$819 Billion Bailout Passes House

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The House on Wednesday evening passed an $819 billion economic stimulus package Wednesday on a party-line vote, despite President Obama's efforts to achieve bipartisan support for the bill.

The final vote was 244 to 188. No Republicans voted for the bill, while just 12 Democrats voted against it.

The Senate is likely to take up the bill next week.

"I hope that we can continue to strengthen this plan before it gets to my desk," Obama said in a statement after the vote. "We must move swiftly and boldly to put Americans back to work, and that is exactly what this plan begins to do."

In floor debate earlier, House Democrats offered near-unanimous support for the bill, touting the package's ability to quickly create jobs and jumpstart economic growth.

"One week and one day ago, our new President delivered a great inaugural address ... which I believe is a great blueprint for the future," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "With swift and bold action today, we are doing just that -- with this vote today, we are taking America in a new direction."

But Republicans, who are outnumbered in the House, have pushed back, expressing concern about the large amount of spending in the bill, and have criticized the tax cut provisions for not going far enough.

"The underlying bill, while it has some good provisions, has a lot of wasteful provisions and slow-moving spending in it," said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. "We have to act -- we have to heal the ailing economy. The question is how to do it best; we think that fast-acting tax relief is the way to get it done."

The House voted down a Republican amendment, which would have cut a significant portion of the bill's spending and greatly expanded the amount of tax cuts in the bill.

Obama spent much of his first week as president rallying support for the bill. After meeting with congressional leadership of both parties on Friday, he met with Republican congressional leaders on Tuesday and a dozen CEOs on Wednesday.

Obama and House Democrats etched out plans for a stimulus package in the weeks leading up to the president's inauguration. Two House committees amended and added some provisions, resulting in $607 billion in direct pending and appropriations and $212 billion in tax cuts.

Next week, the full Senate will vote on its version. The House and Senate bills will be different and need to be reconciled. Then, both chambers would have to vote on the final version in the coming weeks.

Congress has put the legislation on a fast track, as many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agree that fast action is needed to help pull the economy out of a deep recession. Both Democratic and Republican leaders have said they aim to get the bill to Obama's desk for him to sign before lawmakers' Presidents' Day recess in mid-February.
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http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/28/news/economy/house_vote_wednesday/?cnn=yes


Yes, more fake money! Please thank the 188 members of the House that realize this is non-sensical.

All 177 Republicans voted no and 11 Democrats joined them.

Roll Call
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-01-27-obama-economy_N.htm
 
Does all of the bailout monies (which has added up to how many of trillions?) even exist? Will the taxpayers be able to pay this back? How many trillions do we have make before the majority of politicians say, "Now, wait a minute, this is getting out of hand?"

I suspect if that ever happened there'd also be bread lines.
 
Welp, Obama got his wish. It better be all that and a bag of chips or his ass is going to be on the hook just as bad as Bush.

[quote name='RAMSTORIA']All 177 Republicans voted no and 11 Democrats joined them.[/QUOTE]
The Republicans voted no right after they made sure all their projects got in there under the banner of bipartisan crafting of legislation. Don't even let those assholes pretend they weren't in on this. The shit thing is if it goes well they'll talk about how they helped create it, if it goes bad they'll point to their vote against it.

Worthless douchebags.
 
[quote name='speedracer']Welp, Obama got his wish. It better be all that and a bag of chips or his ass is going to be on the hook just as bad as Bush.


The Republicans voted no right after they made sure all their projects got in there under the banner of bipartisan crafting of legislation. Don't even let those assholes pretend they weren't in on this. The shit thing is if it goes well they'll talk about how they helped create it, if it goes bad they'll point to their vote against it.

Worthless douchebags.[/quote]

I hate to tell you buddy, but it always works like this. Same thing with the Iraq War and the Democrats. They voted for it, but they won't admit they did anymore. They'll say if 'if I knew then what I know now, blah blah blah'. Blaming this on Republicans for something that happens EVERY TIME a bill occurs is crazy.

Oh, and by the way, this won't help at all. Just you watch.
 
