Partisan Politics and the Economy

The author of this New York Times article says that the reason that the bailout bill did not pass was that Republicans did not get the right amount of votes. The author says that since the majority of Democrats voted for it, then it cannot be their fault. The blame is also put on the Bush administration whose policies contributed to the financial crisis. The author also says that the Republicans broke step with the current administration for the first time in eight years, and the opinion of the author is that it was not a good thing.

I do not agree with this at all. How is it just the Republicans fault? If the Democrats were more unified, they could have pushed the bill through themselves. They did not need the Republican vote at all. Another reason that they cannot just blame the Republicans is that 98 Democrats voted nay. If just half of those representatives voted for the bailout, then it would have passed. I also think that Pelosi was ill advised to be so partisan in her speech. All that did was make Wall Street get extremely uncomfortable, causing the single largest drop in the market. A point that I do agree with is that on of the reasons the Republicans did not vote is because they think that free-market economics should have limited government regulation, which the author says is impossible because without regulations, the market would crumble.

This article has shown just how partisan the politics of the country is. The Republicans always blame the Democrats, and the Democrats always blame the Republicans.