Mastodon

$700B Bailout Fails in House

Perhaps I spoke too soon. Despite the announcement that the president and Congress had reached agreement yesterday on an unprecedented Wall Street bailout, the bill went to the floor of the House of Representatives for a vote today and failed 228-205. It appears, much to my pleasant suprise, that sensible Republicans and Democrats joined together to vote against this reckless waste of your and my tax dollars.

Following the vote the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped precipitously over 600 points. The Dow fluctuated up and down between a 400 and 600 point loss most of the afternoon before crashing again to a -777 point close. This is the largest one-day point drop in the history of the Dow, but it only accounts for about a 7 percent loss. Percentage-wise, this does not even rate in the top-10 of one-day losses.

The roll call on this vote is available from the Clerk of the House of Representatives web site . . . the title and description are misleading, since the bailout was apparently structured as an amendment to a previous and only-loosely-related bill, but this is indeed the vote tally for the bailout. Unfortunately my representative, Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA 10th), voted in favor of this ill-advised monstrosity.

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.