Re: OT - Thinking about the bailout vote

Bruce S wrote:
A little while ago, I had what seemed, to me, to be an interesting thought about the bailout vote. The bill was defeated by 11 votes, so if any 12 people had changed their votes, it would have passed.

Twelve democrat members of Barney Frank's committee voted against the bill.

That causes me to ask, why did those people most directly involved with the banking problem vote no?

I can only think of two reasons:
1. It was a bad bill and they knew it.
OR,
2. They voted for political reasons, with no concern for the merit of the bill.

If the reason was political, was it to make Bush look bad and hurt McCain? Were they putting politics ahead of country?

And, if they knew the bill was bad enough to vote against it, why aren't they telling us what the problems were? Was that more politics?

Bruce




Interesting analysis on Yahoo news:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080930/us_time/thebailoutdefeatapoliticalcredibilitycrisis

Says that the politicians were actually following what their constituents told them they wanted. "Of the 38 incumbent members of Congress from both parties who are considered vulnerable in the coming election, 30 voted against the bill (eight supported it). By contrast, members of Congress from relatively safe districts were evenly divided - 197 for it to 198 against it." The whole article is worth a read.

Lou
.

Relevant Pages