I do not understand why those who’ve voted no should be labeled “irresponsible.” The senate evidently will not deign to take up this crisis legislation until Wednesday.  Meanwhile, even if you don’t reject the bill on philosophical grounds (see e.g., Dick Armey’s article on NRO today), there is massive room for improvement.  Why not take the time to try to improve it?

This was a terrible bill.  To take just a few particulars, why is there no reform of the government interventions that got us to this point in the first place?  Why aren’t Fannie and Freddie being wound down — even after we’ve now had to make explicit the implicit, disastrous government guarantee?  Why is Pelosi saying (as I noted in an earlier post) that the authority in the bill will allow the Treasury Department (perhaps soon an Obama Treasury Department) to take bad debt off the hands of mismanaged state and local governments?

Why don’t we have a firmer formula for how Paulson (or, again, an Obama Treasury Secretary) will determine the value of the toxic debt before the government starts throwing money at it.  Now, I’ve heard all the arguments about how, for the bailout to “work,” a premium above current value would have to be paid.  Even if I accept that as true for argument’s sake, however, are you telling me I am wrong to worry that this bill gives the Treasury Secretary unduly wide latitude to feed taxpayer money into businesses that should fail because they’ve been irresponsibly leveraged and utterly mismanaged?

Why does the government have to buy the securities?  If liquidity is the problem, why can’t it make money available for loan, taking back collateral, placing the risk on the bad actors rather than the taxpayers, and letting market set a reasonable price for the bad debt by auction and other conventional methods.  Most people will pay their mortgages so these “troubled assets” still have significant value.  And there are buyers out there.  The troubled entities are not selling at the price the market will bear because they (understandably) think they will get a wildly inflated price from the government — once again, perverting the market:  penalizing responsible actors, rewarding the bad actors who brought us to this point, and keeping those bad actors in business.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODUxMmI1MWRkNGY3NzEyZjFmZmY0MzBlNTY0Zjg2MTI=

The liberal dims, along with their handmaidens, the MSM, want you to beleive they are irresponsible.. They were actually the only responsible ones on capital hill today.

http://m.mippin.com/mip/prev/story.jsp?&id;=7&c;=-1&s;=4&pv;=0&sid;=219701&cat;=News I don’t blame John McCain for not rounding up enough Republican votes to get this bailout bill through the House of Representatives--he’s not a member of the House, he’s never held a leadership position and therefore doesn’t know how to whip votes and finally--well, uh--there is one tried and true method for getting members of Congress to vote aye and McCain opposes it: a sweetener, like say, funding for a bridge in their districts. That is one reason why we have earmarks. McCain is opposed to giving away baubles for the greater good.
I do blame McCain for his puerile histrionics and for dragging this issue--which should have been above partisanship--into presidential politics. Let’s make no mistake about it: his various gimmicks had absolutely nothing to do with the substance of the issue. He doesn’t know all that much about the substance of the issue. The gimmicks were a failed attempt to make it seem as if he had powers, and knowledge, he didn’t have. Clearly, he was in a more difficult position than Obama--the populist conservative wing of House Republicans was unwilling to take responsibility for the fruits of the deregulation that they promoted--and that might have required a more aggressive effort to move votes on his part, but the flailing about only confused Republicans (was he for, was he against?) and made matters worse.

LaPolitics Commune - 29 September 2008 10:05 PM

http://m.mippin.com/mip/prev/story.jsp?&id;=7&c;=-1&s;=4&pv;=0&sid;=219701&cat;=News I don’t blame John McCain for not rounding up enough Republican votes to get this bailout bill through the House of Representatives--he’s not a member of the House, he’s never held a leadership position and therefore doesn’t know how to whip votes and finally--well, uh--there is one tried and true method for getting members of Congress to vote aye and McCain opposes it: a sweetener, like say, funding for a bridge in their districts. That is one reason why we have earmarks. McCain is opposed to giving away baubles for the greater good.
I do blame McCain for his puerile histrionics and for dragging this issue--which should have been above partisanship--into presidential politics. Let’s make no mistake about it: his various gimmicks had absolutely nothing to do with the substance of the issue. He doesn’t know all that much about the substance of the issue. The gimmicks were a failed attempt to make it seem as if he had powers, and knowledge, he didn’t have. Clearly, he was in a more difficult position than Obama--the populist conservative wing of House Republicans was unwilling to take responsibility for the fruits of the deregulation that they promoted--and that might have required a more aggressive effort to move votes on his part, but the flailing about only confused Republicans (was he for, was he against?) and made matters worse.

Obama/Pelosi/Reid don’t need a single Republican vote to pass this. Why haven’t they been able to convince the MAJORITY Democrat Representatives to pass this?

LaPolitics Commune - 29 September 2008 10:05 PM

http://m.mippin.com/mip/prev/story.jsp?&id;=7&c;=-1&s;=4&pv;=0&sid;=219701&cat;=News I don’t blame John McCain for not rounding up enough Republican votes to get this bailout bill through the House of Representatives--he’s not a member of the House, he’s never held a leadership position and therefore doesn’t know how to whip votes and finally--well, uh--there is one tried and true method for getting members of Congress to vote aye and McCain opposes it: a sweetener, like say, funding for a bridge in their districts. That is one reason why we have earmarks. McCain is opposed to giving away baubles for the greater good.
I do blame McCain for his puerile histrionics and for dragging this issue--which should have been above partisanship--into presidential politics. Let’s make no mistake about it: his various gimmicks had absolutely nothing to do with the substance of the issue. He doesn’t know all that much about the substance of the issue. The gimmicks were a failed attempt to make it seem as if he had powers, and knowledge, he didn’t have. Clearly, he was in a more difficult position than Obama--the populist conservative wing of House Republicans was unwilling to take responsibility for the fruits of the deregulation that they promoted--and that might have required a more aggressive effort to move votes on his part, but the flailing about only confused Republicans (was he for, was he against?) and made matters worse.

Yet you ignore the obvious, blaming Pelosi for not securing the support of her own party.