To save the US economy - Republicans turn to a tribunus plebis??!

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Indeed. But the mortgages themselves are less of a problem than the derivatives based on them. An instrument so opaque and arcane as derivatives based on debt should have never allowed to get into the financial mainstream.

 

The Republicans had a majority in the House from '95-'07. In the Senate, they had a majority from '95-'01, and again from '03-'07. They had the Presidency from '01 through the present.

The claim that both parties share equal blame is therefore ludicrous.

Which isn't to say that the Democrats shouldn't be blamed. Such a statement would be nonsensical.

 

AMaster, no one said the Republicans tried to fix it, they said McCain tried to fix it. Remember, a lot of republicans still don't like McCain.

Also remember that wide party support of a bill when the party has a majority doesn't guarantee it will pass. Just look at the bail-out bill. The Democrats all seem to have been behind it, they have the majority in the House (by much more than they do in the Senate), yet they didn't pass the bill.

Finally, Amaster, I would agree with your statement if you could show Dem bills that would have fixed this but got killed by the Republicans. Just because you don't have a majority doesn't mean you don't share some responsability. Just look at how so many Dems are trying to blame the bail-out failure on the Republicans.

 

Without meaning to sound insulting or condescending or the like: what are you talking about?

I'm taking issue with the 'equal responsibility' bit, on the basis that power was not equally shared, and therefore responsibility is not equally shared. I'm really not clear what bearing any of your post has on that.

 

Actually, I think that they weren't fond of the bill, but were going to plug their nose and vote yes. Then Pelosi ripped on the Republicans, and they started thinking and realized that they didn't like the bill and voted against it. Perhaps they wanted a solution that didn't involve blaming them for everything...

So our corporate overlords, who no politician has the balls to stand up to, have reduced the demand for labour as the supply increases in an attempt to maximise their profits. As a result, more people need the money they were saving to buy food. This means that less money is being saved, and as a result, there is less money available to be lent. It sounds like a 700 billion dollar bandaid to cover a sucking chest wound...

 

What? The Dems voted 60/40 for it, and Republicans voted over 3 to 1 against it. How are the Dems NOT justified in blaming the Republicans?

 

No, many of them were not. Some of them have commented publicly that it was the voters back home, that their call-in lines "were jammed with calls," who wanted them to vote against it. Almost all of them are up for reelection just next month. Especially here in Texas, since almost every Texas Congressman voted against it.

 

Aparently there were so many emails coming in that it crashed their server or something.

AMaster, my point is that the Dems could have tried something at any time, but didn't. They could have backed or ressurected McCain's bill, but they didn't. They didn't even do anything when they had a majority in the Senate. Remember, the majority doesn't mean you own and completely control the group. Each party has ways to get things passed when they're out of 'power', and enough republicans would support a bill to undo what Clinton did to get it passed. Instead, when McCain proposed the same bill, they voted against it. That's why I assign them equal responsability.

DR, I hope you're being sarcastic. I'm not saying the Republicans had nothing to do with it, but if the Dems were really behind this, and if it were what was really needed, they could have passed it all by themselves without a single Republican vote for them.

 

You hit that on the head, Chandos. Given a seat in the House is a two-year post, every seat is up for election in five weeks (although many are not contested and some representatives are retiring).

I read an interesting breakdown (yesterday?) the vast majority of 'nay' votes came from hotly contested areas -- where the Representative has a real risk of losing their re-election. They voted against it for the exact reason you state. Those representatives who are very secure in their positions voted 'yea' by a large majority.

DR: 60/40 doesn't exactly show unity in the party either. It's clear both democrats and republicans saw a lot of liability in the issue.

AMaster: NOG basically hit my opinion as well. The lack of action on both sides was simply appalling. IMO, that both sides failed to take action implies both sides are at fault. Had there been attempts by democrats to fix the issue I would revise my "equal fault" opinion.

 

The Dems wanted the bill to be bi-partisan, of course, so that neither party could blame the other for the bailout. As I commented in an earlier post, it's all "politics." The Dems know it's unpopular.

 

Let me lay this out for you.

This was President Bush's bailout bill, first and foremost, originally written with the President's blessing by his treasury secretary Hank Paulson. It was Bush who wanted hasty passage of the FIRST version of this bill - so much so that he had a prime-time televised address to urge its passing - which nearly all Democrats were against. This bill was so unacceptable to both sides that it stood no chance of passage and both parties decided to cram in Washington and rework the bill. The same day Chris Dodd (Dem), with minority leader John Beohner at his side, announced that they had reached an essential agreement was the same day McCain decided to parachute into Washington and suspend his campaign, despite the fact that those drafting the revised bill begged him to do precisely the opposite, as the circus of the Presidential campaign would bring nothing constructive to the already-tense proceedings, and McCain had no involvement whatsoever in the proceedings up to that point and hadn't even been in Washington to conduct business as a Senator since April. With me so far?

