Bailout: What Is Slaughter Thinking?
As this whole trainwreck happens in slo-mo, I find myself wondering why Louise Slaughter, who I tend to love because she is pretty close to the top of progressive vote rankings, would vote for the horrible Bailout bill and not allow any other alternatives to be heard. This quote from her, from the House floor this morning during a procedural vote leading up to a vote on the Bailout bill, I believe gives insight into the thought process behind it all (h/t DailyKos):
Madam Speaker, we have found ourselves again at a juncture where we’ve found ourselves many times in these last two years, at the mercy of the Senate. We have a bill that they passed, and unfortunately if we were to open it again, we’d probably be here for another two years trying to do this bill, because I think both sides have many issues that they would prefer to see here. But nonetheless, we understand the emergency that we are under, what it is we have to do.
It seems to me she’s bought into the same thing that House and Senate leadership have, that it would take too long to hear, debate, and negotiate other ideas into a proposal, and so they should just use the Paulson bill since that’s what’s been on the table the longest.
It’s frustrating hearing how the fear is motivating voting patterns. If the markets were punishing the House rejection of the proposal on Monday, why did they go down again after the Senate voted for it on Wednesday?
Fear is a crappy way to handle complex, critical issues like this. Patriot Act, Iraq War, pick a topic.
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