No bailout for the incompetent and the greedy

In case you haven't heard the news, the House of Representatives voted 228-205 today to kill the Wall Street Welfare Act.

(For a real laugher, here's the title of the bill: "To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide earnings assistance and tax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers, and for other purposes". Only Congress can so blatantly hide their true motives behind such unrelated, seemingly innocuous and obfuscatory bill labels that are obviously designed to trick us into having warm and fuzzy feelings about the law. Maybe we should force them to quit using "for other purposes" on proposed legislation, and require them to state what the bill is really for right in the title, as some sort of Truth in Legislation policy.)

Most analyses that I've seen today place the blame for the failure squarely on Nancy Pelosi, who gave a speech ostensibly to drum up support for the measure, only to end up turning it into a nasty partisan screed blaming President Bush and the Republican Party for a "right-wing ideology of anything goes, no supervision, no discipline, no regulation", even though the Republicans were the ones who tried to impose regulations and discipline on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2003, only to have their efforts blocked by Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats. Here's what Rep. Barney Frank, who is championing the current legislation, had to say at the time:

"'These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. 'The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.'"

Yet now he claims that only this bill, which must passed immediately with no questions or modifications, will save the country. Do we believe him this time, or is he just demonstrating more incompetence?

Meanwhile, business as usual goes on in the banking industry, as Citigroup agreed to buy Wachovia today. Hey, wait a minute. I thought that if this bill wasn't passed instantly that the financial markets were going to collapse posthaste? Yet here are two companies that aren't waiting for the government, but acting on their own to fix their problems and improve their bottom lines.

Of course, most news outlets aren't pointing out the fact that Pelosi and Frank didn't need a single Republican vote to pass the measure, as their party controls the House by a significant margin. Fortunately, enough Democrats (including my own Representative Harry Mitchell) either refused to drink the Kool-Aid about this bill being the only remedy that would possibly work or listened to the avalanche of constituent phone calls and emails urging them to not support the measure.

Here's a link to the roll-call vote, so that you can see how your Congressman voted. Please act accordingly by either thanking them or redoubling your efforts to convince them to kill this unnecessary bailout.