The House Republicans blame their failure to pass the bailout bill on Mean Nancy Pelosi, and Barney Frank lets them have it:
The key bit, for those who don’t want to watch YouTube: “[T]hink about this. ‘Somebody hurt my feelings, so I will punish the country.’ That’s hardly plausible. And there are 12 Republican members who were ready to stand up for the economic interest of America, but not if anybody insulted them. I’ll make an offer. Give me those 12 people’s names and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them and tell them what wonderful people they are and maybe they’ll now think about the country.”
More like this, please.
Great. After all, it’s not like as chair of the house committee on financial services he should bear any blame for all of this.
What’s ironic is that evidence is emerging that Pelosi deliberately let this bill fail to embarrass McCain. The house majority whip, Jim Clyburn, didn’t drum up democratic votes as usual. Remember, about 33% of democrats in the house didn’t vote for this. Now who’s playing politics with the future of our country?
The thing I can’t believe is that you think one side is substantially different than the other. They’re politicians ! And with house elections every two years every vote is about getting re-elected and sadly not often enough about what’s best for the country.
If the House Republicans had raised some principled objection to the bill, that would be one thing. I’m not entirely sold on the need for a gigantic bailout package at all, and I could accept that there might be policy reasons to vote against it.
Standing up in front of the cameras and saying angrily that they couldn’t vote for the bill because Nancy Pelosi said mean things about George Bush, though, is infantile. Actually, as the parent of an infant, I think it’s beyond infantile– SteelyKid would be insulted by the comparison.
Barney Frank is absolutely right to call them out on this. I’m sure Jon Stewart will have a field day with it as well, and they deserve every bit of mockery they get.
I’m also not convinced we need this bailout package. In fact I urged my congressman not to vote for the bill. And I know that many of the republicans who voted no had serious and substantive concerns. However, my point was the following: Pelosi’s grandstanding and turning this into a big partisan issue was just as infantile as what you’re accusing the republicans of doing.
Frank is spot-on. This is a great example of why congress has such a low approval rating.
As far as I can tell, nobody has gotten up and said they were at fault. It’s been all about how much blame you can put on others. Disgraceful.
The Dow is way up. The bailout is a giant game of chicken. Let the guilty be deeply punished by the simple expedient of doing nothing. “Nothing” need not be administered, managed, overseen, budgeted, PERT-charted… “Nothing” is idiot-proof (unless the idiots want to get in on it).
Congresscritters are clueless, incompetent, and corrupt. Congresscritters are confluences of overwhelming ignorance with overweening arrogance. What does one do with quota diversity hires to minimize damage within a company? One puts them in management and hopes for insubordination.
Oh, please, give me a friggin’ break. Lots of House Republicans raised principled objections to the bill (including my very own Representative, who happens to be a Republican)–as did several House Democrats too. You’re neglecting that to focus on a little whining.
As for Pelosi, well, you can make fun of Republicans using her speech as an excuse and saying that some Republicans with lukewarm support may have been turned off enough by her rhetoric to change their minds, but it’s dumb politics to make a speech like that when looking for bipartisan support for a measure whose passage is in serious doubt and hangs by a tiny thread. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Unless, of course, Pelosi wanted the bill to fail. Then it would be smart politics. Take your pick.
In any case, it may be whining to have blamed the failure to pass the bill on Pelosi’s speech, but it’s entirely reasonable to point out that her rhetoric sure didn’t help foster the bipartisan support she claimed to be looking for. Remember, the bill was unpopular politically, and most Representatives were being deluged by calls from their constituents telling them not to vote for it–a mere five weeks before the election. All they were looking for was an excuse–any excuse–not to vote for it, and damned if Pelosi didn’t give it to a few of them.
Frank has clearly been in the pocket of the mortgage industry (along with Dodd and a host of others) for some time now. It was his idea to raise conforming loan limits and push Fannie and Freddie closer to bankruptcy. Frank should be ashamed at himself for carrying water for another blatant half-baked executive branch power grab. Fool me once, and all that.
This is the biggest example in my lifetime, so far, of why I consider myself an independent– at the moment, I have nothing, and I mean nothing, but contempt for Congress, right now.
All of them. I cannot ever imagine declaring that my interests converge with any of those fools.
Yes, Republicans are being childish if they’re blaming the bill failure on Pelosi, but Pelosi is equally childish by launching into that tirade in the first place. I could quote chapter and verse about how the Democrats had as big a hand in this debacle as the Republicans, but why bother? If a Republican had had the opportunity to do something that overpoweringly stupid, well, he probably would have, and he’d be getting all the full-throated scorn that the Democrats could muster– Pelosi can take hers; she deserves it.
I’m also not particularly interested in conspiracy theories about Pelosi letting the bill fail to embarass McCain. What I’m interested in is why, if Bush, Bernanke, Paulson, and Pelosi are all screaming at the top of their lungs that this needs to be done, why the Hell did the Democrats have 95 no votes?
