Very Expensive Sausage

Yesterday I got a long email from my congressman, David Dreier, in which he explains his votes on the Wall St. Bailout Plan. Here's an excerpt:

I said NO to a bailout for Wall Street, no to golden parachutes for bums who caused this problem, no to a blank check for Secretary Paulson, no to taxpayer funding for partisan groups like ACORN, no to allowing judges to reduce the value of our homes, no to mandating union leaders to serve on boards of private business, no to government manipulation of the housing market. I fought for and voted YES for a plan to unclog the banking system, yes to increased protection for family and small business savings, yes to ensure that sons and daughters have access to student loans so they can get a college education, and most important of all, yes to guaranteeing that the taxpayer dollars are going to be repaid in full and made whole.

Actually, David, you did no such thing. You voted "yes" both times the bill was before the House. I think that pretty stunning for an avowed "Free Market" Republican, but I'm not really surprised. You've marched in lockstep with your GOP colleagues on just about everything the White House wanted.

What I was surprised by, however, was the vote of Democrats, both in the Senate and in the House. And I was shocked by those Democrats in the House who switched their votes from "No" to "Hell, Yes!" in the second vote. I shouldn't have been, I guess. Joel Stein had already warned me about this in his column in yesterday's Los Angeles Times, which was obviously written before the House vote:

Every representative who voted no on the bailout got something totally sweet in the bill that passed the Senate. Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.) changed his mind once he got the health insurance for mental illness he's been fighting for. The Senate is trying to bribe Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) with tax breaks for Arizona solar companies. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who rides a bicycle, is supposed to be tempted by a tax deduction for bike commuters, as Democrats Adam Schiff of Burbank and Brad Sherman of Sherman Oaks are by tax breaks for movie producers. If they all vote no again, the next version of the bill will include a federally funded movie about a schizophrenic guy who rides his solar-powered bike to work. Which will win 8,000 Oscars. ...

It's become clear that we're not so desperate that we should give so much away so quickly. On Sept. 18, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that if a bill wasn't passed that week, "we may not have an economy on Monday." Not only did we have one, but in the coming days some smart, conservative investors (JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Warren Buffett) scooped up some troubled banks (Washington Mutual, Wachovia, Goldman Sachs) and the crappy mortgages they held, and the government hardly did anything. The only thing we have to fear is the government making us scared.

Any representative who voted against the world's largest economic bailout last week but votes for this bigger, uglier, more dangerous version has been bought. Whether you think this bailout is good or not, the people who changed their minds on such a monumental matter for such flimsy, unrelated reasons do not deserve to be trusted with your vote this November. [Emphasis added]

And that, my friends, is how congressional sausage is made: bribe the recalcitrant congress critter by including a bill important to him or her with the obvious unstated suggestion that it's the only way that bill is going to see the light of day. And the suckers caved.

My disgusto-meter just broke.