I can't think of any way to sugar coat this, I'm afraid. It's a bad bill and it isn't just that Barack Obama voted for it, it's that everything I'm hearing from the Hill says that he's been actively whipping it, not just in the Senate but in the House. Barack didn't hold his nose and vote for this, he made it his bill as much as it is Paulson's.

With this bill go your chances of having, say, universal health care, or massive infrastructure development, or really getting the US of its dependence on foreign oil, or really rebuilding America's school system—or whatever other big, expensive project you thought Obama was promising. 700 billion is a lot of money, and in the end this is almost certainly going to cost even more than that. Probably at least 1.5 trillion. (The technical term, I believe, is 'good money after bad').

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Instead, as usual, it's the middle class that gets to pay. And it's Barack Obama who turned to Nancy Pelosi and Reid and said "this bill must pass". It's Obama who is whipping votes and bending arms for this despite the fact that it is massively unpopular. This is Obama's bill.

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Americans are being robbed, reverse Robin Hood style. Take money from ordinary folks, hand it directly to the rich. That's Obama's first real act as the presumptive President and as the Democratic party's de-facto leader.

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I’ll support him over McCain, but he is effectively a moderate Republican at heart and I will be in opposition the day after the election, because he clearly cannot be trusted to do the right thing unless his ass is in the fire.

I will also predict right now that he is a one term president. He will be lucky to not be impeached in 2011 by the Republicans when they take control of the house, which he has made virtually certain of these last two weeks. Because no, this isn’t going to work, but it is going to cost a lot of money to not work.

posted by Scats : 10/02/2008 12:51:00 AM