Franken reportedly expressed dissatisfaction, which presumably still applies.
Schwartzenegger said, "We want a bailout too," when the State of California's borrowing capability reportedly hit a credit crunch (with the last link itself linking to Guv Arnold's letter).
I could use a few extra billion too, if it's there. Yo, y'all vote me some, ya hear?
Jim McDermott, my former Rep. while in Seattle, changed his vote from yes to no, given how the terms and conditions of the legislation package changed, with a rule that no alternatives/amendments were to be allowed, with only an up and down vote on the Senate pork filled item, with its tax baggage, etc.
Here's Seattle Times' report of his floor remarks, which resonate with me as well reasoned, and resonate due to the extreme respect I have for McDermott (all as published, not excerpted):
October 3, 2008 11:04 AM
McDermott switches vote, says no to Senate bailout plan
Posted by Richard Wagoner
Seattle Congressman Jim McDermott voted against the Senate's version of financial bailout plan today, after supporting the House version on Monday.
The rest of the Washington congressional delegation voted as they did on Monday, when the House rejected the bailout plan. The revised plan passed today.
According to the AP, voting in favor were Democrats Brian Baird of Vancouver, Norm Dicks of Bremerton, Rick Larsen of Lake Stevens, and Adam Smith of Tacoma.
Voting no were Democrats McDermott and Jay Inslee of Bainbridge Island, and Republicans Doc Hastings of Pasco, Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Spokane and Dave Reichert of Auburn.
The new plan extends a program that pays rural counties hurt by federal logging cutbacks and allows Washington state residents to continue deducting state sales taxes on their federal income tax returns. It also includes tax credits for renewable energy production.
Here are the remarks McDermott delivered from the House floor explaining his vote.Mr. Speaker,
On Thursday morning, the morning after the Senate passed a very different bailout bill, two things happened.
The filings for new unemployment benefits hit a seven year high, and a number of telephones melted in my congressional office as my constituents called in with their opinions.
By the thousands, the people of the 7th Congressional District are absolutely enraged by what the Senate did.
Senate Republicans blocked Senate Democrats from legislation that delivers for Main Street.
Senate Republicans demanded the pot be sweetened. But they left out the millions of Americans who can't find a job and are running out of benefits. And they left out a lot of other Americans too.
With economic times getting tougher by the day, Senate Republicans have no problem telling the American people to go it alone.
Last week, the House passed on a strong bi-partisan vote a stimulus package to help Main Street America.
But Senate Republicans said no; they were willing to help Wall Street but look the other way for Main Street.
One caller said they were stunned that the Senate included a call for the Securities and Exchange Commission to alter a fundamental way assets are valued.
It is called mark-to-market accounting and let me quote an NPR report.
The Council of Institutional Investors and the CFA Institute oppose a suspension of mark-to-market - also known as "fair value" - accounting because, in their opinion, the rule offers investors transparency.
In other words, suspending the rule is like letting the fox into the henhouse.
The other day I said I voted in favor of the House bailout bill because I trusted Democratic leaders who worked tirelessly to represent Main Street.
I still do, but Senate Republicans changed all that.
When Republicans force a bill that ignores the plight of Americans, but includes so-called sweeteners, that is not worthy of support.
When Republicans force a bill that slips in more earmark spending, that is not worthy of support.
When Republicans force a bill through that includes an accounting gimmick, that is not worthy of support.
The Senate dug an enormous ditch alongside Main Street, and they want the House to drive into it.
That is exactly where the President has driven this economy over seven years.
When Senate Republicans set the agenda, that's just another way of saying they are following the orders of a President who long ago lost the trust of the American people.
That is not how we are going to restore the trust with the American people. And that is why I voted against the Senate Republican bailout.
There is no question that we need a rescue plan, but the Senate has just made matters worse - and that is pretty hard to do in this economy.
Government has a role to play in calming the markets and addressing the economic crisis, but the more we learn, the more convinced I am the latest Senate plan is taking us in the wrong direction.
There are two models that have worked and which should serve as foundation blocks that we can build upon in a short period of time to produce a plan the American people trust and believe in.
