House of Representatives, California Reps, Votes on Bailout

They say that credit is so tight now that small businesses can't get small loans to cover basic expenses such as payroll.  As a solution, the Federal government is going to take out a seven hundred billion dollar loan. 

The second bailout bill is the same as the first one, with more pork and tax breaks.

If you follow the links to the first roll call, you will be puzzled by the name of the bill:

To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide earnings assistance and tax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers, and for other purposes

This bill originated in the house. It was not a bill in itself, but a rather big rider attached to the earnings assistance bill. I wonder how much attention the firefighters received in the debate. The second bill originated in the Senate, and bears the more sensible name "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008."  (The name is sensible, the bill is not).

First vote:  Roll call 674, 9/29/08

Second vote:  Roll call 681, 10/3/08

I don't even understand the politics behind these events.  Bush calls for an emergency measure, and the Democrats ram it through?  Previous times Bush called for emergency measures, we got the Patriot Act and the Iraq War.  The act is not a liberal act, as it centralizes power and jeopardizes the Federal Governments ability to increase aid to the needy and shore up financially troubled relief programs, such as Medicaid and Medicare.  Neither is the measure popular with Americans. 

Links

Can the Bailout work?  Fat chance.

Bernanke's Hype, by David Henderson

Stop the Housing Bailout, a grass-roots website

A Vote against Rashness, by George Will

It Took Two Ingredients to Make this Financial Crisis, on Coyote Blog

More Comments on the Crash

Jeremy Siegel has hope the plan might work.  Some of the comments are great.  Who could say it better than Wisdom-seeker?

wisdom-seeker@sbcglobal.net - Monday, October 6, 2008, 3:35PM ET  

Siegel is "projecting" an enormous amount of wishful thinking into this "bailout". We have no assurances that anything he postulates will actually happen. The oversight process has no teeth. The people who are managing the "bailout" are the same cronies who messed the system up to begin with. And don't even get me started about his "30 percent / 40 percent / 50 percent" math... The stock market has fallen more after the plan was passed than it did when it was being debated -- those who want to use that as an argument should conclude that we needed more debate. The TRUE end result of this plan is that we will forcibly siphon a tremendous amount of intelligent capital out of the country -- the money that was smart enough to dodge all the bullets so far -- and make it buy Treasuries so that the idiots who got us into this mess can wreak more havoc. Because the $700B isn't coming from nowhere - someone has to buy Treasuries for them to have the money. And that money will be denied to all the other uses to which it might be put. I don't think Paulson has all the answers, or even the best answer, and I resent his trying to take my money to implement his B.S. plan.