As a friend notes, the longer they wait, the busier the FDIC gets. This, I must point out, also costs the US taxpayer money, and there's no chance we'll get any of it back, either.
A journalist friend who spends way more time on politics than I do suggests that if the Democrats cave and include a capital gains tax, it will probably pass--but puts the odds of the Democrats caving at slim to none, since they can now blame any resulting crash on the Republicans.
I didn't think it was possible to be more disgusted with politicians than I usually am, but I find it impossible to express the seething contempt that I feel at this kind of opportunism. I don't mind when they screw with the normal operation of the economy for venal personal gain. But risking a recession in order to get a cut in the capital gains tax? Letting it tank because you can always blame it on the Republicans?
I am grimly reminded of H.L. Mencken's famous observation that Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
The public doesn't quite grasp what's at stake, and there's no reason they should. But the representatives do. The true believers--well, I forgive them their zealotry, and hope that they're right and I'm wrong. But anyone who tanks a bank bailout they think might be needed, in order to get a cut in the capital gains tax, deserves to be tried for treason.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
So you blame this on the GOP, but throw the Dems under the bus if they don't capitulate to something not even needed?
Now that's fair and balanced!
I think the correct move now would be to either threaten or pass a very progressive bill along party lines.
If the House Republicans want to play ball, throw one at their head.
95 Democrats voted against this? Pelosi and Frank couldn't do better than 60% of their own caucus? The GOP numbers were awful but they don't control the House. Pelosi & CO. do and their whips must have taken an early holiday.
I couldn't agree with Megan more - as a libertarian (just like her!), I think any politician who is not in favor of nationalizing the mortgage industry should be tried for treason.
So Megan, how do you feel about the Republicans essentially saying that they voted against the bailout because their feelings were hurt? Just where are the grownups?
This is bigger than a one party problem, and your attempt to blame it on the Democrats is so deeply dishonest, it's breathtaking. Neither side trusts the other, and to say that the distrust of Republicans by Democrats (for very good reason) is key to this failure would be an understatement.
Capital Gains taxes will likely be irrelevant this year and next. Almost everyone that takes a gain will be able to take some offsetting loss from somewhere else in their portfolio, resulting in little capital gains taxes actually being paid.
I see the US automakers got their $25 billion government loan in the omnibus budget bill.
Give me a break, Megan. I know the word elitist gets thrown around a lot these days, but you seem to be asking for the label.
The "common people" you cite are universally against the bailout, and have let their representatives know it in the last few days. It might seem like a foreign concept these days, but they are supposed to vote in accordance with their constituents wishes.
The public might not know the grim details of the crisis, but they do know that they are getting screwed to bail out a relative few incredibly wealthy bankers.
There is no proof that the public will ever get anything back, no proof that the economy is doomed if we do nothing, and no proof that the bailout will even do anything to help. Since you have such a firm grasp on the situation, why don't you tell us commoners how you warned us all about this situation?
I am confused - as I have been by most of the news around the bailout. But Megan, are you angry with the dems for refusing to capitulate, or for the republicans for refusing to vote because the dems won't capitulate - or both?
I'm not sure which is worse - but neither side comes off well. And aren't there a lot of republicans voting against the bill hoping they can turn it into votes come November themselves?
If we start seeing a string of bank failures, they'll all change their tune, and the bill will pass in a day or two. It's not just the GOP that's doing this for leverage, Megan. The liberals mostly voted against it because there was no sop to bankrupt homeowners included.
This is an astonishing political gamble by the bill's opponents in both parties--if the cataclysm occurs, those on record as opposing this package will be finished. If it doesn't, the far left and far right will reap enormous dividends at the expense of the moderates. And no matter which way you cut it, Pelosi just took one on the chin. Whatever happens, I'm not sure she'll be Speaker in January.
Actually Benny, the Representative system does not require that the members vote according to their constituents' wishes. It's like that in England, but here Reps are voted in to vote how they want. Whether they get re-elected or not..
The Republican's fault? Good grief. Last I looked the Democrats controlled both the House and Senate.
The Democrats have the responsibility of leadership - they need to deliver (or not).
The answer is... Reelect No One. Do not vote for any incumbent. Period. Strip them of power and tell them to just go away.
This bill was absurd and I'm glad that it didn't pass. If there's a short-term funding problem then the fed can just put out a bid and buy 50b from 1-90dur.
