I got an email from a friend today, which I think is highly relevant.

An interesting story from the AP today.
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20081019/D93TO0CO0.html

In early 2006, the Senate killing a proposal to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac despite obvious signs that it was in need of better oversight. The measure cleared committee by a party-line vote, yet the Republican-controlled Senate failed to act. How did that happen?

Freddie Mac hired a Republican consulting company to lobby Republicans to kill the bill. Nine of 17 targeted senators sided with Freddie Mac and the Democratic senators who opposed reform.

Kit Bond
Jim Talent
Conrad Burns
Mike DeWine
George Allen
Lincoln Chafee
Olympia Snowe
Lamar Alexander
Mitch McConnell

McConnell’s excuse for not signing a letter urging the leadership to support the bill is that he was part of the leadership. OK, but then, I want to know if when the leadership debated it amongst themselves, was he pro or con? The rest of them can take their places with the other villains who failed to act to avert this disaster. It’s no irony that Chafee, Allen, DeWine, Talent, and Burns have already been run out of the Senate by their own constituents.

Down with congressional tomfoolery!
A pox on both their houses!

Let me add the names of targeted Senators who signed onto the Hagel letter:
David Vitter
John Ensign
Mike Crapo
Larry Craig
Rick Santorum
Lindsay Graham
George Voinovich
Jim Bunning

Also note that Chuck Hagel spearheaded this reform and John McCain signed on early.

Period.

Plus where the Fannie and Freddie Money goes, again.

Hat tip campaign spot

I am livid about this vote.  Here is the statement from John Culberson.

Dear John:

My preferred solution to the credit crisis was to repeal the mark-to- market accounting rule and raise the $100,000 FDIC insured limit on bank deposits to $250,000. Unfortunately, this bailout bill also included $42 billion in tax increases and pork barrel spending, and I could not support it. I am committed to finding a solution that restores liquidity to the banking system, and these two steps will help immensely, giving Congress and the Administration time to think the problem through carefully. While I am glad the SEC Chairman Chris Cox repealed the mark to market rule, and that the bailout bill raised the FDIC insured limit to $250,000, I co-sponsored the conservative alternative, H.R. 7223. To read about the Free Market Protection Act, click here.

The White House and the Treasury both tell us that nothing in this bill will prevent this crisis from happening again, or bring those responsible to justice and that $700 billion may not even be enough. The bill grants the Treasury Secretary unprecedented authority - he can bail out any financial institution operating in the United States by paying any price he wants for any financial instrument, for any reason, and no one can stop him or restrain him in any way as long he makes a phone call or writes a letter to Congress telling us what he has done.

Since we will have to borrow the $700 billion by selling TBills on the international bond market, and the largest percentage of TBills are bought by the Chinese or other hostile powers through Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, under this bill, American taxpayers will borrow billions of dollars from Chinese and Middle Eastern banks to bail out Chinese and Middle Eastern banks.

This bill also raised the national debt to $11.3 trillion, doubled the deficit overnight, and saddled our children with at least $1 trillion in new unfunded obligations. All for a bill the Treasury Secretary admits won’t prevent the problem in the future and may not solve the urgent problem in front of us.

Federal property managers will be able to rewrite mortgages to reduce principal and lower interest rates to zero if they wish, and they can give away foreclosed or distressed-loan homes in your neighborhood to anyone they wish. Liberals who manage these programs will give away millions of free or reduced homes in neighborhoods all over America to families who could not otherwise afford them. The federal government now has the power to create federal housing projects, house by house, in neighborhoods all over America. Just imagine what that means for property values and the safety and security of your neighborhood.

I was one of only seven House members to vote against loosening lending restrictions on FHA home loans in 2007, I opposed the taxpayer bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac earlier this year, and I strongly supported the unsuccessful Fannie/Freddie reform bill of 2005, which would have helped avert this crisis.

We need Congressional action to help forestall and ease the credit crisis, but this bill won’t solve that problem, won’t prevent future problems, and was rushed through far too fast for us to be thoughtful and deliberative.

