The Credit Crisis: (part 3)

I heard on the radio show this morning a political commentator thanking those Senators who voted against the new bailout bill for voting how their constituents have asked them to. It might well be true that they should have voted against it, but they shouldn't do it because that's how their constituents asked them to vote. We have a representative democracy precisely because the public is often ill informed and has a strong tendency to act in a manner contrary to the long term health of the country. The job of a legislator, and in particular a Senator (which is why they have 6 year terms and are supposed to be put in my the State government instead of direct election) is to temper that tendency by voting, after careful study of the issues, in the manner they think best serves the country.

But I'm not intending to talk about the Senate today; today I want to talk about the House. I'll start by saying that the bill that was voted down in the House on Monday was terrible. There are a million better proposals out there that would probably be cheaper and more predictable. But none of them are going to get through a Democratically controlled congress. The Republicans lost the congress in 2006 and it does no good to whine about how we can't get the perfect Conservative bill through (not that they could in 2004, either). We're going to get a bill, and now that we haven't passed the only chance we're likely to get at a clean one, it's going to be something porked up to get more votes from Democrats.

Having said that, Nancy Pelosi doesn't get to whine that Republicans didn't support this bill and that's why the market dropped. It wasn't their bill. I'm sure if you had the Republican Study Committee get together and write a bill they could get something that 90% of Republicans could vote for (though the President probably wouldn't like it). If they held the majority in the House, they could get it passed. But they don't. Democrats have the majority, Democrats get to write the bills, Democrats get to pass the bills, and if the bill doesn't pass because 95 Democrats didn't vote for it, that's their fault.