White House: Bailout Plan Had Been Drawn Up Over Many Months

Roll Call:

The White House today is drumming up extraordinary pressure on Congress to approve its plan to enact a $700 billion mortgage bailout fund, suggesting the markets cannot wait much longer and dispatching Vice President Cheney and other top officials up Pennsylvania Avenue to jawbone lawmakers.

Cheney, White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and presidential adviser Ed Gillespie are meeting this morning with House Republican conservatives, where a rebellion is brewing against the size and questionable free market credentials of the administration proposal.

Cheney will later gather with GOP Senators at the regular Tuesday lunch. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who collaborated in drawing up the proposal, are testifying this morning on Capitol Hill in an effort to defend their handiwork.

But Bush himself continues to do little to explain his plan, and he has refused to be questioned about it.

Read the whole story: Roll Call

Comments

[Moxo]

"Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough. "
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They created this plan over several months... and made no provision for oversight??

This bailout is sounding like either a cover-up for the use of the money elsewhere, or once again the Bushies are showing that they do not care how much they steal from America, but do care about being found out..

Let them all fail - "Sometimes the tree of free-market principles needs to be watered with the blood of investment bankers", so to speak..

[V4Vigilance]

Three pages of output for several months work?

Sounds about right for the Bush misAdministration.

You're doing a heckuva job, Hank!

[OutragedMom]

Working on it for months and we get a 3 page plan with no specifics other than Paulson has no oversight?
This is Bush and Co. setting up the final rape of the American taxpayer. The money will end up in offshore accounts owned by Bush and friends.
NO BAIL OUT.

[TheQuestion]

Months to put it together - But now it's an emergency and must be passed this week

Hmmmm. Somethings not right here maybe ????

[DuPageDem]

Contents of the Patrirot Act had been laying around for years in assorted Rethug wet dream wish lists. They simply stitched them together and dumped it on a compliant Congress when the time was right. Same thing is happening now. Biggest heist since Regan's S&L scam.

[DASChicago]

I am so horribly angry!
This bailout is SHAMEFUL.

This is another "Scare the American People" tactic by the NeoCons!
This current Administration should have been escorted into the Court of Law for selling America to the highest bidder, WAR crimes, Corruption, Greed... This Administration was a disaster from the very beginning and all of the dumbdown supporters of GWB/Cheney administration are also the blame for being so stupid.

[Indedave]

What a surprise! BushCo has been cooking this up for months, yet Pat Paulson (sic) says the patient is now so sick only an emergency enema will save it. I suggest we redirect the cure and flush the toxins from the White House and Wall Street that are killing the body politic.

[tompoe]

My rep is Latham, a KoolAid drinker of the Bush/Cheney war criminal enterprise. I filled out his absurd web form, and finished with a reminder not to send me anything in print, as his words aren't worth the paper they're printed on. These jerks have just been handed their party on a worthless piece of paper called corporate welfare. I don't have a corporation. I don't recognize corporate welfare, until corporate welfare recognizes welfare society. If they want to discuss anything, they need to demonstrate something other than corporate welfare as the premise for their argument. There is none, by the way.

[DrVeruju]

Strip out the clauses that

(1) give the Treasury Secretary powers to do whatever he likes and

(2) prevent court oversight of his actions.

They will allow scamming in perpetuity.

[gevan]

Sending Darth Cheney to hobnob with the KoolAid drinkers gives the rest of us a feeling of confidence how?

[MBryant]

They've been planning this for awhile - the last great cash grab of the outgoing NeoCons...

Think of it like the bonus round on the wnd part of a two part game show. "And now Mr. Bush you've won hundreds of billions of dollars for you and friends in a war and deficits and tax cuts.. but you have one last chance to DOUBLE YOUR MONEY!" (crowd cheers)