I was not shocked to see that Patrick Murphy, our accidentally elected Representative in Congress, accidentally stumbled upon doing the right thing and voted for the financial rescue package.  After all, Li’l Pat always does what his puppet master Nancy Pelosi tells him to do.  Leadership and free thought are not in his DNA.

I was also not shocked to read his unsurprisingly shallow assessment of the situation afterward.

Let’s be clear - politicians voting against this bill today caused the biggest point drop the Dow has ever recorded.  This is what’s wrong with Washington - reckless partisan extremists just made it much harder for Pennsylvania families to keep their homes, seniors to protect their pensions and students to get loans.  Blocking this bill has just made a bad economic situation far worse.  We need to come together and continue to work on this problem, there is simply too much at stake for us not to solve this crisis.

94 Democrats voted against the bill. It was pretty much as non-partisan a rejection as you will ever see on any legislation, most of which gets voted up or down on party lines with a handful of lawmakers moving either way depending on the issue.  The kind of blatant lie Murphy tells here is not helpful.  Li’l Pat mouths the words, but he doesn’t seem to understand just how dire our economic situation is at this moment.

And, let’s be honest here.  Voting against the bill did not cause the biggest point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  The crisis itself, caused by Democrats and their government mandates that lenders had to make loans on property that does not appreciate to people who could not pay them back, is causing this market turmoil.  President Bush tried to solve the problem in 2003 and was rebuffed by Democrats.  John McCain tried to solve the problem in 2005 and was rebuffed by Democrats.

Conservatives being right all along does not erase the problem. What matters now is that the problem needs to be solved, and fast.  This rescue package was our last best hope at doing that. It had been stripped of the outrageous left-wing giveaways that it originally contained.  It had been infused with the oversight everyone wanted.  We’d watched all weekend as pork measure after pork measure was announced as gone.

Anyone who calls this measure “socialism” doesn’t understand the problem, the proposed solution, or the kind of government intervention we’re going to see if this credit crisis causes a severe economic downturn.

First of all, this isn’t a giveaway of tax dollars to fat cats on Wall Street.  This is an investment.  $700 billion is the upfront money going to remove risky loans — loans liberals in our government required lenders to make — from the clogged financial system. It’s fine to cry for a “free market solution” to situations that arise through a free market.  This is not a “free market” problem.  This is a government problem, and it unfortunately requires a government solution.

94% of mortgages are being paid on time.  There is absolutely ZERO risk that, in the end, our entire $700 billion investment in these loans would be lost.  We weren’t just to be buying defaulted loans, we were to be buying loans that were classified as risky, though most are being paid on time.  We’d be buying these loans at about $.20 on the dollar.  A fair chance exists that we’d have actually broken even or a little ahead when all this mess got cleared up.

With no deal in place, business cannot get credit.  All businesses use credit to buy inventory.   All businesses use credit to make payroll.  When businesses cannot make payroll, people get laid off.  When people get laid off, they stop paying their mortgages.  When more mortgages fail, credit gets tighter and home values drop because there are more foreclosed homes on the market. When home values drop, people cannot sell and cover their mortgage.  It quickly spirals out of control.

Does it absolutely suck ass that we have to put $700 billion up to correct the problem 30 years of liberal housing policy has wrought?  Yes, it does.  It also sucks a lot of ass that our 401Ks, IRAs and Brokerage accounts lost $1.4 trillion today.

Is the guy in the next cubicle “Wall Street”?  Because he just took a giant haircut in his retirement fund due to a knee-jerk Michael Moore reaction of “No Wall Street Bail Out.”  And when a person loses his job because his company can only keep people they know they’ll have the available liquid cash to pay every two weeks, he can tell himself that he stood on a misunderstood principle as he’s sitting on the curb.

We, rightly, spent - as in no chance of ever getting back - $508 billion this year to protect our nation’s physical security.  How can anyone agree with that, but disagree with investing - as in buying assets with actual value - $700 billion to protect our financial security?  Security is security.

Opposing this on some “small government” principle isn’t conservatism.  It’s idiocy. If protecting the foundation of our economy through investment is not a legitimate use of federal government, then what besides defense spending is? Or is defense spending even legitimate now?  Should the government tell you “go buy a gun, you’re on your own” because an increasing defense budget might lead to government growth?

The rescue program was killed for fear it might turn us “socialist.”  “Maybe we need a depression,” they said, “to let the market correct itself.”

Does anyone happen to remember what it was that brought on the first landslide of socialist government programs? It was The Great Depression.   No one scored a triumph in staving of socialism today, they’ve actually ushered in an era that makes it even easier for socialist government programs to flourish.

Using the power of the government to help markets clear out a government-mandated clog was the conservative move here.

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Tagged

Credit Crisis, Economy, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Mortgage Crisis