Senate Sweetens Economic Package  

My question is will it really matter when crooks are put in to power and are in power fleecing the American people again and again and again.
In most all swing states Barack Obama's acorn gang are running fraud voter registration,in some state some acorn workers have now been arrested.
Last week the Chicago district attorneys office opened a 100K grant investigation on Barack obama.
Barack Obaam attorneys have send word to all the swing state media threatening them if they run ads on his background.
Nancy Polosie is all over conservative news today she used 100K from public funding to pay her husbands bills.
What the hell we have crooks right under our noses and we know who they are and people scream justice for the people tell me how the hell do we get this with crooks running the house?
Bill O'Reily said tonight he has the information on the pork barbell spending cut out of the bill one was Barack Obama's he asked for 500 million for Acorn,Bill O'
said any who wants the info to contact him.
All these crazy people want in office Barack Obama and he has been cutting their throats ever since he was swore in a a Jr senator,all I can say they dam well deserve him but millions of us American dam sure do not.

Whiteheather,

As I watch the fiasco unfolding in Washington my reservations go all the way back to the "bailout" of Chrystler corporation. I said it then and I'll say it now; where does it all end? At what point do we NOT give these corporations with poor or even criminal business practices a free pass? I don't remember the amount of the Chrystler bailout but it was considerably less than 850 or even 700 billion. What will the price tag be next time, 1 trillion or more? What kind of signal does this send to the rest of the financial world? Will it tend to make them believe they have a "safety net" in the US government? I believe this bailout has far too many incentives and not enough safeguards to ensure this doesn't happen again and believe me, it will happen again!

I'm not happy at all with the Senate version of the bailout, I think it is far worse than the first (failed) version that was voted down by the House of Representatives.

I reluctantly now accept the need for some form of bailout since I now believe that not to do anything to restore confidence in the banks could well lead to a run on many banks which would be far more harmful to our economy. But why the pork? Why do congressmen and senators' votes need to be bought by pork? The first bailout bill should be improved, and there was room for improvement. But though there is now an increase in protection for depositors (upto $250,000 I understand), and this is welcome, but all this pork in my view makes this Senate version worse.

I hope to House of Representatives get tough and remove as much as possible of this pork from the final bill.

I'm not sure how exactly I feel about this bill. I have read several articles that says that the bill is full of earmarks. I suppose that nothing can get passed in Washington without having earmarks attached to it. I think the tax cuts/breaks probably helped get it through. I sure hope that it helps, I know that a lot of people I know have taken some hard hits on their retirement plans. I didn't watch any of the Senate yesterday but I heard some clips of Obama explaining that it's like your neighbors house on fire, you help first then figure out how it started, I thought that was a pretty good analogy since perviously in this election cycle he has blabbered on making things harder to understand. It was good to see him change that. As for the FDIC insurance that should have been changed a long time ago.

It's good that they're doing something - not sure whether this will be the cure-all that everyone things it will be. I think that our economy is so far down the drain that nothing the government does will keep us from a depression.

Yup it does sound better than the first one.

Well when Obama said it was not the time to punish those in charge he was one of those who helped to cause the situation by forcing the government to give loans and sub prime mortgages to those who could not afford them because they were black. And would have cried racism if they did not comply. I like the idea of increasing personal bank savings up to $250,000. That will allow people to put an extensive down payment when they buy their houses. This sounds like a good thing.

The actual FIRST version was a three page proposal presented by President Bush and Paulson. It asked for the development of an office with the authority to spend $700 billion to fix things and included specific language that did not permit any review of decisions made by that office by either the legislature or the judiciary. It was literally a blank check with an upper limit of $700 billion with no checks, no requirements and no possible questioning of how it was to be spent.

The House version that was voted down put in several requirements - it said how the money could be spent, included regulations that would cut out big severance packages and other golden packages for CEOs and executives who made a fortune on bad decisions, 'encouraged' bankruptcy judges to require renegotiation of mortgages in order to keep people in their homes, and in theory at least, would give the government (codename: the taxpayers) temporary ownership of an asset that could eventually turn around and recover some or all of its value. It did NOT include tax breaks for corporations (to encourage them to buy up the bad paper in the private sector rather than having the government take ownership), a REQUIREMENT for renegotiation of mortgages (banks wouldn't accept that because they'll lose money), or a capital gains tax decrease. It also included an option for those banks holding bad mortgages to buy 'insurance' from the government on the mortgages, hold onto the properties themselves and wait for them to turn around. The insurance would pay off on properties that totally tanked, and the companies would own any properties that actually had value or recovered value. It also changed the terms and only allocated $350 billion, with the option for the treasury to come back and ask the congress for more, which would have to be voted on and approved - so it's NOT a $700 billion bailout/rescue (you can call a pig a rose but it still smells like a pig, right?)

The Senate bill is a 'triumph' of politics-as-usual. There ARE some new additions that should have been part of the House bill - like the increase in FDIC limits - but there's a LOT in there that's there on the basis of 'you can have my vote if you include THIS thing that I haven't been able to get any other way'. Some of those things are good things. Some of them are things that are good if you subscribe to a particular ideology (corporate tax cuts for businesses that purchase the bad securities - they DO make sense. I don't like them, but they make sense.) Some of them are just pure special interest expenditures that would never pass if they were voted on their own merit. In the long run, they may be a small price to pay for getting the meat of the bill passed.

I'll be interested to see what gets proposed AFTER this is either passed or buried. It's clear that there are two things needed - a way to stem the tide of foreclosures and some sort of regulation on the way securities are packaged and sold.

I really hate to take such a personal stance on this, but to be honest, this bill doesn't make much sense to me. As a member of the middle class, I haven't been struggling just recently. I have worked two jobs for the last two years, and my wife has her job. We've slowly working our way out of debt, and to be completely honest I get a little irritated every time I hear about this "Bailout bill". According to the abc news link you have posted, and I quote
"Other goodies intended to attract the votes of individual members of Congress include $192 million for the rum producers of Puerto Rico and Virgin islands, $128 million for car racing tracks, $33 million for corporations operating in America Samoa, and $10 million for small film and television productions." Well wow, that's great and all. I don't seem to sound like such a small minded pessimist, but come on. If I go out and foolishly spend money and run up thousands of dollars on credit card debt, is anyone going to bail me out?

I think no matter what they do, it will not fix things. They need to get jobs here so that people can work and pay for things. We cannot keep up with all of this either. Alot of people are on the verge of being homeless.