Posted on 03/03/2010 9:47:53 PM PST by ellery
"Secretary Paulson’s TARP prevented a systemic collapse of the national financial system. Secretary Geithner’s TARP became an opaque, heavy-handed, expensive slush fund. It should be shut down." ~Mitt Romney
This is the same line that Thune uses now. This is a ridiculous position to take. One can either recognize that the original TARP was always potentially an opaque slush fund to be used for whatever purpose the executive branch wanted, and it was therefore an outrageous measure that ought to have been defeated, or one can accept the abuses of the TARP that inevitably followed from the absurd way it was designed. Even though the TARP was unnecessary and misguided, Thune and Romney want to get credit for supporting something they claim saved the day, but they don’t want to pay the political price for supporting something that has become play money for whatever strikes the administration’s fancy. Romney supported and Thune voted for a measure that made possible the slush fund they denounce.
Supporters of a policy or piece of legislation do not get to receive credit for the supposed benefits and avoid blame for the negative consequences. Thune and Romney supported a corrupt, unconstitutional giveaway of public funds to be used in an unaccountable way for arbitrary purposes. Lack of accountability and arbitrariness were built into the measure from the beginning. The problem of the original “troubled assets” for which the funds were intended has never been solved, and the TARP funds have never been used for the purpose for which they were appropriated. Naturally, Romney would like to have it both ways, but his distinction between Paulson’s TARP and Geithner’s TARP is specious and meaningless.
If Romney is the GOP nominee in 2012, Hopey/Changey wins by a landslide.
Who in the GOP was against TARP 100% and remains so to this day?
Does anyone believe for a hot minute that a president Romney would lift a finger to turn back the one-way ratchet of statism? Or just play the usual go-along to get-along tame, establishment, inside-the-beltway, country-club republican game of slow-the-growth-of-government?
If Romney is the GOP nominee in 2012, Hopey/Changey wins by a landslide.
Absolutely. You can take that to the bank.
DeMint
Ron Paul.
he was my representative when I lived in Texas. He used to get earmarks attached to legislation that was sure to pass without his vote. That way he could vote against it so he could claim that he never voted for an earmark for his district....
3V0L
I certainly don’t. Romney drips “government solutions.”
Sounds familiar.
Romney: I Was For Abortion Before I Was Against It
Romney: I Was For Gun Control Before I Was Against It
Romney: I Was For Amnesty Before I Was Against It
Romney: I Was For Global Warming Before I Was Against It
Romney: etc etc etc etc etc etc etc ............ I'm a conservative!
What a bastard.
Is Romney for gay marriage/sodomy like the McCain and Cheney klans?
Mitt is a less horny Bill Clinton. He says whatever he thinks will get him the farthest and has no commitment to any core principales. In Mass he was pro-gay, anti-gun, and pro-abort because he knew it would help him. Flipped on all of those when he thought it’d help him get the nomination. I don’t trust that slimebag a bit.
“Is Romney for gay marriage/sodomy like the McCain and Cheney klans?”
He is for whatever the political winds tell him to be for.
McCain’s line is even worse: “I was duped.”
Actually, you can believe TARP had a tremendous potential for abuse, but still believe that it was necessary to take the actions TARP authorized in order to save the banking system.
There is no doubt that the passage of TARP, and it’s immediate aftermath of implementation, coincided with a marked improvement in banking. And most economists do believe TARP saved the system.
That can be true even though TARP was easily abused, and has been abused, ever since.
TARP as originally intended ALSO has mostly paid for itself, by “mostly” we mean in percentage terms, the amount of money lost is still huge. But it is being abused, with the returning money being used for more bailouts that will never be repaid.
I know that some people think we would have been better off if nothing had passed. I don’t agree. I wish TARP had been written better, I think we could have accomplished the rescue without opening ourselves up to the later abuses. But with democrats in charge, and too-little time, it’s not surprising we didn’t get a perfect bill.
I think John Thune is mostly right on this one.
And by “John Thune is right”, I don’t mean that he should escape blame for the negative consequences of the bill he voted for — just that he is right that TARP allowed good things to happen, and TARP now is being used in a bad way.
I fault him for not finding a way to write TARP to avoid these problems, although mostly I fault Bush on that, because Bush allowed his economic team to write this thing, and it was largely adopted as the wrote it — and when people you think are smart are telling you “we need this passed tomorrow or the economic system will collapse”, it’s hard to say no (a lot of republicans did say no, but I still suspect the plan was to let it pass — I don’t think those “no” votes would have been “no” if they were the ones who stopped the bill.
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