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House Members in Tight November Elections Scuttle Bailout

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

News Flash: Politics, not economics, prompted the House to scuttle the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion economic bailout Monday.

The measure failed 228-205 thanks to the upcoming November elections, according to an analysis by fivethirtyeight.com. Capitalistic lawmakers apparently feared their constituents wouldn't be pleased that their local representative became a socialist or communist overnight.

Of the 38 lawmakers involved in tight November races, only eight voted for the measure. Thirty were against. Those not in close races split 50-50.

And unsurprising, of the 26 lawmakers who were not running for reelection, 23 voted in favor of the bailout.

illustration: beansoup_67

FOOTNOTE: Behind the statistics at fivethirtyeight is Nate Silver, who has developed an algorithm that is dead on when it comes to predicting performance of professional baseball teams and players.

See Also:

• Bailout Agreement Hits the Net -- Is This Transparency?
• Advocates Demand Congress Put Bailout Details on Internet
• Online Bailout Outrage Jumps to Streets, and Into Lawmakers' Inboxes
• Treasury Secretary's Bailout Request Compared to Spam Scam
• Current TV Hacks the Debates
• McCain Speech Receives Polite Applause Online
• Sarah Palin's Campaign Debut Electrifies the GOP, Galvanizes the ...
• McCain Uses Versioning Software to Tarnish Obama's Reformer Image ...

Full post as published by Threat Level on September 29, 2008 (boomark / email).