| The main underlying reason the bill did not pass is... Fear. Fear on BOTH sides because representatives have been inundated with e-mails and phone calls from their constituents urging them NOT to pass the bill.
The reason constituents are opposed to the bill is because they aren't in full possession, or clear understanding of the facts and are reacting in a knee-jerk fashion, "Why should we bail out those fat cats on Wall Street?" What they fail to understand is if we don't act this will eventually effect them if our major financial institutions fail. We will go into a Great Depression. However, they can't make the intellectual leap right now and is why they are telling their representatives not to vote for it. And the senators are all to happy to appease them because this is an election year.
On a related note, this is a prime example of what an ineffectual president George W. Bush is. If he was doing his job properly, he would be on TV and explaining to the general public why we need to approve this bail out and why if we don't act things could get much worse than they are. In my opinion, he should have used diagrams and charts and spoken to the general populace like they are school children and not only explain the crisis (on both the borrower and lender side), but promote the idea tCongress and the House need to act in the best interest of the country. Of course, this would never happen because by doing something like this it is a full admission of his administration's failed policies, but in theory this is how a president should handle something of this magnitude... |