Government ends TARP, makes $15.3 billion profit

[The_Doctor]

I'm interested in looking at the $15 billion relative to the government budget - in budget terms, it's essentially zero, no? But it's still a good number and I'm glad that we ended out TARP this way.

Props to President Bush and the President for doing this, although I didn't agree with the auto bailout (at the time. But they made it work).

[The_Doctor]

TARP is a Bush Administration initiative ... I credited President Bush because he signed it into law, and his Treasury Department created the program (and he pushed for it). Paulson was actually instrumental to TARP, Pelosi helped whip votes, but the TARP program was a creation of the Bush Treasury department. Kind of "The Bush Administration was responsible for it" and thus "credit to President Bush."

I'm not addressing the rest of the campaign style rhetoric you're putting in there, but I credited Bush simply because his Treasury Department came up with it, he pushed the bill, and he signed it and gave it his support. I also credited President Obama for sticking with it.

Not only that, in the second House vote, 91 Republicans voted yes for the bill on the second try (where it passed 263-171). I'm sure much of that was because of the Bush Administration whipping the bill, along with Pelosi.

This was not designed to be a partisan shot at either party.

[The_Doctor]

Uh by that standard a lot of work in Washington is done by career workers in the various agencies (true) and we shouldn't credit political leaders when they pass things (not true). It seems you just want a reason to not credit President Bush for TARP and that's fine bit he and the Treasury Department had involvement. They reviewed the proposal and sent it to Capital Hill.

One career staffer involved in this was Neel Kashkari, who was the Republican nominee for California Governor, by the way

[The_Doctor]

We'll agree to disagree. I feel your argument falls too close towards selective bias - e.g, picking career workers to reap the credit and political leaders the blame for poor decisions based on subjective metrics. In turn, I think while Bush was not perfect, I believe the financial crisis' origins was out of his hands for much of his tenure as President. So I can't fault him as much as others would.

But we can agree to disagree.