They could go it alone, but they don't want to be the ones in charge if it fails.

This was not a partisan defeat - 2/3 of Republicans defeated it while 40 percent of Democrats did, too.

right, i think basically if the repubs are going to refuse to have any part of this bailout and leave the Dems on the hook for it, then why even try to pass a moderate bill? just rewrite it from scratch, exactly the way the dems want it, instead of just modifying an already bad bill. i can't find one expert that is happy with the current bill and most just give a very reluctant approval.

didn't mccain suspend his campaign in the first place to bring the house republicans to the table? i guess he needs to suspend it again huh

pretty sure this is a failure of leadership by both dem and republicans in congress with a massive revolt from both sides. republican leaders failed to deliver votes, and then the rank and file dems quickly saw that they would alone be on the hook for this bill and decided to vote nay.

There were originally only 3 Republicans in favor of the bailout, in the end, 63(?) voted for it. He tried, at least.

Most likely, yes. They are not going to get overall consensus on this bill, especially with the nonsense terms the Dems want in (yes, I'm against most Dems positioning here).

I don't know how much wonkery I can muster, but from what I've read, its the republican alternatives that are pure nonsense. I mean, the republicans say instead of buying their bad debt - the government should make these companies buy insurance from the govt instead? hello? the problem here is that these companies are running out of money, so how can they purchase the insurance? This is something that both Paulsen and Bernanke rejected awhile ago.

You can call the dem proposals bad. But the republican proposals are nonsensical.

Isn't this sudden increase in debt (700B) going to totally wipe out the value of our dollar? Shouldn't we do nothing and let banks continue to buy up the other failing banks. Wouldn't this be the best long term scenario for our country?

Short term disaster but isn't that something we need? This is confusing.

House republicans just saved free enterprise and did more for your country's long term future than you can imagine. Thank them sometime

No, not House Republicans - the entire House. Nearly 1/2 of all Dems voting against this bullshit.

I stand corrected. All the men and women who voted against are heroes.

.

so what does everybody think the government should do?

I don't have a damn clue, at this point. I think things are going to continue going south regardless of what happens.

Fuck the bailout, more stimulus checks for everyone!!!

I think the government should put those 700 billion dollars they were gonna give to an inflated mortgage industry and shove it into education/health/infrastructure and get the foundations of a strong middle class and a real economy happening again.

Here's a hint encourage automation/retraining instead of exploiting cheap labor in sudan or something

There are something like 11 trillion dollars borrowed against bad assets floating up in the air and someone's gonna have to pay for them with their sweat and blood or you can just let it deflate and instead focus on giving investors something to invest in rather than just let banks use houses to lend money to each other til they realize that that doesn't really mean they're making it.

Bush will cancel the election, citing martial law.

lets build bridges across the entire country

Your job's fucked - no one can get car loans or afford gas.

It doesn't fucking matter. Pelosi ensured that there would be enough votes on the Democratic side if Republicans held up their end of the deal. They did not. The Democrats on the other hand had enough votes to make it work. And this wasn't even their bill! If the Republicans voted like they said they would have, this would have gone through. But it turns out that Democrats wanted it more than Republicans.

It's funny. Boehner is crying today about how many Democrats voted nea even though Republicans were responsible for shooting it down. If the god damn Republicans would have done what they committed to, the Democrats who happened to vote against it would be irrelevant.

This is almost entirely the fault of the GOP. There's clearly an internal power struggle and they'll stop at nothing -- this includes completely wrecking the economy in the biggest economic crisis since the great depression -- for some kind of tangible gain.

It's more of the same "gotcha" bullshit from this party, and they're likely going to pay dearly for it in the fall. McCain just made one step closer to getting his ass kicked. Obama now basically has a 1 in 4 chance of a blowout, and rightfully so.

this is the impression i've gotten. but of course that's the impression i've gotten from dems. but on the other hand, the only thing we're getting from republicans is that nancy pelosi hurt their feelings.

if a party deserves blame, i think we know which one does.

but everyone sucks, clearly. but people want to be elected, and uninformed (or maybe not, whatever) constituents didn't want this thing to go through. that's where the problem is. if this is actually a good plan that will help, that needs to be communicated much more effectively.

note: i don't know anything and am not coming down on either side here. really, no idea. i'm looking at this from a purely political perspective.

Not that I want this to go through but if republicans changed their votes because of Pelosi's speech then they should all be rounded up and shot.

This country is embarrassing. Shameful

I never said the Democrats were perfect but they should be the last party to blame;

-Pelosi herself basically ADMITTED that she knew there'd be Democrats against it, but she was also able to twist enough arms to get enough to vote for it because the Republicans all but promised that they'd have the same amount of votes to make this work. BOTH PARTIES were in agreement and then, at the last second, the Republicans dropped it.

-Blaming this on Pelosi and her not so kind words for Republicans is the most pathetic excuse I've ever heard! If they were smart, they would have voted for the bill regardless, in a cheerful manor, and then later blast Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic leadership for being partisan in a time where the Republicans were trying to reach across the aisle. Instead, they COMPLETELY pussed out, didn't even vote for it, then cried about getting picked on during a live press conference. Class act!

-It's obvious that the GOP was looking for any excuse they could think of to not support this at the last minute. Had Nancy Pelosi been nothing but kind to Republicans when she spoke earlier, they would have just blamed it on something else and still dropped their support for the bill.

My only guess is they are hoping McCain will emerge as a "maverick" once more and actually say that this time, he encouraged the party to drift away from Bush's disastrous policies while most Democrats were in support of it. It's not going to work.

The GOP just really hurt themselves today.

i actually feel good about the economic crisis. i was going to lead a failure of a life and be destitute anyway, now everyone else can join me.

McCain will always be a Maverick to me. He told Bush that Iraq needed more soldiers and it doesn't get anymore bad ass than that.

i haven't lost any money because i don't have any to lose

I've been loaning all my money to bums on the streets of NY and I can't wait to get this bailout money. Chachingmothafucka

Big deal. Iraq is a lost cause. The surge was also supposed to give the country a real opportunity to start securing itself without the Iraqis sucking on the teet of the US Military, but that sure as hell hasn't happened. I wish the Democrats would hammer the point that really only ~50% of the surge's proposed successes have worked -- that is, stabilizing the country with more troops, AND finally allowing the Iraqis to help themselves and not keep killing each other.

All the surge does is allow more security in key areas thanks to more troops, but it's that beefed up military presence alone that is allowing for this to work, which really doesn't do a damn thing for when we finally get the fuck out of there. It's artificial success as far as I'm concerned, because you cannot have all of those troops there indefinitely.

This could get a lot worse than anyone could possibly imagine right now. Remember that "complete collapse" thread I posted?

http://forums.netphoria.org/showthread.php?t=160488

This is basically what they were talking about, and I don't even think we've seen the worst of it.