I have a series of sound bites here that you’re going to love listening to. This is yesterday morning in Washington on Capitol Hill on the Senate Budget Committee. Senator Judd Gregg, a Republican from New Hampshire, was talking with the budget director Peter Orszag. How many children out of wedlock does this guy have now? He’s got at least one. He was engaged to somebody, she was pregnant, and he broke up and has gotten with somebody else now. Revenge of the Nerds, so to speak. Anyway, here’s the first bite from Judd Gregg.
GREGG: The whole concept of the TARP was that as we recouped the money — because we were borrowing it from Americans and from the Chinese. That, as we recoup that money, we would use it to pay down the debt. Now, that’s not going to happen. It’s become a piggy bank, which adds to our deficit, adds to our debt.
RUSH: Peter Orszag then decides to say this…
ORSZAG: The degree to which shifting funds, ehhh, would add to our debt or — uh, uh — deficits depends on what the net subsidy rate would be on that new activity. And, remember: The purpose of TARP was to address problems in our financial markets, and it has been remarkably successful in bringing credit spreads back down to normal levels. One of the lingering problems in our financial markets, however, is access to credit for small businesses.
RUSH: They continue this misrepresentation. In the first place, the inspector general, Barofsky, says that TARP didn’t do anything. It has been, ultimately, a failure — and this business about credit for small businesses? They don’t want to borrow any money. They don’t want to right now. They don’t want to expand, folks. There’s no recovery so there’s no reason. So this is where Judd Gregg loses it. On Orszag, about what the TARP law says.
GREGG: No! No! You can’t make that type of statement with any legitimacy.
ORSZAG: Okay.
GREGG: You cannot make that statement. This is the law.
ORSZAG: Small businesses are not suffering from access? A lack of access?
GREGG: Let me tell you what the law says. Let me read it to you again, because you don’t appear to understand the law. The law is very clear. ‘The moneys recouped from the TARP shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for the reduction of the public debt.’ It’s not for a piggy bank because you’re concerned about lending to small businesses —
ORSZAG: Senator, this would require new legislation.
GREGG: — and you want to get a political event when you go out and make a speech in Nashua, New Hampshire. That’s not what this money is for. This money is to reduce the debt of our children.
RUSH: Now, what’s being talked about here is the $30 billion that Obama says he’s taking from money that the banks are paying back to set up a government agency that will ‘provide low-interest loans to small businesses.’ What Judd Gregg is saying is, ‘That’s not the law! You can’t use TARP money for that! I’m reading the law to you,’ and what Orszag is trying to say to you is, ‘But, but, Senator, this would require legislation!’ No, it doesn’t require legislation. The law is the law. He said, ‘Small businesses are not suffering from…?’ So Greg is really laying it to him here. Judd Gregg has stepped up in the last couple of weeks to be a serious critic of these guys. Here’s the final exchange, and Bernie Sanders gets involved here.
GREGG: Let me ask you another question.
ORZAG: Okay.
GREGG: Because clearly we’re not going to agree on this and you’re not going to follow the law. Secondly —
CALLER: Uhh, eh… Sorry. I do… Excuse me. We will be following the law. This would involve legislation to make extra —
GREGG: Well, then you’re not going to be able to do it unless Congress —
ORSZAG: Yes!
GREGG: — gives you the authority to do it.
ORSZAG: Exactly.
SANDERS: That is how laws are made usually. Congress passes them.
RUSH: Thank you, Senator Sanders. (doing impression) ‘That is how laws are made, Congress usually passes ’em.’ So these clowns don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t care about the law anyway, ladies and gentlemen. No question about it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Judd Gregg has been going at these guys on the budget solidly for a year, and this, folks, is exactly what we need to be doing. Every Republican needs to be saying this latest Obama budget, for example, is DOA. They need to set the tone for this. And Judd Gregg seems to have discovered what I have known for decades and that is, you gotta go hard at these liberals. You don’t play by their rules, which say, ‘Independents don’t like criticism. Independents don’t like it when the Republicans criticize the Democrats.’ No, no, no. You go after these guys hard, and the response you get will be huge. All they gotta do is look at Scott Brown. Do not hold back on these people.