Uninformed Voters

Several months ago, a Pew survey asked: “Who enacted TARP, the $700 billion bank bailout?” Almost half, 47%, thought it was Obama. Only 34 % of Americans correctly answered the question. In fact, it was Bush’s team, who engineered the bank bailout.

Bush's appointee, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke the Chairman of the Federal Reserve went to Congress in Sept. 2008. Their arrogant request to Congress stated: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

The TARP bailout of Wall Street took place on Oct. 3, 2008, Obama didn’t become President until Jan. 20, 2009. Congress gave the Bush administration half of the money that was requested, but attached conditions to the second half of the bailout money. Congress told Treasury Secretary Paulson that he’d get $350 billion, but they required an opportunity to evaluate the results, before approving the rest. Paulson decided how the first half of the $700 billion in TARP funds were spent.

Congressional Democrats were disappointed when the Bush administration decided to use none of that money to reduce foreclosures, which had been a central part of the economic solution. Therefore, Congress frozen the second half of the money and put restrictions on how the second half of money could be spent. Congress make it clear to the Obama administration, that it wouldn’t be able to spend any of the remaining TARP funds unless it did something to reduce foreclosures.