SO FAR, SO GOOD… BUT IT’S STILL ONLY THE BEGINNING

It looks like a week’s worth of bi-partisan Congressional deliberation and negotiation has a finally yielded a bill that would bail out Wall Street.

The House of Representatives will vote as early as Monday on the 110-page “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008,” which would allow the U.S. Treasury to buy up to $700 billion of bad debt over time — beginning with an initial installment of $250 billion — from struggling U.S. financial institutions. And early indications are that the plan is already working.

Trading from Japan’s Nikkei 225 index — which has been open for five hours and often serves as an indicator for the U.S. market — was up significantly Monday and the dollar surged to a 1-week high against foreign currencies.

But the first significant signs that the proposed legislation is rejuvenating the downtrodden economy will come in a matter of hours in the way of increased or decreased lending between banks.

If this bill does revive the markets, much of the praise should be given to House Republicans and others like Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham who did the right thing and offered reasonable solutions. While nobody likes the fact that we had to spend taxpayer money to save poor business practices, the alternative would have possibly resulted in an unprecedented economic collapse.

With the masses from all sides of the political aisle vocally clamoring both for and against a bailout, the easy road was to get on television and gripe about the past while offering no solutions for the future. The even easier road was to cave to Bush Administration’s wishes and swallow the bill whole without challenging some of the lesser aspects of their plan.

The third road, however, which those real leaders thankfully took, was that of sticking up for taxpayers while understanding the gravity of the situation. They ensured that taxpayers were protected, and they got the job done.

They made sure there were limits on executive pay. They left open the possibility that taxpayers will not only recoup the money from their forced investment, but could even stand to profit. They brought tougher oversight to the bill where it was severely lacking. They killed the Democrats’ plan to allow bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages. And they even stopped a provision that would have sent some of the profits from the bailout to an affordable housing trust fund, where it would trickled down to corrupt Democratic groups like ACORN.

As Jack Fowler of the National Review wrote, “When you expect your political leaders to step up, and they do, you must reciprocate by following and supporting them — and if you do you’ll still be able to place your head on the pillow with a clear conscience.”

But getting the bill passed is not assured. Leaders from both parties in both chambers of Congress are having to step up their efforts to sell reluctant colleagues on the legislation.

Still, leaders think they have the necessary number of votes. And I certainly hope they do.

“This bill provides the necessary tools and funding to help protect our economy against a system-wide breakdown,” said President Bush. “Without this rescue plan, the costs to the American economy could be disastrous.”

(Photo: Reuters)