The 28 Billion Dollar Man: Is Sen. Shelby The Most Fiscally Irresponsible Politician Ever?
Posted March 4, 2012 at 12:00 pm, in Allied Approaches, From Campaign for America's Future
By Richard (RJ) Eskow
Senior Fellow, Campaign for America’s Future
Republicans love to say that nothing’s more important cutting the Federal deficit. So why is Sen. Richard Shelby wasting $28 billion of taxpayer money? Shelby’s used parliamentary tricks to put more than half of the nation’s mortgages under the rule of an unelected official who answers to no one – except apparently Richard Shelby – whose wasting money like it’s going out of style.
Is Richard Shelby a closet Deficit Lover? In Washington that’s called The Love That Dare Not Speaks Its Name.
But the real answer’s much simpler. Richard Shelby is losing tens of billions of dollars, hurting millions of middle-class homeowners, and stalling our economy recovery for one reason: to take the White House away from the Democrats.
Shelby’s following the path laid out by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said the number one priority of GOP Senators is to make Barack Obama a “one-term President” – not to serve the nation.
If you want to create jobs or treat the sick, Sen. Shelby and his fellow Republicans will insist that we can’t afford it. But there aren’t enough zeroes on this page to count the money they’ll waste for partisan gain.
Edward DeMarco: The Man Shelby Made King
George W. Bush brought a far-right ideologue named Edward DeMarco into the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which controls Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and therefore has power over more than half the mortgages in the country. Now DeMarco’s Acting Director of the FHFA, and where those mortgages are concerned he’s king.
Three years after becoming President, Barack Obama can’t get his own appointee into the job – because of Richard Shelby. That means DeMarco gets to stay on indefinitely.
Edward DeMarco misled Congress and the public by claiming that lowering principal on underwater mortgages would cost $100 billion. DeMarco’s own staff produced a report showing that a principal reduction program would actually save taxpayers $28 billion. But DeMarco didn’t tell Congress about that report.
An FHFA employee testified before Congress that there was a good pilot program designed to do exactly that. DeMarco didn’t tell Congress about that either. The employee testified that the DeMarco team killed the program, as a letter by two Democratic representatives explains, for “ideological reasons.” (more…)
