Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) on the bailout bill

Via email:

We've heard from many of you about the bailout bill in recent days so we wanted to make sure that everyone saw Russ's statement made before last night's Senate vote. Russ was one of 25 senators to vote against the package.

"I will oppose the Wall Street bailout plan because though well intentioned, and certainly much improved over the administration's original proposal, it remains deeply flawed. It fails to offset the cost of the plan, leaving taxpayers to bear the burden of serious lapses of judgment by private financial institutions, their regulators, and the enablers in Washington who paved the way for this catastrophe by removing the safeguards that had protected consumers and the economy since the great depression. The bailout legislation also fails to reform the flawed regulatory structure that permitted this crisis to arise in the first place. And it doesn't do enough to address the root cause of the credit market collapse, namely the housing crisis. Taxpayers deserve a plan that puts their concerns ahead of those who got us into this mess." - Senator Russ Feingold, October 1, 2008

For those of you who are practicing "government by Dow Jones" these days, it's down a couple of hundred points this morning. After the revised bailout bill sailed through the Senate last night.

Well, at least we still have our bread and circuses.