RW Rogers, that position fails to appreciate (or is disingenuous about) the politics of the bill.
Pelosi has said all along that she would not whip her members unless a majority of House Republicans supported the bill.
The logic is simple: the American people by and large don't understand the complexities of the financial system and its interconnectedness with the broader economy. They do understand that no one bails them out of their mistakes, and they abhor the notion that one can be too big, too crooked, too greedy, too deregulated, too incompetent to fail. To say this concept of bailing out "Wall Street" -- you know, where all the frat boys in your college class bragged about taking their six-figure starting salaries - is deeply unpopular in most of the country is a massive understatement.
So while the bailout may be the right thing to do, no way should Dems have to bear the brunt of the hate back home. If this is the right thing, it is right for everyone, and Dems and Repubs should share the pain together, so neither can politicize it in light of the voters' anger.
When the rightmost group of Repubs in the House bailed, it would have made no sense for Pelosi to insist on turning it into a party-line vote. For their courage and patriotism, the Dems "thank you" would have been getting cleaned out of office in the next 2 elections.
This is the Republicans doing. They can own it, and see if the public still hates the bailout in 5 weeks when the ripple effects of doing nothing have hurt nearly everyone.
Megan,
I'll cut to the chase- I go way back with your blogging since the days of Live from the WTC. I've strayed in the last year or so.... But I've returned- only briefly. With a question.
What the hell has happened to you? Your libertarian tendencies have completely eroded. In your current form, I'd suggest you are no more of a fit for the label 'libertarian' than that idiot Bill Maher.
I'll repeat for emphasis: WHAT THE HELL HAS HAPPENED TO YOU?
What's next? Maybe, finally, we can stop playing "pass the hot potato of losses on mortgage debt" game and finally assign who lost what. Trying to paper things over once again is how we ended up under a debt mountain in the first place.
The most unintentionally funny thing I read this weekend was a financial writer who wrote that he wanted to pass the bailout now and worry about the moral hazard later- the very definition of moral hazard.
But is Bernanke still defending the money market mutual funds? People have paid for FDIC insurance. I think Congress may have felt Bernanke has been defending too much. Per Friedman and 'The Causes of the Great Depression,' his central concern is not to let the money supply contract.
Every big prediction of doom the Radical Right has made in the past quarter century has been replaced with a terrible burden of the "known evil" type, such as a war or a bailout or some other disaster. The public is fed up with this, and has instructed their Congress to say, in effect, "oh yeah? prove it."
I think they're right. I think, Megan, that you have been lured in by the manufactured hysteria and fake fear. The President of the United States got up on national television and told people to panic. WTF?
I think a lot of people in finance are gonna get hurt, and the economy will go remain in recession for a few years longer. But the Great Depression? Really? I'm sorry but I just don't trust the people saying it. They have no credibility with me any more. Maybe you're right and this is the one time the wolf is really there, but the story is told for a reason. Hopefully the generation about to come to power in Senator Obama learns it early, and doesn't repeat it.
I am not in-the-know on the workings of the economy, so I come here to read. Thank you for your analysis, Megan.
djconnor, she moved to DC. Prove positive that when everyone around you thinks a certain way, you will too (even if you think that you don't). But she is still a nice lady and bakes a great cake! It's good to have marketable skills.
The Democrats have absolute control of both House an Senate. They have Obama! How could He fail to get this bill passed?! Obama is a Great Leader. How could He have failed us in our Hour of need? O Tempore, O Mores!
The Democrats never needed Republican votes. Pelosi is in total control. She set up the bill with the help of the Giants of the House and Senate. How could she fail? She never needed votes from the minority - they are just a pack of dogs that scavenge daily beneath the tables after each Democrat Feast.
I agree Megan. Blame the dogs. Their votes don't count, their ideas don't matter, and their mere presense is an insult to high minded people.
How could the Main stream media be so wrong? They promised us the bill would pass. Can't they count? Surely if they can forecast the presidential vote of 300,000,000 peope with pinpoint accuracy they must know how a measily 250 Democrats will vote.
BTW, why hasn't the market crashed?
I'm obviously no macroeconomist, but it seems to me that, if a bailout on this scale is truly necessary, it should be *really* really hard to accomplish. Failure the first time around is an appropriate acknowledgment of the hideous aspect of this intervention, and may blunt the negative effect of the bailout on incentives.
