I wrote last week that McCain’s gambit of suspending his campaign made the events of this weekend something like the gunfight at the campaign corral. It was going to be a high stakes gamble that would put the possibility of McCain’s election in the balance. It’s 7:30 PM and the House leaders have just had a brief news conference. Based on what it appears now will be passed, I’d say that as the smoke clears, McCain wins.
Remember that when McCain suspended his campaing last week, many people believed he did it as a political stunt. Blame John McCain for that as not doing a good job of communicating what he walked into. According to Bloomberg.com Lindsey Graham is quoted as saying:
“The fact is the House Republicans were not in the mix at all” until McCain arrived at the talks, said Graham, a South Carolina Republican. McCain “was decisive in regards to the House being involved.”
Tonight during the press conference, John Boehner, House Minority leader said:
they would have run over me like a freight train
While Nancy Pelosi calls House Republicans “unpatriotic” for missing a meeting, It turns out that they weren’t invited to it!
OK, so McCain was involved. Now the question is whether his attendance made any difference? To that, I’d have to say yes.
The latest bill has had the following positive changes:
- Funds that were to be siphoned to ACORN and La Raza have been stripped from the bill.
- The provision that allowed judges to reset mortgage terms has been stripped
- If the “work out” (no longer called a bail out) costs taxpayers money after 5 years, Congress has an affirmative responsibility to present a plan to recoup the cost.
- There will be an insurance program available as part of the program.
In comparison to what was inkled to us on Thursday, as Barney Frank and Chris Dodd frantically tried to head off McCain’s appearance in Washington, this bill has more accountability and doesn’t throw all vestiges of free market economics into the abyss.
While I’m far from happy about having to do this at all, I’ve concluded over the weekend that something needs to be done and the pure insurance option that the House Republicans were offering had too many shortcomings to effectively change the trajectory in any short order.
Had John McCain not arrived when he did, we would have had a 100% socialist, Big Government “solution” provided. Admittedly, this may only be 92% socialist, Big Government. Under the circumstances, I’d say that was an important 8%.
With the American public as anti “bail out” as the poles have suggested, the House Republicans have a good story to tell about how they, and only they, fought at all for the Taxpayer. If the Republicans point out McCain’s intervention and the changes made, I think the American public will see once again, who was a Leader and who merely tried to manage through a situation.