Strategically, the Republicans had little choice but to vote as a solid block against the bill. Here's some insight from a poster at Talking Points Memo.

[quote name='Reader']So I just wanted to make a point about "post-partisanship" because I see so many people misapprehending both the moment and the strategy on this, in my opinion.

A lot was made of when Obama essentially "pre-conceded" and included some tax cuts to businesses before even starting to work on the bill. He then held yesterday's meeting with Republicans and even after all of this, no Republicans voted Yea. Some people are taking this as a repudiation of negotiating with Republicans since they aren't interested in governing, since to them, they can only win by Obama failing, a classic zero sum game. And most of the critics assume that Obama is getting some sort of rude awakening on this.

Once again, I urge people to read Audacity of Hope, because there is a whole chapter on this game, and it's crystal clear that Obama is well versed in it (to say nothing of Rahm Emmanuel) and certainly doesn't think it's played for fun.

But what people are missing is that it's not about convincing Republican politicians. He knows they have their role to play for their party. It's about convincing Republican VOTERS, and I can speak from both the polls and personal experience that it's working. Voters approve of this immense bill by something like 60/40. And yet the tax cuts only account for something like 3-5% of the total bill. It's huge. But look at the strategy here. Republicans get everything they want. Concessions. A meeting with Obama. Happy talk. Time on TV. And still, not ONE of their congresspersons votes Yea. And so Obama comes out looking responsible, reasonable, realistic, and most of all, BI-PARTISAN and Republicans look like petty obstructionists. And the bill that passes is the largest spending bill, perhaps, in history (I haven't looked that up) but the perception is that it's "too small" and Dems made lots of concessions on it.

So in the end, he's in a position to seek still more money, and Republicans can't even complain because they forced the bill to be "smaller" than it might have been, and then voted no anyway.

And polls are showing a s 24% generic ballot preference for Dems in 2010.

IMO, this was very well played.

We'll see what the Senate does next week...[/quote]

For those of you who think that the whole effort is a total waste of money, then what would you do? How would you go about fixing this multi-faceted problem affecting all reaches of America's economy?

Yes, "doing nothing" is an option.
 
[quote name='ITDEFX']Where the hell is all this money coming from?[/QUOTE]

Our children and their children.........and their children.

Anyway you look at it, this isn't a fix to the systemtic problems of our economic system. If this plan is successful, and that is a big "IF," at best it will still just be a relatively short term solution. All it will do is re-inflate the credit and leverage bubble that basically caused all this mess in the first place and then when that newly re-inflated bubble burts again in the years to come we will be even worse off.

IMO, we are putting the long term financial stability of this country at risk because we can't handle a little pain right now. We need to let the various excesses that caused this problem get worked out of the system, not re-enforce them.......and that is what this plan is going to do.
 
Do we know what kind of stimulus package we are getting?
Is it going to be another lump sum paycheck.. or like.. less tax out your paycheck? My dad was saying it was $500 out your taxes for a year..which is like $10 a week.. LOL :(

If that's true, I don't see how an extra $10 a week is going to help people.
 
It's basically a whole bunch of pork, with 10% of it actually doing any real good.

And before anyone asks, some pork includes giving ACORN like 5 million (billion?) dollars and the 330+ million for STD prevention stuff. And I haven't even begun to dig that deep into it yet.

No one however seems to be asking how bad inflation is going to be because of all this spending (NOTE: High inflation cost Jimmy Carter his job).
 
I'm waiting on inflation to come. That'll save the day.

All of those assets worth 50 cents on the dollar will be worth 100 cents on the dollar if we have 100% inflation for a year.

The problem stems with nobody wanting to accept losses.
 
[quote name='BillyBob29']Our children and their children.........and their children.

Anyway you look at it, this isn't a fix to the systemtic problems of our economic system. If this plan is successful, and that is a big "IF," at best it will still just be a relatively short term solution. All it will do is re-inflate the credit and leverage bubble that basically caused all this mess in the first place and then when that newly re-inflated bubble burts again in the years to come we will be even worse off.

