Peter Wallison was on CSPAN last Sunday. Wallison gave some real insight into what really happened with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac disaster. I linked the transcript, but for brevity I will highlight the important parts here.
What caught my attention, and this is difficult to find in the media, is the role that congress had in this. Also referenced here is the breakdown of campaign contributions that went to members of Congress from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that is provided by opensecrets.org.
This conversation only strengthens the argument that is going on now about how broken Washington is, and Barack Obama is right at the top of that list of recipients of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. John McCain is on that list too, but you must remember that this list is a total of contributions they received from 1989 to 2008. That is a 19 year span for McCain, a 3 year span for Obama. It breaks down annually like this:
Over the 19 year period McCain received $21,550, which works out to $1,134.21 per year.
Obama was only in the Senate for three years and received $126,349 which is $42,116.23 per year.
The most telling thing is the fact that Barack Obama, while talking a good game about “CHANGE”, jumped right in to get his piece of the action.
Three Democrats head the list of beneficiaries from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – Christopher Dodd, Barack Obama and John Kerry. THREE DEMOCRATS THAT RAN FOR PRESIDENT.
Christopher Dodd, who is on the TOP of the list of recipients now is trying to shift blame and attention to Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, and President Bush by implication:
“The Democratic Chairman, called the White House, accusation incredible and libel, Mr. Dodd all but accused Mr. Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, of misleading Congress less than two months ago”
It is clear that Dodd, along with many of his peers in Congress, got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
WALLISON: But this is a – frankly, this is just another part of the scandalous process that was going on here. This is using essentially government money, taxpayer money, to lobby Congress indirectly through these groups.
And more has happened. In the new housing legislation, one of the elements in this housing legislation, which contained the new regulations for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, never would have been passed, but for the fact that the Democrats wanted the housing bill aspect of this, because the problems in the housing market – Senator Shelby said, there isn’t going to be a housing bill out of this committee unless you put tough regulations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in it. So, he got those tough regulations in the bill.
But in addition, Congressman Barney Frank in the House wanted a special fund that comes out of the profits of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and is then used for all of these community groups around the country.
So, we see the same process continuing to work. Even though reform legislation was passed, it contains a nice slush fund that can be used by community groups around the country. So we see the same process continuing to work, even though reform legislation was passed, it contains a nice slush fund that can be used by the officials of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to reward community groups.
LAMB: You can go on Google and go looking for this Freddie Mae foundation and some of the information is still there. I did it and I just looked up one state, one year, to get an idea of the kind of money they gave away …
WALLISON: See, ordinary corporations, of course, give away lots of money to community organizations and charitable organizations and cultural organizations, and they do this in part to support their products.
So if General Motors gives a gift to a cultural organization, what they hope is that people will then think better of buying a General Motors car.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are different. Those gifts were given for the purpose of building political support for them, not their products because they weren’t at that point selling any products directly to the—to individuals. They were buying mortgages from banks. These gifts were given to organizations that would then, hopefully, come back and support them politically in Congress, so they were using, in effect, the taxpayer money that was backing them to gain—to buy political support in districts around the country that then reflected back on the Congressmen and Senators here in the United States. That was the process that was going on here.
The shell game...Congress is playing the shell game...with OUR MONEY
DR
