Nancy Pelosi delivers the worst, speech, ever
The gall and stupidity of Nancy Pelosi never ceases to amaze me. Today, with arguably the economic welfare of the United States on the line, and for that matter, several other countries of the world, Nancy Pelosi assured the world an agreement to bail out the struggling spec market was at hand. She’d have it ready by vote time Monday morning. Apparently she was assured by someone the votes were in line to get it done. With the world spotlight shining directly on her, she gathered her wits to deliver the speech that would most likely define her time as House Speaker. This is what she had to offer those nervous and anxious legislators worried sick about whether their voters would understand what was going on and whether or not their opponents at home would use this as a political nuke:
Madam Speaker, when was the last time someone asked you for $700 billion? It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush Administration’s failed economic policies — policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system. Democrats believe in the free market, which can and does create jobs, wealth, and capital, but left to its own devices it has created chaos.
The second sentence alone assured all those antsy legislators who have to answer for their actions in votes in one month that yes, this will be a political ploy to be used against them if they were Republican.
That sentence also is what amazes so many people. Even when presented the facts, that most people already know, she looks you in the eye and denies ANY responsibility other than Bush. Hell, she even denied Clinton was President in 1999. And, she completely ignores what most finance people accept as fact, it was Jimmy Carter’s 1977 Community Reinvestment Act that set this failure in motion. According to her, this whole thing started in 2001. Let’s go on a little more.
That chaos is the dismal picture painted by Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke a week and a half ago in the Capitol. As they pointed out, we confront a crisis of historic magnitude that has the ability to do serious injury not simply to our economy, but to the American people: not just to Wall Street, but to everyday Americans on Main Street. It is our responsibility today, to help avert that catastrophic outcome. Let us be clear: This is a crisis caused on Wall Street. But it is a crisis that reaches to Main Street in every city and town of the United States.
This is not a crisis caused on Wall Street, it is a crisis caused by Washington DC that forced lenders to ignore common banking principals. In other words, if Wall Street had been left alone in 1977 and 1999, Wall Street would be just fine today.
It is a crisis that freezes credit, causes families to lose their homes, cripples small businesses, and makes it harder to find jobs.
It is a crisis that never had to happen. It is now the duty of every Member of this body to recognize that the failure to act responsibly, with full protections for the American taxpayer, would compound the damage already done to the financial security of millions of American families.
That part everyone agrees on. If Jimmy Carter hadn’t forced lenders to make sub-prime loans, then the sub-prime market would never have existed.
Over the past several days, we have worked with our Republican colleagues to fashion an alternative to the original plan of the Bush Administration.
I must recognize the outstanding leadership provided by Chairman Barney Frank, whose enormous intellectual and strategic abilities have never before been so urgently needed, or so widely admired.
I also want to recognize Rahm Emanuel, who combined his deep knowledge of financial institutions with his pragmatic policy experience, to resolve key disagreements.
Barney Frank was also one of the “blame only Bush” peeps. As it is obvious now, Frank’s “outstanding leadership” produced one of the most shocking failures of Congress in my lifetime.
Secretary Paulson deserves credit for working day and night to help reach an agreement and for his flexibility in negotiating changes to his original proposal.
It can be argued that his originaly bill, that did not have a lot of the political time bombs such as the ACORN funding request at the very worst would have suffered the same fate. However, it would have happened a week ago giving legislators a chance to iron out the differences.
Democrats insisted that legislation responding to this crisis must protect the American people and Main Street from the meltdown on Wall Street.
As did Republicans. Once again, she has made this her political agenda. If Republicans weren’t going to get any credit and all the blame, why bother making her look good? A lot of them had reservations in the first place. It was her job to convince them to go against their gut instinct. Cutting them out of getting any credit certainly didn’t make the bitter pill any easier to swallow.
The American people did not decide to dangerously weaken our regulatory and oversight policies. They did not make unwise and risky financial deals. They did not jeopardize the economic security of the nation. And they must not pay the cost of this emergency recovery and stabilization bill.
This is where she completely jumps the shark with reality. The fact is, it was people who never should have had loans defaulting on those loans that caused this. Sure, some blame exists on Wall Street for allowing them to get those loans, but, it was the Community Reinvestment Act ( a Democrat baby ), that enabled them to do so. So, in my opinion, some blame is shared by pretty much everyone who participated in this situation, Wall Street, DC, AND Main Street.
So we insisted that this bill contain several key provisions:
This legislation must contain independent and ongoing oversight to ensure that the recovery program is managed with full transparency and strict accountability.
The problem we have today was because Bush did just that in 2005. It was the sudden transparency of shady bookkeeping that started the collapse of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, and others. It was also done over the protestations of, you guessed it, Barney Frank.
The legislation must do everything possible to allow as many people to stay in their homes rather than face foreclosure.
Sounds like she prefers the Community Reinvestment Act take precedance over common lending practices. Where have we heard that before?
The corporate CEOs whose companies will benefit from the public’s participation in this recovery must not benefit by exorbitant salaries and golden parachute retirement bonuses.
