The bailout, or, maybe McCain had a point

2 October 2008, 1837 EDT

The bailout fails by 12 votes in the House of Representatives. So what does the Senate leadership do?

Come up with a significantly different plan?

Decide that the Democrats are going to own this thing anyway so they might as well pass a strong progressive alternative?

Make marginal changes targeted at specific objections offered by “movable” opponents?

No. Reid and company decide that if we’re going to pile on another $7,000,000,000 in debt anyway, then what’s another $1,000,000,000 between friends? After all, our kids and grand kids can pay for it with the magic economic boom beans we’ve tucked away between the provisions increasing aid to rural schools and passing mental health parity. And tax cuts? The Democratic leadership knows that’s like smack for Republican junkies, so they threw a bunch of them in as well.

For TWELVE VOTES. That’s what, $83,333,333.34 per vote? They could’ve bought themselves a few financial institutions for that. I hear they’re going cheap these days.

What a joke.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.