Senate Sweetens Economic Package

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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?

Yup it does sound better than the first one.

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.