Either that, or the boy finally cried "wolf!" one too many times. Sorry for mixing my metaphors, but let's face it: had the Dubya administration not played the "fear and panic" cards as often as it has over the past 7+ years, maybe someone would have paid attention to Dubya this time when he said we were on the verge of financial meltdown if his Wall Street bailout didn't get passed.
Note that he's finally learned how to compromise, at least a little. Once he realized that the "no review by anyone at any time of anything" the Secretary of the Treasury would do with the 700 billion dollars [talk about your blank checks!--Ed.] was Dead On Arrival, he was willing to attach a few small strings to the money to get the legislation passed. Just not allowing bankruptcy judges to help homeowners rewrite their mortgages along less onerous lines. [Corporate socialism is OK by the GOP, but assisting individuals to keep their homes is unacceptable, evil socialism, I guess.--Ed.]
No one told the House GOP members, apparently. Partisan bickering is more important to them than salvaging the economic future of the country. Even though neither the breakdown of the votes nor the other facts support them, GOP House members are blaming the Democrats for the bill's failure. [George Orwell would love this.--Ed.]
Fully two-thirds of Republicans in the House voted against the bill, sending it to defeat by fewer than 30 overall. The Democrats voted for the bipartisan bill just as they'd agreed to do. Two-thirds of them supported it, even though many had to hold their noses while they did so.
The GOP representatives are also blaming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's "partisan rant" for the collapse of the bipartisan agreement to pass the bill. I listened to her speech. She ranted no such rant. All she did was point out--rightly--that the economic deregulation policies of the last 7+ years are to blame for the mess in which we now find ourselves. And that we'd better pass some regulations with teeth to keep it from happening again [or at least to keep it from happening until the next time we forget our history and re-deregulate to assuage the greed of Wall Street--Ed.].
Even if she had ranted a partisan rant, so what? Isn't the economic future of the country more important than such trivialities? Not to the GOP representatives, apparently, since they are the ones who scuttled the bill.
[Anybody notice the irony here? More Democrats than Republicans voted to support legislation proposed by a Republican Administration. Dare I hope that this split within the GOP foretells the end of the rabid right wing? Nah. Wouldn't be prudent.--Ed.]
Not that the bailout is such a great idea anyway. I'm none too keen on giving even more money to the people who screwed everything up to begin with. I'd like to propose an alternative plan: you want to save the economy? Take Dubya's tax rebate program of earlier this year and make it big enough to do some good. You're prepared to spend 700 billion dollars we don't have? If you can give it to Wall Street, how much better to give each and every legal American (all 305 million of us) 2.295 billion dollars apiece?
I'll bet we all could do some serious power shopping with that. Wal-Mart, beware!
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