Who is more to blame for the failure of the bailout in the House of Representatives?

Question

Is it Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi for delivering a partisan speech attacking "right wing economics" near the end of the floor debate? Or is it the Republicans who decided, as Rep. Frank put it "Because somebody hurt their feelings, they decided to punish the country"? Putting aside the underlying problems/causes/etc. for a moment, whose fault is it that this particular vote failed?

Answer 1

The one lady who took her 5 minutes to tell it like it is

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How the golden parachute is all Wall Street wants that is the tax payer

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And how Bush took Clinton $4 trillion surplus and wiped it our and has added $10 trillion debt instead

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And now wants to add more to the blunders of the brains on Wall Street

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Like she said in closing

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The party is over the party is over

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Those words will go down in history books as the words that changed how Wall street operates

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Answer 2

Barney Frank should just keep his mouth shut. He sounds retarded. Gregg Rudd isn't far behind.



They are all to blame. They all hate each other and themselves for being such dismal failures.



These are the people who are running the country and it's pretty embarrassing to be an American sometimes. We put people in office that obviously do not want to be there and have no intention of doing a good job nor do they care a hoot about anyone but themselves. They are there for the pay check and for the power they hold and the importance but haven't a clue as to how to put it to good use.



Everything Nancy said was true and I am glad she said it. People should be shouting her words through all sectors of capitol hill constantly 24/7. Maybe then it would sink into their numb skulls what this is all about.



What a pathetic pile of sh..... they are all. Either get your act together and do something for the sake of the American people or get out of Washington!

Answer 3

Say rather credit, not blame.



Now that common sense has survived the first spate of Bush and Paulsen crying "wolf". it is time to think. Just because Bush loudly and hysterically proclaimed that the only way to prevent the depression he has been leading us into for8years is to throw hundreds of billions of our tax dollars at it does not mean that is the only or best or even a good "fix".



Other nations are responding with more calm and wisdom. There are other things that can and should be done.



Trading on the stock markets should be suspended until strict regulations can be put in place to limit the damage that can be done by reckless speculation and panic.



Those financial institutions that are in trouble should be nationalized, set in order and sold to new owners.



The Federal Reserve needs to either be attenuated or dissolved. Just as starting points.

Answer 4

There are enough Democats to have passed the bailout,given that, there are enough Democats that don't drink her coolaid so it would not have passed with a pure democrat vote, even though they are in the majority. Pelosi wanted republicans on record voting for the bailout in case it fails. Then Pelosi can blame it on republicans as usual.

Dont get me wrong, there are kiss A** republicans that voted for it....ex

Rep. Bob Inglis, Sen Lindsey (lapdog Graham) out of SC.

Answer 5

I am to blame. I told them to vote no.



Sorry...but I think our future is worth it.



This explains the true root cause.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU6fuFrdCJY



We will get a plan. it will be better..in the long run.



I don't know the answers...but I would not trust Nancy Pelosi with a Blank checkbook..and I dont want expanded Government.



And the Democrats had opportunity in 2003 and again in 2005 to vote for regulation to avoid this mess....but they (and to a small extent the republicans) were getting tons of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.



Be patient...

Answer 6

This is semantics but I think it's important to say:



The bailout didn't fail. America has representative government and it acted. It did not bury the issue in committee and hide from it.



The bill failed to pass. No one really knows whether that's best or not. I happen to think we should take action. I think the bill could have been more punitive to the companies receiving relief. Maybe we'll get a better bill.



Hopefully, for all of us. Business and the government will make the right choices.

Answer 7

I don't know that its anybody's fault. I think they all voted their hearts. My hubby and I watched all 3 hours of speeches and we agreed that these people, except for a few, seemed to be speaking from their hearts. If you want to break it down though, 95 democrats voted against the bill, with 141 voting for. You only need 218 to pass a bill. If the democrats wanted to pass it they could have, easily.

Answer 8

Irresponsible lending on the part of big corporations. The reason why real estate is at a stand still. These people were handing out loans like lollipops at the bank. I think maybe the government should put regulations and monitor large corporations more closely but liberals would probably cry about that.

Answer 9

This isn't a "resolution" this is the biggest PLEA BARGAIN in human history....This is a payoff to everyone who could identify the guilty parties, including Barney Frank and Chris Dodd (both members of the same faction of the Democratic Party that backs Obama, by the way)...

Answer 10

By TERRY JONES

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, September 24, 2008 4:30 PM PT



One of the most frequently asked questions about the subprime market meltdown and housing crisis is: How did the government get so deeply involved in the housing market?





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IBD Exclusive Series: What Caused The Loan Crisis?









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The answer is: President Clinton wanted it that way.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even into the early 1990s, weren't the juggernauts they'd later be.