Either Pelosi is unable or unwilling to deliver the votes needed for passage, and then has the incredible gall to blame the Republicans for the bill failing to pass? Has it escaped the Democrat’s notice that they have fucking majority? Were they planning to use it? Ever? Were you yourself not complaining about the Democrats’ failure to exercise their full Congressional majority powers a few months ago? Are they afraid Bush is going to veto the bill he’s been begging for?
Nothing you say about the Republicans is wrong. Using Pelosi’s speech as their excuse is stupid and infantile. But Pelosi’s speech itself was stupid and infantile. And Pelosi’s inability to actually get enough support to pass a bill falls below pathetic and into the realm of contemptuous ineffectivity. We’ve got Obey calling Boehner “too weak” to get support from the Republican side, while Pelosi is sitting there with a 12-vote deficit and 95 Democrat nays? Do Obey and Frank think I can’t fucking count?!
I like to think I’m passed the point in my life where I get worked up into a lather over the politics of the day. Frankly, I hate being that way, and that guy. But sweet Jesus Christ, these boneheads– and I mean every goddammed one of them– are trying my patience. Along with every sad attempt to push blame to one side or the other.
Obey: “Boehner is too weak to get the Republicans to vote for the bill! Nyah-nyah.”
Pelosi: “I want Republican support! But first, I will heap scorn and derision on them in public! And then I will fail to deliver enough of my own votes, so that the Republicans are necessary!”
Boehner: “Boo-hoo! Our feelings are hurt! Screw you guys, we’re going home!”
Frank: “Omigod, the Republicans killed the bill!”
Novak: “You have a majority, Democrats! You wanted it! You demanded it! We gave it to you! You claimed it was a mandate! Now get back in session and USE IT!”
Frank is spot-on.
Frank is a major reason why we’re in this mess in the first place! Thanks for nothing Barney Frank.
Exaggerate? EXAGGERATE?
PS: John Novak hit the nail on the head.
My brother used to say about people like this: “If they were on People’s Court, Wapner would tell Rusty to take them out back and slap the s**t out of them.”
There is plenty of blame to go around, but it is interesting to note that today Republicans have been backing away from the “fault lies with Pelosi’s speech” cop-out. There are two indicators about why so many republicans voted as they did:
1) Their leadership told them “if you feel safe in the coming election, vote as you want. if you are challenged, vote your conscience.”
2) It’s come out that Newt Gingrich was lobbying hard against the bill, right to the last minute.
As I said, no word on my Dems’ lack of support: I’m guessing congenital lack of spines in voicing objections prior to the vote.
If I had any faith that there would be some intelligent, reasoned, conversation among the leaders on this issue, I would feel a little better. I have a feeling my dog will solve the Riemann Hypothesis question before that happens.
Random points:
1) What I’ve read of Pelosi’s speech is pretty weak tea, as partisan broadsides go. If that’s all it takes to give significant numbers of Republicans the vapors, I don’t know how they got a reputation as being tough guys on national security.
2) I’m sure that nobody on the Republican side made any speeches that were anything other than nobly bipartisan and conciliatory. These speeches are generally made to a mostly empty chamber, for the benefit of pundits, political junkies, and shut-ins who can’t reach the remote to switch away from C-SPAN. They’re an opportunity to grandstand for an audience at home, and everybody involved knows it.
3) This was a compromise bill. If the Democrats were going to pass a bill on a party-line vote, I’d hope they would have the sense to take a page from the Republican playbook and not invite anybody from the other party to help draft it. As it was, it was a hodge-podge designed in an attempt to get support from both parties, meaning it would lose some members of each.
The Republican leadership signed on to this bill, and promised to deliver a certain number of votes in exchange for a hand in writing the thing. They couldn’t or wouldn’t deliver on their promise, and resorted to a desperately silly excuse afterwards.
I’m not a huge Democratic partisan– you’ll never hear me refer to the Democratic Party as “we.” But the modern Republican party is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, and I have absolutely no sympathy for them.
As Chad notes, this was a compromise bill. The deal and premise the entire time was that each party needed to muster majority support (100 GOP votes out of 198 possible) to demonstrate bipartisanship and prevent after-the-fact finger pointing. There were things in the bill that neither side liked, after all.
The Democrats came through with extra cushion, 60% of their caucus. The Republicans utterly failed to deliver the votes they believed they had as late as yesterday morning).
As far as I’m concerned, the failure by Republicans to live up to their end of the bargain gives the Democrats free rein to pass a Democratic bill. I agree with John when he says the Democrats have the majority, so they should use it. Use it to layer on much more significant oversight regulations and assistance to “Main Street,” as the term goes.
Fuck it.
If the Democrats are serious, let them stop whining, hold a re-vote, and pass the damn thing. Let them re-write the bill so they like it more and pass that. Then when the Republicans whine later, they won’t have a leg to stand on.
(I, however, as a non-Republican, will feel fully empowered to bitch if they pass something I don’t like.)
But until they actually do something, they’re entitle to nothing but my scorn. Moreso, because they are the majority party and they know Bush isn’t going to veto it.
I remain filled with blistering contempt for all 535 of them, along with anyone who tries to tell me that their team is all cool while other team is all bad.