Sweden versus Japan.
Sweden suffered through a 20-month recession followed by 3.2% growth since 1994.
Japan suffered a "lost decade".
Megan — this bailout that you back seems to follow the Japanese model, by propping up bad banks and other financial institutions — instead of the Swedish model, of temporarily taking over insolvent institutions. firing management, selling off assets, and re-capitalizing and re-privatizing the companies when they recover.
A pox on both their houses.
It's not the wealthy bankers who are losing their shirts. They all have their walk-away money. They will be fine unless the economy craters beyond all recognition. So will most on Capitol Hill.
Most of them will probably get re-elected, too.
See what happens when you promote the BigShinyThing as being the OnlyThing for too long? Eventually, people start calling you on your bluff.
Now, let's see if the ever-omnipresent desire for revenue outweighs a 3.0 TED Spread that supposedly will be the ruin of our economy.
And, oh, Republican pundits: GET BEHIND YOUR BOYS, NOW. You led them down this path; now help them weather the storm.
Rogers,
They moved to more centrist bill knowing they would lose the left wing dems because the Republicans said they had the votes.
Now if they move the bill to the left to pick up dems the Reps have only themselves to blame.
Actually Benny, the Representative system does not require that the members vote according to their constituents' wishes. It's like that in England, but here Reps are voted in to vote how they want.
Umm, what?
MPs are free to vote as they prefer - there is no mechanism (except for the spectre of the next election) to make them vote according to their constituents' wishes. If they vote against their party's policy when directly ordered to support the party line, they can be expelled from their political party, but remain an MP.
If I were the Democratic leadership right now, I'd just propose a bill that's likely to pass a party-line vote and then dare the White House to veto it.
Where did Megan get the connection to a capital gains cut? I see nothing about that in current news stories. Republicans are quoted in the NYT, but the gist is "this is socialism for the rich", not "I want my own goodies added".
So explain to me why having the Fed temporarily (for 6 to 24 months) reduce reserve and capitalization requirements, lower the Fed fund rate and step up open market and other operations to support that, and encourage (perhaps by temporarily reducing the rules and discount rate) use of the discount window by banks wouldn't be a viable and more libertarian alternative to Paulson's (now modified by congress) plan?
The Democrats have absolute control of both House an Senate.
Absolute control of the Senate, are you f'ing kidding? The Republicans didn't have that with 55 seats, do you think the Dems do with 50 seats and Joe Lieberman?
I guess the plus side of this is that it gives the Dems an excuse to go with the Sweden plan and pass it on a party-line vote.
The bailout may be unpopular, but straight nationalization along the lines of "There will be no bailout. The gov't will take control of the institutions that were so greedy and got us into this mess, fire their leaders, clean them up and return them to the private sector with much tighter regulation" will probably go over just fine.
I, too, am apalled that Congress, when called upon to perform a historic duty, a duty that, though necessary, would be difficult to defend, failed abjectly.
This vote would be particularly difficult to defend if it worked (as Dodd pointed out, if you avoid a catastrophe you win no hellelujahs because nobody experienced the pain you saved them).
But letting it go will almost certainly have dire consequences. I'm shocked.
That said, I'm wondering why Megan seems to think the Republican No's were driven by capital gains considerations. The explanations I've read from Repubs. have all been some version of "this is socialism and I can't vote for it in good conscience." I've not read any discussion of capital gains, though I've not read too much so a link would be helpful if available.
On the Dems side, as some above have pointed out, they do control Congress. If they are convinced that this is a cataclysmically large danger, why oh why don't they just come up with their own left-wing version of the bill and pass it on a party line vote? It seems unlikely that Bush and Paulson will say no to a bailout because it's too lefty when they feel End Times are bearing down on us...
Populism is a disease, caused by our failed education system, which has very painful symptoms - how painful we shall soon see, unfortunately for those who thought they had been vaccinated...
The "common people" you cite are universally against the bailout, and have let their representatives know it in the last few days. It might seem like a foreign concept these days, but they are supposed to vote in accordance with their constituents wishes.
And most of the problems with government these days have been caused by their doing exactly that.
The "common people" are mostly not paying great attention to politics. Their first thoughts on whatever has just hit the headlines are therefore unlikely to be especially acute.
If the people are sovereign, why do they never get the blame for the decisions they make, instead of their servants in Congress and the White House?
