Flying Pink Unicorns

High Drama in the House Today

The upcoming vote in the House today on the financial rescue package (bailout) is probably the most important congressional vote in 40 years, and ranks among the most important votes ever. There is hugely high drama in the capitol today. Follow it. If the vote fails, Friday October 3, 2008 has every chance of being remembered as Black Friday, the day when the US economy went to hell in a handbasket.

As you all know, I'm hugely in favor of the big rescue. I'd do some things differently, but this is most necessary, and really soon. I hear over and over and over that the credit markets are completely frozen. Municipalities can't borrow, businesses can't borrow, and consumers are having trouble borrowing for houses and cars. If this continues for long, a very deep recession is in the cards, with a big shocking loss of output and jobs, sufficient to push the unemployment rate above 12-13% for the first time since the 1930s is definitely possible. I'm not saying these outcomes would be likely, but they would be possible. Our financial sector is unwinding from one of history's great bubbles. The government can't help that, and shouldn't create ANOTHER bubble, but can mitigate the worst of side effects. Banks and other financial institutions shrinking is good. Those same banks/FIs failing is another matter entirely, and is much more scary.

Back to the high drama. There have not been that many really important really close votes that I am aware of. But there have been a few.

1) Women's suffrage. This refers to the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote everywhere in the US The vote in Congress was not close. However, ratification of the constitutional amendment by the states was slow. Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify, bringing the amendment into effect. In the first roll call vote in Tennessee's state legislature, the ratification failed by a 48-48 tie. There was considerable feeling against the amendment in the remaining states, and thus every chance that the amendment would have failed but for Tennessee. A second roll call vote was taken, also tied. On the 3rd roll call vote, the youngest member of the Tennessee legislature switched his vote and Tennessee thus ratified the amendment by the slimmest of margins. It was reported that this young man had a telegram from his mother urging him to do the right thing and vote in favor of the amendment. High drama indeed; had the amendment failed it would likely have taken into the 1930s for it to pass again.



2) Renewing the draft in 1941.

It has long been reported that on August 12, 1941 the US House voted 203-202 to "renew" the draft and thus keep a much larger peacetime army than existed before. However, I have read an article which suggested that this bill merely lengthened the tour of a draftees duty, and was not nearly as critical as has been reported. Still, it was an important piece of legislation and passed by only one vote.


3) Clarence Thomas' confirmation. Admittedly not a critical vote for our Republic, but Thomas has mattered. Ask President Gore. The vote in the Senate Committee was a tied vote, and his nomination was reported out by Chairman Joe Biden without a recommendation. My understanding is that Biden could have killed the nomination then and there by simply declining to report him out of committee. The vote on the Senate floor was 52-48 in favor of confirmation.

4) Clinton's 1993 5-year deficit reduction plan. This budget balancing bill, which was quite important in my opinion to the 1990s economic boom, famously passed without a single Republican vote in either the Senate or the House! The Senate split 50-50 with Al Gore breaking the tie. The vote in the House was 218-216. Awfully close!!! I think the financial rescue package is hugely more important, but still this was a vital piece of legislation which passed by the very narrowest of margins. The deciding vote in the Senate was then-Nebraska Democrat Bob Kerry, who said at the time that he could not cast the vote which would sink Clinton's presidency.

The vote in the House later today could easily be a 1 or 2 vote margin, and is of huge national and international importance. Follow it-- the course of our nation will be affected. There will be awfully high drama on the Hill today.