PrintJuly 25, 2008
The Stealth Bailout
Stealthily, with minimal legislative deliberation (much less media attention), a vast new claim on the United States Treasury is being enacted into law by Congressional Democrats. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted to bail out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae with a porked-up bill that allowed only limited debate.
An open-ended, potentially multiple-trillion dollar piece of legislation came out of committee at 6:30 p.m. (July 22, 2008) and was voted upon on the floor of the House at 2:30 p.m. the next afternoon.
Rep. John Culberson's (R-TX) office emailed this information:
H.Res. 1363 a closed rule for H.R. 3221, the Housing Omnibus bill. It
amends the latest Senate version of H.R. 3221 with a 694-page House
amendment, which was made available to House offices just 16 hours ago.
We will have only 2 hours of floor debate on the most sweeping changes
to housing law in a generation. It denies Republicans any amendments or a Motion to Recommit. [emphasis added]
That means only 1 hour of debate for each side. A final vote on the largest open-ended tax commitment levied on the federal government (and therefore its citizens personal wealth) since the New Deal, and the Republicans get one hour in which to raise objections.
The Democrats are running the 100th Congress ruthlessly. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are largely a Democrat scandal, with names like Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick major embarrassments for the Dems, and therefore objects of little interest to the media.
We are to be committed to bail out Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, banks, savings and loans, mortgage brokers, along with funding for more pork projects without our Representatives given time to actually read and study the legislation. Or time to conduct full and open debate without rules and restrictions applied to those in dissent?
Rep. Culberson, breaking House rules, sent these messages in real time from the House Floor:
- "Total unfunded liabilities of USA over 56 trillion yet today House voted to increase this liability by nearly 10 percent"
- "America's annual budget 2 trillion -- mortgage bail out taxpayer guarantee of 5 trillion in home loans -- US could only pay for it w new debt"
- "Mortgage bail out also added 800 billion to national debt limit TODAY"
- "Mortgage bill creates an open ended line of credit for Freddie/Fannie to withdraw as much taxpayer cash as they want w/o repaying us ever"
The same is occurring in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will bundle all the legislation together in one massive omnibus bill -- The Advancing America's Priorities Act. This is in defiance of Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-Okla.) fight to put "holds" on numerous bills while still in committee.
According to Sen. Coburn, "The Reid Omnibus is 398 pages and contains approximately 35 various bills." Coburn is also angry that Reid will not allow full and open debate on this bill. Instead Reid is forcing it through the Senate with only one vote. No debate; just one up or down vote.
Upon learning of Reid's plan, Coburn spoke these words from the floor of the Senate:
"That bill is coming about because myself and several other senators have refused to allow those bills to go without debate on this floor and without the ability to amend them. Now, some of them are very good things we ought to be about. But we should not be about it until we are going to inculcate and act as senators the same way every other family in this country has to act; that is, by making a decision based on priorities. ...
"By historical standards, this is supposed to be the greatest deliberative body in the world. In the 110th Congress, 890 bills have passed - 890. Fifty of them have had debate. Only 50 have had debate. And for most of those, the debate has been extremely limited and shortened through the power of the majority leader. ..." [emphasis added]
Also alarming was another Culberson message from the House floor,
"No reporters and few visitors were in the gallery to see America's gov't go into the home building and loan business -- just another day."
So don't look for video of the event on the news. Before this 110th Congress leaves for a 5 week recess it will have, according to Culberson, created the
"Biggest expansion of gov't since New Deal - just passed House 272 to 152 - this may be the best no vote I ever cast - 5 trillion new liability."
But even this is a guess because without ample time to actually read the legislation or to have full debate; no one will know what is actually in the passed legislation until it's too late. Almost without debate, and with virtually no media scrutiny, a potentially major claim on our wealth is being snuck into law.
If not for the new realtime media we probably wouldn't know this much. Which is why Congressional Democrats are trying to silence this technology enabling members to communicate directly with their constituents and the public.
