The original economic rescue package that went down to narrow defeat on Monday was notable for the strange coalition that formed. Rather than a clear left/right split, the opposition was an interesting grouping of vulnerable incumbents and representatives from districts geographically or economically far removed from Wall Street, from across the ideological spectrum.
Today’s second-try vote that passed the bailout 263 to 171 (with Dems splitting 172-63 and the GOP splitting 91-108) necessarily involved a lot of people flipping from nay to yea. As with the original vote, the flippers weren’t heavily concentrated at one point on the ideological spectrum, but scattered throughout. 33 Dems switched from nay to yea, as did 25 Republicans. (Only one representative, Jim McDermott, switched from yea to nay. And one GOP representative, Jerry Weller, switched to no vote to yea.)
If there was one place the switches came from, though, it was the Progressive Caucus, which was originally 35-32 in favor of the bailout. Today, 16 caucus members flipped to yea, making it 50-17 (accounting for McDermott going the other way). The Progressive Caucus shares many members with the Congressional Black Caucus, which also turned direction (reportedly because of heavy lobbying by Obama himself, based on his promises to revisit the issue in January), with 13 flippers, changing its numbers from 18-19 to 31-6. Likewise, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus also turned, with 5 flippers, going from 8-13 to 13-8.
As was predicted, there was little movement among the Blue Dogs, who reportedly weren’t happy with the additional pile of debt thrown in as a ‘sweetener.’ Only 5 Blue Dogs flipped, as they went from 31-22 to 36-17. Likewise, 8 New Dems flipped (some of whom are also Blue Dog members), going from 38-21 to 46-13.
On the Republican side, the ultra-right Republican Study Committee still remained the main bastion of resistance. Of the 205 25 GOPers who flipped, only 11 came from the RSC, as the RSC went from 26-81 to 37-70. On the other hand, the country-clubby Main Street Partnership moved to the most pro-bailout caucus in the whole House, with 7 flippers, taking it from 21-15 to 29-8 (including the addition of Weller).
More over the flip…
Few vulnerable representatives wound up changing their votes, as they (especially on the GOP side) continued to hold out in the face of perceived public opposition. On the Democratic side, only 3 vulnerable members flipped (Giffords, Mitchell, and Yarmuth, all Lean D). On the Republican side, 9 vulnerable members flipped (Knollenberg at Tossup, Kuhl and Schmidt at Lean R, and Boustany, Buchanan, Dent, Ros-Lehtinen, Shadegg, and Terry at Likely R).
(I say ‘perceived’ because a new Democracy Corps memo, based on polling of competitive GOP-held districts taken after the first bill’s failure (and subsequent market crash), suggests that the bailout isn’t as much of a political loser as the “100 to 1 calls against” anecdotes first suggested. This, of course, assumes that the specifics of the bill are properly explained, rather than simply rammed down everyone’s throats, as happened last week.)
By a 47 to 42 plurality, voters say they want their representative in Congress to support the 700 billion dollar plan to purchase troubled mortgage assets as modified by Congress to include limits on CEO pay and repay taxpayers in the long-term…. The winning Democratic message notes the need to turn the economy around and protect the middle class but mainly focuses on the improvements made by Congress to the Bush administration’s original bill, including limits on CEO compensation and protections to ensure taxpayers are paid back when the economy rebounds.
Two One retiree also flipped, remarkable since there were so few retirees voting nay in the first place: Ray LaHood and Jim Ramstad.
One other thing I would have expected was more representatives from what we’ll call ‘investor-class’ districts flipping from nay to yea (in the face of angry constituents upset about their 401(k)s rather than the cost of the bailout). However, they didn’t seem to flip at any greater rate than the rest of the House (although that may be because representatives from these districts were pretty heavily in favor of the package to begin with). Of districts where the 2007 median household income was over $65,000 (approximately the top 20% among districts), there were only 9 flippers: four from the Dems (Donna Edwards, Hirono, Tierney, and Woolsey), and five from the GOP (Biggert, Frelinghuysen, Gerlach, Knollenberg, and Ramstad).
I remember reading that he was personally trying to drum up support?
Pretty impressive, given that there’s less that 200 GOPers in total. 🙂
I don’t think there’s been a vote in recent memory that cut across factions and party lines like this one.
They passed it.
I’m just not convinced that such unprecedented concentration of power is necessary. And if only they’d made it more “socialist” so that the Repubs would hate it enough that would either have failed or have passed and actually given the government a damn good share of control of these companies–which would only be fair if they’re asking the government to bail them out in the first place. They get help, but they should at least pay some consequences.
I’ve been of the opinion that running an economy on borrowing money from someone who’s borrowed money from someone else who’s borrowed money from yet someone else is a BAD idea.
Of course, I have no economics degree, and I’ve merely taken basic macro and micro in college, so what am I to say anything…
(By the way, I might be what people call a “budget hawk”; that’s one reason I really hate the Bush tax cuts, as well as, consequently, a lot of Republicans. Also, the whole idea of tax cut + Afghanistan war + Iraq war + homeland security beefing up at the same time. Bad idea.)
Speaking of budget hawking, I was trying to look up the definition of the term, and came across this crap: http://www.theconservativevoic… . My response to it: the right-wingers can take their fantasy-land budget discipline and shove it.
But this one was a good deal more progressive than the first one voted on. I’d still rather no bailout bill had passed, but one was bound to pass anyhow.