# House and Senate pass bailout bill **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 3, 2008, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/house-and-senate-pass-bailout-bill/466352 "2008-10-03T18:11:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/house-and-senate-pass-bailout-bill/466352/41 "2008-10-04T20:26:04Z")
**Oy!,** I do understand and have a lot of empathy for the “between the devil and the deep blue sea” position you and a lot of other people are in. I know students who are having trouble affording to get to school because of gas prices, and several people who are stuck in the middle of real estate transactions. ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/house-and-senate-pass-bailout-bill/466352/42 "2008-10-04T23:05:46Z")
Yeah, it sucks. This bill violates the hell out of my principles; I’m a Kucinich liberal, and normally I’d be screaming against it. But being in a situation where I personally desperately needed it to be passed (and am not at all assured that its passing will help me out) made me realize that my situation can not be particularly unusual, and that therefore this really did need to be done. That in turn led me to the insight that, like most pork barrel projects, when you actually look at the meat of them, there is actual possible merit in doing it. Since we’re human beings and thus really, really bad in predicting the consequences of our actions, the best we can do is to take our best shot and hope things work out all right. I honestly think most of Congress were voting in good faith here. They may be wrong, but they were being sincere about it. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/house-and-senate-pass-bailout-bill/466352/43 "2008-10-04T23:47:55Z")
A couple economists are on CNN talking about the bill. They think it was a horrible mistake . They should have forced the regulation now ,before they gave the money away. Paulson says give me the money now and we can deal with rules to prevent it from happening again later. They wont. We had some power over them and could have done some good for the future. They screamed panic, played the fear card and got away with it. This bill does practically nothing for the middle and lower classes. It does nothing to prevent the problem from coming back ,assuming it does some good and makes it go away. The foreclosures are still there coming to get us. ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/house-and-senate-pass-bailout-bill/466352/44 "2008-10-05T02:08:35Z")
Well, **gonzo** , all I can say is that we can hope for better things with a Democratic congress and a President Obama. Unfortunately, we can’t promise them. Obama’s a moderate, Clintonesque guy. The best things you can say about him are that he’s highly intelligent and knowledgeable, his natural bent is toward the left, and he’s one hell of a lot better than the alternative. ---
**Author:** ![Monocracy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monocracy/32/4493_2.png) [@Monocracy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monocracy)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/house-and-senate-pass-bailout-bill/466352/45 "2008-10-05T16:00:16Z")
This is great. Our government is already in the red for $600 billion a year, and both Presidential candidates promise to cut taxes. Now we’re forking out another $700 billion (no, wait, let’s make it $800 billion … it’s only money). It would be as if i were deep in debt with more bills than paychecks, abd decided to cut my hours at work to take more vacations. I have a feeling that this wanton creation of money is going to have disatrous results. So… can i buy gold and foreign currency on AmeriTrade? I knew i should have done it years ago when Bush first cut taxes, but i didn’t have much for savings back then. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/house-and-senate-pass-bailout-bill/466352/46 "2008-10-05T16:21:37Z")
> [@Sarahfeena](#): > > Not to mention stopping the greed and corruption in the government. Obama is running on the “change” platform, himself, which I might be a little more inclined to believe if he ever lifted one tiny finger against corruption when he was a politician in what is probably the most corrupt city in one of the most corrupt states in the union. Only one tiny finger would sway you? Oh goody! > [@](#): > > [Judge Him by His Laws](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010303303.html) > > . . . > > [Obama] played **a major role** in passing many other bills, including the state’s first earned-income tax credit to help the working poor and **the first ethics and campaign finance law in 25 years (a law a Post story said made Illinois “one of the best in the nation on campaign finance disclosure”)**. Obama’s commitment to ethics continued in the U.S. Senate, where he co-authored the new lobbying reform law that, among its hard-to-sell provisions, requires lawmakers to disclose the names of lobbyists who “bundle” contributions for them. > > Taken together, these accomplishments demonstrate that Obama has what Dillard, the Republican state senator, calls a “unique” ability “to deal with extremely complex issues, to reach across the aisle and to deal with diverse people.” **In other words, Obama’s campaign claim that he can persuade us to rise above what divides us is not just rhetoric.