Maybe We Have A Congress After All

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Fail

The neocon plan to bailout America’s richest people, who are now in danger of becoming regular people like most of us(read: middle economic class) while leaving the rest of us struggling is not being received well in Congress.

WashingtonWire:

The White House expressed confidence that it will reach a deal with Congress to move forward this week on its $700 billion rescue plan for shaky financial markets.

“There should be no question out there that this plan will get done this week,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters on a conference call Tuesday. “We are very, very confident.” The idea that a deal couldn’t be reached is “unthinkable,” and that it would be a “very, very serious situation for our economy were we not to get this legislation passed,” he said.

Fratto said top administration officials — Vice President Dick Cheney, White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and National Economic Council Director Keith Hennessey — were lobbying members of Congress Tuesday, including the House of Representative’s conservative Republican Study Group.

Reading through the comments I came across this comment from stan:

The bill as written is a horrible piece of legislation that could well ruin our country. It essentially has congress signing over all its powers to the president. It is Rome all over. There MUST be congressional oversight along with checks and balances written into this bill. The free markets will no longer be free. We can not allow any one branch of government to control the markets. This bill changes us from a three branch system to a one branch system of government. BAD IDEA. It is bad enough that the administration wants to turn us into a Socialist government through their blunders, but now, after they have screwed up the economy, they want absolute authority to fix it. No thank you.

From Politico:

The vice president traveled to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to silence a chorus of GOP complaints about Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s $700 billion plan. But House Republicans who walked into a closed-door meeting with Cheney steaming over the plan walked out just as angry, and they described what happened in between as both “a bloodbath” and “an unmitigated disaster.”

Texas Rep. Joe Barton took the unusual step of telling reporters gathered outside the Cannon Caucus Room that he had confronted Cheney “respectfully” about his concerns — a level of dissent Republicans once considered heresy under the Bush administration.

Another lawmaker present — who spoke on the condition of anonymity — said that Cheney, White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten and economic policy adviser Keith Hennessey “were in worse shape when they left than when they came in.”

Cheney’s inability to turn around members of his own party said plenty about how congressional Republicans view the Bush White House these days — but maybe even more about their discomfort with a bailout plan many of them see as an attack on their free market principles.

“It’s a sad fact, but Americans can no longer trust the economic information they are getting from this administration,” South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint said in a comment posted on Politico’s Arena forum.

“There is tremendous unease over the federal government assuming the assets that these financial institutions cannot price or manage,” said Alabama Rep. Spencer Bachus, the ranking Republican on the committee drafting the legislation.

It wasn’t clear Tuesday whether Republicans were willing to take responsibility for killing the Paulson plan — but neither were they eager to take responsibility for passing it, either.

I am Jon. I didn’t create this mess and I do not want to pay for it. These fat cats have already taken too much from this country. Let them fail.