During the Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt developed a Home Loan Housing Corporation that stabilized the housing market and helped homeowners work through the crisis.
More recently, in the 90s, Sweden stepped in and assumed temporary control of the financial system, cleaned up the mess and got out.
There are models available that we can use to quickly produce a solution that the American people will actually believe in.
There is a credit crisis in America to be sure, but there is no question today that there is also a trust crisis in America, every bit as damaging and debilitating. We cannot solve the first crisis before we address the second crisis.
Since the current Administration precipitated this, we should be focused on building a foundation for a new Administration to restore the faith and trust of the American people as we work to restore the trust and credit of our financial system.
NY Times had liveblogging, here.
Several outlets outside the US carried the story, e.g., Toronto Globe and Mail, BBC, and Aljeezra.
Trading markets were up on the news.
A lot of mischief can be bundled into an end-of-session 450 page bill. And it was. Confirmation, here and here.
It's been characterized as an "$810 billion bailout bill" - see here and here.
Reader views in comments are welcome. How did Bachmann vote? How did Walz vote, the second time around? Has that Minnesota House delegation breakdown been published?
_______UPDATE________
Strib online, Ramstad is the only Minnesota delegation member to change votes.
Any reader thoughts, on another bailout, this one for Tom Petters?
A host of online pictures, this one from PiPress.
Bloomberg reports, outside the marble halls there's rain on the parade.
_______FURTHER UPDATE________
McDermott nailed it. Those professing dismay at earmarking larded up the thing reprehensibly. As noted in an earlier Crabgrass post, Cantwell and Feingold opposed it.
I trust the judgment of those three. Another I trust, Rush Holt of NJ, had homeowner rescue in mind, and wrote of it to Democratic House leadership. He voted for the House version of the bill Monday, Sept. 29, and for the Senate version, today.
He is my other trusted Rep index person - a Carleton College grad, with tenure as a former science administrator and he has been the single most vocal voice of warning over electronic voter fraud worry. His House bio page indicates:
Rep. Holt earned his B.A. in Physics from Carleton College in Minnesota and completed his Master’s and Ph.D. at NYU. He has held positions as a teacher, Congressional Science Fellow, and arms control expert at the U.S. State Department where he monitored the nuclear programs of countries such as Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union. From 1989 until he launched his 1998 congressional campaign, Holt was Assistant Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, the largest research facility of Princeton University and the largest center for research in alternative energy in New Jersey. He has conducted extensive research on alternative energy and has his own patent for a solar energy device. Holt was also a five-time winner of the game show “Jeopardy.”
An active Member of Congress and a strong voice for his constituents, Rep. Holt serves on the Committee on Education and Labor, the Committee on Natural Resources, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Holt is the only scientist and only Member from the New Jersey delegation to sit on the Intelligence Committee. Holt is also the Chairman of the Select Intelligence Oversight Panel. Created at the start of the 110th Congress in January 2007, the Panel is working to strengthen oversight of the intelligence community by ensuring that policymakers receive accurate assessments, civil liberties are safeguarded, and the intelligence community is protecting Americans.
Holt was honored to serve on the National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century chaired by former Senator and astronaut John Glenn. He is co-chair of the Research and Development Caucus, and sits on Congressional caucuses concerning Children’s Environmental Health, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Development, Alzheimer’s, Diabetes, Biomedical Research, Internet, Community College, Farmland Protection, Human Rights, and a Women’s Right to Choose.
What's to dislike in those credentials? Nothing.
So, among the four in my catalog of most respected reps, two being Senators, two as House members, it was 3 to 1 against the Senate bailout version. And that one approval vote was with Holt saying reconvene after the election to do emergency fixing of the economy for the rest of us.
To me, the bill that got passed raises problems. I understand there was a lot of "hold your nose and vote for it" thinking by others in the House, but - there are problems.
And as McDermott nailed it, it was the Senate Republicans who did in the better thinking. That, for us, has the fingerprints of Norman Coleman, and nobody else from Minnesota but Norm. House members went along.
