Just 12 Votes

If you listened to Barney Frank after the "Bailout" bill failed to pass in the House of Representatives, you would have heard that it failed, solely, because of 12 votes. According to Frank, it was all because of 12 Republican votes.

The real truth is that 40 percent of the Democrats didn't vote for this bill. 12 Democratic members of Barnie Frank's own House Banking Committee didn't vote for the bill. 15 supposed friends of Pelosi (Democrats from California) didn't vote for it either. Five Democratic Committee Chairman didn't vote for the bill. These are people who are as close to Pelosi as possible. In theory, the Democrats could pass this bill by themselves since they have the voting majority. However, they don't want to be out there on their own on this one. They want political cover.

Frank's blaming of the Republicans is symptomatic of why this bill failed. All last week and right up to today's vote, the Democrats were busy blaming Republicans, the Bush Administration, and greedy Wall Street firms and CEO pay. So it is no wonder why calls into the Congress switchboard were running 10 to 1 against the passage of this bill.

This was not working together. People like Pelosi, Frank, Reid, Schumer, and Obama used this whole crisis as a way of driving a wedge between Corporations in this country (Wall Street) and the average American (Main Street). It was a massive political advertisement being used to get Barack Obama and Democrats elected in a little over a month. There was no real concern about you and I.

A lot was made about CEO pay. But, the reality is that the CEO's could have been paid as little as a buck and it wouldn't have stopped this crisis from happening. The core problem of this crisis was the push by certain socialistic politicians (mostly Democrats) and community agency (like ACORN and ACORN Housing, Inc.) to give home loans to people who should have never had them in the first place. Seeded with Democrats from the Clinton Administration, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, facilitate this until it all began to unravel. The genesis of this crises goes all the way back to the Carter Administration and a Democratic Congress that passed the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (See Overview). The potential of this crisis was heightened even further by the actions taken by Clinton Administration in 1995 and 1999 to create the subprime loan vehicle and further home loans to unqualified buyers. So, for the Democrats to blame McCain/Bush and the Republicans, it is purely being done to deflect blame and to protect anticipated gains in the Congress and the chance to own the White House in next month's election.

Politically, the Democrats did nothing to support the bill. They constantly kept referring to it as a bailout for greedy Wall Street. In doing so, angry phone calls into the Congressional switchboard were running 10 to 1 against the passage of the bill. With that lack of public support, it is no wonder why Democrats and Republicans, alike, headed for the hills and voted no.

Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, and Barnie Frank would have best served their own interest if they had sold this bill as "rescue" of the credit markets and, ultimately, the rescue of the banking activities that would affect all Americans. But, they didn't. Instead they threw leadership and bipartisanship, aside, to take political shots and doom it to failure. Now, the bill is effectively dead until something entirely different is done.

Please take note: As of this morning, Barack Obama has stopped using the word "bailout" and has begun referring to it as a "rescue package". At that same press conference, I never once heard him mention "greedy" Wall Street as had been the case all week. I guess Mr. Obama is "just" starting to figure out how to work on a bipartisan basis. After all, reaching across the aisle is one of his campaign promises. A promise that was totally absent during this last week's push to get this bill passed!