While President Carter in 1977 signed the Community Reinvestment Act, which pushed Fannie and Freddie to aggressively lend to minority communities, it was Clinton who supercharged the process. After entering office in 1993, he extensively rewrote Fannie's and Freddie's rules.

In so doing, he turned the two quasi-private, mortgage-funding firms into a semi-nationalized monopoly that dispensed cash to markets, made loans to large Democratic voting blocs and handed favors, jobs and money to political allies. This potent mix led inevitably to corruption and the Fannie-Freddie collapse.

Despite warnings of trouble at Fannie and Freddie, in 1994 Clinton unveiled his National Homeownership Strategy, which broadened the CRA in ways Congress never intended.

Addressing the National Association of Realtors that year, Clinton bluntly told the group that 'more Americans should own their own homes.' He meant it.

Clinton saw homeownership as a way to open the door for blacks and other minorities to enter the middle class.

Though well-intended, the problem was that Congress was about to change hands, from the Democrats to the Republicans. Rather than submit legislation that the GOP-led Congress was almost sure to reject, Clinton ordered Robert Rubin's Treasury Department to rewrite the rules in 1995.

The rewrite, as City Journal noted back in 2000, 'made getting a satisfactory CRA rating harder.' Banks were given strict new numerical quotas and measures for the level of 'diversity' in their loan portfolios. Getting a good CRA rating was key for a bank that wanted to expand or merge with another.

Loans started being made on the basis of race, and often little else.

'Bank examiners would use federal home-loan data, broken down by neighborhood, income group and race, to rate banks on performance,' wrote Howard Husock, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute.

But those rules weren't enough.

Clinton got the Department of Housing and Urban Development to double-team the issue. That would later prove disastrous.

Clinton's HUD secretary, Andrew Cuomo, 'made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis,' the liberal Village Voice noted. Among those decisions were changes that let Fannie and Freddie get into subprime loan markets in a big way.

Other rule changes gave Fannie and Freddie extraordinary leverage, allowing them to hold just 2.5% of capital to back their investments, vs. 10% for banks.

Since they could borrow at lower rates than banks due to implicit government guarantees for their debt, the government-sponsored enterprises boomed.

With incentives in place, banks poured billions of dollars of loans into poor communities, often 'no doc' and 'no income' loans that required no money down and no verification of income.

By 2007, Fannie and Freddie owned or guaranteed nearly half of the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage market — a staggering exposure.

Worse still was the cronyism.

Fannie and Freddie became home to out-of-work politicians, mostly Clinton Democrats. An informal survey of their top officials shows a roughly 2-to-1 dominance of Democrats over Republicans.

Then there were the campaign donations. From 1989 to 2008, some 384 politicians got their tip jars filled by Fannie and Freddie.

Over that time, the two GSEs spent $200 million on lobbying and political activities. Their charitable foundations dropped millions more on think tanks and radical community groups.

Did it work? Well, if measured by the goal of putting more poor people into homes, the answer would have to be yes.

From 1995 to 2005, a Harvard study shows, minorities made up 49% of the 12.5 million new homeowners.

The problem is that many of those loans have now gone bad, and minority homeownership rates are shrinking fast.

Fannie and Freddie, with their massive loan portfolios stuffed with securitized mortgage-backed paper created from subprime loans, are a failed legacy of the Clinton era.

Answer 11

They are CONgress...expect nothing from them that is timely...or fair to the taxpayers...If the economy fails (which it might even with the bill) then maybe the Government will change also...We the people want no taxation without representation.And the representatives we currently have are about as welcome as a fart in the shower.

Answer 12

NANCY PELOSI'S, ATTACK AND BARNEY FRANK A.K.A.[MUMBLES] ARE TWO CLOWNS AND IT SCARES THE HELL OUT OF ME THAT THIS IS WHAT I HAVE REPRESENTING ME!!!!! BARNEY [MUMBLES] FRANK THINKS HE IS A COMEDIAN, RMEMBER HOW HE ASSURED US THAT FREDDIE MAC AND FANNIE MAY WERE SOLVENT, AFTER ALL THEY WERE HIS BABIES AND HE WAS THE OVERSIGHT, A REAL COMEDIAN, I HOPE THE INVESTIGATION INCLUDES "FUNNY BOY".THE CONGRESS IS IN THE HANDS OF GREEDY INDIVIDUALS AND WE NEED TO CLEAN UP THIS CROWD AND VOTE THEM OUT!!!

Answer 13

It is no ones "fault". I expect each representative voted the way they felt was right, not because of hurt feelings or anything Nancy Pelosi said. Maybe because their constituents back home called in droves and said this was a bad idea. Lets stop playing the blame game and address the problems.

Answer 14

I would say a large part is due to Nancy Pelosi. Just my opinion.

