FAIL.

Plenty of blame to go around on this one. I've gotta say: Pelosi's railing against the right was not the best way to ensure that they would accede to a bill they hated. Good work, Madam Speaker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey3ZlsmIkz4&eurl

The partial transcription that follows is my own:

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Madam Speaker, when was the last time anyone ever asked you for $700 billion?

That's a staggering figure. And many questions have arisen from that request, and we have been hearing, I think, a very informed debate on all sides of this issue here today. I'm proud of the debate.

$700 billion. A staggering number, but only a part of the cost of the failed Bush economic policies to our country--policies that were built on budget recklessness. When President Bush took office, he inherited President Clinton's surpluses, four years in a row, budget surpluses, on a trajectory of $5.6 trillion in surplus. And with his reckless economic policies, within two years, he had turned that around. And now eight years later, the foundation of that fiscal irresponsibility, combined with an "anything goes" economic policy, have taken us to where we are today.

They claim to be free-market advocates, when it's really an "anything goes" mentality. No regulation, no supervision, no discipline. And if you fail, you will have a golden parachute, and the taxpayer will bail you out. Those days are over. The party is over in that respect.

Democrats believe in a free market. We know that it can create jobs, it can create wealth, it can create many good things in our economy. But in this case, in its unbridled form, as encouraged, supported by the Republicans--some in the Republican Party, not all--it has created not jobs, not capital. It has created chaos. And it's that chaos that the Secretary of the Treasury and the Chairman of the Fed came to see us just about a week and a half ago. ...
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I want to flesh this out a bit. To some representatives, a vote for this bill could be seen as an acknowledgment of Pelosi's remarks. It's not personal or anything like that. It's something akin to the film version of "The Crucible." Daniel Day-Lewis' character refuses to put his name on the church door because "it's all he has." Conservative House Republicans will go to their graves believing that government, not right-wing free-market economics, caused this problem. To vote for the bill after Pelosi's tirade would, in some ways, be surrendering their good names. And, of course, Daniel Day-Lewis' character was hanged as he recited the Our Father.

On the other side, I have great respect for Paul Ryan. He rambled and misspoke a couple of times, but his sentiments are my sentiments.

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/vidLink.php?b=1222703292&e=1222703892&n=1

The transcription that follows is my own.
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... A lot of us have lost a lot of sleep; a lot of us have looked at this situation. When Secretary Paulson came to us about a week ago, he gave us a three page bill that said "give me a blank checkbook and put $700 billion in it."

I was offended at that time.

And so what happened since then? We added 107 pages of taxpayer protection to that bill. We understand the gravity of this situation, and we worked with our colleagues on the other side, to make this bill a better bill. We made sure that there's upside for the taxpayers, so that when this happens, when profits come to these companies, we get their stock warrants, so that the first person in line to get those profits is the American taxpayer so they can get their money back. We made sure that there's an insurance program that makes sure that Wall Street shares in the cost of this recovery plan. And we also made sure that the executives of these companies that made these bad bets don't profit from this recovery plan. We cut the initial cost in half in this bill; Congress will have to approve the second half of this next year.

Why did we do all this?

Because this Wall Street crisis is quickly becoming a Main Street crisis. It's quickly becoming a banking crisis.

What does that mean? Why does that matter to us? Why does that matter to Janesville, Wisconsin?

If it goes the way it could go, that means credit shuts down. Businesses can't get money to pay their payroll, to pay their employees. Students can't get student loans for next semester. People can't get car loans. Seniors may not have access to their savings. Are we standing at the edge of this abyss? Nobody knows, but maybe.

It's very probable.

Madam Speaker, this bill offends my principles. But I'm going to vote for this bill in order to preserve my principles, in order to preserve this free enterprise system. This is a Herbert Hoover moment. He made some big mistakes after the Great Depression, and we lived with those consequences for decades. Let's not make that mistake.

There's a lot of fear and a lot of panic out there. A lot of what this is about is getting that fear and panic out of the market. I think the White House bumbled this thing. They have brought this issue up to a crescendo, to a crisis, so that all eyes in the world markets are here on Congress. It's a heavy load to bear.

We have to deal with this panic. We have to deal with this fear. Colleagues, we're in the moment. This bill doesn't have everything I want in it. It got a lot of good things in it, but we're here. We're in this moment. And if we fail to do the right thing, heaven help us. If we fail to pass this, I fear the worst is yet to come.

The problem we have here is we're one month away from an election. We're all worried about losing our jobs. And all of us--most of us say "this thing needs to pass, but I want you to vote for it, not me." But unfortunately, a majority of us are going to have to vote for this. And we're going to have to do that because we have a chance of arresting that crash. Just maybe, this will work.

And so for me and for my own conscience, so I can look myself in the mirror tonight, so I can go to sleep with a clear conscience, I want to know that I did everything I could to stop it from getting worse, to stop this Wall Street problem from infecting Main Street.

And I want to get on my airplane and go home and see my three kids and my wife that I haven't seen in a week, and look them in the eye and know that I did what I thought was right for them and their future. And I believe with all my heart, as bad as this is, it could get a whole lot worse, and that's why I think we have to pass this bill. I yield.
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This appeared to be extemporaneous. His fumbles betray the fact that he's sleep-deprived, and they were numerous (he meant the Stock Market Crash, not the Great Depression). And I legitimately hate the "Wall Street/Main Street" thing that's been kicking around the discourse for the last few days. But I found this speech to be impassioned, important, and timely. It's too bad few listened.