It wasn’t at all clear to me what we were and were not promised at the start of TARP. Much like all recent government activities of late, it’s just “do something, do it quick and we’ll change it later (again & again)”.

Glenn,

First mistake was you belived the BS the gubment was shoveling your way. Second was the notion that gubment cared.

It’s not the gov’ts, and ultimately the tax payer, fault that people purchased homes that they couldn’t afford.

As with Chrysler and GM, the gov’t has no business sticking their nose into these situations. The Socialists in Congress should not have relaxed the lending rules.

Everyone is looking for a hand out to correct the bad decisions they’ve made…welcome to Obamunism.

On a different note, the Taliban has one of our soldiers, do you think Our Dear Leader’s groveling to the world will keep the Taliban from removing our soldier’s head from his shoulders? Or, do you think the Taliban will keep him in a detention facility, give our soldier a Bible and feed him American food while he’s detained? We’ll find out if the Big Zero’s pathetic overtures to the Arab world has made any difference. It’s helped with Iran and North Korea, hasn’t it?

T.A.R.P = Take (the money) And Run Program

As Tango says, it is not the government’s fault if you tried to buy more home than you could afford. I work with a bunch of people who are upset because their homes are now “devalued.” Does it matter if you intend to stay? (no) Did they never think that maybe the house was over-priced to begin with? No, but then there are the ones that had to have the house with 4 bedrooms and 3 full baths, the family room, living room, dining room, 3-car garage, etc. Has no one ever heard of “the starter home??” If you believed your mortgage lender and signed up for a mortgage that put you in the red when you needed to buy groceries, you deserve what you are now living with. And don’t get me started on the people who MUST have a NEW home and not an older home in a stable neighborhood that was built (probably) a lot better than the crap being built today.

Quit asking for a hand out and start taking responsibility for your budget. Most of us will have a lot more respect for you when you do.

TGS - Wake up to reality. It took W 7 years and 3,000 soldiers’ lives to not find Bin Laden. But you want to come down on Obama because of one captured soldier?

Iran and Korea were the countries that W so “forcibly” labeled the “Axis of Evil” but did not even sneeze at for 7 years. Now you want Obama to clean up that mess too?

Greedy Congressman Barney Frank — in a guaranteed Democrat House seat — apparently can’t bear the idea of citizens getting our money back — he’s proposed to divert the money to a more politically appealing purpose.

“When President Obama announced on June 9 that some financial institutions would be allowed to repay Troubled Asset Relief Program dollars, he said the massively expensive TARP bailout had made money for the federal government. “It is worth noting that in the first round of repayments from these [TARP recipients], the government has actually turned a profit,” the president said. Indeed, TARP supporters have long held out the hope that the program might be profitable.

But now Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has come up with a proposal to spend any TARP profits before they can be returned to the taxpayers. Last Friday, Frank introduced the “TARP for Main Street Act of 2009,” a bill that would take profits from the program and immediately redirect them toward housing proposals favored by Frank and some fellow Democrats.

In exchange for receiving TARP money, financial institutions were required to hand over shares of preferred stock that paid a dividend for the government. In theory, if a financial institution paid the dividend faithfully, and then repaid the TARP money, then the government would turn a profit. Last month, the General Accountability Office (GAO) reported that, through June 12, 2009, the government had received $6.2 billion in dividend payments. The original TARP legislation required that money made from the program “shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt.”

Frank, however, wants to spend the money before it can be used to pay down anything. First, the “TARP for Main Street” proposal would take $1 billion “from dividends paid by financial institutions that have received financial assistance provided under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act” and apply it to a trust fund that Frank has long wanted to create for low-income rental housing. (The measure, unfunded, was part of last year’s bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.) Next, Frank would take $1.5 billion from TARP dividends for a so-called “neighborhood stabilization” fund. Republican critics have charged that both measures might allow federal dollars to be distributed to activist groups like the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, or ACORN.

The “TARP for Main Street” bill would also spend $2 billion, apparently from remaining TARP funds, to subsidize people who are delinquent on their mortgages, and another $2 billion to “stabilize multifamily properties that are in default or foreclosure.”

Frank’s proposal comes at a time when Republicans, and some Democrats, are expressing concern about the continued use of TARP money. Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch recently complained that TARP funds are “now being used as a go-to solution to address all of our nation’s economic ills.” Hatch and Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln recently introduced a bill that would require that TARP money goes back to the Treasury for debt reduction.

Spending the dividend payments now, as Frank proposes, would reduce the chance that TARP might ever be a break-even deal for the taxpayers. “We don’t know if TARP is going to be making any money, so taking the dividend payments going back to Treasury is pretty questionable,” says one House GOP aide. Indeed, in its June report, the GAO revealed that 17 troubled institutions have not paid their dividends, much less repaid the TARP money itself. And last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that three other institutions were not paying dividends. But now, Frank is proposing that dividends be spent immediately. “It defeats the idea of taxpayer protection,” says the GOP aide.”

Nancy Pelosi Defends the Public’s Right Not to Know

It’s a good bet that no Member actually read the Cap and Trade energy tax bill that narrowly passed the House on Friday. Republican Minority Leader John Boehner complained on the floor that Democrats didn’t give legislators time to absorb even the 300-page summary, let alone the 1,500-page text of the bill. Reading a bill, much less understanding what it entails for the America economy, however, is hardly a precondition for voting for it, as 210 Democrats and 8 Republicans proved.

“I did actually read the summary,” Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan tells me, who says he was appalled by the plan’s ambition to regulate almost every facet of the U.S. economy. “This is at least the third time this year House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has brought a bill to the House floor without giving members a fair chance to read the proposed law they were voting on,” adds Republican Rep. Tom Price of Georgia. He points to the $800 billion stimulus bill and the ten-year budget as other examples.

As a candidate, Barack Obama denounced such sneaky legislating and promised that under his administration all bills would posted on the Internet for a period of days before any vote in Congress. That principle has now been violated almost as routinely as the Pay-Go budget rule that Mr. Obama also says he favors, a scruple that hardly impeded his headlong drive to launch $1 trillion in deficit spending next year.

Rep. Price says the failure of Ms. Pelosi to give Members time to study the climate bill was no accident: “They didn’t want members or the public to know what was in it.” Mr. Ryan agrees: “Most Americans would be furious if they knew what Cap and Trade really does.”

Mr. Price will introduce a new rule in Congress requiring five days between posting a bill publicly and any roll call vote in the House. Enacting this rule would require a majority vote in the House, which Democrats readily could supply since they were the ones who strenuously promised a new era of transparency in Washington. Mr. Price’s amendment certainly is faithful to Ms. Pelosi’s pledge of greater sunshine. But so far in this Pelosi Congress, expediency is proving a higher priority than accountability or transparency. Don’t be surprised if the mammoth Obama health care bill is passed without anyone knowing what’s in it too.

Where is the transparency?

Where are the bills on the internet posted for 5 days before a vote?

Why are the IG’s being fired when investigating “The Messiah’s” friends?

What happened to “No new taxes on anyone making under 250K”?

What happened to “No lobbyists in my administration”?

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I sure dont see any libs responding to this one. Of course you have one who brings out a talking point without all the facts. What a surprise! Magnum, you are absolutely on target. To the silly comment of W was in for 7 years and now its all his fault I thin she forgot that the Democrats took over the Senate and Congress in 2007. It took almost a year when all hell broke loose and thats all Bush’s fault?

I love a good holiday laugh! I guess I should thank her for that one.