OBAMA MORPHS TARP INTO DEMOCRAT REVOLVING LINE OF CREDIT

The Wall Street Journal reported today about the Democrat's political abuse of TARP, which was created to "save the financial system" in a time of "crisis". (I don't buy into that, but I digress.). The original description of the program, according to Federal Reserve's own website was:

Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) Information

"The federal banking and thrift regulatory agencies encourage all eligible institutions to use the Treasury Department's Capital Purchase Program and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program. On October 14, 2008, the U.S. government announced a series of initiatives to strengthen market stability, improve the strength of financial institutions, and enhance market liquidity. Treasury announced a voluntary Capital Purchase Program to encourage U.S. financial institutions to build capital to increase the flow of financing to U.S. businesses and consumers and to support the U.S. economy. Under the program, Treasury will purchase up to $250 billion of senior preferred shares on standardized terms."

I don't see anything in there about bailing out financially irresponsible auto companies, states, homeowners, or any other political vote bribery programs. Do you? Rather than use any excess leftover from it's original intention, the program has been manipulated into a massive slush fund, or "goodies bag," for the Democrat Party. Below are some snippets from the Wall Street Journal article, entitled, Stimulus III:

"TARP is now morphing into a revolving line of Democratic political credit. Barney Frank wants to divert at least $4 billion to bail out more home owners. Virginia Senator Mark Warner wants $50 billion for loans to small business. Mr. Obama proposed yesterday to use TARP to finance his own ideas as part of Stimulus III, and if he and fellow Democrats succeed the taxpayers will never see this cash again.

The President tried to recast his "every penny" promise yesterday by arguing that recycled TARP cash would create jobs and thus revenue to bring down the deficit. This is also Speaker Nancy Pelosi's new talking point. They're right that a strong economy is the best way to reduce deficits, but their spend and spend again policies only make closing those deficits more difficult.

One note of hope here is that the White House admits that the TARP statute restricts its use to the "stabilization" of the financial system. The law also specifies that repaid money must go to deficit reduction, a fact that allowed Mrs. Pelosi to gather enough votes to pass TARP last year. This means Democrats are going to have to rewrite the law to spend TARP on pork and green jobs..."

It's ironic that Obama and Biden brag about how well the first stimulus plans have worked. So well, in fact, that we need to do even another one! TARP, like all other politically-motivated government solutions, crammed down our collective throats in times of "crisis," causes much more problems than it cures. The economic pain inflicted for this fiscal insanity will not be pleasant.

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