** > > . . . > [@](#): > > [Obama prods Jones to pass ethics law](http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1169484,obamajones091708.article) > > September 18, 2008 > > **Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on Wednesday phoned his political mentor, Illinois Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago), to encourage him to quickly pass state ethics legislation** that runs the risk of dying if action isn’t taken soon. > > “Senator Obama called Senator Jones today to offer his strong support for the ethics reforms pending before the Senate and urged him to pass them at the earliest possible opportunity,” Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said. > > . . . > > Good-government activists and some elected officials reacted by publicly asking Obama to intercede with Jones. > > Their cries put Obama in a trickbag. If Obama didn’t talk to Jones, he risked being labeled a hypocrite because **passing ethics bills in Springfield and Washington are among his major accomplishments.** > > . . . So that’s at least two “tiny fingers”. I’m thrilled that you’ll now believe he’s serious about his “change” platform! ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/house-and-senate-pass-bailout-bill/466352/47 "2008-10-05T19:33:33Z")
> [@Shayna](#): > > Only one tiny finger would sway you? Oh goody! So that’s at least two “tiny fingers”. I’m thrilled that you’ll now believe he’s serious about his “change” platform! I wonder if you are aware that Obama’s friend Emil Jones regularly hijacked bills that others had worked on for years, handed them to Obama in order to allow him to get the credit…including the bills you mention here. [Here’s](http://www.houstonpress.com/2008-02-28/news/barack-obama-screamed-at-me/1) a cite for you. > [@](#): > > Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills. > > “I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen,” State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. "Barack didn’t have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit. > > “I don’t consider it bill jacking,” Hendon told me. “But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book.” > > During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama’s stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law — including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced. > > It was a stunning achievement that started him on the path of national politics — and he couldn’t have done it without Jones. So, your examples don’t impress me all that much. That campaign finance bill was already well on its way, Barack Obama or no, so I’m not all that impressed by his sponsorship of it. And your second example was from September 18 of THIS YEAR? Oh, sure, that’s a great example of his long career fighting corruption! If Obama wanted to impress me with his committment in this area, he might have started with refraining from endorsing Todd Stroger in his controversial run for President of Cook County Board of Commissioners. You folks who don’t live in Chicago may not have a clear picture of how the machine runs here, but [here](http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_16_60/ai_n28028562) is a cite that will give you a little bit of an idea. Cook County and the City of Chicago are incredibly corrupt, and time after time, Obama has endorsed these machine politicians for his own political ends. Color me unimpressed. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/house-and-senate-pass-bailout-bill/466352/48 "2008-10-05T22:21:09Z")
Ah, so you didn’t really mean it when you said you’d “be a little more inclined to believe if he ever lifted one tiny finger against corruption.” Gotcha ya. I also take issue with the crybabies who appear to be jealous that they couldn’t accomplish closure on bills on some of these issues that Barack Obama was then successful in negotiating into law. If you actually read the first link I provided, you’ll see that at the time Obama took on the Death Penalty legislation, **nobody wanted it**. Nobody. So clearly whatever work had been done previously, wasn’t even the slightest bit effective. Yet everyone acknowledges Obama’s skill at bringing everyone to the table and actually **getting it done**. > [@](#): > > . . . but the bill itself aroused immediate opposition. There were Republicans who were automatically tough on crime and Democrats who feared being thought soft on crime. There were death penalty abolitionists, some of whom worried that Obama’s bill, by preventing the execution of innocents, would deprive them of their best argument. Vigorous opposition came from the police, too many of whom had become accustomed to using muscle to “solve” crimes. And the incoming governor, Rod Blagojevich, announced that he was against it. > > Obama had his work cut out for him. . . The allegation that these whiners want to characterize this as Obama simply running the ball into the end zone from the 1 yard line after they did all the hard work, smacks of envy, and looks to me to be a flat out lie. I’d hardly characterize a bill that **nobody wanted** , and that everyone was vocally opposing, as sitting at the 1 yard line at the time. > [@](#): > > . . . > > “I thought the prosecutors and law enforcement would kill it,” said Peter Baroni, who was then a Republican aide to the Illinois Senate’s judiciary committee.\*\* “He (Obama) was the one who kept people at the table.”\*\* > > . . . > > [http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/12/obama.death.penalty.ap/](http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/12/obama.death.penalty.ap/) Color me unimpressed by your unwillingness to actually accept the terms you, yourself set. ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/house-and-senate-pass-bailout-bill/466352/49 "2008-10-05T23:00:15Z")
