The Senate passed the Bailout Bill but Bernie Sanders voted NO:

The Bill passes the Senate, from Roll Call News, ( http://www.rollcall.com/ )
The Senate accomplished what the House on Monday could not by passing, 74-25, a $700 billion Wall Street rescue plan Wednesday night.

The package that won overwhelming support among Members in both parties will now be sent to the House for another vote Friday. The vote echoed Senate rhetoric throughout the day, and the strong support on the floor vindicated Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) surprise Tuesday night decision to bring it up and add a tax-extenders package to it.

Forty Democrats and 34 Republicans voted for it, while 10 Democrats and 15 Republicans opposed it. Several Senators facing strong re-election challenges – such as Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) and Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) – voted for it. The only endangered Democratic incumbent, Sen. Mary Landrieu (La.), voted against the bill. Most of the “nay” votes came from the more conservative and liberal wings. More at: http://www.rollcall.com/news/29005-1.html (Also, the Yahoo news version of the same story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/financial_meltdown )

Bernie Sanders, (I Vermont, http://sanders.senate.gov/ ) was one of the 25 Senators to vote NO on the Bailout Bill, here is what he did and why. (Reprinted here in it's entirety from: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=303980 )

Newsroom / Archives
Wall Street Bailout -- 10/01/2008

The Senate approved a $700 billion Wall Street bailout. Senator Bernie Sanders voted against the bill that would put Wall Street’s burden on the backs of the American middle class. “The bailout package is far better than the absurd proposal originally presented to us by the Bush administration, but is still short of where we should be,” Sanders said. “If a bailout is needed, if taxpayer money must be placed at risk, if we are going to bail out Wall Street, it should be those people who have caused the problem, those people who have benefited from President Bush's tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, those people who have taken advantage of deregulation who should pick up the tab, not ordinary working people.”

Sanders proposed a five-year, 10 percent surtax on families with incomes of more than $1 million year and individuals earning over $500,00 to raise $300 billion to help bankroll the bailout. Senators, however, set aside the amendment on a voice vote.

In a Senate floor speech, Sanders elaborated on the bailout bill’s flaws:

"This country faces many serious problems in the financial market, in the stock market, in our economy. We must act, but we must act in a way that improves the situation. We can do better than the legislation now before Congress.

"This bill does not effectively address the issue of what the taxpayers of our country will actually own after they invest hundreds of billions of dollars in toxic assets. This bill does not effectively address the issue of oversight because the oversight board members have all been hand picked by the Bush administration. This bill does not effectively deal with the issue of foreclosures and addressing that very serious issue, which is impacting millions of low- and moderate-income Americans in the aggressive, effective way that we should be. This bill does not effectively deal with the issue of executive compensation and golden parachutes. Under this bill, the CEOs and the Wall Street insiders will still, with a little bit of imagination, continue to make out like bandits.

"This bill does not deal at all with how we got into this crisis in the first place and the need to undo the deregulatory fervor which created trillions of dollars in complicated and unregulated financial instruments such as credit default swaps and hedge funds. This bill does not address the issue that has taken us to where we are today, the concept of too big to fail. In fact, within the last several weeks we have sat idly by and watched gigantic financial institutions like the Bank of America swallow up other gigantic financial institutions like Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. Well, who is going to bail out the Bank of America if it begins to fail? There is not one word about the issue of too big to fail in this legislation at a time when that problem is in fact becoming even more serious.

"This bill does not deal with the absurdity of having the fox guarding the hen house. Maybe I'm the only person in America who thinks so, but I have a hard time understanding why we are giving $700 billion to the Secretary of the Treasury, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who along with other financial institutions, actually got us into this problem. Now, maybe I'm the only person in America who thinks that's a little bit weird, but that is what I think.

"This bill does not address the major economic crisis we face: growing unemployment, low wages, the need to create decent-paying jobs, rebuilding our infrastructure and moving us to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

"There is one issue that is even more profound and more basic than everything else that I have mentioned, and that is if a bailout is needed, if taxpayer money must be placed at risk, whose money should it be? In other words, who should be paying for this bailout which has been caused by the greed and recklessness of Wall Street operatives who have made billions in recent years?

