The bailout was killed by House Democrats. Yes, Democrats. Losing by a margin of 228-205, the measure only needed 12 members to change their minds.
95 Democrats voted against the bill.
Quit blaming John McCain for failure to keep your majority, in the majority.
Take a look at these articles –
Bill Dyer at Townhall – Elections have Consequences
Hugh Hewitt – Duplicity and Cynicism
Michelle – The Crap Sandwich
Hot Air – Bailout Bill Fails After Pelosi Speech
I wrote a lengthy post on this top yesterday but Investor’s Business Daily has expanded and improved on my material.
Big Government: Barack Obama and Democrats blame the historic financial turmoil on the market. But if it’s dysfunctional, Democrats during the Clinton years are a prime reason for it…
[I]t was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street’s most revered institutions.
Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.
The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority home ownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky sub-prime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but “predatory”…
Obama and Democrats on the Hill think even more regulation and more interference in the market will solve the problem their policies helped cause. For now, unarmed by the historic record, conventional wisdom is buying into their blame-business-first rhetoric and bigger-government solutions.
While government arguably has a role in helping low-income folks buy a home, Clinton went overboard by strong-arming lenders with tougher and tougher regulations, which only led to lenders taking on hundreds of billions in subprime bilge.
Market failure? Hardly. Once again, this crisis has government’s fingerprints all over it.
Powerline quotes Barney Frank in 2003 as saying
‘These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.
Way to go Barney!
Investor’s Business Daily::The Real Culprits In This Meltdown.
After days of moaning and blaming, perhaps a few facts should be inserted into the discussion about the current financial melt-down.
Barack Obama blames John McCain and Republicans for the mess. Why? According to Obama, Conservatives have been advocating de-regulation and free market controls and this de-regulation produced the current fiasco. Sounds great to liberals. Must be true.
However, a tiny bit of knowledge regarding economics and the free market concept are helpful. De-regulation did not cause this problem. New regulations caused it; new regulations from the Democrats.
Rewind to the 1995 Clinton Administration. Bill Clinton believed that everyone has a right to own a home. Everyone should own a house whether they can afford it or not. It was in the Constitution; or at least it should be. Banks were hesitant to follow the President’s lead however. They knew that there were certain geographic and demographic areas that foreclosure was a near certainty.
Mr. Banker, do you think it is too risky to loan money to people with a history of non-payment? Are you worried about default and foreclosure on loans to unstable people with unstable incomes? Enter Fannie and Freddie. They will cover the risk. When the loans fail (and they did by the thousands), someone else will take the loss. So, give them the loan.
To the average consumer this is great news. To the poorest in our country it is better news. It no longer takes a good work history and 10% cash down to buy a house. You just need a smile and a signature and you can finance 105%, buy the house of your dreams, and make payments when it is convenient. Trillions of federally insured dollars, that never should have been there in the first place, flowed into the credit markets. Understandably, home builders loved this plan. So did the Finance industry. All markets were booming. Politicians, especially friends of Obama, cashed in on the deals.
But everyone ignored some core principles of the free market. They forgot that risk requires compensation. Financial activities with risk fail, sometimes frequently, and require a high rate of potential return to cover the losses. Bill Clinton and Fannie Mae tried to remove the risk. But they couldn’t. They could only shift it to someone else; Fannie and Freddie. They forgot (if they ever knew) how money is actually made and how goods and services are exchanged.
Which brings us to the big, bad, predatory bankers and their outrageous practice of loaning money to people that could never afford it. This is exactly the change Bill Clinton and the Democrats were pushing. The created and changed laws so that people that could not afford a house could buy a house. Barney Frank is STILL trying to make this happen. The mortgage lenders were fulfilling the wishes of the White House. To vilify them now is to distort history.
This is not how the free-market works. It is not de-regulation it is changing regulations to produce a desired outcome with political pressure. Just the opposite of what McCain has advocated and exactly what Obama has supported. In 2005 when Conservatives tried to deal with the mess before it got out of control, McCain supported action and Obama opposed it.
