Yesterday's attempted passing of a bailout package demonstrates the complete lack of leadership and failure of current congressional leadership. As former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich stated, Pelosi should have never brought this legislation to a vote if unless she was sure it would pass. Yet, knowing that just last week we know that less than 10 House Republicans supported the bill. Over the course of the weekend, Republican leadership was able to bring an additional 55-60 Republicans onboard. Prior to the vote, rumours surfaced around the hill that leadership still did not have the votes, yet Pelosi forged ahead, forcing an uncertain vote in the house.
Following the failure of the bill, Democratic Leadership trudged forward to arrogantly place the failure of the bill upon the minority party. If this were true, it would represent the first time in the history of the House of Representatives that a minority party was in control of congress. According to Representative Blunt, yesterday morning, he expected 75 Republicans to vote for the bill. At the end of the day his count was 10 short; but even if Blunt's count was accurate, the bill still would have failed by 2 votes. In reality, the media has largely ignored the story behind the 95 Democrats who voted against the bailout; a story that starts with failed majority leadership that was unable to obtain over 60% support for a modified bill that they largely crafted.
The story behind their votes, including 12 Democrats who serve under Barney Frank on his Finance Committee, is rooted in Pelosi putting the good of her political party ahead of that of our nation. Overnight, Democrats opposed to the bailout began surfacing and presenting some interesting statements regarding their "no" votes. For the most part the media has ignored the story, but Fox News and even NBC to a much lesser extent, reported the reality.
Pelosi told Secretary Paulsen that Democrats had "delivered on their side of the bargain", yet, Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA.) told ABC's Jake Tapper that he felt absolutely no pressure from Pelosi or other Democratic Leadership to vote for the bill. This lack of pressure by Democratic Leadership was evident when Democratic Whip, Jim Clyburn told reporters yesterday morning that he had not even begun "whipping" the Democratic Caucus to support the leaderships position.
Pelosi and current leadership planned on utilizing this bill to both protect the party against accusations that they were doing nothing, while requiring enough Republican support to target Republicans who went against their constituency and voted for the bill. As Fox News and NBC both reported early this morning, Pelosi approached the freshman members of the Democratic Caucus and some 16 Democrats involved in contentious races and specifically told them that there would be no repercussion if they were to vote against party leadership and vote no to the bailout package. Although Pelosi did not specifically tell them to vote no to protect their re-election bids, the fact that she purposely told them there were no political repercussions to voting against the party could be considered nothing less than a clear message to protect their own asses. Ironically, nearly every Freshman Democrat and Democratic Representative involved in close congressional races voted against the bill. In addition, Pelosi failed to apply any pressure or threaten Democratic Committee Chairs who were opposing the bill. Committe Chairs Conyers, Filner, Thompson, Green and Peterson all voted against the rest of Democratic Leadership.
Democrats have claimed that many of these 95 saw the wave of Republicans voting no and fearful of their own re-election chances, followed suit. Yet, couldn't the same argument be made in reverse. If Republicans saw that over 40% of Democrats were casting "No" votes, the writing on the wall that Democrats would utilize this vote for political fire would be clear. There are only 2 excuses that Democratic leadership can provide for the failure of this bill. Either they must admit that as leaders, "the buck stops here", and they rushed this vote and failed within their own MAJORITY party; or they must admit that they irresponsibly politicized and purposely failed to pressure their own party members to further the parties political power.
In either case, Pelosi should resign from her leadership position for a clear failure to lead during a period of crisis and failure to deliver on a single campaign promise from her parties platform 2 years ago. In addition, new Democratic Leadership working with Republican Leadership should immediately remove every single member of the Senate Banking Committee and House Finance Committee and install new committee leadership.
J Brown
September 30th, 2008
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5 comments:
It's kind of funny, how one moment you guys are attacking the Media (aside from Fox), then the next, you're using it to argue your conspiracy theories.
Gotta love GOP hypocrisy.
There is an intelligent comment that almost has something to do with the arguement. No diversion there, no defense for the actions of Pelosi and no denial as to the substance.
This would not be a partisan issue if a majority of the House Republicans would vote for the bill. Under that circumstance both parties have ownership or "skin in the game" for the bill. A majority of republicans and democrats will pass this bill in the Senate. Why not expect the same from the house. Pelosi by making sure that 100% of Democrats don't vote for the bill is putting pressure on House republicans to own the bill and not shoving it down there throat. That is the only way to make an unpopular bill a truly bipartisan effort.
"The only way to make an unpopular bill a truly bipartisan effort" is to revise the bill to make it acceptable to a majority of the members. It's called "Legislating." Congress should try it some time.
I had heard that Pelosi was hedging her bets by talking some dems out of voting for the bill. Thanks for confirming my suspicions. The way that she has handled this crisis should show everyone how unfit she is to be speaker. I have chronicled the whole mess on my blog entitled Faith Based Initiative. Feel free to come share your thoughts.
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