It’s a cobbled together mess of input from staffers, lobbyists, and NGO’s. If you want to know who put what in the bill go back and look at who took Pelosi and Dingell staffers to lunch during the weeks leading up to the initial drafts being put forth.
Rasmussen: Americans Don’t Want House Plan
In the latest Rasmussen poll two thirds of Independent voters and 4 out of 5 Republicans say no bill passing is a better outcome than the House version(s) passing.
Not surprisingly, there is a huge partisan divide on this issue. Sixty percent (60%) of Democrats say passing the legislation in Congress would be the best course of action. However, 80% of Republicans take the opposite view. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 23% would like the Congressional reform to pass while 66% would rather the legislators take no action.
Voters who earn less than $20,000 a year are evenly divided but a majority of all other voters would prefer no action. Middle income voters, those who earn from $40,000 to $75,000 a year, are most strongly in favor of taking no action.
I’ve pointed out the weakness of the house version(s) several times here and in debates in many threads over at Little Green Footballs. It’s a cobbled together mess of input from staffers, lobbyists, and NGO’s. If you want to know who put what in the bill go back and look at who took Pelosi and Dingell staffers to lunch during the weeks prior to the initial draft releases.
This doesn’t mean that Americans are opposed to health care insurance reform – and remember, this bill does nothing to reform health care, it just reforms insuring care. So a few things that conservatives and the public are in favor of are in the bill, however they are tied to so many other negatives and unknowns that nobody wants the Pelosi version. Do the math: 40 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of Independents, and 80 percent of Republicans opposed. That’s a large majority opposed. If you are a Democrat you might say that Nancy and her staffers pretty much have let down the side on this.
UPDATE: Here are just two examples of the problems with the bill – to be able to characterize the bill as “budget Neutral” the money has to come from somewhere. Try a takeaway of half a trillion from Medicare based on pie in the sky imaginary savings, and new taxes. This is why the CBO report rocked O’s world so hard. I think most Americans are going to figure out this shell game flim flam before the recess is over.
So the hardball questions aren’t really about death panels – they are about what are you cutting in Medicare?*** Who’s determining that? Whose Taxes are you raising and how?
***People dwelling in the real world know that the “cuts” are political legerdemain for “we’ll just hide the costs in Medicare and let the next generation deal with the shortfall.” The first time any senior died or got denied care post passage it would be nationwide news quicker than you could say “Schiavo” and you also know that the Erin Brokovich fans on the left would be demanding congressional investigations vociferously.
A funny video send up up Nancy’s lies about the CIA, and her refusal to address the issue. Friday she once again ducked questions on the issue backed by a coterie of other Congresscritters, and then got out of DC as fast as she could…
Pelosi vs The CIA [with Bond Theme Song]
A funny video send up up Nancy’s lies about the CIA, and her refusal to address the issue. Friday she once again ducked questions on the issue backed by a coterie of other Congresscritters, and then got out of DC as fast as she could…
Am I angry? No, I am enraged at Pelosi’s speech. It seems intended to politicize this and ensure that there is no fix. The Dems are not happy unless we are all poor victims and the economy is tanking because they are party-power first people.
The title of the post says it all.
The American people know who has held the US economy hostage for housing the past few years, it’s time for a new speaker. If the Dems want a vote on this, they can put forward a speaker who is less incendiary. IHT 11/08/2006:
Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who will soon become the head of the House Financial Services Committee, said he and other Democrats who have been advising Pelosi, the party’s leader in the House, were planning to propose a “grand bargain” with business interests.
If the Republicans support the Democrats’ efforts to increase minimum wage, extend student loans and expand affordable housing programs, Frank said, then the Democrats would support efforts to reduce trade barriers and burdensome regulation.
Representative John Dingell, who will head the Energy and Commerce Committee, said that he intended to focus on an energy bill that would make America more independent of foreign oil and another one outlining a bill of rights for patients. He also plans to hold hearings on unfair trade practices that have hurt American industries and workers.
Dingell, who is the chamber’s senior member, said he intended to work with Republicans in crafting legislation because “it’s best to legislate from the middle.” But he also said that “it won’t be the easiest task because the far right has controlled the House and I’m not sure how we can emancipate the Republican party and work with them.”
