The Latest Federal Bailout
 

The Senate and House have agreed to add another 787 billion dollars to our economic debt list already. With some individual banking companies already securing well over 150 billion of the money thus far, and still flailing helplessly, one begins to wonder how many bailouts and recovery plans it will take to drag the corporate world out of the abyss, and hopefully bring some of the American people along with it.

This latest plan seems to be more than just a free handout of money though, so we'll see.

What do you think?

Congress is the biggest pack of idiots I have ever seen.

I see this as blood in the water. The sharks are coming to get their fair share of the feeding frenzy. In the end, I really don't believe this is going to help the economy, mainly individual companies that got there first.

Just about 1000 pages and it was released for review at 12am yesterday with the vote at 9am. I guarantee you not one Senator read that thing, yet it passed easily. And where did all this bipartisanship and transparent government talk go? The only thing bipartisan about it were the "nay" votes. Every Republican and seven Democrats.

A new detail I hadn't heard until last night was that there is an article in the bill that allocates $1.4 billion to "science". That's the quote. I'm trying to find an exact source for that now just to make sure. I also heard it has numerous changes scribbled in the margins (i.e. $100 million changed to $150 million).

Although I do hate the slamming of Pelosi lately because of her trip to Rome. I doubt she hurried the bill through just so she could go accept an award, but anything's possible I guess. And I also heard last night that it is "common practice" for Senators not to read bills before voting on them. They should all be thrown out.

Typically, no senator, let alone any man, has the time to read every bill that comes through congress. What they do is have interns read through 50-100 or so pages of each bill and summarize for them what its about and then they vote on it.

OH, that's the "transparent government". See, I know just as much about the bill as the people passing it. Good to know.

I have less of a problem of their inability to read it and more of a problem with their "This bill is an economic fix? Well, good! The last ones worked out great! A-OK!"

The point of the congress is to make sure the bill is in the benefit of the USA, right? So why exactly are they having such a hard time figuring out, oh, hey, those last two were something akin to the exact opposite?

This bill ISN'T an economic fix though. Obama made a HUGE mistake in not crafting this Bill himself (Having HIS people do that, is what I mean by that, of course), but I don't know if he had any specific plan...basically he made the mistake of going to Pelosi and congress and saying "write me a bailout between 600 and 700 billion dollars" and let them come up with it. Basically its mostly useless pork that is NOT going to bail out the economy. But the Democrats just HAD to fill the thing with pet project after project. I think the Republicans have it wrong too, and across the board tax cuts isn't gonna fix it either, but thank god they fought out at least 200 billion in pork crap.

Do we have a source on the fact that he didn't even write it?

Because we loved the last bailout sooooo much, why not do another? Bailouts and stimulus packages do not help the economy at all. Free money never does. There's plenty of things we could do with that money that would create jobs and at least accomplish something, but no, we're going to give free money to these people who fucked themselves over.

Did you watch the address Obama gave on Monday? He specifically said he wouldn't allow a bill full of pork to pass, that every single earmark and every single pet project would be stripped out before it gets passed. I doubt Obama would say something that strong without actually knowing what's going on with the bill, because he detailed some fairly specific requirements for it to pass (namely, that it create at least 4 million (I think) new jobs, and that it have no pet projects).

I'm not saying that his statements correspond with reality... Just that he said it, and that I don't see a reason for him to not follow through after such strong words.

Edit: Another thing he said: He gave an example of the kind of project it would go towards funding. He wants to make every government building more energy efficient, which will create jobs (obviously, since someone has to do it) and be a long-term investment saving 4 billion dollars a year, AND be better for the environment.

Also, as we saw in another discussion thread, he wants every institution which accepts bailout money to cap their executive salaries at 500k. It's not exactly free money.