The numbers are not good for the Bush bailout plan:
The more voters learn about the proposed $700 billion federal bailout plan for the U.S. economy, the more they don't like it, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey taken Monday night.Now 44% oppose the taxpayer-backed plan, up seven points from 37% yesterday. Twenty-five percent (25%) support it now, versus 28% in the earlier poll. Thirty-five percent (35%) were undecided before; now 31% are (demographic crosstabs available for Premium Members).
While 35% think the bailout plan will help the economy, nearly as many (30%) say it will hurt, and 13% believe it will have no impact at all.
But, despite their concerns, 74% of voters also believe it is at least somewhat likely to be approved by Congress this week.
The way this bailout has been discussed in the establishment media, it would seem as though the Bush plan enjoyed the overwhelming support of the American people, that voters strongly endorsed the idea of throwing $700 billion to the financial sector, whose policies and actions were in many ways a leading cause of the current economic downturn. Yet this is clearly not the case. A scant quarter of likely voters favor the Bush bailout, with a plurality opposing the plan. While there may be a political price to be paid if nothing is passed, it's not clear to me that there is much of a political price to be paid if this pan is not passed.
There are other options out there that Congress needs to pay heed to. One is to take time, and use an abundance of caution. The Bush administration has not made a compelling argument that a plan must be jammed through Congress and signed into law immediately. Another is to try the plan in chunks. Chuck Schumer today noted that the Treasury plan would spend about $50 billion per month for buybacks of bad debt, so why couldn't $150 billion -- a huge amount of money still, but not one that would lead to the greatest deficit in several decades -- be allocated for a trial of program, with Congress coming back in January to consider expanding the expenditures?
I'm sure there are other choices as well, and though I am not sufficiently schooled in economics to gauge the efficacy of such plans, what I do know is that on a political level there is a real willingness within the public to consider plans in addition to the one put forward by the Bush administration -- and it would be in the interest of Democrats, as well as (and more importantly) the country as a whole, for Congress to consider all of its options.
Update [2008-9-23 15:24:11 by Jonathan Singer]: Reuters -- "Resentment grows over Wall Street bailout plan"
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