Tag Archives: Democrats

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MUST-READ: Wall Street bankers gave Obama millions in campaign contributions

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Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner reports on Obama’s new bank bailout bill.

Excerpt:

President Obama likes to say we need to clean up Wall Street.  But let’s be clear: He is pushing a job-killing bailout bill for Wall Street that benefits his top financial contributor from the 2008 campaign – a firm that just happens to be under investigation by the SEC for defrauding investors.

Despite the President’s rhetoric, his support for the Democrats’ bailout bills gives big Wall Street banks a permanent, taxpayer-funded safety net by designating them “too big to fail.”

[…]Goldman Sachs, recently charged with defrauding investors, was President Obama’s top Wall Street contributor during the 2008 election cycle, donating nearly $1 million to his campaign.

  • Securities & investment firms in general were the fifth largest contributor to President Obama’s 2008 campaign, donating nearly $15 million.
  • Big banks also donated more than $3 million to Obama during the 2008 election cycle.

And some details about what the new bank bailout does:

  • The Dodd Gives Wall Street a Pre-Existing $50 Billion Bailout Slush Fund. Sen. Dodd’s financial bailout bill would create a $50 billion ‘orderly resolution fund’ ($150 billion in Rep. Barney Frank’s bill) that could be repeatedly replenished from industry assessment.
  • The Dodd Bill Gives Wall Street a Treasury-Backed Credit Line.  The FDIC would be authorized to borrow from Treasury up to the amount of cash left in the ‘resolution fund’ plus 90 percent of the value of the assets of any and all too-big-to-fail firms in its control.
  • The Dodd Bill Provides a Government-Guaranteed to Wall Street Debt.  The FDIC would be authorized to guarantee the debt of any solvent bank, bank holding company, or affiliate in any amount subject only to an aggregate debt limit set by the Treasury Department.
  • The Dodd Bill Institutionalizes Unlimited Wall Street Bailouts.  The FDIC, as the resolution agency for too-big-to-fail firms, would be given wide latitude to use resources to make payments to anyone in any amounts, at their own discretion.

Now let’s hear more about the rich bankers from Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs

This Newsbusters article explains Goldman Sachs’ connections to the White House:

  • White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel used to work for Goldman Sachs.
  • Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner used to work for Goldman Sachs.

And the Washington Examiner reports that:

  • Former White House counsel Greg Craig is now employed by Goldman Sachs.

Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs are often filled with Democrats.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

And don’t forget that the government-backed companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were run by Democrats, and they were also bailed out by the Democrats.

Excerpt:

Freddie and Fannie used huge lobbying budgets and political contributions to keep regulators off their backs.

A group called the Center for Responsive Politics keeps track of which politicians get Fannie and Freddie political contributions. The top three U.S. senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were Democrats and No. 2 is Sen. Barack Obama.

Now remember, he’s only been in the Senate four years, but he still managed to grab the No. 2 spot ahead of John Kerry — decades in the Senate — and Chris Dodd, who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

Fannie and Freddie have been creations of the congressional Democrats and the Clinton White House, designed to make mortgages available to more people and, as it turns out, some people who couldn’t afford them.

Fannie and Freddie have also been places for big Washington Democrats to go to work in the semi-private sector and pocket millions. The Clinton administration’s White House Budget Director Franklin Raines ran Fannie and collected $50 million. Jamie Gorelick — Clinton Justice Department official — worked for Fannie and took home $26 million. Big Democrat Jim Johnson, recently on Obama’s VP search committee, has hauled in millions from his Fannie Mae CEO job.

Political contributions and bailouts. Is there a connection?

News

CBO estimates Obamacare cost to be 2 trillion from 2014-2023

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From the Weekly Standard. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The CBO says that Obamacare would cost $2.0 trillion in the bill’s real first decade (from 2014 to 2023) — and much more in the decades to come.

But $2.0 trillion wouldn’t be the total ten-year costs. Instead, that would merely be the “gross cost of coverage provisions.” Based on earlier incarnations of the proposed overhaul, the total costs would be about a third higher (the exact number can’t be gleaned from the CBO’s analysis, which is only preliminary and is not a full scoring) — making the total price-tag between $2.5 and $3 trillion over the bill’s real first decade.

How would we pay for all of this? According to the CBO, by diverting $1.1 trillion away from already barely-solvent Medicare and spending it on Obamacare, and by increasing taxes on the American people by over $1 trillion. Among the Medicare cuts would be cuts of $25,000 in Medicare Advantage benefits per enrollee — up from $21,000 in the previous scoring.

[…]We’d also pay for this through increased deficits.  Under strict instructions from the Democrats, the CBO gave Obamacare credit for over $400 billion (from 2014 to 2023) in phony “savings” that would allegedly result from cutting doctor’s payments under Medicare by over 20 percent and never raising them back up.  As the CBO notes, one of two things could happen:  Congress could either follow through on these severe pay cuts — in which case doctors would view all Medicare patients as if they have the plague — or, Congress could eliminate these pay cuts — as everyone in Washington expects to have happen under the so-called “doc fix” — in which case the CBO projects that this bill would raise deficits by over $100 billion from 2017 to 2019 alone.

So, after racking up higher deficit spending in two years than President Bush (or any other president) did in two terms, President Obama would leave his successor a 12-figure deficit related to Obamacare alone — for the period from 2017 to 2019 alone.  That’s according to the CBO.

Someone is going to have to pay for all of this spending. Either taxes are going to go up so that we are all out of a job, or the government will print money and devalue the currency via inflation. I hope the young people who voted for Obama like the taste of grass – because that’s all they’ll be eating for the rest of their lives if this spending keeps up.

News

Massachusetts treasurer says Obamacare could wipe out the economy in 4 years

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Story here from Business Week. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The Massachusetts treasurer said Tuesday that Congress will “threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years” if it adopts a health care overhaul modeled after the Bay State’s.

Treasurer Timothy Cahill — a former Democrat running as an independent for governor — said the 2006 law has succeeded only because of huge subsidies and favorable regulatory changes from the federal government.

[…]Cahill said he’s called for the state to abandon its plan, and for the federal government not to match it.

He also gave reporters a copy of a state ledger sheet showing the state’s Medicaid program ballooning from $7.5 billion to a projected $9.2 billion since the health care law was adopted. Of the 407,000 newly insured, only 32 percent paid for insurance wholly on their own.

The remaining received partial or total taxpayer subsidies.

[…]Cahill [pointed] out the Obama administration is asking the House and Senate to approve a national plan that includes an “individual mandate,” similar to Massachusetts’, and an entity designed to match buyers with private health insurance plans.

Cahill said the Massachusetts equivalent, the Health Care Connector, had helped only 5 percent of those who bought private insurance without any type of government assistance.

While the Massachusetts program has increased access to health insurance, he said it hasn’t cut underlying cost increases, steering more people to a broken system.

“If President (Barack) Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistake of the health insurance reform adopted here in Massachusetts on a national level, they will threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years,” the treasurer said.

Let’s learn from the mistakes of others who tried to do what Obama is doing.