"The American people are bitter. They are angry, and they are confused. Over the last seven and a half year, since George W. Bush has been President, 6 million Americans have slipped out of the middle class and are in poverty, and today working families are lining up at emergency food shelves in order to get the food they need to feed their families. Since President Bush has been in office, median family income for working-age families has declined by over $2,000. More than seven million Americans have lost their health insurance. Over four million have lost their pensions. Consumer debt has more than doubled. And foreclosures are the highest on record. Meanwhile, the cost of energy, food, health care, college and other basic necessities has soared.

"While the middle class has declined under President Bush's reckless economic policies, the people on top have never had it so good. For the first seven years of Bush's tenure, the wealthiest 400 individuals in our country saw a $670 billion increase in their wealth, and at the end of 2007 owned over $1.5 trillion in wealth. That is just 400 families, a $670 billion increase in wealth since Bush has been in office.

"In our country today, we have the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on earth, with the top 1 percent earning more income than the bottom 50 percent and the top 1 percent owning more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. We are living at a time when we have seen a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the very wealthiest people in this country, when, among others, CEOs of Wall Street firms received unbelievable amounts in bonuses, including $39 billion in bonuses in the year 2007 alone for just the five major investment houses. We have seen the incredible greed of the financial services industry manifested in the hundreds of millions of dollars they have spent on campaign contributions and lobbyists in order to deregulate their industry so that hedge funds and other unregulated financial institutions could flourish. We have seen them play with trillions and trillions dollars in esoteric financial instruments, in unregulated industries which no more than a handful of people even understand. We have seen the financial services industry charge 30 percent interest rates on credit card loans and tack on outrageous late fees and other costs to unsuspecting customers. We have seen them engaged in despicable predatory lending practices, taking advantage of the vulnerable and the uneducated. We have seen them send out billions of deceptive solicitations to almost every mailbox in America.

"Most importantly, we have seen the financial services industry lure people into mortgages they could not afford to pay, which is one of the basic reasons why we are here tonight.

"In the midst of all of this, we have a bailout package which says to the middle class that you are being asked to place at risk $700 billion, which is $2,200 for every man, woman, and child in this country. You're being asked to do that in order to undo the damage caused by this excessive Wall Street greed. In other words, the “Masters of the Universe,” those brilliant Wall Street insiders who have made more money than the average American can even dream of, have brought our financial system to the brink of collapse. Now, as the American and world financial systems teeter on the edge of a meltdown, these multimillionaires are demanding that the middle class, which has already suffered under Bush's disastrous economic policies, pick up the pieces that they broke. That is wrong, and that is something that I will not support.

"If we are going to bail out Wall Street, it should be those people who have caused the problem, those people who have benefited from Bush's tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, those people who have taken advantage of deregulation, those people are the people who should pick up the tab, and not ordinary working people. I introduced an amendment which gave the Senate a very clear choice. We can pay for this bailout of Wall Street by asking people all across this country, small businesses on Main Street, homeowners on Maple Street, elderly couples on Oak Street, college students on Campus Avenue, working families on Sunrise Lane, we can ask them to pay for this bailout. That is one way we can go. Or, we can ask the people who have gained the most from the spasm of greed, the people whose incomes have been soaring under president bush, to pick up the tab.

"I proposed to raise the tax rate on any individual earning $500,000 a year or more or any family earning $1 million a year or more by 10 percent. That increase in the tax rate, from 35 percent to 45 percent, would raise more than $300 billion in the next five years, almost half the cost of the bailout. If what all the supporters of this legislation say is correct, that the government will get back some of its money when the market calms down and the government sells some of the assets it has purchased, then $300 billion should be sufficient to make sure that 99.7 percent of taxpayers do not have to pay one nickel for this bailout.

"Most of my constituents did not earn a $38 million bonus in 2005 or make over $100 million in total compensation in three years, as did Henry Paulson, the current secretary of the Treasury, and former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Most of my constituents did not make $354 million in total compensation over the past five years as did Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers. Most of my constituents did not cash out $60 million in stock after a $29 billion bailout for Bear Stearns after that failing company was bought out by J.P. Morgan Chase. Most of my constituents did not get a $161 million severance package as E. Stanley O'Neill, former CEO Merrill Lynch did.

