The Surreal Life Starring the President and the Congress

I do a fun with numbers series and this post could easily have been done much the same way. There are all sorts of numbers relevant to the current bailout. For instance, there is the number 32 which is Real Clear Politics' current average of the President's job approval. Then, there is the number 21 which is Real Clear Politics' average job approval ratings for Congress. Then, there is the number 28 which is what Rasmussen Reports found is the percentage of Americans that support this bailout. Finally there is the number 121, and that is the number of days that this President has of being President.

So, in other words, a lame duck, deeply unpopular, President is attempting to pass a major bailout that no one supports and an even more deeply unpopular Congress appears likely to let him do it. While lawmakers appear to question certain aspects of the plan, they appear to be on board with the guiding principle of the massive bailout.

The nation's top economic policymakers acknowledged this morning that an already extraordinary series of government actions has failed to stabilize global financial markets and said that Congress must act quickly on a proposed bailout plan to avoid dire consequences for the U.S. economy.

But the proposal received a skeptical reception from both Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Banking Committee, who raised a number of questions about the plan and demanded protections for the taxpayers -- including beleaguered homeowners -- who are being asked to bear the estimated $700 billion burden of the program.

Arguing that the crisis on Wall Street threatens the jobs, savings and finances of every American, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said in congressional testimony that debates about broader financial system reform should wait until the current crisis is resolved.

While it appears as though many legislators will do their typical dance of questioning this and that, it doesn't appear as though in the end they will actually block this massive bailout. My question is why.

The Democrats have blamed the Bush administration for the entire economic malaise of the last eight years. They blame him so much that they create five years of economic malaise even though the economy was doing great. The Republicans fancy themselves free market thinkers that want to control spending. The President has less than 130 days left in office. He will start a massive bailout and leave the rest of the bailout to the next administration. This bailout will give mostly a blank check to the President and the Treasury.

Sure there will be oversight, but does anyone really think that oversight will be any better than the oversight done on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? So we have a deeply unpopular idea by a deeply unpopular President presented to a deeply unpopular Congress, and no one has thought that this presents an opportunity for good politics, if not good policy as well. The Republicans got crushed in the last election because of their ties to the President. Here is an opportunity to step farther away from the President than their opponents, and yet they are largely silent. The Democrats hate this President and yet he comes to them with a $700 billion proposal, and rather than dismissing it out of hand, they are nearly ready to play ball.

Where is the political courage? Where is the political skill? For several years, Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson have guided this economy to where it is at, and now they say it's on the verge of collapse and so you better do as they say. Hasn't the problem been that we have done as they said? Let me see if I understand this right. On Friday, the President announces that the economy is ready to disintegrate and the Treasury needs permission to spend $700 billion of the taxpayer's money and they need it pronto. If things are so dire, how come they just figured this out last week? This doesn't sound like a request but extortion.

Where are the Republicans organizing a filibuster and proposing tax cuts and an end to ludicrous rules like FASB 157? Where are the Democrats telling the President they don't trust him on the economy and they won't give him any more checks? Here we have a lame duck President, deeply unpopular, and if he demands $700 billion, it appears the Congress will just give it to him. Or what? The whole entire system will disintegrate as the administration just discovered on Friday. Color me skeptical if I don't believe there are other alternatives. A bunch of irresponsible bankers bought bad bonds, mostly on margin, and now the Federal government needs to take those bonds over. In other words, the best idea we have is to have the tax payers hold onto this bad debt. That's not a plan, that's a joke a bunch of stuffy think tank employees tell each other.

Yet, unless the dyanamics change remarkably, we are all on a collosion course so that a deeply unpopular President gets a blank check to spend in his last 121 days to the tune of $700 billion.