Totally agreed. Inaction at this point is absurd. They have all the green light they need.
If the Democrats are serious, let them stop whining, hold a re-vote, and pass the damn thing. Let them re-write the bill so they like it more and pass that. Then when the Republicans whine later, they won’t have a leg to stand on.
Absolutely.
They tried to do the right thing, and were rebuffed. At this point, I’d be perfectly happy to see them re-write the bill to move it signficantly leftward, and pass it on a party-line vote.
The Democrats needed to at least try to bring the Republicans along. If the GOP is going to behave like a bunch of spoiled children, though, they deserve to be shut out of the process.
And if they write a dumb law just because the Republicans “let them,” rest assured I will maintain my blistering scorn. If they write something that screws us five years down the road, I will lampoon them for it then.
One of the joys of the otherwise lonely life of the non-aligned is that I get to whomp on people based on results, not the trivial politics of the day.
But then again, weeks like this one remind me why I can’t believe that any of those people are acting with my benefits in mind– even in the midst of a crisis, it’s hard to find someone more interested in fixing the damned problem than in playing political games, keeping score, counting coup, and trying to embarass the other guy.
They sicken me.
Not half of them. All of them.
While I rather like the idea of passing something on a party-line vote, there are two points to consider…
1) You actually CAN’T pass something like this on a strict party-line vote in the Senate. Basically it takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster and the GOP WILL filibuster anything they haven’t signed off on.
2) It also takes a two-thirds vote to override a veto. And Bush WILL veto anything HE hasn’t signed off on.
Passing a party-line bill through the House DOES have some potential advantages in terms of increasing the bargaining power of the Senate Dems (and, if it’s a politically appealing bill, in terms of setting up a campaign issue), but there really isn’t much of a chance that a mostly party-line bill will really become law.
Chad –
The formatting of your page is all screwed up when I view it on IE 6 on Windows XP. I was just at Ed Brayton’s page and it was fine, but I came to yours (as I did his) from the sb home page headlines and the formatting is gone completely. Your text is disappearing off the right-hand edge of the screen. Is anyone else seeing this same thing?
OTOH, I can’t see any of those annoying ads that hang out (sometimes literally) in the right column, so maybe this is a feature, not a bug?!
Addendum:
When I come to your blog by clicking on the blogroll on the sb home page, your formatting is fine, but when I clicked on comments to come here and mention this, the formatting went to hell again! I think it’s just this one particular blog. Your other blogs seem to format fine.
That’s just what you get for using IE 6…
The formatting is hosed for just this post, under just that one browser (it looks fine in Firefox and Opera). I have no idea what’s going on, but I’ll bring it to the attention of the relevant people.
Michael, #17,
I doubt very much the Senate would filibuster this, unless it were egregiously tilted one way ro the other. Likewise, I doubt Bush would veto it. Posturing aside, this actually is important.
In a less frothy– but still angry at the entire Congress– vein, consider The Monkey Cage which tells a simple story, backed up with analysis:
1) Rightwingers don’t want the bill for ideological reasons; the more rightward, the less likely the vote (generally because it’s intervention, and apparently a deeper recession or depression is preferable to intervention)
2) Leftwingers don’t want the bill for ideological reasons; the more leftward, the less likely the vote (generally because it doesn’t help homeowners directly, and apparently a recession or depression that nails everyone is preferable)
3) Legislators in weak districts don’t want it because their constituents might vote them out. (To which I counter, ain’t no one gettin’ re-elected in 2010 if the economy completely tanks.)
Now, Monkey Cage being Monkey Cage, they’re not so much stating an opinion as they are stating the results of impromptu research and congressional modelling. The message in that to me is that the ability of Congress to ram this thing to left in order to get passage on a party vote isn’t as high as it might seem, because doing so will bleed Republicans, and there just might not be enough strong Democrat seats to cover it. (Maybe there are, I don’t know; but this morning’s Time articles are telling me the bill is polling heavily, heavily, heavily against among the voters.) For that reason alone, the Democrats do want some measure of cover, here.
Which is what really makes the present round of grab-ass bullshit so completely intolerable. When I said these people weren’t voting with my best interests at heart, I meant exactly that, and I was right– these people are not voting the welfare of the country. They are nakedly, cynically voting their re-election chances in the fall, or their ideology, and the health of the economy in crisis be damned.
This makes Pelosi stupid for launching partisan attacks when she wants– and isn’t sure if she needs– bipartisan support. She’s stupid, in other words, for giving Republicans an excuse to be stupid. This makes Republicans stupid for rising to the bait, for taking the chance to be stupid.
A pox on all of them.
Chad, I was completely delighted with your epithet “a wretched hive of scum and villainy” – its even better than “a bottomless pit of depravity”, my favorite upto now
Chad –
Thanks for looking into the formatting thing. It looks fine today. I agree with you about IE6 (and Microsoft in general). Unfortunately, I have no choice in the browser I use at work!
I’m waiting for the business world to catch up with the rest of us. I’m convinced it’s coming. I’m just not convinced that it will be in my lifetime!