For some large companies, the Democratic victory is a major one. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage finance giants, which have been recovering from accounting scandals, had faced the possibility of tight new oversight laws pushed largely by Republicans. But some powerful Democrats had resisted, preferring to promote the companies’ housing mission over tighter capital standards and portfolio limits.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the largest U.S. mortgage-finance companies, would be allowed to expand their $1.5 trillion mortgage portfolio to buy subprime loans under a Democratic plan to help struggling borrowers.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats also called on President George W. Bush to increase funding for foreclosure prevention and appoint a coordinator to oversee the administration’s response to the mortgage-market turmoil in the plan they unveiled today in Washington.
“Our country faces a challenge that threatens the economic security and the dream of homeownership of many of America’s working families,” Pelosi, of California, said at a news conference.
Just a year ago she was begging to shove more crap loans down the american taxpayer’s throats.
Here’s her friends Chuckie Schumer and Barney Frank trying to lower lending standards on homes costing nearly half a million dollars — yes we should give half million dollar homes to people not worthy of credit Chuck & Barney, I mean the taxpayers are always willing to take it up the bum from Dems in congress right?:
Schumer and other Democrats have called on the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight to relax government restraints barring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from buying home loans exceeding $417,000 and from expanding their assets.
The senator introduced legislation last month to let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac temporarily increase their mortgage portfolios by 10 percent. The bill would also allow the companies to buy loans in “high-cost areas” where values are 50 percent higher than the current $417,000 cap.
U.S. Representative Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said Congress would pursue “sensible regulation” to restore investor confidence in the mortgage markets. Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said he wants to meet with mortgage lenders to urge them to help borrowers refinance.
“We need the people who hold the paper to be more flexible,” Frank said.
Am I angry? No, I am enraged at Pelosi’s speech. It seems intended to politicize this and ensure that there is no fix. The Dems are not happy unless we are all poor victims with a tanking economy because they are party-power first people.
“From the minute John McCain suspended his campaign and arrived in Washington to address this crisis, he was attacked by the Democratic leadership: Senators Obama and Reid, Speaker Pelosi and others. Their partisan attacks were an effort to gain political advantage during a national economic crisis. By doing so, they put at risk the homes, livelihoods and savings of millions of American families.
“Barack Obama failed to lead, phoned it in, attacked John McCain, and refused to even say if he supported the final bill.
“Just before the vote, when the outcome was still in doubt, Speaker Pelosi gave a strongly worded partisan speech and poisoned the outcome.
“This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country.” — McCain-Palin senior policy adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin
More History from 2006 — When the Bankers and the Dems shot the fix for this down in flames.
Here’s the timeline:
Along the same vein, I want to know who in the WUSSANIMOUS Republican leadership decided not to put John McCain’s bill up for a vote in 2006. What are the names?
UPDATE: I’m taking a bit of heat over this post, so let me clarify, I am in favor of doing this save for the credit markets, and unlike most I always have been. What I don’t think we need to do is rush into it and be hammerlocked by expediency into bad choices. Like Steve Forbes I do think it absolutely necessary to prevent a deep recession. However I also have a lot of faith and confidence in both the breadth and depth of our economy, and do not think it would lead to depression.
What we don’t need with it is political posturing of the sort Pelosi pulled that is transparently false and riddled with Bush derangement syndrome. The Dems in the house have fought off any reform or any change to FNMA GMAC and CRA since 2001, to point at Republicans as the cause is very heinous demagoguery and a flat out big lie. She needs to be replaced by the Dems, or she needs to resign, or she needs censure. Holding this bill hostage a day or two until she at least does a mea culpa isn’t going to absolutely kill the economy, and it will give people a couple more days to digest why it’s necessary, and to improve it.
Barack Obama is the second biggest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac money during the last ten years, and he’s only been in Washington for four years… is this Change, or the same old corruption? Story at Little Green Footballs.
Recent stories have him raising 66 Million dollars in August — so just who else bought Barry? It’s time to follow the money.
With the questionable home deal with convicted Felon Tony Rezko, and the several years he spent working for “affordable housing” as a community organizer he can’t claim ignorance on what’s going on in financial markets today.
Many of these bad loans bundled together into bad investment vehicles are what’s causing the problems we see now. They came as a result of community outreach and community organizers who crafted programs with banks to lower loan approval hurdles to “disadvantaged borrowers.” Good fiscal practice is just that, so the banks who went overboard on these programs are the ones feeling the pinch now.
Also note that the former CEO of Fannie Mae, who engineered the community outreach defaulted loans debacle is now Barack Obama’s favorite housing advisor. Is this surreal, or just a big freaking coincidence? Did he warn about the earnings mistatement in 2006 because he knew of all the bad loans in system before he left, or because he made an educated guess? You decide.
