed. Forty percent of the House Dems voted against their leaders. In a parliamentary system, this would have resulted in the resignation of the government and new elections in 3 or 4 weeks fought on the bailout issue. Sadly, America is encumbered with a presidential system that cannot respond to crises unless the people in power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue know what they are doing. Monday’s vote of no confidence illustrates just how little they know.

The phones were ringing on Capitol Hill, and the people hated this bill, telling their representatives to vote “nay.” This is one of the reasons this journal finds democracy inadequate at best. The people are too ignorant of what is at stake. The bill might have cost taxpayers $700 billion over several years -- the 777 point drop on the Dow Monday wiped out $1.3 trillion in a couple hours. Beyond that, small businesses won’t be getting lines of credit to buy inputs, ship outputs or pay staff. The bill was seen as a bailout of the fat cats rather than a dose of oil to keep the engine of the economy producing paychecks.

Now, the House has given its members the ability to go home and say, “I stopped the bill,” and then, turn around and vote for a slightly modified package that will be sold at home as “a much better deal.” With the credit markets frozen, Congress knows it has to pass something. By the week-end, they will.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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