IMO, we are putting the long term financial stability of this country at risk because we can't handle a little pain right now. We need to let the various excesses that caused this problem get worked out of the system, not re-enforce them.......and that is what this plan is going to do.[/QUOTE]

I think you severely underestimate "a little bit of pain," given (1) the size of our national debt, and what that means for how we need to sculpt tax plans in the long term, and (2) the size of government spending from year to year.

We're in a crisis; we can't really cut government spending in meaningful ways without carving up spending in programs like the military or corrections. Those are two locations where spending cuts can be massive, and should be massive - but will also mean the end of your political career. We're also in a crisis because we *need* to raise taxes on everyone in order to accommodate our past spending transgressions over 30 years. We need to raise capital gains taxes, income taxes, the social security cap, etc. Nobody wants to do it, everybody wants taxes to go up on everyone but them. But it's reality, and she's a harsh, cold bitch sometimes.

Our national debt and annual spending have been out of control. But we've dealt with the supply-siders broken, foolhardy, and not-even-antiquated because calling it that would treat it somewhat legitimately, which it *never* has been philosophy for several decades now. The Heritage/Cato/Club for Growth "the answer is to always cut taxes no matter what" approach to improving the conditions of the country and the government. Never been proven even remotely right. On the other, we have a government whose fiscal plan is akin to Roman Bellic borrowing money form the Albanians to gamble away, thinking that he can pay of his debts if he hits it big.

Which he doesn't.

The bailout is what it is. I'm not a huge fan of it, but I believe fully that the "do nothing and let people suffer" crowd are obtuse to the conditions of the real world, or simply don't understand multiple indirect effects, or can't think in the long term. Sure, cut spending on stimulus now, let the chips fall, and then call for more government spending to lock up people on account of the necessary increase in crime that coincides with the resulting increase of "do nothing" policies that lead to greater poverty and homelessness.
 
I completely understand what is happening out there. I'm in the markets everyday and I read and see every new bit of economic data. It isn't difficult to see what is happening out here and how this massive ponzi scheme we have been running on the world is about to fall apart.

My interpretation is that we, as a nation, have no tolerance for pain at all. We have been living in a period of constant excess for decades and we have finally reached the tipping point where the system can not handle the excess anymore. But now, instead of dealing with and working off the various excesses we have created throughout the economic system we are looking for a way to simply re-enforce those excesses. All we are doing to moving the *bubble* from area to another.....over and over again. Until the excess is allowed to work itself out and reach a natural market balance we will continue going from boom to bust to boom again......to bust again.

This plan isn't about the long term at all. It is 100% focused on trying to create short term relief, and it doesn't even do that very well, while putting the long term viability and stability of the US economy at serious risk. We are going to follow Japan's playbook in late 80's/90's that led them straight to a near 20 year period of stagflation.
 
Are we not already at serious economic risk? Haven't the collective acts of the past 30 years put us on an irreversible rocket towards serious financial doom?

Hell, I've been calling "depression" for no fewer than 5 years now. Doesn't make me suddenly right, but I still think you underestimate "pain." You may think that means fewer flat-screen tvs, or trips to McD's. I think it will lead to food riots and a skyrocketing crime rate like we've never seen before. Not quite "The Road Warrior" bad, but it will make it seem plausible.

"Brother, Can You Spare a Dime" will move aside for "Brother, I'm Gonna Cut Your fucking Throat For That Bottle of Water."
 
[quote name='KingBroly']I hate to tell you buddy, but it always works like this. Same thing with the Iraq War and the Democrats. They voted for it, but they won't admit they did anymore. They'll say if 'if I knew then what I know now, blah blah blah'. Blaming this on Republicans for something that happens EVERY TIME a bill occurs is crazy.

Oh, and by the way, this won't help at all. Just you watch.[/QUOTE]
I definitely get your point, and thought it's not perfectly analogous, I certainly can't in good faith put up an argument to the contrary. Like I've said before, at this point I'm rooting for everyone. Hell, I even like that Republicans have suddenly found their small govt roots again. I just wish they could leverage their opposition a little better.

