Tornado Alley (PROG)

[ieddyi]

Yep ,much better to be a show pony like Barry and just sit around looking pretty

The house reps are trying to get a better deal passed. They want the govt to offer insurance for the bad loans that the companies who mismanaged would actually have to pay for.

A much better deal than the bailout and the taxpayers subsidizing poor management and greed

But, go ahead and reflexively criticize any action by McCain. Nah, there's no urgency here, it's just that if a deal doesn't get done the international markets will melt down on Monday. A foreign policy debate is much more important and Barry has all his talking point memorized and is afraid he will forget them

JUst like you criticized the reps for not passing added oversight of Fanny/Freddy in '05 when they controlled Congess, if you were fair, you'd criticize the dems now. THey control congress and can pass any bill they want. They'll load it up with porkm but are scared to lead and won't do squat w/o cover from the reps.

Congressional Democrats Show Us What Leadership Is All About

Hurricane Warning for Tomorrow's Financial Markets

Posted by: Blackhedd

Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 10:40PM

67 Comments

Published reports have it that Congress couldn't get a deal done on the Paulson bailout plan. Sketchy reports at mid-day said that Congressional leaders had the outlines of a plan in place, with a raft of what appeared to be largely extraneous changes to the structure of the deal.

Evidently those modifications were intended to give Congress a way to second-guess the progress and implementation of the bailout. Financial markets figured that half a loaf was better than nothing, and they finished the trading day with moderate gains.

But tonight, the news is that there's no deal after all.

Reliable information from Capitol Hill seems to have been blacked out for most of the day. The tenor of the published stories is that a small handful of Republicans in the House of Representatives are torpedoing progress.

My guess is that the Democrats, who are in total control of the proceedings, are well aware of both the critical need for this bailout, and also of the politically-inconvenient fact that the American people are disgusted and want no part of it whatsoever.

Consequently, it would make no political sense at all for the Democrats to pass the legislation on their own. They badly need a way to blame Republicans for it.

One supposes that the Democrats want the bailout to pass with just enough Republican support so they can call it a Republican bill that they were dragged into, kicking, screaming (and pork-barrelling) all the way.

That's regardless of the facts that the bailout is needed to stabilize financial markets in the near term, and also that expert opinion is steadily moving in support of the idea that the bailout actually will improve conditions in the real economy.

It's also regardless of the fact that the Democrats control both houses of Congress.

We're not talking about a filibustered vote in the US Senate here. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barney Frank are the key players in this saga. They can do anything they damned well please with this legislation, and they need approval from not a single Congressional Republican to do it.

For the Democrats to blame a few Republicans for the failure to act is a craven lack of leadership. The country gave these people control of Congress in 2006 expecting they would do a better job than the Republicans.

And this is what we get, instead.

At this hour, markets are open in the Far East, but the critical credit-markets in London are not yet open for Friday trade.

Hours ago, when New York trading ended, it appeared that money markets were under extreme stress but not at the edge of panic.

The Fed funds rate centered around 1.5% for much of the week, averaged below 1.2% last night. The Fed's target for this rate is 2%. There's a distinct possibility of an emergency cut in policy interest rates, as early as the wee hours of this morning.

I would also look for additional emergency measures such as expanded currency swap-lines with foreign central banks, before New York opens for trading, a mere ten hours from now.

This is a hurricane warning. There is heavy weather ahead in financial markets. We've made an awful lot of history in the past ten days. We may be about to make some more.

-Francis Cianfrocca

The Curious Incident of Reid and Pelosi In A Crisis

"Guys, Call Me If My Leadership Is Needed. Guys? Hello?"

Posted by: Dan McLaughlin

Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 10:32PM

4 Comments

Gregory: "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."

Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

In politics, actions speak louder than words, and inaction sometimes speaks even louder. With John McCain leaving the campaign trail to go to Washington to join the negotiations over the Paulson bailout bill, there's a fair debate about exactly how important his presence there is, as I will discuss below. But judging by the actions of everyone involved, there's no doubt that even his own Democratic colleagues recognize that Barack Obama is completely irrelevant to the process.

As I noted yesterday, nobody really wants to support the bailout, but the White House and many in both parties on Capitol Hill feel it's necessary, and will back it if and only if a consensus bipartisan deal can be put together. John McCain, of course, has made a career in Washington of being the man in the middle who holds the key to precisely such sorts of bipartisan compromises.

The Democrats' Congressional leadership has zigzagged repeatedly on whether they want or need that help in building a consensus. Wednesday morning, we were hearing that Harry Reid was alternately begging for McCain's help and claiming he already had it to press Republicans unhappy with the deal into supporting it:

Media reports indicate congressional Democrats and Republicans alike are anxiously looking to Sen. John McCain for cues on his stance on the financial bailout package. Stories suggest the GOP nominee's stance on the legislation could prove decisive to its passage. ABC World News, for example, reported McCain "may hold the fate of the $700 billion bailout proposal in his hands. Even with Vice President Dick Cheney lobbying hard for the bill today, top congressional Republicans say if McCain does not support the bill, it will likely die" and "Democratic leaders have told the White House a deal without McCain on board will mean no sale. They say they fear McCain will, quote, 'demagogue' the bill and Democrats on the campaign trail." Roll Call adds, "According to a Democratic aide familiar with the discussions," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told Treasury Secretary Paulson "this week that 'if McCain didn't come out for this thing and come out for it quickly, it was going to begin bleeding Republican votes.' Democrats 'have a very real concern that opposition [from McCain] is going to drive away potential Republican votes,' this aide said."