At the President's request, Obama reluctantly returned to Washington to put his stamp on the bill as well. A joint press conference in the President's cabinet room was held with both candidates, majority and minority leaders and the President to discuss progress on the SECOND version. Despite McCain's insistence that he was needed for progress to occur, he didn't make a peep during the entire thing, and even when asked by Obama for his thoughts, got up and left. By most accounts on both sides, any work he'd done behind the scenes were a transparent attempt to take credit for whatever he could, a trick McCain has pulled more than once.

On the day of the floor vote, a consensus had indeed been built and enough votes had been promised from both parties to pass it. Nearly every news outlet was reporting that the bill was "expected to pass." More on the Dem side despite their fundamental disagreement with it, and less on the Republican side, despite it being a bill their own President and Presidential candidate demanded that they support (not that they should have supported it). Then Nancy Pelosi gives what is undoubtedly a partisan, but lame and milktoast speech (like all of her speeches), that was evidently so offensive to the sensitive souls on the Republican Study Committee (the biggest collection of wingnut partisans in government) that they claimed faux outrage and it was Pelosi's partisan fervor that overturned enough R votes to ensure failure. This despite the fact that the RNC had already produced a campaign ad the day before which was set to run in battleground states that blamed Democrats and Obama for the PASSAGE of this horrible, awful socialism ridden bill. The same day, McCain was jumping in front of every TV camera he could before the vote to take credit for "bringing the House together" and putting his stamp on the bill and blaming Obama for injecting politics into the proceedings (couldn't have waited till it passed, John?). The ad began airing the day after the bill failed, as it was too late to be pulled. In other words, the original intent by the House Republicans was just to provide enough Republican votes for the thing to pass BARELY so they could hang the bailout bill squarely on the Dems and Bush, freeing them up to distance themselves from Bush, now officially the most disapproved-of President in history, and wax patriotic about "standing for principle while the Liberals nationalized your future" or whatever (a strategy confirmed by several House Republicans). The problem is, they blew it - and just a few too many House Republicans voted against it, causing it to fail, and again, House Republicans have all but admitted to this. It is viewed by a majority of the public that the collapse can largely be blamed on the Republicans and, for once, the public is probably right about something.

Should more Dems have voted for a bill they were fundamentally against? Sure. Both parties were. This was a "put politics aside and do what must be done" moment. But when the chips were down, McCain and the House Republicans put melodrama and partisan BS first. They deserve far more than half the blame in this particular case, I'm sorry. Their electoral chances for the foreseeable future looked bleak as it is, this just cements the doom.

 

You really can't blame the Republicans for voting the way they did. For some of them it was a matter of principle, coupled with what the voters demanded. Quite frankly, I think that no one has sold this bill to the American public. In that sense, it was Bush's failure for not convincing the voters that the bill was needed, and the House leadership did not do much better in that regard either. In fact, the Democratic leadership has been more abysmal than even Bush in that regard.

 

Some of them, yes. Almost everyone was against it on both sides. But again - one party voted majority for it and the other party voted overwhelmingly against it. I fail to see how that's an equal share. If both parties had voted 60/40, both parties would have registered their displeasure while still swallowing an admittedly bitter pill for the good of the country. That didn't happen.

 

I partially agree with you DR. However, I believe the biggest failure of the bailout was the lack of communication with the average American -- people want to know why such an act is necessary and that their money is actually going to help the situation. The vast majority of America believes the bailout was going to give all the CEO's who got us in the rut the sky-high bonuses they unfairly want. Their hard earned money was to keep companies afloat that showed less discretion than drunk in a liquor store.

There was nothing from either party or the White House to adequately explain what was going on. Pathetic. So the people did exactly what they should do -- they lit up their representative's phone lines like a Christmas tree. And the Representative did what politicians always do when they see their careers flash before their eyes -- they voted the way the calls wanted them to.

Chandos hit it -- the politicians voted to save their jobs. Failure occured because politicians chose not to inform the public. Granted, the first version may have also failed if everyone understood it.

Edit: I'm too slow...take it away Chandos.... I also think more republicans voted against it because more of them are in tighter races than the incumbant democrats.

 

I can certainly agree with that, T2. One of the biggest problems I had with this whole thing was the hastiness of it all (the solution to irresponsibility is never more irresponsibility). If you don't take time to explain, there's bound to be confusion.

