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Who is more to blame for the failure of the bailout in the House of Representatives?

Is it Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi for delivering a partisan speech attacking "right wing economics" near the end of the floor debate? Or is it the Republicans who decided, as Rep. Frank put it "Because somebody hurt their feelings, they decided to punish the country"? Putting aside the underlying problems/causes/etc. for a moment, whose fault is it that this particular vote failed?

23 Answers

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    The one lady who took her 5 minutes to tell it like it is

    .

    How the golden parachute is all Wall Street wants that is the tax payer

    .

    And how Bush took Clinton $4 trillion surplus and wiped it our and has added $10 trillion debt instead

    .

    And now wants to add more to the blunders of the brains on Wall Street

    .

    Like she said in closing

    .

    The party is over the party is over

    .

    Those words will go down in history books as the words that changed how Wall street operates

    .

  • 1 decade ago

    Barney Frank should just keep his mouth shut. He sounds retarded. Gregg Rudd isn't far behind.

    They are all to blame. They all hate each other and themselves for being such dismal failures.

    These are the people who are running the country and it's pretty embarrassing to be an American sometimes. We put people in office that obviously do not want to be there and have no intention of doing a good job nor do they care a hoot about anyone but themselves. They are there for the pay check and for the power they hold and the importance but haven't a clue as to how to put it to good use.

    Everything Nancy said was true and I am glad she said it. People should be shouting her words through all sectors of capitol hill constantly 24/7. Maybe then it would sink into their numb skulls what this is all about.

    What a pathetic pile of sh..... they are all. Either get your act together and do something for the sake of the American people or get out of Washington!

  • ?
    Lv 7
    1 decade ago

    Say rather credit, not blame.

    Now that common sense has survived the first spate of Bush and Paulsen crying "wolf". it is time to think. Just because Bush loudly and hysterically proclaimed that the only way to prevent the depression he has been leading us into for8years is to throw hundreds of billions of our tax dollars at it does not mean that is the only or best or even a good "fix".

    Other nations are responding with more calm and wisdom. There are other things that can and should be done.

    Trading on the stock markets should be suspended until strict regulations can be put in place to limit the damage that can be done by reckless speculation and panic.

    Those financial institutions that are in trouble should be nationalized, set in order and sold to new owners.

    The Federal Reserve needs to either be attenuated or dissolved. Just as starting points.

  • Grogan
    Lv 5
    1 decade ago

    There are enough Democats to have passed the bailout,given that, there are enough Democats that don't drink her coolaid so it would not have passed with a pure democrat vote, even though they are in the majority. Pelosi wanted republicans on record voting for the bailout in case it fails. Then Pelosi can blame it on republicans as usual.

    Dont get me wrong, there are kiss A** republicans that voted for it....ex

    Rep. Bob Inglis, Sen Lindsey (lapdog Graham) out of SC.

  • Foxes
    Lv 6
    1 decade ago

    I am to blame. I told them to vote no.

    Sorry...but I think our future is worth it.

    This explains the true root cause.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU6fuFrdCJY

    We will get a plan. it will be better..in the long run.

    I don't know the answers...but I would not trust Nancy Pelosi with a Blank checkbook..and I dont want expanded Government.

    And the Democrats had opportunity in 2003 and again in 2005 to vote for regulation to avoid this mess....but they (and to a small extent the republicans) were getting tons of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

    Be patient...

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    This is semantics but I think it's important to say:

    The bailout didn't fail. America has representative government and it acted. It did not bury the issue in committee and hide from it.

    The bill failed to pass. No one really knows whether that's best or not. I happen to think we should take action. I think the bill could have been more punitive to the companies receiving relief. Maybe we'll get a better bill.

    Hopefully, for all of us. Business and the government will make the right choices.

  • 1 decade ago

    I don't know that its anybody's fault. I think they all voted their hearts. My hubby and I watched all 3 hours of speeches and we agreed that these people, except for a few, seemed to be speaking from their hearts. If you want to break it down though, 95 democrats voted against the bill, with 141 voting for. You only need 218 to pass a bill. If the democrats wanted to pass it they could have, easily.