However, there are conflicting signs in the media on the level of McCain's support for the package. The AP reported McCain "hinted he might vote against" the bill yesterday, calling the price tag "staggering." However, The Hill reports Reid "announced" that McCain would support the package, saying last night, "I got some good news in the last hour or so ... it appears that Sen. McCain is going to come out for this."

More here.

McCain at this point was in the midst of negotiating with Obama a bland joint statement of the need for bipartisan consensus, without saying what it was they wanted consensus on. McCain had, shortly before the announcement of the Paulson plan last week, released his own bailout framework on Thursday the 19th (see here and here), which appeared to lean more in the direction of loans to shaky companies rather than purchases of their inventory, but hadn't firmly committed himself on the deal still being worked out between the White House and the Hill Democrats. But then Reid's call for help was echoed by a summons by Paulson, relayed through Lindsey Graham, that McCain's aid was needed:

Paulson then called, according to my sources, Senator Lindsey Graham, who is very close to John McCain, and told him: you've got to get the people in the McCain campaign, you've got to convince John McCain to give these Republicans some political cover. If you don't do that, this whole bailout plan is going to fail. So that's how, McCain, apparently, became involved.

That's the point at which McCain decided to "suspend" his campaign and return to Washington, even arguing that Friday night's debate in Mississippi should be postponed so as not to interfere with the negotiations in DC. After Obama refused to follow suit, Hill Democrats hastily scrambled to downplay McCain's importance. Barney Frank sneered that "McCain is Andy Kaufman in his Mighty Mouse costume - 'Here I Come to Save the Day,'" while Reid reversed course and said that neither McCain nor Obama would be helpful:

[I]t would not be helpful at this time to have them come back during these negotiations and risk injecting presidential politics into this process or distract important talks about the future of our nation's economy. If that changes, we will call upon them. We need leadership; not a campaign photo op.

Eventually President Bush invited both McCain and Obama to a joint meeting with both parties' Congressional leadership at the White House. The Democrats' insistence on McCain's unimportance didn't last any longer than Reid's original statement. Congressional Quarterly today reported that

McCain's unilateral decision to break off his campaign and return to Washington to push for action on a rescue plan scrambled the political world Wednesday but by Thursday was seen by some Democrats as a way to potentially help line up Republicans behind the final proposal.

Reid himself announced:

With the economic news only getting worse each day, I call on the President, Senator McCain and Congressional Republicans to join us to quickly get this done for American families.

In other words, Reid recognizes the basic reality: McCain is a player in this debate and needs to be a part of any resolution.

But what about Obama? In contrast to McCain's plan, Obama had released lists of general principles on the crisis, but no detailed plan. Obama told the press Wednesday that

what I've told the leadership in Congress is that, if I can be helpful, then I am prepared to be anywhere, anytime.

Neither Reid nor Pelosi has called for Obama to do anything; there has been no groundswell among Hill Democrats for Obama to get involved, and so far as I can tell, nobody is much discussing whether the plan being worked out does or does not satisfy Obama's "principles" or whether Obama's ultimate support or opposition will affect how they vote. And Beldar explains why that silence says everything about what Obama's own colleagues think of his usefulness in a crisis:

What's already abundantly clear in this crisis...without the need for any hindsight, is that Barack Obama has failed to lead.

Indeed, when the crisis engulfed them, those who've had the best first-hand opportunity since January 2005 to watch him try to do his job - his fellow senators, even the leaders of his own party who mouth the words about him being "the next President of the United States" and the hope of a new generation - didn't call a halt to everything and send out a plea for his personal presence in Washington. Their actions and in particular, this inaction, shows that they know in their hearts that Obama is no real leader. They know he's simply a well-cut, slick, but empty suit onto which the trappings of leadership have been projected. And when it comes to putting their own careers, their own modest places in history, on the line, they certainly didn't look to him for guidance.

The only reason for Obama's abrupt 180-degree pivot today was to provide his campaign and his party with a fig leaf: Now they can pretend that both his and McCain's presence and participation in Washington were essential to the striking of any deal. To do otherwise would be to cede the election to McCain outright.

Nevertheless: Except for the sole purpose of maintaining his campaign's dignity, Barack Obama is today the single most dispensable member of Congress.

Oh, well. At least they will get their gold coins with Obama's likeness on them. That's undoubtedly worth more than his leadership or his ideas.

http://www.redstate.com/diaries/redstate/2008/sep/25/the-curious-incident-of-reid-and-pelosi-in-a/