White House on Fannie/Freddie bailout: If only Congress had acted...

With the Bush administration moving the federal government into a multibillion-dollar rescue of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, this question comes up: How does this jibe with President Bush's philosophy of limited government?

"This is not exactly limited government, this takeover," observed CBS News' Jim Axelrod, at White House Press Secretary Dana Perino's daily news briefing today. "....Just in terms of conservative political ideology, how concerned was he about doing something that seems to be sort of the opposite of all of that?"

Well, if Congress had just followed the president's advice back in 2002 or so....

Or, as Perino put it in not-quite-so-blunt a manner, it didn't have to come to this:

President Bush initiated a call years ago to try to reform this system because he did not want the status quo to continue.  Unfortunately, Congress didn't act on that.  And the systemic risk that was posed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to our entire economy was one that the president felt it was more important to deal with now, and start to work on now, so that the next administration would be able to work with the Congress and figure out a way to make sure that this would not be allowed to happen again. 

"So far," she added, "cooperation with Congress since this announcement has been very good."

Of course, the announcement was made on Sunday, barely 24 hours before she spoke, and Congress is just returning to town from its late-summer break.

-- James Gerstenzang

Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press

Comments

[David Gerard]

Privatise the gains, socialise the losses! http://tinyurl.com/6r9qo5

[PacificGatePost]

OMINOUS SIGN BEHIND PAULSON’S ACTIONS

http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/09/secretary-paulson-reasures-foreign.html

And as usual the taxpayer is on the hook in the biggest bailout ever, and forever after that.

[rhodiumman]

You better hope that the rest of the world doesn't come to the conclusion
that we are the United Shams of America.

You politicians, you bankers, and businessmen that have no integrity, you who do not even know the meaning of the word and can not possibly get there from where you are, you have brought us to where we are now.