"Last week I placed on my Web site, www.sanders.senate.gov, a letter to Secretary Paulson in support of my amendment. It said that it should be those people best able to pay for this bailout, those people who have made out like bandits in recent years, they should be asked to pay for this bailout. It should not be the middle class. To my amazement, some 48,000 people cosigned this petition, and the names keep coming in. The message is very simple: “We had nothing to do with causing this bailout. We are already under economic duress. Go to those people who have made out like bandits. Go to those people who have caused this crisis and ask them to pay for the bailout.”

"The time has come to assure our constituents in Vermont and all over this country that we are listening and understand their anger and their frustration. The time has come to say that we have the courage to stand up to all of the powerful financial institution lobbyists who are running amok all over the Capitol building, from the Chamber of Commerce to the American Bankers Association, to the Business Roundtable, all of these groups who make huge campaign contributions, spend all kinds of money on lobbyists, they're here loud and clear. They don't want to pay for this bailout, they want middle America to pay for it."

I can guarantee my senators (not "mine" in the sense that they represent me, but they hail from my state) voted for this nightmare. Nonetheless, I'd like to confirm it.

I was in a bit of a hurry to post Bernie's thoughts-I figured everyone else would be discussing the Senate Bill's passage, I wanted to get up the thoughts of a dissenting vote. (Tuth time- I have always been against the Bailout Bill but I think this version may have won us even MORE seats in the Senate and House come November...I'm no pundit but I suspect you will be hearing one or more of the progressive radio pundits in agreement starting tomorrow.) Binging that roll call to this thread, it is an important addition, thank you again.

I wanted to post that roll call but I guess I did not know where to look OR it is not up yet. In my state, Washington, Senator Patty Murray voted YES and Senator Maria Cantwell voted NO.

Before denigrating any Senators for their vote please consider that there may be some serious politicking going on here. House Republicans are now on the 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' spot because of what the Senate just did. If they vote FOR the Bill, they are going AGAINST their constituents and like everyone-one else on the hill voting for a Bill championed by the most unpopular President ever.

This begs the question: "But chknltl, the Dems did the same thing and aren't THEIR constituents just as strongly against the bailout???" Yes and no, yes many of us ARE against the bailout bill, as a matter of fact this particular one passed by the Senate is preloaded with 'junk' that the Neo-Cons are all happy about! More Corporate Tax Cuts!!!! Tell me, how are more of those damned Corporate Tax cuts a good addition to a Bill which the House just said no to????

Now let me be an Obama strategist for a second: "We had no choice!! The Republicans stood against us in the the House on this critical bailout of the American economy. SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE! We had to place these disagreeable 'incentives' in that bill to ensure that the Republicans in the Senate would be there for the final vote! No, we don't like the Bill and no we especially don't like this current version with those incentives BUT in the spirit of non-partisanship, in the spirit of supporting our President, and in the spirit of saving the nation's economy we did what we felt had to be done!"

See how that paints the Republicans in the House??? Yep, they just got turned into a bunch of greedy corporate lovers still attached to the blatantly failed trickle down economics policies! "WE HAD TO ADD THOSE INCENTIVES TO GET THEM TO VOTE YES!"

OTOH,if the House Republicans balk at this new Senate Version of the Bill, if they vote NO one more time and Wall Street goes into another dive....well each and every one of those who vote no this time will be screwed HARD by We The People to include their koo-laid drinkin constituents because of the near panic which will ensue from the Wall Street dive. We The People are coming to the distasteful conclusion that SOMETHING must be done...did you notice in my above rant who did the SOMETHING-distasteful though it was????

Yeah, it made my head spin too but the very fact that those Tax Breaks were added and Dems didn't blink got me thinking...that was the best conclusion my little mind could come up with. IMO this is a beautifully played out chess match by the Dems and the Republicans are rapidly running out of pawns!

Since the mortgage originator got their fee as soon as they sold the mortgage, they didn't have any incentive to check on credit quality - a lot of loans got made to people who weren't good credit risks.

Low interest rates occurred because foreign nations with massive savings to invest, such as China or Japan or the OPEC nations, lent money freely (i.e., bought U.S. Treasury bonds and U.S. mortgage-backed securities).

Normally, if you don't have any savings, you can't buy big assets. But with foreign nations lending us their savings, it kept interest rates low and kept capital flowing. These low interest rates encouraged home prices to rise.
http://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/mso_11591___article.html/assets_price.html

What we have here is a failure of our government to regulate. Unfortunately, both parties were responsible. We see plenty of finger pointing for political gains. Some of this is "cover your ass".