Your last sentence overstates your case by a mile.
You've made it quite clear that you're convinced that if we don't pass a bailout, there'll be a massive recession. I disagree, but you're entitled to espouse your opinion. However you should realize that you've become so convinced that you're starting to project. You're starting to use phrases like "true believers" to label those that disagree with you, and you've somehow got it into your head that the 400-some-odd idiots in congress agree with you as well, and more than half of them voted against it anyway out of malice.
That's just silly. Just the other day Yglesias posted about that congressman he interviewed who didn't even know what moral hazard was. Do you really think HE believes that "failure to pass bailout" = "inevitable recession"? Do you really think all, most, or even a plurality of his peers believe that? You just admitted yourself that "the public doesn't quite grasp what's at stake." Well I hate to break it to you, though I thought you knew, that members of congress are not generally smarter or better informed than the public, so it's not a great leap to conclude they don't understand what's at stake either.
"...your attempt to blame it on the Democrats is so deeply dishonest, it's breathtaking."
No it isn't and I say that as a Democrat. 95 Dems voted against this bill and against their own leadership.
It's striking that the most idealogical (and in my opinion least thoughtful) members from the extremes of left and right are allied in rejecting this.
"The "common people" you cite are universally against the bailout, and have let their representatives know it in the last few days. It might seem like a foreign concept these days, but they are supposed to vote in accordance with their constituents wishes.
"The public might not know the grim details of the crisis..."
So if the public doesn't know the grim details but knows what they want, what are their representatives supposed to do if the public is WRONG??
Would you really want a pilot of a plane you're on to go against her better judgement and try to land in a thunderstorm because most of the passengers want her to even they don't understand the "grim details" involved in that choice?
davido, all we've heard is endless predictions of total doom and disaster if we don't hand $700 billion in taxpayer funds to the richest and most powerful people in America.
Pardon me if this sounds presumptuous, but where's the evidence? All we have is a self-fulfilling prophecy: the worst president in the last century stands up, says we need to give $700 billion to a bunch of Wall Street failures and then says "We must have this bailout or else the market is doomed."
When the bailout is rejected, the market tanks. Gee, what a shock.
This is hysteria, plain and simple, and fake-capitalists like Megan are responsible for feeding it.
I think people out there in the real economy, the real real economy not the credit swap, triple derivative economy, know what is going on. We've run up are debts way to much, we have a huge trade deficit, we've increased a hard working but illiterate underclass through mass migration, we are stuck in two low-to medium intensity conflicts with no end in sight. None of this is sustainable... and this bailout was just one more effort to sustain it and a particularly obnoxious one at that.
Yes, we are going into recession. That would have happened anyway. When the smoke clears, our economy is going to begin restructuring towards something more like an optimal use of resources.
On one side we have Japan: a 10+ year depression caused by the government bailing out every Tom, Dick, and Harry that got burned by lending money before a real estate market collapse.
On the other side, Nancy Pelosi and George Bush are telling us that there will be Hell On Earth (tm) if we don't bail out every Tom, Dick, and Harry who got burned by lending money before a real estate market collapse. Excuse me if I think we're going down the wrong road.
You don't cure a hangover by handing out vodka, and you don't cure too much bad loans by handing out more loans. You close the loans, and start over. The credit markets don't need quantity, they need quality.
Megan, why the double standard?
You consistently seem to accept borderline criminal behavior from Republicans, and to expect Dems to be angels.
The GOP made this monster; and it's as bad and destructive as any 1950's era monster movie from Japan.
They bred it in their corner offices. It's mother was a Republican investment banker, it's father a GOP senator. As it grew, they molded it with a lack of regulation, distorting it beyond recognition. Today, the monster busted out of its secret prison and began its rampage down Wall Street, down Main Street, down Elm Street.
People will loose their homes. Their jobs. Their businesses. Infrastructure will be destroyed. And they're too stupid to run away, screaming.
But this monster is pure GOP greed.
I have to say that today I'm quite happy despite Obama's huge lead in the polls. If the moderate voices have an effective majority in Congress, then Obama will have no choice but to govern in the middle. So much for your left-wing fantasies of Obama remaking America.
ROFL. hah ahahhaa
They bred it in their corner offices. It's mother was a Republican investment banker, it's father a GOP senator. As it grew, they molded it with a lack of regulation, distorting it beyond recognition. Today, the monster busted out of its secret prison and began its rampage down Wall Street, down Main Street, down Elm Street.
