Bye Bye HR 3997. You’re dead now, rest in peace.

Why the hate for 3997?

Because there is no need for a bailout. These banks should go bankrupt and FDIC payments made.

The bailout will just make future mismanagement justifiable, not to mention the dollar will greatly be devalued.

Why is this dead? From what I read it looks like it’ll pass any day now.

It’s dead. Bills from December don’t come back alive again. This bill deserves to die because it has the Exit Tax. A silly idea of the Congress to punish green card holders and US citizens that leave the country and live elsewhere. The US cannot continue to punish companies and individuals for leaving the country, instead they should look at the reason they are leaving: an outdated tax regime which has failed to keep up the world.

The sponsor for this bill is part of the problem and is responsible for the failures. Barney Frank the guilty one is pushing the bill. He needs to resign at the least along with Dodd. No investigations, no bill!

I agree with that observation. Frank and Dodd are the foxes watching the henhouse. I am pleased that this socialistic bill was quashed. Thank-You Congressman Michaud.

Careful what you ask for, you just got it. Good luck during the coming recession (or worse). FDR will look like a conservative when it’s over years from now.

Can someone point out to me where in the the text of the bill it talks about the 700 billion dollars? I sure can’t find it.

Sec. 115. Graduated Authorization to Purchase:

http://publicmarkup.org/bill/emergency-economic-stabilization-act-2008/1/115/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Economic_Stabilization_Act_of_2008

The fact that this was engineered 18 months ago has INSIDE JOB written all over it. This was a planned act of economic terrorism.

Bernake, Greenspan, and Paulson are responsible, and should be tried and imprisoned immediately.

Not just them, but all bank executives that made this negligent mortgages. They should be held responsible and if found criminally negligent and barred from working in financial and banking industry for life.

These banks should go bankrupt, FDIC payments made, assets seized and sold by the government.

These bailouts are a joke.

All I know is that I am screwed! Our congressmen and women as usual are pretty much worthless and spineless little trolls. There only real concern is whether tehy retain their jobs. Screw the rest of us. All these bastards should just go away.

thank you peloski for making sure this didnt pass with your awful speech!

This bill didn’t pass because it is nothing more than the Bush administration giving us the finger on the way out of office. “The sky is falling ~ the entire financial world will collapse…” Yup, and there’s WMD in Iraq, dubyah…After going over each line of this bill, I’ve come up with changes that need to be made, line for line. For example: BEFFORE the Secretary commits to purchase troubled assets, he should be submitting reports – not AFTER (duh); Sec 109(a): there is NOTHING that assures homeowners in financial distress that they even have a chance of keeping their homes ~ words like “may”, “encourage”, and “where permissible” are not definitive and may be defined in anyway the financial corporations (the same ones who screwed themselves) see fit. These are just two examples ~ I can assure you there are many more. Read the bill yourself, and then contemplate Anonymous’ comment about the fact that the original bill was actually written 18 months ago…Hmmmmm…
Peace,
Cherylana

I don’t think anyone has pointed this out yet here, but I believe the information here on OpenCongress is incorrectly reporting H.R.3997 as having been voted on in 2007.

Apparently (according to Matt Burton) there’s another bill with the same code — from the same session of Congress (??). And this is throwing off Thomas and/or OpenCongress because they assume bills have unique codes.

Or I dunno, somebody please correct me if I’m wrong. Matt also pointed out this page which might clear some stuff up: http://www.govtrack.us/special/econstimbill/changes.xpd

Didn’t we just “bail out” these same GSEs under H.R.3221 passed July 23, 2008 by the House – “providing tools to prevent a repeat of these problems” (see Barney’s Press Release May 8, 2008) and “provide crucial liquidity to our mortgage markets….” Is this going to be a quarterly test of the taxpayers’ memories and math skills? The politicians voting for these bills are common thug thieves!

Check out: “Bad News For the Bailout” by Wingfield & Zumbrun on forbes.com – especially the part about the $700 billion not being based on anything, they just wanted to “choose a really big number.” My head almost exploded!

These guys seem to not understand the reason the American people are REALLY against this plan…WE DON’T TRUST OUR REPRESENTATIVES IN WASHINGTON.

-We don’t believe this will work.
-We don’t believe they have thought it out properly.
-We don’t believe that Main Street will really benefit, but are sure that the Fat Cats on Wall Street will.
-We don’t believe this crisis is any more real than the WMDs in Iraq.
-We just don’t believe.

I say, vote any representative out of office who is behind a plan that doesn’t hold the executives of these companies responsible.

That means, forget a salary cap…instead, these guys need to be fined. They need to pay back their millions in salary, and fess up to the fact that their inept leadership caused this problem.

If they can’t pay it back, how about a few years of community service. And if they are found guilty of willful misconduct, lock ’em up and throw away the damn key.

This bill and its supporters have forgotten why they are in Washington it is not to enrich their friends and contributers at taxpayers expense. And the sky is NOT falling if we end up in a depression this bill will most likely be why. It was loose credit policies that got us into the first depression this bill is like giving a drunk a six pack to cure his hangover.

What happened to a bill being available online for 72 hours for the public to review it before it’s voted on?? And how many other bills are they going to tack on to this one to see that it passes?? HOW ABOUT WORKING FOR THE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS FOR A CHANGE???

That’s too easy. The only “Change” I want to be able to believe in is that they would start working for us and quit pushing these socialistic bills in our face and telling us it’s a requirement.

“Because the bill must originate in the House, the Senate is attaching the rescue plan to a bill that deals with renewable energy tax incentives. This would allow the Senate to vote before the House to approve a bailout bill.”

Whether you’re for or against the bailout, every American should be pissed about the above quote.

They are skipping the House and getting the Senate to pass this bill. If the Senate passes this bill, then they will use the victory in the Senate to put further pressure on the House to pass this. Do not let Congress cave in! We have to show Washington who their bosses are, and that we will not stand for any more of these special favors that the rich do for each other.

It is astounding that this is even being passed through Congress again. Public reaction to bailout failure jams Internet in D.C. http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080930/NEWS02/809300363/1009/NEWS01, states that due to such a large volume of public response the House website has crashed or slowed, with one Congresswoman receiving 1600 emails in a day about the bail out, 80% of them opposing it.
I received a response email from my Senator, Dianne Feinstein, who said she received 50,000 emails in opposition to the bill being passed.
Even the administration’s own party rejected it.
So what does the government do, they shut down and turn up the heat, and try again, without any regard for the popular consensus. This is an outrage.

I want every government official who should have been watching and should have stopped Wall Street charged with treason.

I thought that the constitution required all spending bills to originate in the house.

Whats with all the fancy new names? It’s still skunk weed!