Bailout Bill Defeated?

People in a position to watch C-Span are telling me that the bailout bill may have been defeated in the House.  Stay tuned.

CNN Money is reporting that the bill is “stalled.” The Dow has dropped like a stone, 500 points.  They’re leaving the vote open indefinitely (not a parlimentary procedure I typically support, but in this case?. . . ) to try to twist people’s arms into supporting this bill.

Christ.  The Republicans are going to send the entire country off a cliff because they can’t admit to being wrong?  Nothing like principled leadership.

2:10 ~ Yahoo! Reuters is now saying that the bill is defeated.

2:20 ~ MSNBC does the post mortem.  Funny that Republicans pick this moment to suddenly decide they don’t support everything the president does.  It looks as though plenty of Democrats voted against the bill as well.  That’s about what I expected, anyway.  But the one time I might have hoped for Republican Party unity to do some good for the country, they let me down.

So, now what?  Well, with the Dow in the toilet by 500 points, I suspect a lot of those same constituents the House members are trying to please will demand that the government do something.  If not now, then certainly when they start losing their jobs.

2:28 ~ Felix Salmon at Conde Nast weighs in on the situation.  His headline?  “Oh, Shit.”  This is not the blog of a vulgar teenage heavy metal enthusiast.  This is a respected economist.

2:54 ~ MSNBC has updated video on their website.  And don’t miss this video from last week, where a Republican commentator Ed Rollins states baldly that Republicans are playing Party over Country:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf4PQMs-CRk[/youtube]

Again, it needs to be said that a fair number of Democrats also rolled on this one.  But not nearly as many and the Republican leadership has really failed the American people at this point.  Moreover, by failing to pass a bill rather unsettling to their sensibilities, they’ve maybe just forced the next president’s hand in recreating the Roosavelt era Great Society reforms to undo the damage of Republican rule.

Jesus, can we just send these guys somewhere and get it over with?  They don’t just want to be part of the problem, they want to be all of it.

3:06 ~ A bit of perspective on the drop in the Dow today:

The markets turned highly volatile as it became clear the measure wouldn’t find the necessary support. The Dow regained ground then fell back again, trading down 524.88, or 4.71 percent, to 10,618.25. At its low, it was down 705.06, not far from its previous record for an intraday drop, 721.56, set during the first trading day after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Still, in percentage terms, the decline remained well below the more than 20 percent drops seen on Black Monday of October 1987 and the Depression.

For what it’s worth.