Most of Georgia delegation opposed bailout from the get-go

Washington — When it came to persuading most of the Georgia lawmakers to buy the $700 billion plan to steady the financial markets, the Bush administration and House leaders never even came close.

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On the eve of Monday’s vote, the opposition was already hardening among Georgia’s seven Republican House members, as several gathered in the office of Rep. Phil Gingrey of Marietta to compare notes.

From that point, it became clear that not one of the state’s Republican representatives would be coming to the aid of his party or president on the biggest vote on the economy in their careers. As Rep. Paul Broun of Athens put it, perhaps least delicately, “This bill is a big cow-patty with a marshmallow stuck in the middle, and I’m not going to eat that cow-patty.”

Members had all felt the effects of a torrent of phone calls and e-mails overwhelmingly opposing the plan. Gingrey said the public was outraged that they might be “bailing out the very culprits [on Wall Street] whose egregious behavior put us into this situation,” and he added that he sympathized with that view.

Sure, there were also frightening predictions made by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and others about a market meltdown if Congress didn’t act and act quickly.

But the G-7, as the Georgia Republicans call themselves, were unmoved as they milled around the “Georgia corner” of the House floor, not long before Monday’s vote.

Gingrey, just before he voted against the bill, said he was unmoved by the administration’s forebodings: “I think that they have helped create a panic situation by saying, ‘Godzilla is a block away, you better get ready.’”

A last-minute call from the Republican leader’s office Monday had no effect on Gingrey. And when House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, took the floor and urged that members do “what is in the best interest of our country” and vote for the admittedly “imperfect” bailout plan, he failed to rally the Georgians.

As Gingrey put it, “Our leadership — they weren’t elected by the people in our districts.”

“Something needs to be done” to steady the markets, Gingrey said. But he added that a better plan could be drawn up in the next week or two that would fit the Republican ideals of free enterprise solutions.

“We simply cannot preserve our free market economy by sacrificing the very principles that underlie it,” Gingrey said in a statement issued after the bailout measure had been defeated by a 228-205 Vote.

Three of Georgia’s six Democratic representatives also voted against the plan.

“My instincts led me to be in opposition from the very beginning,” said Rep. Hank Johnson of Lithonia. He sat on the House floor through nearly four hours as lawmakers debated the massive proposal. But he was already convinced that the Paulson plan would not “stop the record foreclosures” and would amount to “trickle down economics,” he said.

Like other lawmakers, Johnson said his office has been flooded with calls and e-mails — about 1,000 altogether. “I think there may have been two or three people who called to support it,” he said.

Moreover, the gas shortage in the state didn’t help, he added. With Georgian having to wait in long lines for gas and pay big prices when they finally fill up on the way to work, that could be “partially responsible for the people’s desire not to bail out Wall Street,” he said.

But there was something else. Johnson, a strong opponent of the war in Iraq, was hearing echoes of President Bush’s argument to send troops to fight there. “We have heard this tune before, when the president rushed to Congress and demanded that we do what he wants, when he wants it, all with dire consequences,” Johnson said.

Johnson had no second thoughts, even after watching the stock market tumble by 777 points when the Paulson plan was defeated.

“The stock market has reacted unfavorably,” he said. “But the stock market can turn itself around, and I suspect it will.”

Johnson predicted that Congress would be back in a few days working on a new plan, one that he said would “protect the folks on Main Street and our financial markets.”

Only two Georgians, both Democrats, voted for the plan. Rep. Jim Marshall of Macon went against the strong current despite being in a competitive race for re-election.

“Some members of Congress simply don’t understand the exposure and the threat,” he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

He said he had no desire to “bail out the jerks” who caused the financial chaos. “But I am absolutely willing to try to avoid almost every single economist has said — and that is an imminent crash of the credit markets — which all economists agree means that we head almost certainly into a depression.”

Rep. Sanford Bishop of Albany was the only other Georgian who voted yes for the measure, which he said was “necessary to prevent a deepening of the financial crisis currently gripping the nation.”

Staff writer Jim Galloway contributed to this report.