Very interesting. So those Democrats urging Freddie and Fannie to take on risky mortgage debts, egged on by the likes of ACORN, were nothing but a prolonged hallucination witnessed by millions?
The trough of too-good-to-be-true credit was fed at by millions from multiple levels of society and answering readily to whistles both blue and red. If your answer to the situation is to play pin the tail on the elephant, you're not thinking through this seriously.
I am debt free, solvent, and liquid.
I am a genius compared to the brightest lights on Wall Street and in Congress.
My self esteem just shot up. heh heh heh
Sell the toxic assets on E-bay, no reserve. There's your price discovery.
Travis,
"davido, all we've heard is endless predictions of total doom and disaster if we don't hand $700 billion in taxpayer funds to the richest and most powerful people in America.
Pardon me if this sounds presumptuous, but where's the evidence?"
I'm persuaded by what I've read and heard about the credit markets over the last few weeks to be concerned that these predictions are correct. So I haven't simply relied on warnings coming from the Fed and Treasury. This crisis appears to be real.
Where is your evidence to the contrary?
And as my retirement (and those of literally millions of others) depends on what the markets do, the markets tanking is no small matter. My net worth has declined significantly in the last three weeks so I have as they say, "skin in the game." For me this is real.
If it isn't real for you yet, you'd better hope this was all a hoax. Because if it is real and nothing is done, you're not going to like it.
aMouseforallSeasons -- I'm sure Megan or somebody else can help us out here; who are the folks defaulting on their mortgages; scary brown folks or real-estate flippers?
aMouseforallSeasons -- I'm sure Megan or somebody else can help us out here; who are the folks defaulting on their mortgages; scary brown folks or real-estate flippers?
Ooh, a Race Card, and played as part of a Sleight-of-Hand diversionary strategy! It's a tempting trade, but I already have a Race Card in my Identity Politics collection, and since the card returns to your hand every time you play it, there's nothing to be gained by acquiring two of them.
If by any chance you have the Obama & Ayers Bedfellows card or maybe the one that shows the McCains photoshopped over the infamous Hart/Rice photo, then I'm back in.
NOW you're disgusted?
NOW?
1. The pick of Palin didn't disgust you?
2. The flat out lying by McCain/Palin didn't disgust you?
3. The sexism against Clinton didn't disgust you?
4. The Terri Schiavo drama didn't disgust you?
NOW?
That makes no sense.
"As a friend notes, the longer they wait, the busier the FDIC gets. This, I must point out, also costs the US taxpayer money, and there's no chance we'll get any of it back, either."
and goes to show that you have no clue how the FDIC works; it's paid for by premiums on the banks. It doesn't cost the taxpayers a dime. If the FDIC needs short-term loans they have a line of credit the Treasury, and then it gets paid back by increases
in the premiums.
Interesting post, though for the sake of clarity I'd urge you to remove the capital D in Mencken's "democracy..." quotation. He was talking about democracy and not The Democracy (as the Democratic party was often called), an important distinction that seems confused here.
Re: Yes, we are going into recession.
I very much believe we are already in a recession, and have been since late last year, however the key statistics are being cooked to avoid proclaiming a second Bush recession.
Adding a Capital Gains Tax to the bailout is even sillier than lipsticking a pit bull.
It won't help, it won't be any prettier, and you are likely to be in worse shape for the experience.
No bailouts for the Wall Street fat cats. We should be putting them in jail not bailing them out. Power to the people!!!
"since they can now blame any resulting crash on the Republicans."
The fact that they can get away with this makes me really ill. Don't any reporters know the Democrats have a majority in both houses. Yet driving in the car the top of the hour news presented the defeat of the bill as all the fault of the republicans. Seriously, anyone who doubts bias in favor of the democrats amongst the major news organizations, please explain this.
(PS, before you respond by simply calling me an evil fascist, I did attend the democratic caucases and voted for Obama. The rest of his party could lose him my support though.)
How can you really be such so naive? The bailout or whatever you call it was floated by the *Republican* Bush administration. That this thing was necessary was attested to by *Republicans*, not Democrats. It was not a policy for which Democrats advocated.
If Republicans are unwilling to support their own administration, then why should Democrats?
