Senate Passes Wall Street Bailout Bill. Time for Working Families’ Bill

by Mike Hall, Oct 2, 2008

The U.S. Senate last night approved (74–25) a bailout package intended to calm financial markets and get credit markets moving again. Except for some tax extenders for business and an increase in federal deposit insurance, the bill mirrors the bailout package voted down in the House of Representatives on Monday.

But as Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said during the debate on the bailout:

We need to move aggressively with the same sense of urgency to rescue families on Main Street who are struggling to pay their bills and keep their jobs. They’ve been in crisis a lot longer than Wall Street has.

On Friday, the House approved an economic recovery package that included a seven-week extension of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits for jobless workers who exhaust their benefits—13 weeks in states with high unemployment. Just last week, jobless claims hit a seven-year high.

It also provided $32.4 billion for job-creating infrastructure projects, including bridge and highway repair, water and sewer projects, public transportation and school repair, and included $14 billion to help states pay their share of Medicaid costs.

Senate Republicans blocked a similar bill.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says while comprehensive government action is needed to address the financial and credit crisis,

without a robust economic recovery package and concrete help for homeowners, the bailout will not work. It will not address the real underlying weaknesses in the U.S. economy.

Obama strongly agrees an economic recovery package is needed.

We need to pass an economic stimulus package that will help ordinary Americans cope with rising food and gas prices, one that can save 1 million jobs rebuilding our schools, and roads and our infrastructure, and help states and cities avoid budget cuts and tax increases—a plan that would extend expiring unemployment benefits for those Americans who’ve lost their jobs and cannot find new ones.

Both Obama and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) voted for yesterday’s Wall Street package. But McCain, who last week made a desperate attempt to grab the spotlight by supposedly “suspending” his campaign and returning to Washington to help solve the crisis, did not offer a single word on the Senate floor.

According to news reports, he had little impact on negotiations of the initial package and admitted on the Fox News show “Fox and Friends” that he didn’t save the day last week when he left the campaign trail to rescue the Wall Street bailout.

Sweeney says the lessons from this financial crisis will have a major impact on voters come Election Day.

Decades of financial deregulation and attacks on unions and the middle class—together with a failure to address the housing bubble—a led us straight into the current crisis.

The choice is clear:  John McCain has been a lifelong deregulator and privatizer, while Barack Obama has consistently fought for working people. We simply can’t afford to hand the keys to the car over to the guy who drove us off the road in the first place.

The House is expected to vote on the bailout tomorrow.

Meanwhile, two Senate Republicans in tight races with AFL-CIO-backed opponents showed where they stand when it comes to Wall Street versus Main Street, when they voted against Friday’s economic recovery package for working families and for the Wall Street bailout yesterday.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who serves as his party’s leader in the Senate, is facing a strong challenge from AFL-CIO-endorsed Bruce Lunsford. Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.), a first-term Republican, is being challenged by former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, also endorsed by the AFL-CIO.

For more on the Kentucky races, click here, and for New Hampshire, click here.

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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

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