The Editors

Holly Yeager profiles an extremely competitive congressional race, and explores what it says about Democratic fortunes in the suburbs: Back in 2006, it wasn’t until December 11 — and two recounts — that Deborah Pryce, a Republican first elected to Congress from Columbus, Ohio, in 1992, was finally declared a winner in her re-election bid, […]

Dana Goldstein on Colorado’s strange labor-business coalition: In an unprecedented deal between labor and business, those initiatives, and two others backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers, were pulled from the ballot last Thursday, just hours before the Colorado secretary of state’s deadline for Election Day changes. Seventy-five executives at local companies, including powerhouses […]

Robert Kuttner ponders the consequences of the bailout bill’s failure and suggests that maybe, just maybe, it could allow a better bill to be passed: What now? First, we will face the inevitable round of recriminations. But the record is pretty clear. The Democrats were prepared to step up and take a politically difficult vote. […]

Robert Kuttner takes McCain to task for doing all of the politicking but none of the heavy legislative lifting on the bailout bill. At the level of presidential politics, this signals severe disarray both in the McCain camp and in the Republican Party. The House Republicans are deserting both their president and their Senate colleagues. […]

Robert Reich explains why we should be wary about the just-announced bailout deal: But the devil is in the details. From what I’ve heard, the kinds of limits being discussed could easily be cosmetic, such as limits on golden parachutes or limits on net increases in direct salaries during the duration of the bailout. Public […]

As the country discusses the Wall Street bailout, Robert Kuttner remarks on the mysterious absence of concern about the federal deficit from former fiscal fear-mongers: One thing that we haven’t heard much about lately is the federal deficit. Not very long ago, a broad and bipartisan assortment of Cassandras was warning that the greatest menace […]

Mark Schmitt debates National Review‘s Byron York. Here’s a section on the financial crisis where Mark explains the ongoing moral-hazard problem of the Treasury Department’s bailout plan: And here’s the whole thing: –The Editors

Hank Paulson claims that Congress has to act now or the whole financial system will collapse. But, Robert Kuttner points out, it’s better to do this overhaul right — from the bottom up rather than from the top down — than to do it in great haste: Paulson’s tactic of demanding instant action because impending […]

Over on his blog Ezra rounds up the 5 biggest problems with the bailout: The Imperial Treasury: The bailout plan, as currently designed, gives Hank Paulson almost unlimited power with virtually no oversight. The bill says, “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and […]