Thursday, September 25, 2008

A correction, of sorts

Well, when you write nearly 4000 posts, you inevitably must publish a few corrections. I've not had to do that often, but I must do it now. This post reprinted part of an eerily prophetic speech John McCain gave in favor of a bill that would have overhauled Fannie Mae.
If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.
At the time -- 2005 -- no-one paid attention to this warning. Now the progs are trying to pretend that John McCain is somehow responsible for a mess that he tried to prevent.

Question: If Barack Obama gets endless credit for a not-so-brave speech he gave in 2002, why doesn't McCain get credit for his highly predictive words in 2005?

In my original piece, I said that Obama voted against the legislation. Not true; my apologies. In fact, the bill -- the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190 -- never made it out of committee. However: The committee in question was, of course, the Senate Banking Committee, headed by Chris Dodd, the number one recipient of donations from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

The number two recipient of Fannie and Freddy money is, as noted in previous posts, Barack Obama. He has taken in almost as much money as Dodd. Quite an accomplishment -- Dodd has been in office a lot longer.

I find Obama's Big Haul very odd, because he is not on the Banking Committee. However, he did once have a bizarre moment (one of those "scandal for a day" things that was soon forgotten) in which he claimed to be a member of that very committee. In fact, he said that he ran the joint...
"Just this past week, we passed out of the out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee - which is my committee - a bill to call for divestment from Iran...
Most passing strange.

So just what did Fannie and Freddie expect to get for the money?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank You for posting this. Very enlightening.
The fact that we will never hear about McCains speech from anybody else is the good old media bias and white-guilt driven BS.
Do I have to say how tired I am of all this?
But it is almost accepted as a sign of this GE.
The thing with Obama's lie hits me a little different.
It is like this "I have an uncle that liberated Auschwitz" thing.
The way he makes such claims and never appologizes about the lies.
I don't know, it is like he has some serious issues. Like the fassade has a crack and we see a very troubled and troubling man.

Anonymous said...

From a CNN piece on Obama vs. Banking Committee:

UPDATE: An Obama spokesman tells CNN “it was his bill, not his committee,” referring to the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act that the Illinois senator sponsored and introduced in May 2007. The measure was then referred to the Banking Committee, and passed a vote of 19-2 on July 17.

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XIslander

Unknown said...

Joseph, you said:

"However: The committee in question was, of course, the Senate Banking Committee, headed by Chris Dodd, the number one recipient of donations from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae."

Dodd was not the chairman of the Banking Committee when the Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190 died in committee. Bills don't live from congress to congress. They live or die during the congress in which they are introduced.

The Democrats didn't take over congress until 2007 so it would have been impossible for Dodd to have chaired the Banking Committee when the bill died. A Republican chaired the committee, Richard Shelby (R-AL).