As President Barack Obama and his leftist allies in Congress spend trillions in taxpayer dollars in the span of just a few months, it is important to remember that the left is no enemy of big business. The left LOVES big business. Who else could possibly pay huge corporate taxes and make payroll on exorbitant big labor contracts? So as the Obama administration both makes it harder for Detroit to turn a profit by mandating fuel efficient cars, and then turns around gives them more bailouts, remember, this is exactly how the last New Deal worked: big business, big labor, and big government getting together in one room to screw small businesses and the American taxpayer.
Nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than the Treasury Department TARP bailout. Earlier this month we saw Citigroup work with Senate Democrats to screw their competitors by being the first to agree to a mortgage cram down program. We heard the story of how TARP author Rep. Barny Frank (D-MA) personally intervened to score a bank in his district hundreds of million in taxpayer dollars. Just this week we learned that virtually all of the firms that have received bailout money (including Goldman Sachs), are still lobbying Washington DC. And it turns out that all six of the law and accounting firms hired by the Treasury Department to help manage the $700 billion financial bailout also have clients who received bailout money.
But don’t worry, President Barack Obama and his Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner are on the case. Just yesterday they enacted new guidelines aimed at eliminating the influence of lobbyists on bailout fund. Feel better? Then you’ll love this news. On the very same day Geithner announced his anti-lobbyist rules he hired Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson as his Chief of Staff.
So good news for Goldman and good news for Geithner. Bad news for the other banks (just ask Goldman’s ex-competitor Lehman Brothers), and bad news for the American taxpayer.
Found on Heritage Foundation Foundry