Here are several recent news articles that help explain the history of the current credit crisis:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-democrat-fingerprints-are-all-over-the-financial-crisis-949653.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212948811465427.html

Sincerely,

John Culberson
Member of Congress

From Coach

Just so everyone knows the score.  Our Virginia delegation voted against the bailout plan 6 to 5:

Virginia’s congressional delegation was sharply divided, with six voting against the package and five in favor. Bobby Scott was the only Virginia Democrat voting against the bill. He joined Republicans Robert Wittman, Thelma Drake, Randy Forbes, Virginia Goode and Robert Goodlatte.

Voting for the legislation were Republicans Eric Cantor, Frank Wolf and Tom Davis, and Democrats Jim Moran and Rick Boucher.

If I recall correctly, Eric Cantor was one of the Republicans front and center really pushing this thing.

But since my Representative is Frank Wolf, that’s who has some explaining to do to me (OK, not me in particular, but his constituents in general).  And check THIS out.  His former primary opponent, Vern McKinley (whom Mr. Wolf trounced 9 to 1), reportedly warned about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae more than 10 years ago:

“Although Freddie and Fannie are privately owned, they are what is known as government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). GSEs don’t have to follow all the rules that true privately owned companies do: they don’t have to register their securities with the government, their securities receive special treatment for investment purposes, they don’t have to pay state and local income taxes and–most important–their government sponsorship gives them the aura of a fully guaranteed government entity. That final benefit means they save billions in borrowing costs, just as lenders are willing to offer low-interest student loans that are guaranteed by the government. That savings alone allows the GSEs to pocket about $2 billion per year, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office and the Treasury Department.”

“Allowing Congress to grant such special privileges is a bad idea. Those privileges, which are granted solely to Freddie and Fannie, crowd out other potential competitors in their market. Privately owned companies should not receive such preferred borrowing status, because it redirects investor funds into the middle- and upper-income housing market at the expense of other potential investments. Finally, the failure of either Freddie or Fannie could saddle taxpayers with a huge liability.”

“Congress should immediately revoke all the benefits of government sponsorship: clearly, Freddie and Fannie can be profitable without them. Eliminating special privileges will force mortgage markets to be truly competitive and will eliminate the possibility that the current system of government sponsorship will someday lead to yet another taxpayer-funded bailout.”

Just think what difference it would make if we had a few more Republicans in the House (and Senate) actually acting like Republicans.  Well I’ll say one thing, there were many today who did, and I thank God for them.

To save Johnny the trouble of navigating the perilous waters (no pun intended) of embedding a YouTube Video.

This is very disturbing, but illustrates volumes. Watch it to the very end and see President Clinton admit the obvious:

Hopefully, as Johnny put it, this will mean the beginning of the end of Barack Obama, given that Frank Raines is one of his top financial advisors.

Jim Bunning’s recent speech
The gist:

Well, I am not buying it, and neither are many of the nation’s leading economists. If some sort of government intervention is needed to fix the mess created by the government failures I talked about earlier, we need to get it right. Congress owes it to the American people to slow down and think this through. We need to know that whatever we do is going to fix the problem, protect the taxpayers, not reward those who made bad decisions, and make sure this does not happen again. But we can not do that in one week as we are all trying to rush home. Congress needs to take this seriously and stay here until we find the right solution, not just throw 700 billion dollars at Wall Street as we walk out the door.

Jim Demint’s recent ad

(Ok, the last two minutes are campy. but the first seven are right on)

Demints graph showing the amount of money donated by Fannie and Freddie to Obama vs. McCain was laughable. McCain received $862/year from Fannie and Freddie vs 42K/year for Obama. Even accounting for the many years McCain has been in office, this difference is egregious. Obama received more donations from Fannie and Freddie than any other Senator currently serving. These Senators know the score, urge your representatives to support them.

Hat tip :K-LO

Did I miss something, or were there hearings on Capitol Hill where the CEOs and Chairmen of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac answered to Congress about the blatant corruption existing in their organiziations since their inception?

Oil companies have to testify before Congress because of “obscene” profits, tobacco companies because of the health risk of their product (that everyone is already well aware of), and baseball players have to testify about steroid use.  But the organization at the very center of one of the most catastrophic financial collapses of the modern age doesn’t have to answer any questions on Capitol Hill?

I must have simply missed it.