This blaming of the Democrats is absurd. This was not a Democratic bill. It was supposed to be a bipartisan compromise, and the essential nature of the plan was of course developed by the Bush administration in the person of Secretary Paulson.
The bill came to the floor on the premise that both party leaderships would be able to corral the majority of their members to support the bill. The Democrats succeeded in doing so - in fact, in getting 60% of their caucus to vote for it. The Republican leadership completely failed, only geting 35% of their caucus to vote for it.
Yeah, Pelosi couldn't get all the Democrats behind it - but that was because it was not a bill which was designed to get every Democrat to support it. It was a bill designed to get the support of a majority of both parties.
If the Democrats wanted to pass a bill on their own, they wouldn't have chosen this one.
Why should Democrats vote for something they don't believe in and totally cave to the Republicans? And you want to know what a Capital Gains Tax elimination would do? Put billions into the hands of the greedy jerks who caused this problem in the first place. Sorry, that one is a non-starter. Also, a Capital Gains Tax elimination would make this even more fiscally irresponsible--and cost the government even more money--than it already is.
You just can't face the facts: your guy, John McCain, put politics before country. Maybe you need to cover up the slogan on your yard sign and put "Politics" over Country. It's what your guy does.
How many posters so easily forget that this is the Reagan Revolution, free market ecomony. This is a Republican creation where hundreds of thouusands on Americans profited greatly while producing nothing of value to the economy or the society.
No one seems to have a clue that a bigger fundamental is at work here, peak oil, peak natural resources, and peak sustainable population. Let me take the "honor" of saying it first?!? "This will be a recession without end!!"
This whole economic catastrophe is brought on by Republicans. Yet only one third of the Republicans were willing to vote for a remedy for the catastrophe. Two thirds of the Democrats were willing to put themselves on the line for a bill that didn't even address concerns important to Democrats. Yet somehow, this is all Democrats' fault? That is just crazy.
Are you kidding me? McMegan, you're just an idiot, OK? The Republicans have been planning the hang this bailout bill all over the Dems quite plainly, pace Ruffini and a whole host of dems bloggers. Radio Silence from McMegan land.
But one whiff of the Dems turning about this mess (rightfully) on the Republicans and you get all up in your stateswoman horse. What a goddamn hypocrite!
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard"
As if Congress knows any better. Please.
"This whole economic catastrophe is brought on by Republicans. "
1. Who supported the expansion of the CRA?
2. Who refused to regulate Fannie Mae even when warned of this outcome by Greenspan several years ago?
3. Who encouraged Fannie Mae to lend to lower income borrowers without regard to sound lending practices, only considering politically correct outcomes?
Please. The Democrats share a large blame in this. There are consequences to their initiatives. They either don't understand or don't care.
Nobody cares about your "journalist" friend's opinion. You provide no support for what you state and then go on to analyze it as if it were truth. This post is extremely sloppy and lazy, you do not deserve a public voice.
Don, if there are massive bank failures, I think we can be very confident that the US taxpayer is going to step in to fill the gap. They're not going to levy a premium increase on the industry when it's this shaky.
Lily:
1) Irrelevant; CRA loans have a lower default rate than the mortgage market as a whole.
2)Presumably Congressional Republicans, who enjoyed majorities in both houses as well as a rubber-stamp President in the White House.
3) See above. Nobody asked Fannie Mae to give out garbage loans except the Wall Street predators who stood to make millions on commissions.
Lily, you seem to be the one who doesn't understand. This credit crisis isn't simply a case of a bursting real estate bubble and defaulted mortgages. The economy has handled that before.
The difference today is that we have deregulated derivatives systems that the GOP put into place (Phil Gramm, McCain's buddy, in particular). Add years of total lack of oversight by a GOP President and GOP controlled Congress, and you ended up with these derivatives being fictionally valued. In fact, it's such a nightmare, nobody knows how to value a vast trove of these things.
Here's what happened to the GOP support for the bailout.
The Republicans who voted against it wisely decided that it was a losing proposition for several reasons.
1) It reinforces the idea that the GOP is the handmaiden of the wealthy.
2) If it was a success, Democrats would take all the credit for acting so swiftly to resolve the crisis.
3) If it wasn't a success the Democrats would still say that the crisis was caused by "failed Republican policies" that were too poisonous to overcome.
4) It would alienate more constituents than it would draw.
The GOP is looking at a weak election season anyway. Why would they give more fuel to the Democrats?