Interesting post, Ecofreak.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']
We're in a crisis; we can't really cut government spending in meaningful ways without carving up spending in programs like the military or corrections. Those are two locations where spending cuts can be massive, and should be massive - but will also mean the end of your political career. We're also in a crisis because we *need* to raise taxes on everyone in order to accommodate our past spending transgressions over 30 years. We need to raise capital gains taxes, income taxes, the social security cap, etc. Nobody wants to do it, everybody wants taxes to go up on everyone but them. But it's reality, and she's a harsh, cold bitch sometimes.
[/quote]

Well, I worry about the rich avoiding these said taxes and the poor just falling further. By poor I mean those working full time to support themselves and/or a family without the ability to continue jobless for an extended period of time.

The government we have is a corporate one, when the corporate climate is good the people are spared. When the corporations face adversity, the people are burdened to make sure the rich stay that way.

I don't know what the answer is, but I am sure it isn't going to come from D.C.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']Are we not already at serious economic risk? Haven't the collective acts of the past 30 years put us on an irreversible rocket towards serious financial doom?

Hell, I've been calling "depression" for no fewer than 5 years now. Doesn't make me suddenly right, but I still think you underestimate "pain." You may think that means fewer flat-screen tvs, or trips to McD's. I think it will lead to food riots and a skyrocketing crime rate like we've never seen before. Not quite "The Road Warrior" bad, but it will make it seem plausible.

"Brother, Can You Spare a Dime" will move aside for "Brother, I'm Gonna Cut Your fucking Throat For That Bottle of Water."[/QUOTE]

I use the term "a little bit of pain" in comparision to where we have come from. When taking a step back and looking at our economic history post WW2, we have basically been in a bullmarket for about 60 years. Yes, there have been little pull backs here and there but in terms of their total economic damage compared to where we have come from, they were pretty insignificant.

This is really the first sizeable correction to affect every sector of the economy since the Great Depression and even now, even with the pain we have experienced, it is relatively small compared to how much we have grown the past 60+ years. It is all about perspective, about where we have come from.

I fully recognize the problems we face and their potential to get much, much, much worse. I see that the house of cards that forms the base of our economy is very close to tumbling down.

My worry, as I've stated before, is that we are giving up economic growth in the future because we can't deal with the pain we are going through right now, which in terms of global economic history is still relatively light. We are basically taking a cash advance on future economic activity.......at a tremendous interest rate.

We are a nation of instant gratification and our economic policy proves that. We have little regard for the future implications of the economy if we can make things a little easier today.

Our system needs to be cleansed and pumping trillions of dollars of fake money into it is only going to postpone the inevitable.
 
[quote name='Dead of Knight']Uncle Bernie's Xerox Machine![/quote]

oh please..... Uncle Bernie was busted years ago..where have you been woman?

[quote name='BillyBob29']Our children and their children.........and their children.

Anyway you look at it, this isn't a fix to the systemtic problems of our economic system. If this plan is successful, and that is a big "IF," at best it will still just be a relatively short term solution. All it will do is re-inflate the credit and leverage bubble that basically caused all this mess in the first place and then when that newly re-inflated bubble burts again in the years to come we will be even worse off.

IMO, we are putting the long term financial stability of this country at risk because we can't handle a little pain right now. We need to let the various excesses that caused this problem get worked out of the system, not re-enforce them.......and that is what this plan is going to do.[/quote]

If you break it down to the simplest form possible, it sounds like we can fix our money problems by creating more money problems by giving out more money. We can't sell some of our technology and make a profit!??!?!?!
 
The government tax rebate "stimulus" didn't work.

TARP didn't work (except for execs who got $20 billion in bonuses for bankrupting their companies).

This "stimulus" won't work either.

These things are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Government hogging all the resources isn't going to make things better, it makes things worse. Not allowing poorly-run companies to fail just hurts those companies that are well-run, just like giving financial benefits to the idiots who took out larger-than-life mortgages on small salaries screws schmucks like me who actually pay their reasonable mortgages.
 
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