Financial Bailout Plan #2

[Bev in B'ville]

This plan was submitted to the Republican Study Committee (from what I understand a necessary preliminary step to introducing it to the house for consideration). You can view it here.

 

Lynn Westmoreland (a Georgia rep) flew back to Atlanta last night and explained on the local radio that this was an alternative bill they tried to get Nancy Pelosi to recognize (last Friday) so that it could be debated on the floor as an alternative to the other bill that so many were unhappy with. She would not, thinking that she had yesterday's bill in the bag.

 

I look forward to hearing comments on this bill by those who are economic savy. This is touted as a "workout" not a "bailout" and supposedly has a lot of support (on both sides of the aisle).

[Holly IN]

Didn't you hear what Nancy did? She basically told her people to vote no on the bill. Also did you hear her speech before the vote? It was awful. They showed it last night on tv what she said (the little snippet that prevented the vote). She is at fault for the no votes on her side as well as the republicans. It is a political ploy at this point in my opinion. She wants to manipulate the elections by her actions in the room before the vote.

 

Holly

[Bev in B'ville]

I was interested to see that more democratics voted no to the bill (~95) than republicans who voted yes (~64).

 

I truly don't understand her purpose in making that speech. She is either very astute and knew by making this speech she would alienate people who would then vote no because of it (and she could blame the republicans for not passing the bill); or, she is completely naive and made a very partisan speech expecting everyone to ignore her diatribe before the vote.

 

I really like this second plan much better than the first. Less government involvement in the marketplace and better for taxpayers.

[hsmamainva]

Nancy Pelosi didn't tell her people to vote no. 2/3rds of democrats voted for the bill.

 

What she did was to basically stick her tongue out at the republicans, just before the final vote. (Totally uncalled for -- she could have done that AFTER the vote)

 

I'll cut and paste some of her speech here -- the link for the rest is:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/washington/30pelositranscript.html

 

.....

 

Madam speaker, when was the last time anyone ever asked you for $700 billion? It’s a staggering figure. And many questions have arisen from that request. And we have been hearing, I think, a very informed debate on all sides — of — of this issue here today. I’m proud of the debate.

 

$700 billion. A staggering number. But only a part of the cost of the failed Bush economic policies to our country. Policies that were built on budget recklessness. When President Bush took office, he inherited President Clinton’s surpluses — four years in a row, budget surpluses, on a trajectory of $5.6 trillion in surplus. And with his reckless economic policies, within two years, he had turned that around.

 

And now eight years later, the foundation of that fiscal irresponsibility, combined with an anything goes economic policy, has taken us to where we are today. They claim to be free market advocates, when it’s really an anything goes mentality. No regulation, no supervision, no discipline. And if you fail, you will have a golden parachute, and the taxpayer will bail you out.

 

Those days are over. The party is over in that respect. Democrats believe in a free market. We know that it can create jobs, it can create wealth, it can create many good things in our economy. But in this case, in its unbridled form, as encouraged, supported, by the Republicans — some in the Republican Party, not all — it has created not jobs, not capital, it has created chaos.

 

And it is that chaos that the secretary of the Treasury and the chairman of the Fed came to see us just about a week and a half ago — seems like an eternity, doesn’t it, so much has happened, the news was so bad. They described a very, very dismal situation. A dismal situation describing the state of our economy, the fragility of our financial institutions and the instability of our markets, our equity markets, our credit markets, our bond market.

 

And here we were listening to people who knew of what they spoke. Secretary of the Treasury brings long credentials and knowledge of the markets. More fearful, though, to me, more scary, was the statement — were the statements of Chairman Bernanke [ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve], because Chairman Bernanke is probably one of the foremost authorities in America on the subject of the Great Depression. I don’t know what was so great about the Depression, but that’s the name they give it. And we heard the secretary and the chairman tell us that this was a once in a hundred year phenomenon, this fiscal crisis was so drastic. Certainly once in 50 years, probably once in a hundred years.

 

And how did it sneak up on us? So silently, almost on little cat feet. That they would come in on that day — and they didn’t actually ask for the money, that much money that night. It took two days until we saw the legislation that they were proposing to help calm the markets. And it was on that day that we learned of a $700 billion request.