Bailout deal fails again, polispeak runs rampant

You have to be impressed by the Congressional Democrats. They have balls. Not brains, just balls. Because that is the only way they can make the claims they do about the bailout deal.

In listening to the Democrats, Barney Frank in particular you would think that the Republicans are staging a massive political coup. That the Republicans are the only reason why the bailout deal that was voted on today failed was their votes. That this is all about politics and the upcoming election.

But if you stop listening to the polispeak in Congress and look at the vote numbers and you see another picture.

The vote was 228 – 205 against the deal. That includes 94 Democrats, which could have easily made the difference and passed the deal no matter what the Republicans did. But they chose to go against their Party and Treasury Secretary Paulson, and President Bush.

Why? Because the deal was horrible. Because there is no confidence in the deal. Because the rush to pass the deal makes you wonder what is in it. Like the fact that a previous version included a stipulation that if this bailout actually got any money repaid that money would not go to taxpayers but would fund a Democratic initiative called ACORN (which has federal problems currently).

Or how about the fact that I have yet heard how the public, that will be buying these assets (bad mortgage loans) could or will get the money back. We will spend $10,000 each, out of our pockets, and if this ever makes break-even or profit there has been no discussion how we get that $10,000 back in our pockets directly. And under the current plans you never will. That is not a political problem, that is just a bad deal.

If this were as political as Democrats would like it to be, then this bad deal would have passed, Senator Obama would have the credit for it (or at least Senator McCain would have the blame) and they would use this to win the election. That didn’t happen.

If this were political, Republicans could have voted for this deal claimed it was because of Senator McCain’s influence and used that to win the election. It’s just that simple.

But Senator McCain, the Republicans, and 94 Democrats are not being political. They are doing their jobs. They are trying to structure a deal that works for taxpayers like you and me. They want to answer (I hope) the question of how the money comes back to you and me, if it ever makes money.

If we want to really be political about this, we can ask why Barney Frank and Chris Dodd could not see the impending problem as late as July of this year yet they are the heads of the Banking and Finance Committees in Congress. They were informed by supposedly brilliant minds on the exact status of the problem, and they crafted laws and regulations to control what happened. They also made enormous amounts of money from the very people they were (supposedly) watching.

Look, here is the reality. Senator Obama and McCain are Senators. One of them will be the next President. They are effectively the leaders of their respective Parties. They need to get into this fray (well at least Obama does as McCian is) and do their jobs. They need to forge a deal, stand together and say they endorse the deal. At that point it will have to pass. And to forge the deal they need to answer the question that I feel is most important, how I get my money back.

Everything that is short of this is polispeak. Every moment that Obama avoids this problem, every moment that they don’t answer the key question, every moment we have no deal endangers America and makes our near-term future that more bleak. And no matter how many Democrats blame Republicans, or how many deny their failure to do their jobs, the outcome remains the same.