A $700 billion bailout package designed to ease the nation's worsening economic crisis cleared Congress and was signed into law Friday after the House of Representatives approved a revised version of the bill that it had rejected days earlier.
Some 32 Democrats and 26 Republicans switched positions to vote for the Senate-passed bill, pushing it through the House by 263-171. President Bush quickly signed the measure, praising Congress for rallying behind the rescue package.
"By coming together on this legislation, we have acted boldly to help prevent the crisis on Wall Street from becoming a crisis in communities across our country," Bush said during a five-minute statement in the White House Rose Garden. Later, he walked next door to the Treasury Department, where he thanked Secretary Henry Paulson and the building's employees for their hard work during the financial crisis.
Stock prices slid on Wall Street despite the bill's passage as new data from around the world made it clear that the economic outlook is darkening rapidly. U.S. employers shed 159,000 jobs in September, the highest monthly number in five years, for example. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped another 157.47 points to close at 10,325.38. ... - mh
Hidden in this version of the bill is a tax break for makers of wooden arrows for children.
Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith introduced a bill in May to fix an item in the tax code under which the excise tax on inexpensive arrows for children is greater than the selling price of the arrows. Some nine manufacturers nationwide are affected. Wyden (D) voted No on the bill. Smith (R) voted Yes. - politicocomment
This is just a way of Wall Street forcing us to pay (by taxes) for worthless investments. I agree with Ron Paul and many others: Let Wall Street eat it. Things will be difficult for a year, but then they will get better. With the bail out, we are just going down the same road again and another crash is inevitable.
PAUL: Well, I think [the bail out is] a mistake because we don't have the money. But that doesn't mean you have to do nothing. I mean, we could reform the system. We could return to sound money. We could balance our budget. We could change our foreign policy. We could take care of our people at home. We could lower taxes.
There's a lot of things that we can do. But the worst thing that we can do is perpetuate the bad policies that gave us this trouble in the first place, and that is that we no longer, over the last quite a few decades, believed in free-market capitalism. Capital is supposed to come from savings. We're supposed to work hard and save.
As a matter of fact, the Chinese work hard, right now, and they save, and they're buying up the world. But we borrow and spend and consume, and now it's caught up to us and it's undermining our whole system. ... So this $700 billion is not going to do it. - latimes
2 comments:
Dear, Congress
Now that we have gotten this out of the way lets work on a matter that is near and dear to me, it appears that over the past several years I have ran a muck with my credit and seem to be in a pickle. So I'm writting to request a check in the sum of $25k to cover this. I was irresopnsible,young,stupid and I need a little help. I think in the aftermath of what we have just signed this should not be a problem after all it's only $25k.
Please just tack this on to the other $830 billion that I have to pay with everyone else and we'll be just fine.
Thanks in advance,
stew
When President Bush first submitted the bailout bill two weeks ago, I agreed that it was urgently necessary. I also understood that the Senate and Congress would need to refine the terms. It needed to have more control to protect taxpayers. Our elected representatives have added weak oversight to limit Secretary Paulson’s complete discretion and control of all $700 billion. It minimally addresses CEO pay restrictions, but not foreign owned institutions, leaving them in the bailout pool. Nothing in the bill addresses citizens facing foreclosures. All of these things seem at least related to the current financial crisis, but promise little in the way of protecting the tax dollars we will be investing in the economy. It ultimately does appear to be the powerful giving our money to the rich, again. Adding insult to injury, unrelated issues have found their way into the bill, such as energy and tax bills, as well as pork barrel, which take up over three-quarters of the verbiage.
If we had any faith in the way our government worked before this bill, citizens must now acknowledge that our elected representatives aren’t capable of addressing our country’s business needs quickly, sufficiently, or without taking care of their own wants first. At this point, I don’t trust the legislative or executive branches of our government to handle any of our nation’s concerns. They have proven their complete ineptitude while formulating this bill.
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