Deal or no deal

No deal. Not yet at least.

Why?

The debate about the debate

Well nobody's sure what exactly happened at the White House meeting yesterday. There are so many reports that are directly contradicting each other that it's safe to say that somebody is telling bald-faced lies... it's just impossible to tell who. So, analyzing the debate about the negotiations and who was right or wrong on the politics is pretty damned near impossible due to a lack of reliable information. So, like the USC Trojans last night, I'm going to punt this one and just assume that everybody's lying.

Policy Disagreements

We can say that there is a real disagreement born out of party ideology on the bail-out package.

The Republicans are fundamentally opposed to regulation and spending. So there is real unease among Republican house members. They have balked at the idea of spending 700billion dollars just because it's too big. They want to have a market-based solution along with the bail out. That's probably a good idea... ideally. However, in a crisis it's important to do something rather than nothing. It is often better to get even a bad plan going than to do nothing at all. This is where the Republicans are wrong, their concerns are real and probably good, but we've got to address the fundamental problem in some way before it spirals out of control and we lose the chance to fix it at all.

The Democrats are also guilty. They have taken the bail-out package as an opportunity to insert all sorts of ideologically driven policies that are unrelated to the topic at hand. The Democrats want to provide help for folks who cannot pay their mortgages. That might be a good thing to do, but it's irrelevant to the bail out of the financial sector. The Democrats have added an idea about limiting CEO pay. Again, this is not particularly relevant to the bailing out the financial sector. Both of these things are contentious and the idea of bailing out individuals who can't pay their mortgages will make the already extremely expensive package even more expensive... thus causing even stiffer Republican opposition. By injecting these other issues into the bail out the Democrats have held the financial safety of the country hostage to social spending that they'd like to have but isn't directly relevant to the purpose of the package. Like the Republicans the Democrats need to moderate or drop these demands because they're standing in the way of any package being passed. And doing nothing is the worst possible outcome.

So... Obama and McCain were both right when they called for bipartisanship to dominate so that we can come to an agreement quickly. So far neither has been able to provide the leadership needed to heal the congress and get something done.