Not everyone was thrilled with the rejection yesterday by Congress of the $700 billion bailout. Many however, were.

The American public made its wishes known to their representatives by phone, by email, through the media that they did not want this bill passed. And it didn’t. And the people were pleased. And the sky didn’t fall. After an initial market dip it rose again today. Life goes on.

The average American doesn’t have money on Wall Street; if the Dow goes up or down doesn’t matter to them. It’s a foreign land filled with fat cats who do nothing to help them as individuals. They don’t have golden parachutes nor will they ever have the opportunity to get one. They understand that $700 billion of their money is a lot of cash particularly when borrowed. They also realize that Congress has no clothes. Congress is more concerned, they believe, with their buddies on Wall Street than they are with their own constituents; the people they rely on to get elected. That’s why they called to remind them.

Alas Congress can’t leave well enough alone. Pressures from the White House, from banking and business lobbyists (who spent in excess of $500 billion lobbying Congress over the past 10 years*), from special interests, from banks themselves, is swaying them. Unlike the public who, when they visit the same banks we’re being asked to bail out for a low interest loan or to beg for the removal of a criminally high overdraft fee, they don’t understand that ‘no’ means ‘no’. They are trying to dress up the pig (no disrespect to Governor Palin intended) and see if they can slip it through anyway. Just as they slipped the $25 billion loan to the car companies Friday night. In the real world we call this a slight of hand.

I’m not sure if you attempted to email your representative last night but it was impossible to get through such was the volume of public communications to congress. The news channels reported that the phone lines were once again jammed with callers. I doubt that these were goodwill calls, these calls were a response, as was mine, to the prospect of a ‘redo’ vote Thursday. The media quote a 100:1 ratio of callers against the bailout.

It seems that Congress can't hear their constituents; they're going for a revote anyway. Congress believes in the idea that ‘if at first you don’t succeed, keep voting.’

To quote Osama, “let me very clear.” Changing the outcome of this vote will cost Congress their jobs. The ground swell of public opinion has been stirred and the public, on one of the rare occasions that the media has noticed, is angry. Furious.

Should a revote Thursday pass this bill in whatever form, I would advise Congress members who voted for the bill seeking reelection to start packing their golf trophies into moving boxes. They may be away from Washington for a while.

The reality of the voting public’s anger is something that will sink home as soon as the bright city lights of Washington fade on the members journey home to heartland on their reelection campaigns. No amount of camaraderie, backslapping or lobbyist cash can hide those seeking reelection from those fateful words, “you’re fired.”

Congress take heed.


[*1998 -2008: US Chamber of Commerce, $398,224,680. Business Roundtable $112,280,000 – www.opensecrets.org]