> [@Shayna](#): > > Ah, so you didn’t really mean it when you said you’d “be a little more inclined to believe if he ever lifted one tiny finger against corruption.” Gotcha ya. What you are counting as a “little finger” is very little indeed. Microscopic, I’d say. Last month he made a _phone call_ to his mentor, asking him to vote a certain way. That’s really going out on a limb. > [@](#): > > I also take issue with the crybabies who appear to be jealous that they couldn’t accomplish closure on bills on some of these issues that Barack Obama was then successful in negotiating into law. If you actually read the first link I provided, you’ll see that at the time Obama took on the Death Penalty legislation, **nobody wanted it**. Nobody. So clearly whatever work had been done previously, wasn’t even the slightest bit effective. Yet everyone acknowledges Obama’s skill at bringing everyone to the table and actually **getting it done**. > > The allegation that these whiners want to characterize this as Obama simply running the ball into the end zone from the 1 yard line after they did all the hard work, smacks of envy, and looks to me to be a flat out lie. I’d hardly characterize a bill that **nobody wanted** , and that everyone was vocally opposing, as sitting at the 1 yard line at the time. Color me unimpressed by your unwillingness to actually accept the terms you, yourself set. Oh, please…I’m not talking about pushing one piece of legislation through that has very little to do with the corruption at every level of government in my county, city, & state (and which was bound to go through eventually…good for him for getting it done, but it he wasn’t fighting that much of an uphill battle). He consistently has endorsed people who are in the midst of hiring scandals, contractor shakedown scandals, patronage scandals, and God knows what else. And he’s done so when there were candidates running on the same reform platform that he’s running on now. So, if he’s so committed to this kind of change, why did he never endorse these candidates? Because they were outsiders, and he wasn’t. Sucking up to the Democratic machine got him where he is, and if that’s ok by you, then great, but I’m not falling for his “reform” line. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/house-and-senate-pass-bailout-bill/466352/50 "2008-10-05T23:45:16Z")
Of that 700 billion… it ain’t gone yet. They may not spend any of it. They may not spend all of it. Apparently, the CEO payment part is really toxic to banks. They’ll do almost anything to avoid it, at least, according to CBS Newsradio 88, this afternoon. ---
**Author:** ![PerditaX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@PerditaX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PerditaX)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2008, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/house-and-senate-pass-bailout-bill/466352/51 "2008-10-06T12:02:21Z")
> [@susan](#): > > It really, really pissed me off that the mental health parity piece suddenly got attached to this behemoth. It’s hard to celebrate its passage knowing that it was used as bait for the terrible bailout bill. I understand your point, but for me, _how_ it was passed is, in the big picture, less important than _that_ it was passed. It had been languishing in Congress for years, it’s very much needed, and yes, it affects me personally. FTR, though, it’s the _only_ thing I like about the bill. I’m not convinced the “crisis” is so dire that they had to pass this abomination of a bill that’s so full of pork and so huge (450+ pages) so quickly that nobody had a chance to read it and see what we’re going to be paying for. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2008, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/house-and-senate-pass-bailout-bill/466352/52 "2008-10-06T14:30:12Z")
> [@Oy](#): > > To be fair, I think some of the voters changed their minds and told their reps as much. Plus the market dropped so precipitously on Monday after the bill was voted down. I honestly think that had they resubmitted the bill as voted on Monday, it might have passed by similar numbers today. The pork made some people happier about it, and me personally much unhappier about it. Really, cause from here it looks like either they thought it was the right thing to do, but needed a bribe to do it or thought it wasn’t the correct course for our nation but decided a kickback would change their mind. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2008, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/house-and-senate-pass-bailout-bill/466352/53 "2008-10-06T16:31:41Z")
Stock market is dropping like a rock today. International markets are in steep declines. If the bailout was supposed to be a rallying call .it was not heard. Bush was on TV saying it will take time for it to work. Then why were we in such a hurry to pass it? We could have taken our time and done it right. The market has been down in the area of 600 all day. The German economists are panicking and one headline says gold bars are your best hope. This is a mess. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/house-and-senate-pass-bailout-bill/466352.md?page=2)