Posted by
Always To The Right on Monday, September 22, 2008 8:38:12 PM
The 109th Congress has become the focus of hindsight in the financial
meltdown of the past few days. With perhaps as much as one trillion
dollars in federal funds in play for bailouts under a Bush
administration proposal, people want to know why no one saw this coming
before now. As Kevin Hassett reports at Bloomberg, Congress had an opportunity to force better practices on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but some familiar names failed to act
What happened? Despite moves from Republicans such as Chuck Hagel,
John Sununu, Elizabeth Dole, and John McCain to get more regulatory
oversight on Fannie and Freddie, Congress took no action. Why? Fannie
and Freddie had already co-opted Chris Dodd with over $130,000 in
campaign contributions over 20 years, and over $120,000 to Barack Obama
over less than four years. Hillary Clinton took tens of thousands in
eight years, and Chuck Schumer also opposed any new regulation on markets that Congress had forced open.
We can play blame games for the next several months and years, but
what would be the point? In this case, there is a point, and it
couldn’t be more clear or important. We have two candidates running
for President who would bring much different styles to executive
authority over regulatory responsibility. Barack Obama and his allies
took the money and stayed on the sidelines rather than take proactive
action to resolve the credit crisis. McCain and his co-sponsors of
this bill had the right idea and instincts, but could not get any
cooperation from Clinton, Schumer, or Obama.