Fear and caution rule in Congress' bailout vote
NEWS ANALYSIS
Constituents vent fury at House members jittery about losing their jobs. Even supporters of the rescue package are tepid.
WASHINGTON — President Bush lobbied. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson pleaded. Vice President Dick Cheney worked on conservative Republicans; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi coaxed liberal Democrats. Barack Obama lobbied gently. John McCain worked the phones and boasted about how effective he was.
But all that leadership failed to command much loyalty in either party Monday. When the financial rescue plan came to a vote, two-thirds of the House's Republicans and two-fifths of its Democrats ignored their leaders' pleas and voted no.
The surprise defeat of the Bush administration's financial rescue plan was a product of the waning influence of a lame-duck president and the nervousness of members of Congress, whose institution is even less popular and who faced a flood of angry messages from constituents. McCain and Obama are more popular, but neither candidate embraced the bailout measure enthusiastically before the vote.
Their cautiousness, combined with the unpopularity of other senior political leaders, left rank-and-file members of Congress free to draw their own conclusions about how to react to public skepticism of the bailout, coming only five weeks before election day.
"We're all worried about losing our jobs," Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who voted in favor of the plan, said in a speech in the House. "Most of us say, 'I want this thing to pass but I want you to vote for it, not me.' "
The rescue plan, which would have allowed the Treasury to spend as much as $700 billion to buy distressed investments from troubled financial institutions, was always going to be a hard sell.
No grass-roots constituency supported the idea. Instead, conservative Republicans protested the bill as a huge federal intrusion into private enterprise, and liberal Democrats complained that it rescued wealthy investors but didn't give homeowners a refuge in bankruptcy to avoid foreclosure.
Members of Congress were flooded with messages from voters urging them to vote no. In the final hours before the vote, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who is bankrolling campaigns to aid Democratic candidates, condemned the plan. Influential conservative groups such as the Club for Growth and FreedomWorks called for its defeat.
In the face of that storm, members of Congress in tight races walked away.
