Bruce McQuain, [1]this morning:
To the blockheads who run Congress [2]:
Dean Baker, a liberal economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said he has told congressional Democrats that Bush is the one who is in the delicate situation and would therefore be unlikely to veto whatever package Democrats send to him, as long as it gives Paulson some of what he needs.
“I can’t imagine Bush would veto something Democrats send him,” he said. “I just can’t believe he’s prepared to say, ‘If you don’t give me exactly what I want, the financial markets collapse.’ I can’t believe he’d do that.”
Don’t even think about larding this bill up with pork or “stimulus” packages or any other misbegotten idea your twisted little political minds can come up with which hasn’t a chance of passage at any other time.
Heh.
Well, look, in looking around, my take is, that’s already begun.
One thing you may or may not have noticed is how the whole of congress more or less went on vacation when this crisis finally hit, and how Reid said ‘bobody knows what to do” [3]. The fact is, they were busy looking for political cover, if not political advatage in this situation right at the off. Barring either, the Demorat leaership wasn’t about to make a move, which explains Reid’s statement. Now that they’ve had a few minutes and the crowd hasn’t shown up with the tar and feathers yet, their crafty little minds are coming up with ways to try and leverage this thing to their advanage. No shock that Chris Dodd should be the first kid on the block to figure out how to use this new toy.
Cynical? You bet your sitting device I’m cynical. Democrats are still involved; I don’t have much choice in the matter. For example… does it bother anyone that Barney Frank is still dictating lending policy?
I will say this again, this is a failure of government. Not because of too little regulation, but too much.