Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Chicken Little not needed after all

Rep. Barney Frank is reporting tonight (on Reuters) that the Democrats have a deal that they will present to the Republicans tomorrow. It will include maybe less than the $700B as an initial package, impose tough congressional oversight, put some limits on CEO compensation, provide bankruptcy protection for people losing their homes, and give the government (taxpayers) some return on investment from companies that prosper from the help.

Apparently Bush and Paulson are reluctantly agreeing, although they really really really hated to give in on CEO compensation. Remains to be seen how the Republicans who didn't want government bailing out private companies will respond.

Frank also got in a dig at McCain, saying that now that the deal is almost complete, he drops in to help us complete it. In fact, he said, the "photo op" at the White House tomorrow is likely to slow things down.

Now that McCain has played Chicken Little and they didn't need him to keep the sky from falling, it'll be interesting to see how he crawls back onto the campaign trail and shows up to debate after all.

Ralph

1 comment:

Ralph said...

Barney Frank said, "We're trying to rescue the economy, not McCain's campaign."

Chris Dodd said he was glad that McCain was expressing an interest in the economy. I've heard from Obama numerous occasions these last couple of days. I've never heard from McCain on the issue. I'm just worried a little bit that sort of politicizing the problem, sort of flying in here, I'm beginning to think this is more a resuce plan for John McCain and not a rescue plan for the economy."