Yesterday the Bush Admin launched a full salvo of it's mighty weight into the Bush "Trillion" plan. The results reflected the Bush Admin's net 30% approval rating. It bombed! Newt is warning Republican Congressman that to vote for this abortion will seal their fate in November.....

 

Today, Vice President Cheney and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten spent the day in Congress trying to convince conservatives to accept the administration?s bailout package. Politico reports, however, that ?House Republicans rose up en masse against their vice president.? ThinkProgress has compiled a list of conservatives who have declared opposition to the administration?s $700 billion bailout:

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY)
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)
Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ)
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)
Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO)
Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN)
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL)

?They were in worse shape when they left than when they came in,? said one lawmaker who was in the caucus meeting with Cheney and Bolten. ?These were the wrong guys?The problem is that they?ve used up a lot of good will.? Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called the administration?s bailout ?just wrong.? (Let us know in the comments if we?ve missed anyone.)

As the meat boils off of the bone this is seriously looking like a Democrat Party scandal that was ignored by the Bush Admin because of it's fear of political backlash (or as some might say, their cowardice). By that I mean that clearly there was a scent of FannieMae/FreddieMac problems for years back that got scant attention. W clearly didn't want to explain why he had to reign in the home buying/selling party because it was about to cost the taxpayers a couple of trillion greenbacks. He would have been called racist for stopping people from aquiring their piece of the American dream (women and minorities affected the most by these things you know....). In spite of that the right thing to do is what it is and it was his duty to manage this.

 

His head was up and locked in Iraq and he forgot how to use the hand pump to put down the wheels for landing. Now his fuel is gone and he is asking the taxpayers to reverse engineer a new runway for his F102 to belly in with no damage.

 

't ain't gonna work.

 

Check Six

 

Rocky

 

 

The only problem is that Bush has tried ... what 12 times to reel in Fannie and Freddie and the Dems have blocked it just like they blocked McCain in 2005 when he put up hard core legislation that could have stopped all this.  Senator Dodd even told Bush to butt out - calling on the President to "reconsider his ill advised proposals" to regulate Freddie and Fannie.  Rep. Frank stated that the President's proposed legislation to create an independent regulator of Fannie and Freddie was "Inane".

All of this was carried in that right-wing mouthpeice - the Washington Post "Where was Sen. Dodd?" 9/12/8.

 

The President proposes - Congress disposes. 

 

The President proposes - Congress disposes.<Softwar 

 

Fair enough. Congress controls the purse strings and W needs to work within that structure to achieve change. Still, W found his leadership skills aplenty to invade Iraq in 2003. While Iraq certainly had it coming (violating UN Security Council resolutions as well as the provisions of their Gulf War I surrender), they weren't going anywhere and we didn't find enough WMD's to justify what we did. In face of this he still was able to use his leadership to finish the conflict on his terms and win a second term in office to boot. Bully for him. When he believes in something he seems to be able to find a way to make something happen. His problems with FannieMae/FreddieMac simply were not important enough to spend his time on. Ultimately, this was a greater clear and present danger than Iraq and Saddam Hussein ever was.

 

I stand by my analysis.

 

Check Six

 

Rocky

It's easy to blame Bush for everything but in this case - he tried to stop the hammer and his actions kept things from getting worse.  Here are three articles - two from last year where Bush pushed again with everything the executive branch could do and the third - a rather good description of who really is responsible....

Bloomberg
August 10, 2007

President Bush said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac must complete a "robust reform package" before the government will allow the two largest mortgage finance companies to buy home loans beyond current federal limits.

Congress needs to get the companies "reformed, get them streamlined, get them focused, and then I will consider other options," Bush told a White House news conference yesterday.

August 11, 2007
AP
WASHINGTON - Mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will not be allowed to take on more debt, the government said yesterday, denying requests to relax the companies' investment caps as a way to pump cash into the struggling mortgage market.

The decision by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight capped a week of speculation that buoyed the stock prices of the government-sponsored companies. Investors drove Fannie's share price 17 percent above last Friday's close, and pushed up Freddie's stock by 11 percent.

Democratic lawmakers and others made the case for federal regulators to ease the investment limits on Fannie and Freddie in order to provide much-needed liquidity in the market for mortgage-backed securities.