The Republican Senate knifed it in the back, and I suppose that's what McCain returned to accomplish. Bipartisan consensus building probably is his explanation.
__________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Asian markets a decade ago went through crisis, and there may be an institutional memory of the bitter medicine the west required; Asia Times Online noting in passing, as a routine matter, how the Christmas Tree gained $110 billion in Senate-added ornaments; and that in the course of predicting dire inflation-related adjustment:
Now many of the same pro-market stalwarts who criticized Asia's half-market, half-interventionist response to the 1997-98 financial crisis are among the strongest proponents of the US government's proposed US$810 billion Wall Street bailout package, which the Senate passed on Wednesday - after $110 billion in tax breaks was tacked on to the initial $700 billion plan to lure votes from both parties. The House of Representatives is scheduled to consider the plan on Friday.
Rather than advocating for a market-price clearing of distressed assets and foreign buyouts of homegrown assets, as they did for Asia, many Western commentators have taken Wall Street's side in its plea for a government bailout of banks and bankers on the grounds that the US is simply to large too fail and without government intervention the entire US - if not global - economy is at risk.
That's obviously debatable, even as Asian government leaders, whose central banks are flush with US dollar-denominated assets, called earlier this week for the US government to intervene. What is clearer is that global investors have finally lost faith in the US's debt-binged financial status quo and that a new, less US-centric era of global capitalism is dawning.
Financial services were perhaps the US economy's chief value-added comparative advantage in the global economy and with their demise the US's overall terms of trade will inexorably decline. Regardless of how much good money the US Congress eventually throws after bad to restore confidence, Wall Street's debt-driven meltdown will inevitably lead to a lower US standard of living.
That spiral will intensify if and when Asian and Arab investors opt for suddenly safer investment options closer to home rather than committing their capital to underwrite US government-propped, artificially high-priced US assets. A debt-ridden US can also expect to lose out to cash-rich China and others in the mounting global competition for the scarce natural resources and commodities needed to fuel and feed their domestic economies.
The Asian urge to commit those assets elsewhere will rise as the $810 billion bailout package stokes US inflation, artificially props overvalued US asset prices and further undermines the value of the dollar. Underscoring market perceptions of the bailout's inflationary risks, global gold prices surged around 3% in a single day earlier this week on expectations that the original $700 billion package would pass its first vote.
Market orthodoxy says selling distressed US assets at market clearing prices to cash-rich Asian and Arab investors represents the best hope for a US turnaround. Asia's de-leveraged banks, corporations and governments are indicative of the hard, belt-tightening lessons learned from the 1997-98 financial crisis, including gut-wrenching setbacks to previous gains in poverty alleviation. These are the market lessons the US now clearly wants to avoid.
The allowed bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, still not explained as different from others rescued and not put under, independently drew comment:
Trying to add a bit of simplicity to the complexity of a credit market breakdown, I'll say the Lehman collapse marked a critical inflection point in at least five major respects:
# First, the crisis of confidence jumped the "firebreak" from risk assets to contemporary "money," shattering trust in various facets of contemporary finance that was forged over decades.
# Second, it required the marketplace to reexamine exposures to various direct and indirect counterparty risks, a terminal blow for derivatives markets.
# Third, it pushed the credit default swap marketplace into full-fledged dislocation and instigated a long-overdue regulator onslaught.
# Fourth, it decisively burst the "leveraged speculating community"/hedge fund bubble. This has ushered in another round of problematic de-leveraging and accelerated the reversal of Ponzi finance dynamics.
# Fifth, it instilled global fear with respect to the risks of participating in the inter-bank lending market with American institutions.
Basically, the Lehman collapse marked the end of Wall Street risk intermediation as a significant component of system financial intermediation. Going forward, credit growth will be chiefly generated by the banking system, supported by various forms of government backing (Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Washington bailouts/recapitalizations, and so forth), the now government-operated government-sponsired enterprises (GSEs), and various forms of federal government debt issuance.
There is much detail beyond the excerpts in this thinking from Hong Kong. Have a look.