A Defeated Bill

The House voted down the bailout package. The Democrats are blaming the Republicans even though almost 100 Democrats voted against it; the Republicans are blaming the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi who, I guess hurt their feelings beforehand. Bizarre, one would think that thick skin was a requirement in the House.

The stock market dropped almost 800 points for the day. Whatever one’s opinion on whether this package was good or bad, the stock market certainly didn’t like it.

There are certain things that we have learned.

Neither Nancy Pelosi or John Boehner has the pull that they need to get votes. They have both blamed each other for the defeat but if they were truly honest, they are both to blame. They have both helped create and maintain a partisan hostility within the House and it does not go away because a leader says so. Neither person was able to get the votes to pass the bill.

President Bush has lost the respect of people in both parties. Big time. The largest number of ‘no’ votes came from his own party despite him almost begging them to go along with him. He long ago lost the trust of the Democrats, but now he no longer has any respect from his own Party. Dick Cheney got booed off the platform the other day from his own party. This is an Administration that has completely and utterly lost the respect of others.

Neither Senators McCain or Obama were able to muster the votes. They may be the de facto leaders of the two parties, but neither of them could pull this one off. Obama didn’t push as hard as McCain and McCain’s party did not follow his lead. They will both blame each other, of course. The reality is that neither of them had the mojo to pull this one off.

Locally both Baron Hill and John Yarmuth voted against the bill. They, like most everyone in closely contested races, chose to vote ‘no’ to this incredibly unpopular vote. It’s hard to say if this was an act of courage or cowardice in their parts. Whatever is the case, in virtually every district where there is a close race looming, the person voted ‘no.’

Having said all of this, here is what we know for sure.

No one knows for sure if this bill will solve the problem. It is a $700,000,000,000.00 gamble. We really don’t know the answer to this.

We also don’t know for sure what will happen if no bill is passed. There are all sorts of ‘gloom and doom’ statements, but no one is really sure what will transpire long term.

We know for sure what we don’t know much for sure.

It seems to me that this mess is a mess that people from both parties helped create and the only resolution is for people of both parties to solve it.

They might need to grow up, however, in order to do so. And that might be a tall order!