blogger interrupted

I’ve been paying real close attention to the debate about the Bush Bailout, and I have to say, the longer we get away from last week, the less I believe THE SKY WILL FALL TOMORROW if we don’t pass it, and the more I believe this is a cynical ploy to get something out of this president before he is gone.

When I was working for Tim Ryan in 2002, the Iraq war authorization was forced onto Congress in precisely the same way.  Conducting a congressional campaign in the midst of the Iraq vote was a lot like conducting congressional business on this bailout looks now.  All the wrong incentives were reinforced by the campaign calendar.  Too much hyper-attention was focused on legislative process.  Deliberation was gone, knee-jerk idiocy predominated.

And the Bush Administration loved it.  They loved every second of that process in 2002.  It forced not just the existing Congress, but whoever was in the next one, to play by Karl Rove’s rules, put themselves on the record, and then be forced to stand by that in perpetuity.  It used America’s political system to create poor incentives on legislators to make wrong decisions.

Just listen to the debate, 4 days after this “bill” was put in front of us.  Still, no one knows anything.  Even CNBC reporters are still asking threshold questions like -

What are we buying?

Where is the money coming from?

Who gets what?

This is totally absurd.  It is the debate the Bush Administration wants to have on its way out of office, so that Republicanism’s failed philosophy is embedded into American debt for generations.  

Congress should tell Wall Street, Hank Paulson, and Bush to wait for a month and a half.  That’s all.  Take this bill off the table, put it into committee, and let this election proceed as an arm of the debate Americans deserve to have before they spend $700 billion.  Let Americans decide how this bailout should look, at the ballot box, and who should administer it, at the ballot box, and what it should mean for the future of our markets, our economy, and our country.

Barack needs to lead on this, too, if not today, very very soon.  There is simply no reason, none, for this bill to be shoved down the throats of successive generations of Americans in one week, during a hyper-sensitive election season.  If Wall Street is going to collapse in the interim, because our country needs to make a deliberate decision, then Wall Street was going to collapse anyway, whether we bailed them out or not.   

What about the markets?  Well, the market stabilized after hearing about this bill.  They will stay stable if they are assured that something will happen after the election.  Market sentiment does not need a passed piece of legislation, or the blank check that Bush wants, to know that American taxpayers are on the way with the fire truck.  We’re talking about 42 days here.

Take a deep breath.  

Table this bill for 42 days.

And then get to work on it.

Seems only reasonable.