Posted by
Always To The Right on Monday, September 29, 2008 7:29:41 PM
Why not?
She tried a bipartisan bill and got nothing for it. What’s stopping her
from turning it into a Christmas tree for the left and passing it on a
strict party-line vote? Bush will sign it regardless and Senate
Republicans will be under tremendous pressure to decline a filibuster
with the Dow down 600 points today and god knows where tomorrow. This
is the flaw in the “if the majority thinks it’s so important, let them
pass it” approach: They will pass it, on their terms,
and they’ll point to Republicans like Gingrich and Paul Ryan and the
Journal — and Paulson and Bernanke, of course — who’ve acknowledged
this is an emergency to take credit for rescuing the economy. All they
have to do is wait a few days until the public’s good and terrified and
the polls on the bailout start to reverse. They’re reversing already.
A number of Republican House members and staff, along
with others who are plugged in, are telling me that Nancy Pelosi and
the Democrats will come back with a new bill that includes all the
left-wing stuff that was scrubbed from the bill that was defeated today
in the House.
As this scenario goes, the House Democrats need 218 votes, and they
have to pick up a number of black and Hispanic House members who jumped
ship because the Wall Street provisions, in their view, were too
benign. So things like the bankruptcy judges setting mortgage terms and
rates, the ACORN slush-fund spending, the union proxy for corporate
boards, stricter limits on executive compensation, and much larger
equity ownership of selling banks through warrants will all find itself
back in the new bill. Of course, this scenario will lose more
Republican votes. But insiders tell me President Bush will take
Secretary Paulson’s advice and sign that kind of legislation.
House Republicans weren’t willing to swallow a bitter pill today so
they’ll swallow a more bitter pill later this week. And guess what?
They’ll still get killed at the polls in November.
There’s no gain for McCain at the polls in doing so, admittedly,
but he’s the guy who preaches “country first.” Here’s his chance.
Update: This is day one.
The Dow closed the day down 777.68 points, or 6.89
percent, beating its previous record for an intraday drop of 721.56
points, set during the first trading day after the Sept. 11, 2001,
terror attacks. Still, in percentage terms, the decline remained well
below the more than 20 percent drops seen on Black Monday of October
1987 and the Depression.
“This is panic, and fear is running amok,” one trader told CNBC. “We
are in a classic financial meltdown, and it’s panic-based. We’re seeing
panic selling.”
Update: The wealth lost today on the market — just today — exceeds the cost of the bailout considerably.