The Bush administration, though, opposed the idea: President Bush insisted that a higher priority should be placed on tightening the oversight of Fannie and Freddie, which only a few years ago suffered multibillion-dollar accounting scandals.

Motley Fool -

The People Responsible for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac By Bill Mann, Seth Jayson, Tim Hanson, Nate Weisshaar and Keith Beverly September 10, 2008

It was a wise man who noted that the only corporate structure more insidious than a government-sponsored monopoly is a government-sponsored and investor-owned monopoly. In the end, as Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) have now so painfully proved, trying to serve the master of public policy while generating returns for investors will lead to disaster.

Fannie and Freddie collapsed because they were part and parcel of the widespread gross financial misconduct that has taken place in the United States over the past decade. It's easy to miss this fact, but the reality is that too many people were making too much money pumping up the housing market. In 2005, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the erstwhile regulator of the two, attempted to limit their use of off-balance sheet entities to groom earnings. In the end, it didn't, because, as one reform-minded politician admitted, Congress was afraid of undermining the housing boom.

 

To reiterate: Bush has demonstrated the ability to provide leadership when he believes in a course of action. Clearly, he used none of these skills to this particularly dangerous circumstance as it developed. Pontificating from the sidelines is not leadership in my view and W didn't dig in and make this a priority.

 

What really happened here? Okay, I will take a W.A.G. Bush knew he had a limited ability to leverage his electoral equity. His priority was Iraq. In return for looking the other way on Iraq he sold out: health care (socializing the Pharmaceutical industry), enviormental issues (his turn around on the global warming farce), education (the lovely partnership with Ted Kennedy to feed the education industrial complex for another 100 years), and now clearly the socializing of the great staple of private property ownership!

 

Leadership.

 

Check Six

 

Rocky

Basically, Bush pushed for reforms from Congress and could not get them enacted.  This is what happens when you don't have a majority in the legislature. 

 

The problem is different with the war powers act allowing Bush to pursue terrorists and knock Saddam out.  That stuff is easy in comparison to trying to get regulations and laws passed by Shumer, Dodd, Obama and Barney Frank.  One can mobilize the military with a single call - action happens and bad guys get the chopper. 

 

Inside the Beltwar - the war is very different.  As we are watching now - the libs in Congress are trying to tag as much as they can onto the bail out - so it can be distributed to their favorite causes (e.g. Acorn).

The disaster that was Fannie and Freddie was already under way and nothing was going to be allowed to stop the train to social reform through housing.  If Congress does not allow your legislation to reform pass - then the only option is to veto, jawbone, stall and prevent as much as possible according to the powers and laws given to the Executive branch.  The samples of what Bush did do that I provided were outside of Congress - directing the oversight agency to not allow what the Dems wanted - more waste, fraud and abuse.

 

Heaven knows that Bush deserves a beating over lots of things but this is simply not one of them.  The MSM is pushing this fiction of its all Bush's fault and it was greedy Republican bankers - when you look at it you find exactly the opposite.  Congress blocking, taking money from lobbyists for Fannie, social reform laws enacted to prevent bankers from denying loans to people who could not pay them back, Raines using fake accounting to inflate the assets so he would get overpaid by millions etc....  All I see here are dem, dem, dem.

 

Our respectful disagreement here is in the degrees of separation between the Bush Administration and today's events. You seem to contend that the Bush Administration simply could have done nothing else here. You assert that they did everything humanly possible, exhausted all measures at their disposal, and nothing else could reasonably have been expected. I strongly disagree.  (in this I do not wish to place words in your mouth here so please let me know the extent to which you are willing to concede Bush & Co. could have reasonably been expected to improve upon their performance, in hindsight if you wish.)

First, this isn't a small thing. It affects the bedrock of our economy. No item represents a greater danger to US. No otherpriority can be placed ahead of this. Given the gravity of the situation, who wishes to argue that the response up until today has been adequate? I have carefully examined the responses by this administration and I will argue with anyone who says the Bush administration is demonstrating an understanding of the unfolding events and where they want to lead US.Given that reality, I am lead to an inescapable conclusion that the Bush administration was surprised by these events. If they were surprised, they were clueless and your assertion that they were strongly leading the charge for reform starts to look pretty th

The "Buck Stops Here" is the correct attitude to take.  There is no "that is above my pay grade" in the oval office.