Our message to Wall Street is this: the party is over. The era of golden parachutes for high-flying Wall Street operators is over. No longer will the U.S. taxpayer bailout the recklessness of Wall Street.
The taxpayers who bear the risk in this recovery must share in the upside as the economy recovers.
And should this program not pay for itself, the financial institutions that benefited, not the taxpayers, must bear responsibility for making up the difference.
These were the Democratic demands to safeguard the American taxpayer, to help the economy recover, and to impose tough accountability as a central component of this recovery effort.
Where is the responsibility or consequences for those who borrowed money knowing full well they were scamming the lending institutions? Clue here, once again, Nancy, THEY ARE THE MAIN PROBLEM. No matter what form of lending you put in place, if people intend to rip it off, and she blames the lenders, we’ll be right back where we are now. The solution would be simple for the corporation, don’t lend to anyone. The way things are now, people filing bankruptcy can stall the system for years. They get a primary residence for free. The company is forced to lend to a certain amount to these people or get prosecuted by the feds for discrimination. If those bad loans stay on their books too long, the feds prosecute them by forcing them into insolvency. And now, if they do it right, and make some money, Nancy wants to punish the executives for making money. Communism is sweet compared to Nancy Pelosi’s utopia.
This legislation is not the end of congressional activity on this crisis. Over the course of the next few weeks, we will continue to hold investigative and oversight hearings to find out how the crisis developed, where mistakes were made, and how the recovery must be managed to protect the middle class and the American taxpayer.
She is absolutely clueless. A bazillion blog posts and news reports have investigated this to death. The whole country at this point knows what caused this. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were directed to accept almost any risk if a person was a minority or in an underserved location. Entire companies sprung up to do nothing but process loans and sell the risk to Fannie and Freddie. After a point, Fannie and Freddie were no longer solvent under normal business rules. Their management cooked the books to make them look better. ( Hey Nancy, their board and management were almost ALL Democrats! ) In 2005, seeing what was going on at Fannie and Freddie, Bush changed the rules to make them much more transparent in they had to report their financial situation much more frequently. That led to both collapsing. Their collapse started a chain reaction throughout the finance industry as credit tightened up. Now, traditional banks, which never relied that much on Freddie and Fannie, are eating up those companies at huge discounts. How you protect the taxpayer and middle class is very simple, THE LOWER CLASS USUALLY CAN’T AFFORD DECENT HOMES. This however, runs smack in the face of the directives of, you guessed it, the Community Reinvestment Act. So, the answer is simple. In order to protect middle class and American taxpayers, author a bill to undo the damage Jimmy Carter ( a Democrat ) caused.
With passage of this legislation today, we can begin the difficult job of turning our economy around, of helping those who depend on a growing economy and stable financial institutions for a secure retirement, for the education of their children, for jobs and small business credit.
Today we must act for those Americans, for Main Street, and we must act now, with the bipartisan spirit of cooperation which allowed us to fashion this legislation.
Is she really that oblivious, stupid, or what? Attack the Republicans by blaming it all on a Republican while actually denying any Democrat ever had anything to do with it, and then demand bipartisan spirit? Sheezus.
This not enough. We are also working to restore our nation’s economic strength by passing a new economic recovery stimulus package — a robust, job creating bill — that will help Americans struggling with high prices, get our economy back on track, and renew the American Dream.
Now, there were some who were nervous over the price tag. Her economic recovery stimulus package came with a $60 BILLION price. Needless to say, it died as well. It wasn’t even close.
Today, we will act to avert this crisis, but informed by our experience of the past eight years with the failed economic leadership that has left us less capable of meeting the challenges of the future. We choose a different path. In the new year, with a new Congress and a new president, we will break free with a failed past and take America in a new direction to a better future.
She of course has to go out with a partisan bang.
Clue here Nancy, although this might assure an Obama victory, which I am quite certain that was her only goal with this speech, economically Obama will be so crippled by this situation if it’s not dealt with honestly now, he will most likely be a one-termer with the reputation of, well, Jimmy Carter.
Now, I do think Nancy Pelosi is stupid as mud. However, I also think she had no intentions of this passing. She is by far less concerned with the economy of the world than she is dogging President Bush. In her mind, I truly do believe she thought she could put all the blame on Bush while currying “bipartisan” support. She did put her neck on the line pretty much assuring its passage this morning. So, I don’t think she meant for it to fail. She however, failed to convince a huge chunk of her own party to vote for it.
And that’s where it gets even more fun to watch. I don’t think it was her plan to lose 60 of her own members. Although she may be winning the race for Obama, I am going to bet, if Obama does win, she won’t be the Speaker come January. Something about a single digit popularity rating, before this all happened, that sort of tells me something’s gotta give. Reid hasn’t faired any better. If Obama does win, look for Hillary to be Majority Leader in the Senate, and someone else as House Speaker. Although Nancy’s been toxic for the Dems in the House, she’s not really dragging down anyone. If anything, she’s probably helped Bush keep what little popularity rating he has. If Obama thinks she’ll drag him down with leadership like she displayed tody, she’ll go under that bus faster than a preacher.
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