RUSH: Barney Frank. I want to go to yesterday’s audio sound bite roster. Actually, we have stuff from today and yesterday. Yesterday he was on with Chris Cuomo on Good Morning America, and I’ll tell you, Barney is getting more and more contentious with his buddies. I mean, the people in the Drive-By Media are Barney’s buddies, and he’s getting contentious with them, often for no reason (which means he’s defensive). But first from MSNBC today, Joe Scarborough’s morning show. Scarborough said, ‘How do we stop the next big bust on Wall Street? We had the ’87 crash. We had the Asian crash. We had the dotcom crash and the telecom crash, and now we got the housing bubble crash.’ I’ll tell you the next crash. I just said, folks. We are insane. It was just two months ago that we learned that massive debt that can’t be repaid causes bubbles to burst big time. And now we’ve got trillion-plus dollar or trillion-dollar deficits, promised by Obama, for years. So that’s the next one to bust, and Scarborough is asking Barney Frank, ‘How do we figure out what the hell we’re doing on Wall Street?’
FRANK: It’s not deregulation. That was the problem. It was the failure to adopt new regulation for a new phenomenon, the securitization. The biggest part of this problem was subprime loans: money lent to people to make them homeowners who couldn’t afford the loans, who should not have been considered to be, in many cases, capable financially of homeowning. Now… Eh… You’ve gotta recognize reality. We have begun to adopt legislation to prevent that. We can stop the last problem from recurring. Nobody can know what the next problem will be.
RUSH: This is… (laughing) He created the problem! This… Folks, this is more than chutzpah. He created the problem. This is a sound bite that gets you out of your chair. I don’t believe I just heard this. He created it. His definition of ‘affordable housing’ was to make sure that people who couldn’t pay the loans back got the loans, the mortgages. He forced Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac to do this. ACORN was involved, Obama’s group. This was a Democrat Party operation through and through! Instead of answering questions from Joe Scarborough, Barney Frank ought to be answering them as a witness before some other congressional committee. So now we have begun to adopt legislation to prevent this? (laughing) All you can do is laugh. I know some of you people are put out with me because I’m laughing at this, but what are we going to do? You can’t go through your life angry all the time like the liberals do, but this… Okay, let’s move on to Good Morning America with Chris Cuomo and Barney Frank. In the first sound bite, Cuomo says, ‘You Democrats say you’re gung-ho, talking huge numbers in this stimulus plan. But in light of all the spending that’s been done already with the questionable results…’ And, by the way, that’s a good point. All this stimulus spending, are where are the results? Where is the economy roaring back? Question to Frank: ‘[W]hat gives you the confidence that you can pass this new stimulus?’
FRANK (speaking unclearly): The Bush administration came to us and said, ‘If you don’t give us 700 billion right away there will be a collapse.’ Now, we have a problem because the initiative is with the administration. But hasn’t been 700 billion. We did vote the authorization but we said that after they’ve spent the first half, they were going to have to notify Congress before they could spend the second half. We are sufficiently dissatisfied with what the Bush administration did with the first half —
CUOMO: But, Mr. Chairman…
FRANK: — the second 350 is frozen and is not being spent. Until we come to some agreements with the Obama administration about how to spend it.
RUSH: Now, just be cool, because it isn’t going to be long before they can’t blame Bush anymore. Bush was sold a bill of goods by Hank Paulson, who is a Democrat. This is just history revision right before your very eyes. They then had this exchange.
CUOMO: Your title is Chairman of the House Financial Committee, I mean, certainly this isn’t just about you looking to the administration. You have a role in this also.
FRANK: Well, one… Technically…
CUOMO: You approved the TARP plan. You approved the spending, and the question is: ‘Where is the accountability? Do you know where that money went?’
FRANK: Well… I’m trying to explain that. Yuhheehhh… No, in part we don’t, and here… First of all, it’s not just a technical thing since you’re stretching the title. It’s the financial services committee. I say that because there is a Senate finance committee that deals with taxes. Yes, we know in part where it went. We are unhappy with that. We set up a mechanism to monitor it. And because we are unhappy with it, we have frozen the second half of it. The other thing I would say is —
CUOMO: But just think about that, as a taxpayer sitting out there, Mr. Chairman.
FRANK: I’m, sorry. (growing angry) I’m sorry! If you KEEP! If you keep interrupting, we can’t have a coherent conversation. These are not subjects that can be answered in 18 seconds.
RUSH: (laughing) It happens in every interview! (laughing) He turns on his friends and he accuses them of being incoherent when we can’t understand half of the words Barney’s saying! And he accuses Chris Cuomo of being incoherent! (laughing) And then it led to this.
CUOMO: American taxpayers hearing all this — $10 billion in bonuses, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley alone — you seem to be saying that you’re powerless in this. Why should they have confidence in the new administration?
FRANK: No, I’m not sure saying that!
CUOMO: Why should they have confidence in the new administration?
FRANK: Excuse me. I’m sorry. This is terribly distorted. I didn’t say I was powerless! I don’t think —
CUOMO: You said the administration proposed it, that there’s a method of doing things, that you didn’t like it but that’s the way it is.
FRANK: No, I’m sorry, you’re… This is the worst kind of distortion! In the first place, I don’t think it’s powerlessness to say, ‘Instead of spending 700 billion, you’re only going to be able to spend half of it and we will freeze the second half.’ That’s not powerlessness! I don’t think freezing $350 billion is — is — is not doing anything, and holding it until the Obama people get there. And I — if you think that Congress can simply take over and run the program, that simply isn’t the way the American Constitution works.
(playing of Banking Queen song.)
RUSH: Well, it certainly was the way the subprime mortgage thing went down! It certainly was the way. Congress was in charge of telling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac what to do. Barney was leading the way, folks. He was — and is — the Banking Queen!
(playing of Banking Queen song.)