 

That's why I blame everyone (I'm non-partisan in that regard) -- although the lion's share of the blame falls on the White House. It was their plan, the majority of repsonsibility for communicating falls on them.

 

Personally, I take this as a sign that the bill was BS all along (from Bush's desk to Pelosi's) and in every form it took (including the current one). These politicians have the best economic advisors money and influence can buy (I'll bet at least) and know exactly how 'important' this bill really is. What do they do in light of this? Play politics as usual, with anyone at risk listening to his or her constituents and voting their way (instead of listening to the experts). If this bill would really have kept the nation out of a major financial crisis in which the rich would stand to loose a lot (in investments), they would have ignored the voice of the people and passed the bill anyway. Even if they don't get re-elected, they keep their fortunes in the stock-market and can always run again on the 'I voted for the bail-out' platform.

Basically, it looks to me like no one considered this to be important enough to really make sure it went through.

 

Or, they did not want us to know what was really in it. As T2 commented, people didn't want to get stuck paying for greedy CEO's and bailing out deadbeats who couldn't pay their mortgages because they made poor choices.

 

I personally think that the worst part of the original bill was the ACORN section.
This is a group that helped get us in thse position in the first place.

The bill from monday included this
TRANSFER OF A PERCENTAGE OF PROFITS.—
(1) DEPOSITS.—Not less than 20 percent of any profit realized on the sale of each troubled asset purchased under this Act shall be deposited as provided in paragraph (2).
(2) USE OF DEPOSITS.—Of the amount referred to in paragraph (1)—
(A) 65 percent shall be deposited into the Housing Trust Fund established under section 1338 of the Federal Housing Enterprises Regulatory Reform Act of 1992 (12 U.S.C. 4568); and
(B) 35 percent shall be deposited into the Capital Magnet Fund established under section 1339 of that Act (12 U.S.C. 4569).

It has now been replaced with
TRANSFER TO TREASURY.Revenues of, and proceeds from the sale of troubled assets purchased under this Act, or from the sale, exercise, or surrender of warrants or senior debt instruments acquired under section 113 shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt.

“Housing Trust Funds” have pretty consistently been utilized by the Democrats in the Senate/Congress for “grants” to (mainly) ACORN and other such groups to “educate and assist” minorities in “home ownership"
In plain english: the help people who aren't qualified to get a loan that they either can't afford or never intend to repay get one.

ACORN uses blackmail tactics to pressure companies into funding them
Just do a web search on acorns tactics
EDIT: decided to list a few on my own

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/sto...3B31D0-6AB7-4353-B8E7-91300F4DFF81}&dist=hppr

James Terry, Chief Public Advocate, Consumers Rights League:
"ACORN routinely says it will clean up its act. Yet, given its decade-long history of voter fraud, embezzlement, and misuses of taxpayer funds, ACORN's pattern of fraud can no longer be dismissed as a series of 'unfortunate events.'
"The problem of voter registration fraud raises serious questions for this committee, and the Consumers Rights League appreciates that the right questions are being asked.
"Here are the most important questions right now: We know about the thousands of potentially fraudulent voter registration cards turned in by ACORN and caught by officials. But given the size of ACORN's efforts and the fact that the abuses appear to be systemic, we believe it is fair to question how many more fraudulent registrations have not been discovered, Furthermore, as this mega organization with a decades long history of violating the law is turned to get out the vote efforts, we believe it is fair to question how many fraudulent registrations may lead to fraudulent votes or what other activities they are willing to undertake to influence the election.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/story/700310.html

TALLAHASSEE -- Two suspicious Seminole County voter registration cards became a flash point Wednesday in the Republican effort to suggest the community group ACORN is committing fraud in its historic Florida get-out-the vote efforts.

An ACORN spokesman said the group spotted what appeared to be forged registration cards weeks ago and fired a worker over them. Seminole's election chief, Mike Ertel, said he was still "tremendously concerned," but stopped well short of calling the incident "fraud." The Republican National Committee, though, levelled the accusation and blasted the housing and wage advocacy group in a nationwide conference call with reporters, saying this wasn't an isolated incident.

In Orange County, ACORN staffers submitted multiple, duplicate registrations on behalf of six separate voters this summer. One individual had 21 duplicate applications. Election Supervisor Bill Cowles and his staff protested, noting in a June memo that ACORN had been submitting sloppy forms as well.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=802043
http://www.epionline.org/news_detail.cfm?rid=171
http://www.kmbc.com/politics/10214492/detail.html
http://www.komonews.com/news/8729967.html

And guess who is in bed with them?
Thats right, the dems beloved leader the big O
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI=
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI=
http://www.plumbbobblog.com/?p=396
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/05/obamas_ties_to_acorn_more_subs.html