Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain pulled off the presidential campaign trail just long enough on Wednesday night to cast what both of these cautious contenders hope will be “safe” votes favor of a financial bailout scheme based on the $700 billion plan proposed last week by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.
In doing so, they joined an overwhelming majority of their fellow senators in passing the plan by a 74-25 vote. Forty Democrats and 33 Republicans voted with Connecticut Independent Joe Lieberman, who caucuses with the Democrats but backs McCain, to advance a slighting altered version of the Paulson plan.
The Senate move sends the measure back to the House with “sweeteners” added in hopes of attracting enough Democratic and Republican votes to secure its passage in a chamber that rejected the Paulson plan on Monday.
No one was shocked that Obama and McCain went along with the Bush administration’s plan to allow the federal government to begin buying up hundreds of billions of dollars worth of supposed assets from troubled financial institutions — a move designed to rescue Wall Street speculators and bad bankers from the mess they into which they steered their firms and the economy.
Obama summed up the Washington consensus when he said during the floor debate, “There’s no doubt that there may be other plans out there that, had we had two or three or six months to develop … might serve our purposes better. But we don’t have that kind of time. And we can’t afford to take a risk that the economy of the United States of America and, as a consequence, the worldwide economy could be plunged into a very, very deep hole.”
But not everyone was buying that line.
Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican who has been a key player on banking issues and who actually had the wisdom to oppose the deregulation moves of the late 1990s that helped create the current crisis, told senator Senate were in the process of having “failed the American people” by acting hastily.
“I agree we need to do something,” said Shelby. “[But] we haven’t spent any time figuring out whether we’ve picked the best choice.”
Equally blunt was Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, who rejected the bailout plan as “deeply flawed.”
“It fails to offset the cost of the plan, leaving taxpayers to bear the burden of serious lapses of judgment by private financial institutions, their regulators, and the enablers in Washington who paved the way for this catastrophe by removing the safeguards that had protected consumers and the economy since the great depression,” said Feingold. “The bailout legislation also fails to reform the flawed regulatory structure that permitted this crisis to arise in the first place. And it doesn’t do enough to address the root cause of the credit market collapse, namely the housing crisis. Taxpayers deserve a plan that puts their concerns ahead of those who got us into this mess.”
Popular
"swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe →
Feingold pondered seeking the presidency this year, but decided against doing so.
That gave him the freedom that the man he backs for the job, Obama, and the man he has frequently worked with in the Senate, McCain, seemed to lack on Wednesday night.
Like the other senators who voted “no” — a left-right coalition of 16 Republicans and eight Democrats and Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders that withstood overwhelming pressure from the White House and Wall Street — Feingold, Shelby and their compatriots rejected what bailout-critic Sanders says will put Wall Street’s burden on the backs of the American middle class.
“The bailout package is far better than the absurd proposal originally presented to us by the Bush administration, but is still short of where we should be,” argued Sanders. “If a bailout is needed, if taxpayer money must be placed at risk, if we are going to bail out Wall Street, it should be those people who have caused the problem, those people who have benefited from President Bush’s tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, those people who have taken advantage of deregulation who should pick up the tab, not ordinary working people.”
Unfortunately, Barack Obama and John McCain lacked the time, the insight or the inclination to recognize that reality.
Here is a rundown of how the presidential candidates and their 98 colleagues approached Wednesday night’s vote:
Akaka (D-HI), Yea
Alexander (R-TN), Yea
Allard (R-CO), Nay
Barrasso (R-WY), Nay
Baucus (D-MT), Yea
Bayh (D-IN), Yea
Bennett (R-UT), Yea
Biden (D-DE), Yea
Bingaman (D-NM), Yea
Bond (R-MO), Yea
Boxer (D-CA), Yea
Brown (D-OH), Yea
Brownback (R-KS), Nay
Bunning (R-KY), Nay
Burr (R-NC), Yea
Byrd (D-WV), Yea
Cantwell (D-WA), Nay
Cardin (D-MD), Yea
Carper (D-DE), Yea
Casey (D-PA), Yea
Chambliss (R-GA), Yea
Clinton (D-NY), Yea
Coburn (R-OK), Yea
Cochran (R-MS), Nay
Coleman (R-MN), Yea
Collins (R-ME), Yea
Conrad (D-ND), Yea
Corker (R-TN), Yea
Cornyn (R-TX), Yea
Craig (R-ID), Yea
Crapo (R-ID), Nay
DeMint (R-SC), Nay
Dodd (D-CT), Yea
Dole (R-NC), Nay
Domenici (R-NM), Yea
Dorgan (D-ND), Nay
Durbin (D-IL), Yea
Ensign (R-NV), Yea
Enzi (R-WY), Nay
Feingold (D-WI), Nay
Feinstein (D-CA), Yea
Graham (R-SC), Yea
Grassley (R-IA), Yea
Gregg (R-NH), Yea
Hagel (R-NE), Yea
Harkin (D-IA), Yea
Hatch (R-UT), Yea
Hutchison (R-TX), Yea
Inhofe (R-OK), Nay
Inouye (D-HI), Yea
Isakson (R-GA), Yea
Johnson (D-SD), Nay
Kennedy (D-MA), Not Voting
Kerry (D-MA), Yea
Klobuchar (D-MN), Yea
Kohl (D-WI), Yea
Kyl (R-AZ), Yea
Landrieu (D-LA), Nay
Lautenberg (D-NJ), Yea
Leahy (D-VT), Yea
Levin (D-MI), Yea
Lieberman (ID-CT), Yea
Lincoln (D-AR), Yea
Lugar (R-IN), Yea
Martinez (R-FL), Yea
McCain (R-AZ), Yea
McCaskill (D-MO), Yea
McConnell (R-KY), Yea
Menendez (D-NJ), Yea
Mikulski (D-MD), Yea
Murkowski (R-AK), Yea
Murray (D-WA), Yea
Nelson (D-FL), Nay
Nelson (D-NE), Yea
Obama (D-IL), Yea
Pryor (D-AR), Yea
Reed (D-RI), Yea
Reid (D-NV), Yea
Roberts (R-KS), Nay
Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea
Salazar (D-CO), Yea
Sanders (I-VT), Nay
Schumer (D-NY), Yea
Sessions (R-AL), Nay
Shelby (R-AL), Nay
Smith (R-OR), Yea
Snowe (R-ME), Yea
Specter (R-PA), Yea
Stabenow (D-MI), Nay
Stevens (R-AK), Yea
Sununu (R-NH), Yea
Tester (D-MT), Nay
Thune (R-SD), Yea
Vitter (R-LA), Nay
Voinovich (R-OH), Yea
Warner (R-VA), Yea
Webb (D-VA), Yea
Whitehouse (D-RI), Yea
Wicker (R-MS), Nay
Wyden (D-OR), Nay
