Barney Frank Vies For Washinton's Most Toxic Asset

Few people have played such a disastrous role in our nation as Barney Frank. He has been a key architect of the mortgage mess that is at the heart of our economic meltdown. Since the mortgage market crashed, that hasn't slowed this utterly shameless and dangerous man. He has strong-armed the bond rating companies not to downgrade municipal bonds and floated a plan to have the federal government insure all state and local bond issues. A few days ago, he asked Fannie Mae to start accepting loans on condos that they currently deny as too risky. His latest is now to take repayment of TARP funds - money that is by law supposed to go into the general funds and be used to pay down our crippling debt - and use it to fund one of his latest brilliant plans. This from Byron York:

When President Obama announced on June 9 that some financial institutions would be allowed to repay Troubled Asset Relief Program dollars, he said the massively expensive TARP bailout had made money for the federal government. "It is worth noting that in the first round of repayments from these [TARP recipients], the government has actually turned a profit," the president said. Indeed, TARP supporters have long held out the hope that the program might be profitable.

But now Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has come up with a proposal to spend any TARP profits before they can be returned to the taxpayers. Last Friday, Frank introduced the "TARP for Main Street Act of 2009," a bill that would take profits from the program and immediately redirect them toward housing proposals favored by Frank and some fellow Democrats.

. . . Last month, the General Accountability Office (GAO) reported that, through June 12, 2009, the government had received $6.2 billion in dividend payments. The original TARP legislation required that money made from the program "shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt."

Frank, however, wants to spend the money before it can be used to pay down anything. First, the "TARP for Main Street" proposal would take $1 billion "from dividends paid by financial institutions that have received financial assistance provided under…the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and apply it to a trust fund that Frank has long wanted to create for low-income rental housing. (The measure, unfunded, was part of last year's bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.) Next, Frank would take $1.5 billion from TARP dividends for a so-called "neighborhood stabilization" fund. Republican critics have charged that both measures might allow federal dollars to be distributed to activist groups like the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, or ACORN.

The "TARP for Main Street" bill would also spend $2 billion, apparently from remaining TARP funds, to subsidize people who are delinquent on their mortgages, and another $2 billion to "stabilize multifamily properties that are in default or foreclosure." . . .

Read the entire article. I mean, its not like we need to be concerned about the size of our budget, right? Barney Frank is a clear and present danger to this country.