He Said WHAT About Paulson?

GOP Representative Paul Broun is a liar.  I admit there are times when we all lie.  When she asks, “Does my ass look fat in these pants?”, honesty can be fatal.  But this whopper is a full size GOP lie.

Speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives yesterday, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) strained to try to explain the deficit, correctly noting that most of it came from reckless spending during the Bush administration era. Exhibiting his partisan colors, Broun tried to reconcile Bush’s Troubled Asset Relief Program by falsely claiming that Bush administration Treasury Secretary was a “Democrat”:

BROUN: I wanted to put some perspective on 2008, too. That’s when the President’s chief economic adviser — I guess the Treasury Secretary — told him that the sky was falling and that we needed to pass the Toxic Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which many Republicans voted against. I didn’t buy the Democratic Treasury Secretary under a Republican President because that’s exactly what Hank Paulson is. He’s a Wall Street insider, a Wall Street banker. Wall Street believes in big government.

Watch it:

 

Paulson is a Republican, and was still a Republican when TARP was passed. Broun’s fib is the latest in a long line of conservatives desperately flailing to make up excuses for the Republican-led bank bailout… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Think Progress>

I admit that passing TARP was a bipartisan effort.  It could not have made it without support from both parties.  The idea was that Treasury would use the funds to buy up toxic assets so Banks could get them off their balance sheets and start lending money again.  What happened next was not bipartisan at all.  Paulsen took the money, bailed out AIG, not even a bank,  and lent the money to the TBTF Banksters with virtually no strings attached.  They, in turn, used it to speculate in the market, turned record profits, and did not start lending again.  That was a completely GOP idea.