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Senate to vote on bailout; pressure remains on House
The offices of U.S. Reps. Steve Pearce and Tom Udall continued to be inundated on Tuesday with phone calls and e-mails from people wanting to weigh in on the proposed $700 billion bailout, with most speaking against the bill the House rejected on Monday.
But it appears that the Senate, not the House, will make the next attempt to pass a bailout package to try to provide aid to the struggling economy. In a surprise move, Senate leaders announced late Tuesday that they’ll vote today on a bailout plan that also includes a number of tax breaks the House rejected last week.
Before that move was announced Tuesday, leaders in both parties were trying to make minor changes to the bailout proposal in an attempt to win about a dozen additional votes in the House to ensure passage. Many said a new House vote could come later this week, but the status of that vote is unclear now that the Senate has scheduled its vote.
Regardless, Udall spokesman Sam Simon said early Tuesday afternoon that, since Monday’s narrow defeat of the proposal, his office had received “600 e-mails and dozens (approaching hundreds) of phone calls,” most of them “opposing the bailout package as it stood” on Monday.
Pearce spokesman Brian Phillips said that, before Monday’s vote, the calls and e-mails were “overwhelmingly against” the bailout — “on the order of 150 or 200 to 1.” Since the vote, he said, “we’re getting a lot more calls supporting the bailout, but it’s still 4-1 against.”
Pearce, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate, and Udall, his Democratic opponent, both voted against the bill. U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., voted for it. Her office did not respond Tuesday to a request for information on calls and e-mails about the bill.
Neither did the office of U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who has said he would have supported the version of the bill the House rejected Monday. A spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said Tuesday afternoon — before the Senate scheduled today’s vote — that the number of calls about the bailout bill dropped significantly after Monday’s vote. Bingaman has also said he would have voted for the bill.
During the week prior to the vote, Bingaman spokeswoman Jude McCartin said Tuesday, the senator’s office was receiving about 300 calls a day, “mostly unhappy about the proposal.”
“But many of those callers also said if it was necessary to pass something, they wanted taxpayer protections and no golden parachutes built in,” McCartin said.
Guv, Teague would have voted against bailout bill
Meanwhile, two high-ranking
“With the info I’ve seen, I couldn’t have voted for that,” Teague said, explaining that there weren’t enough guarantees for taxpayers.
“I agree with Harry. I wouldn’t have voted for that bill,”
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Last night I watched a TV host say the bankers bail-out was needed so that loans could be made and interest paid in order to resume business as usual.
The supporters of the bail-out admit that it won’t fix the problem.
We are doing what happened in the late 70’s, which was kiting checks, the only difference being plastic cards or computer digits. We can no longer rob Peter to pay Paul.
The truth is – the collective debt of Americans has consumed all of tomorrow’s pay checks and there simply is no more to borrow. Consequently, we are all in deep do-doo and throwing more pooh at the problem will only make matters worse.
Thomas Jefferson is reported as saying to Samuel Kercheval in 1816:
“To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.”