Answer 15

Pelosi! She is a dangerous and evil woman!

Answer 16

The democrat leadership is entirely at fault. Democrats could have passed this vote on their own, BUT 40% of their own party didn't even vote for it.

Answer 17

I say the Dems they could have pushed this thru without the help of the Reps. Looks like some of them smartened up.

Answer 18

It's the fault of all the cowards who voted against this. Everybody knows that its necessary to hopefully avoid a total meltdown. Nobody likes the bailout, but that doesn't mean we have to be suicide bombers, killing Wall Street and ourselves simultaneously.

Answer 19

133 Republicans and 95 Democrats voted against it. Obviously the Republicans share more of the blame for the failure of the bailout. The question is whether or not the bailout would've been a GOOD thing or not.

Answer 20

Barney Frank is a fat moron with a lisp... and an @ss bandit.



Do you really take him seriously? Consider the source.

Answer 21

The American People.

Answer 22

On MSNBC this week, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter tried to connect John McCain to the current financial disaster, saying: "If you remember the Keating Five scandal that (McCain) was a part of. ... He's really getting a free ride on the fact that he was in the middle of the last great financial scandal in our country."



McCain was "in the middle of" the Keating Five case in the sense that he was "exonerated." The lawyer for the Senate Ethics Committee wanted McCain removed from the investigation altogether, but, as The New York Times reported: "Sen. McCain was the only Republican embroiled in the affair, and Democrats on the panel would not release him."



So John McCain has been held hostage by both the Viet Cong and the Democrats.



Alter couldn't be expected to know that: As usual, he was lifting material directly from Kausfiles. What is unusual was that he was stealing a random thought sent in by Kausfiles' mother, who, the day before, had e-mailed: "It's time to bring up the Keating Five. Let McCain explain that scandal away."



The Senate Ethics Committee lawyer who investigated McCain already had explained that scandal away -- repeatedly. It was celebrated lawyer Robert Bennett, most famous for defending a certain horny hick president a few years ago.



In February this year, on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes," Bennett said, for the eight billionth time:



"First, I should tell your listeners I'm a registered Democrat, so I'm not on (McCain's) side of a lot of issues. But I investigated John McCain for a year and a half, at least, when I was special counsel to the Senate Ethics Committee in the Keating Five. ... And if there is one thing I am absolutely confident of, it is John McCain is an honest man. I recommended to the Senate Ethics Committee that he be cut out of the case, that there was no evidence against him."



It's bad enough for Alter to be constantly ripping off Kausfiles. Now he's so devoid of his own ideas, he's ripping off the idle musings of Kausfiles' mother.



Even if McCain had been implicated in the Keating Five scandal -- and he wasn't -- that would still have absolutely nothing to do with the subprime mortgage crisis currently roiling the financial markets. This crisis was caused by political correctness being forced on the mortgage lending industry in the Clinton era.



Before the Democrats' affirmative action lending policies became an embarrassment, the Los Angeles Times reported that, starting in 1992, a majority-Democratic Congress "mandated that Fannie and Freddie increase their purchases of mortgages for low-income and medium-income borrowers. Operating under that requirement, Fannie Mae, in particular, has been aggressive and creative in stimulating minority gains."



Under Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities. Clinton's secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Andrew Cuomo, investigated Fannie Mae for racial discrimination and proposed that 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low- to moderate-income borrowers by the year 2001.



Instead of looking at "outdated criteria," such as the mortgage applicant's credit history and ability to make a down payment, banks were encouraged to consider nontraditional measures of credit-worthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named "Caylee."



Threatening lawsuits, Clinton's Federal Reserve demanded that banks treat welfare payments and unemployment benefits as valid income sources to qualify for a mortgage. That isn't a joke -- it's a fact.



When Democrats controlled both the executive and legislative branches, political correctness was given a veto over sound business practices.



In 1999, liberals were bragging about extending affirmative action to the financial sector. Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Brownstein hailed the Clinton administration's affirmative action lending policies as one of the "hidden success stories" of the Clinton administration, saying that "black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded."



Meanwhile, economists were screaming from the rooftops that the Democrats were forcing mortgage lenders to issue loans that would fail the moment the housing market slowed and deadbeat borrowers couldn't get out of their loans by selling their houses.



A decade later, the housing bubble burst and, as predicted, food-stamp-backed mortgages collapsed. Democrats set an affirmative action time-bomb and now it's gone off.



In Bush's first year in office, the White House chief economist, N. Gregory Mankiw, warned that the government's "implicit subsidy" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, combined with loans to unqualified borrowers, was creating a huge risk for the entire financial system.



Rep. Barney Frank denounced Mankiw, saying he had no "concern about housing." How dare you oppose suicidal loans to people who can't repay them!

Answer 23

bush