Politicians are now crying that we must provide a $700 billion dollar bail-out, which is not nearly enough by the way. And who will be paying this enormous tab? You and me. People that have worked hard, paid our bills, scrimped, saved and managed our money wisely are absorbing the risk and paying the bills.
And who created this fiasco?
The Democrats did it.
Michael Reagan has a fabulous article on the financial crisis we have been reading about this week. Who is at fault? Who should get the blame?
Pin the tail on the Donkeys.
Bill Clinton and Democrats made the policies. Democrats did the consulting. Democrats accepted the contributions. And now Democrats will get off scott-free. Reagan points out that,
“The scandal of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dwarfs the Enron debacle. In Enron, people went to jail. With the Fannies, some just walked away with millions.”
Guess what the Democrats are doing now, besides bailing out their friends? Blaming the Republicans of course. Nothing is ever their fault.
Some additional quotes from the article:
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the top three U.S. Senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were Democrats, and No. 2 was Sen. Barack Obama, who as Fox noted had only been in the Senate four years but still managed to grab that No. 2 spot ahead of longtime colleagues John Kerry and Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.
According to Fox, Fannie and Freddie were where big-time Washington Democrats went to work and pocketed millions. Franklin Raines, Clinton’s White House Budget Director, ran Fannie and collected $50 million.
Jamie Gorelick, an official in Clinton’s Justice Department — the woman who built the “wall” that prevented the FBI from targeting terrorists before 9/11 — worked for Fannie Mae and took home $26 million. Big-time Democrat Jim Johnson, who headed Obama’s VP search committee, also hauled in millions from running Fannie Mae.
Obama brazenly blames John McCain and the GOP for the current Wall Street mess when it’s clear none of it was due to Republican policies. The truth of the matter is that it was McCain and three GOP colleagues who sought to reform the government’s lending policies three long years ago after the Bush administration had failed two years earlier. On May 25, 2006, McCain spoke on behalf of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, and warned against the debacle we are now facing if it failed to pass.
WOW! The media double standard has reached a new high (or is that low?) by blaming Sarah Palin for the breakin to her Yahoo email account.
AP writer, Ted Bridis, says:
If Gov. Palin hadn’t been using a consumer-level Yahoo! account (more than one, actually) this crime wouldn’t have happened….
Wait. That can’t be right. Blame the victim? Hold people accountable for their actions and choices in life? Why Ted, you are starting to sound like a Conservative.
On the other hand, this could this be just one more knee-jerk reaction that results from a fluid definition of truth, integrity and morals? That must be it. Ted would never become a Conservative.
Michelle Malkin has a great article on this topic that includes an email exchange with Ted. AP reporter e-mails: Yeah, it’s all Palin’s fault.
When Nancy Pelosi finally gets around to passing legislation to allow for more energy exploration, she says she is “giving incentives” to the energy industry.
When Republicans have done the same thing, Nancy calls it “giving tax breaks to Big Oil.”
Just more liberal double-standards and double-talk.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a6YdNmK77k
The recent primary victories by Barack Obama have left Hillary Clinton and her campaign in turmoil. As if the Presidential election needed more drama, Obama and Clinton may arrive at the convention in a delegate deadlock.
As expected, Barack Obama took still another sweep in Maryland, Virginia and The District of Columbia. Having already won in Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington State, Barack Obama’s sweep puts Clinton in an awkward position and is the first serious threat to her election as the Democratic nominee for President.
I just read the letter from House Democrats to Robert Iger, CEO of Disney, demanding that ABC edit/censor “Path to 9/11.” Representatives Conyers, Dingell, Harman and Slaughter acknowledge that while they have not actually seen the mini-series but they are concerned it might have some innaccuracies in it.
I will be writing to thank them for their unflinching commitment to truth. Further, I will be requesting a copy of their letter to Michael Moore as he was getting ready to release “Fahrenheit 911.“
Recent Comments