So Much for Bipartisanship

Connie Hair at Human Events reports on the latest power grab by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to re-write House rules today to ensure that the Republican minority is unable to have any influence on legislation. Pelosi’s proposals are so draconian, and will so polarize the Capitol, that any thought President-elect Obama has of bipartisan cooperation will be rendered impossible before he even takes office.

Pelosi’s rule changes — which may be voted on today — will reverse the fairness rules that were written around Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.”

In reaction, the House Republican leadership is sending a letter today to Pelosi to object to changes to House Rules this week that would bar Republicans from offering alternative bills, amendments to Democrat bills or even the guarantee of open debate accessible by motions to recommit for any piece of legislation during the entire 111th Congress. These procedural abuses, as outlined in the below letter obtained by HUMAN EVENTS, would also include the repeal of six-year limit for committee chairmen and other House Rules reform measures enacted in 1995 as part of the Contract with America.

I’m not the least bit surprised by this news… Democrats in congress are only interested in bipartisanship on their terms.

H/T: Michelle Malkin.

Crash & Burn: $700 Billion “Crap Sandwich” Goes Down In Flames!

Whoa… I was expecting a close vote on bailout bill but this is a complete shock. The bailout bill has crashed and burned in the House.

The vote was 228 nay to 205 yea with 1 not voting. Democrats supported the bill 140-95, while Republicans opposed it 65-133.

Is this the reason?

Nancy Pelosi’s floor speech certainly didn’t help… I’d like to think the bills failure had more to with a majority of Congressmen being opposed to socializing business losses rather a reaction to the highly partisan nature of her remarks.

The truth is despite all the spin saying this bill needed Republican support to pass Democrats have a sufficient majority in Congress to pass it without Republican support… If just 10 Democrats had changed their votes it would have passed!

If anything this vote is a complete repudiation of Pelosi’s leadership… She simply couldn’t hold her caucus together, let me say this again Democrats have the votes to pass this pig without Republican support and Pelosi couldn’t get it done - 95 members of her caucus voted against it!

Bailout Deal Reached?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that lawmakers reached a tentative bailout deal overnight:

Top U.S. policy makers emerged from hours of tense negotiations with a clear message just after midnight Sunday morning: A deal to bailout U.S. financial markets has been agreed on and all that remains to be done is to commit the legislation to paper.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.), were flanked by key negotiators in the Capitol as they announced that a $700 billion plan to have Treasury buy up toxic assets had been all but finalized after hours of exhausting negotiations.

“I think we’re there,” an exhausted Mr. Paulson said, a sentiment echoed in the statements of negotiators such as House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.) and Senate Banking Committee head Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.).

Those present said the bailout plan still needs to be drafted in its final form, a process staff members were expected to continue throughout the night in what one aide called a “marathon drafting session” in Ms. Pelosi’s office just off the rotunda in the Capitol building. A formal announcement is scheduled for some time Sunday, though an exact time and location were not immediately available.

A summary of the tentative agreement released by Ms. Pelosi’s office said the plan “gives taxpayers an ownership stake and profit-making opportunities with participating companies; puts taxpayers first in line to recover assets if a participating company fails; (and) guarantees taxpayers are repaid in full — if other protections have not actually produced a profit.” (See Ms. Pelosi’s summary.)

Additionally, the summary said the legislation will expand the range of firms that can sell troubled assets to the government to include pension plans, local governments and community banks serving “low- and middle-income families.”

A House Democratic aide said the government would be able to receive warrants it could hold until maturity from financial firms on assets received either through auctions or through direct purchases.

I’ll reserve comment until I see a markup of the final bill.

Update: Ed Morrissey has more at Hot Air… It looks like House Republicans were able to get most of the pork removed from the bill.

Update (1:50 p.m. eastern): House Republican Whip Roy Blunt’s office has released a side by side comparison of the new bill versus the Paulson Plan and the Frank-Dodd bill.

The new bill does look more palatable but the devil’s in the details… I what to see the final bill and the conference report before I say yea or nay.

Update (4:10 p.m. eastern): N.Z. Bear @ Porkbusters has the draft bill… (H/T: MM)

Update (6:40 p.m. eastern): Michelle Malkin has an updated draft and a quick and dirty analisys of the bill.

This thing stinks to high heaven… Unfortunately I think this bailout has become a necessary evil - the Bush Administration, Congress and the media have painted us into a corner and if this bill doesn’t pass Secretary Paulson’s dire warnings will ultimately become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Democrats Credit Crisis…

The more I dig into the history behind our current crisis the more outraged I become… Commenter Veretax writes:

“I think the American people have had it with this situation where the middle-income people in our country are not protected from the ramifications of the risk-taking and the greed of these financial institutions,” Pelosi told MSNBC….

She blames bush and those risk takers. If MSNBC had any back bone (which I know they don’t) they should counter with “But Madam Speaker, is it not true that you own several million dollars worth of stock in AIG which the Federal Reserve just bailed out?”

Talk about hypocrisy.

If MSNBC, or anyone in the media for that matter, wanted to commit an act of journalism they’d ask her why Democrats opposed the Bush Administration’s reform attempts in 2003. Or why they blocked the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 that John McCain co-sponsored?

Hell if they were really interested in practicing journalism they ask Barack Obama how he managed to rack up $126,349 in contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in only four years in the senate?

Ed Morrissey has much more detailed analysis at Hot Air:

With the financial sector in turmoil today, the media and the politicians have started throwing around blame with the same recklessness as lenders threw around credit to create the problem.  Politically, the pertinent question is this: Which candidate foresaw the credit crisis and tried to do something about it?  As it turns out, John McCain did - and partnered with three other Senate Republicans to reform the government’s involvement in lending three years ago, after an attempt by the Bush administration died in Congress two years earlier.