The bottom line is that the politicians of both parties bent to the greed and control of the corporations, the financial institutions and Wall Street. Yes indeed, Bush deserves a lot of credit for this fiasco as it occurred on his watch. He may well go down in history as the worst President in the last 100 years. But to be somewhat fair, he was merely a puppet controlled by the big corporations and the military industrial complex. Unfortunately, far to many of the people we have elected are owned by the big corporations and the financial sector.

As long as everything was going great and the stock market and the price of homes were skyrocketing the average American never paid any attention. Politics is boring. American Idol is interesting. Americans became sheep and were happy to be herded by the politicians they elected. Don't kid yourself, the politicians were well aware that we faced the potential of hard times. They could rationalize the problem away by saying that home prices always go up. When people were unable to afford the mortgages they took on with the assurances of the banking institutions, they blamed the people who bought in these loans and feel little responsibility for the results.

When the bottom started to fall out, the Bush administration came up with the most idiotic plan ever conceived in American history. The only solution was to give the Secretary of the Treasury a blank check for $700,000,000,000 dollars to use in any manner he wished. And if Congress refused to pass this bill the End of the World As We Know It would occur. Sounds like the tactics of fear we were fed to get us into the war in Iraq.

Fortunately, the House refused to go along with this plan. Now it looks like the original plan will be improved somewhat by the Senate. It will pass merely because it has to. The bottom line is that the people we elected failed to represent us. That failure led to the mess we find ourselves into today. We will survive and turn out stronger and better than we were before. But we will face some hard times.

The people who survived the depression and World War II were interested in news. They had seen the results of ignoring what was happening to our country on a first hand basis. They would actually discuss politics at the dinner table. Most of these people are no longer with us. It looks like their children and their grandchildren will learn how important politics is. It will be a hard lesson.

I know, thinkin, not one of my stronger talants...but check this out.
How many votes come November will this cost Dems in House or Senate races? Are we dems going to jump ship over this? I'm betting that when you go to the polls you will be voting straight Dem, I'm betting that this 'Bail Out Bill' will change NOTHING for how we us Dems vote come November.

I noticed that this latest Bill by the Senate is basically the same one that the Republicans blocked in the House...remember how we cheered the repukes???? One difference in this Bill is the addition of CORPORATE TAX BREAKS. Now how on Earth did our Senate Dems let THAT happen without even blinking???? And yet We The Unhappy Constituents will be voting straight DEM!

What about the Republican constituents?
They have been spoon-fed for decades that Government is BAD by who? Their Republican Leadership! What happens when that Republican Leadership STABS THEIR CONSTITUENTS IN THE BACK by passing this Bail Out Bill- ESPECIALLY WITH EVEN MORE TAX INCENTIVES FOR THE VERY CROOKS WHO DID THIS TO US!!!????
Yep, unlike the Dem constituency, the Republican voters are gonna be madder than...well I suspect a whole lot of them are gonna refrain from voting for any back-stabbin politician this November!

OTOH what happens IF the House Republicans balk yet again and Wall Street goes into yet another nose dive? Whose fault will THAT be? We Dem supporters are STILL gonna vote straight Dem, nothing changed. On the other hand the mixed up Republican Constituency will be angered yet again because "It's The Economy Stupid", and WHO just balked on saving the economy???? (Yep they'll be gettin that line from EVERYONE because it will be those very repukes who voted to stop the Bailout Bill who will be holdin a bag load of dieing Wall Street!

Damned if they do, damned if they don't!

Now take this all a step further- We are potentially looking at a future Veto Proof Dem Majority in the House and even more Dems in the Senate and a Dem as POTUS. Don't you think that this Bail Out Bill can be revisited by Congress so as to remove the distasteful items and maybe a fix here and there????? Could we truly have made those fixes with the status quo in the Senate or the House?

Well that's what my lil brain just came up with. IMO there is a lot more politickin goin on than meets the eye here. IMO the House Republicans may have just been painted into the corner of Damned If You Do and DOUBLE Damned If You Don't! IMO this will cost them dearly come November!

Am I remembering that part of Civics wrong?

". . .it should be those people who have caused the problem, those people who have benefited from President Bush's tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, those people who have taken advantage of deregulation who should pick up the tab, not ordinary working people.”