During the last two weeks the bailout question has haunted every member of Congress, each faced with what was a very difficult decision. With dozens of financial experts lined up to explain the economic peril looming and predicting further Wall Street declines, there appeared little doubt: Do the obvious and vote in favor of the $700 billion bailout.

But not so fast. The phone calls and emails from back home piled up by the thousands in opposition to the nearly three-quarter-trillion dollar bailout. Constituent outrage was boiling over – no bailout for Wall Street fat cats at the expense of Joe six-pack. Why should the people on Main Street be saddled with the bad debt that bankers on Wall Street created?

Liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, this was and continues to be a two-horned dilemma. If you rush to vote in favor of the bailout, you appear to be insensitive to the concerns of voters just weeks before an election, which is not a good move for any member of Congress, especially in a swing district or in what may be a close election. Don’t forget the single-digit approval rating for Congress as a whole.  On the other hand, if you are instead strongly opposed to any bailout plan, you could be labeled as cold and uncaring about the plight of millions of Americans who could see their pensions, savings or 401Ks evaporate.

Dozens of articles and opinion columns have been written on this topic over the last couple of weeks by people who know much more about the subject than I do. My viewpoint is purely political, not based on economics or financial analysis. From the political perspective if you’re a liberal, you hem and haw a bit, and then you vote “Yes.” In the end, this is a relatively easy vote for you. This path enables you to look pensive, because you don’t want to appear that you rushed to judgment. So you get to look thoughtful as you blame President Bush, blame the fat cats on Wall Street and tell the public you really didn’t want to vote for the bailout. The way I see it, in the end you do what you always do, and that is to heap more debt on the American taxpayer and proclaim there was no other option (exactly what Democrat and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ofCaliforniadid). Most of these liberal Congressional members are from urban districts safe in the Democratic fold, and their vote has little political consequence for them.

As a moderate Republican or “blue dog Democrat,” the choice is a little more difficult. You want to show you have empathy for the folks back home, but you also realize there is a great deal of truth in what the financial experts predict if no bailout plan is passed – the financial crisis is likely to get worse, with more bank failures, more people losing their savings and an economy in steep decline. You want to vote for the bailout, but you know it’s not popular back home. These folks are probably most likely to look at the polls, evaluate their individual races, and see what their colleagues are doing before making their final decision. There is safety in numbers, and this group is always playing it safe.

Clearly, the most conflicted player in this game of political “Russian roulette” is the conservative Republican. It is obvious that the lack of oversight at Freddie Mac and Fannie May has fueled the meltdown. The fact that the federal government has already pumped $600 billion dollars of taxpayer money into failed financial institutions has to make you wonder if another $700 billion will get swept away like a beach house in the storm surge. Your free market economic principles tell you that another government bailout will only propel the country into greater dependence on government, like government insurance programs that protect businesses and individuals who make bad choices. Your fundamental political philosophy tells you to vote against the bailout package, but there is this nagging economic reality that tells you this really is a bad situation and there is a need to do something, so perhaps you should hold your nose and vote “Yes.”

On Monday, September 29, we saw these political forces in action. The U.S. Congress voted down the $700 billion bailout and the stock market suffered its largest one-day point loss ever (though it wasn’t the largest percentage drop in history). The bill was defeated by a vote of 228 to 205, with 140 Democrats and 65 Republicans voting in favor of the bailout. The opposition came from conservative Republicans and “blue dog Democrats,” sprinkled with a few incumbents in close re-election bids.

But not to fear, the U.S. Senate is near. With only one-third of Senators up for re-election this year and with two Senators vying to be president, the bailout package was sure to pass, and it did, with 74 votes. They threw in a few additional financial sweeteners, along with mental health care legislation in order to get the votes to pass the pig.

The House followed suit last Friday and approved the $700 billion bailout by a vote of 263-171, with 172 Democrats and 91 Republicans favoring the sweetened legislation. President Bush signed the bill into law immediately.

The reality is that Congress with its 535 different viewpoints is not meant to act quickly or vote on trillion-dollar spending bills in a matter of days. This time, they did. But the greater difficulty is that Congress can never instill the self-discipline to vote on legislation that contains only one subject (i.e., a clean bill). Every piece of legislation is a “landfill” of policy, spending, and pork, making it impossible for the media, let alone any citizen, to understand what they did until it’s too late.

Let’s hope we don’t find out that this pig really didn't fix the market.