  • ?
    Lv 4
    1 decade ago

    Irresponsible lending on the part of big corporations. The reason why real estate is at a stand still. These people were handing out loans like lollipops at the bank. I think maybe the government should put regulations and monitor large corporations more closely but liberals would probably cry about that.

  • 1 decade ago

    This isn't a "resolution" this is the biggest PLEA BARGAIN in human history....This is a payoff to everyone who could identify the guilty parties, including Barney Frank and Chris Dodd (both members of the same faction of the Democratic Party that backs Obama, by the way)...

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    By TERRY JONES

    INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, September 24, 2008 4:30 PM PT

    One of the most frequently asked questions about the subprime market meltdown and housing crisis is: How did the government get so deeply involved in the housing market?

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    IBD Exclusive Series: What Caused The Loan Crisis?

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    The answer is: President Clinton wanted it that way.

    Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even into the early 1990s, weren't the juggernauts they'd later be.

    While President Carter in 1977 signed the Community Reinvestment Act, which pushed Fannie and Freddie to aggressively lend to minority communities, it was Clinton who supercharged the process. After entering office in 1993, he extensively rewrote Fannie's and Freddie's rules.

    In so doing, he turned the two quasi-private, mortgage-funding firms into a semi-nationalized monopoly that dispensed cash to markets, made loans to large Democratic voting blocs and handed favors, jobs and money to political allies. This potent mix led inevitably to corruption and the Fannie-Freddie collapse.

    Despite warnings of trouble at Fannie and Freddie, in 1994 Clinton unveiled his National Homeownership Strategy, which broadened the CRA in ways Congress never intended.

    Addressing the National Association of Realtors that year, Clinton bluntly told the group that 'more Americans should own their own homes.' He meant it.

    Clinton saw homeownership as a way to open the door for blacks and other minorities to enter the middle class.

    Though well-intended, the problem was that Congress was about to change hands, from the Democrats to the Republicans. Rather than submit legislation that the GOP-led Congress was almost sure to reject, Clinton ordered Robert Rubin's Treasury Department to rewrite the rules in 1995.

    The rewrite, as City Journal noted back in 2000, 'made getting a satisfactory CRA rating harder.' Banks were given strict new numerical quotas and measures for the level of 'diversity' in their loan portfolios. Getting a good CRA rating was key for a bank that wanted to expand or merge with another.

    Loans started being made on the basis of race, and often little else.

    'Bank examiners would use federal home-loan data, broken down by neighborhood, income group and race, to rate banks on performance,' wrote Howard Husock, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute.

    But those rules weren't enough.

    Clinton got the Department of Housing and Urban Development to double-team the issue. That would later prove disastrous.

    Clinton's HUD secretary, Andrew Cuomo, 'made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis,' the liberal Village Voice noted. Among those decisions were changes that let Fannie and Freddie get into subprime loan markets in a big way.

    Other rule changes gave Fannie and Freddie extraordinary leverage, allowing them to hold just 2.5% of capital to back their investments, vs. 10% for banks.

    Since they could borrow at lower rates than banks due to implicit government guarantees for their debt, the government-sponsored enterprises boomed.

    With incentives in place, banks poured billions of dollars of loans into poor communities, often 'no doc' and 'no income' loans that required no money down and no verification of income.

    By 2007, Fannie and Freddie owned or guaranteed nearly half of the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage market — a staggering exposure.

    Worse still was the cronyism.

    Fannie and Freddie became home to out-of-work politicians, mostly Clinton Democrats. An informal survey of their top officials shows a roughly 2-to-1 dominance of Democrats over Republicans.

    Then there were the campaign donations. From 1989 to 2008, some 384 politicians got their tip jars filled by Fannie and Freddie.

    Over that time, the two GSEs spent $200 million on lobbying and political activities. Their charitable foundations dropped millions more on think tanks and radical community groups.

    Did it work? Well, if measured by the goal of putting more poor people into homes, the answer would have to be yes.

    From 1995 to 2005, a Harvard study shows, minorities made up 49% of the 12.5 million new homeowners.

    The problem is that many of those loans have now gone bad, and minority homeownership rates are shrinking fast.

    Fannie and Freddie, with their massive loan portfolios stuffed with securitized mortgage-backed paper created from subprime loans, are a failed legacy of the Clinton era.

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