Promises, Promises

The American Thinker surveys the legacy of the Democratic Congress 2007-9.

Here is how they handled Iraq once in office:  Harry Reid told us that the Iraq war was “lost” and the surge was not “accomplishing anything.” Senator Obama introduced legislation that would have prevented the surge and would have taken all US troops out of Iraq by March 2008 (that would be seven months ago, as you read this) .

Were they right?

Barack Obama now admits that “the surge succeeded.” So much for that change.  And as the surge succeeded, Congress’s approval ratings plummeted.  The latest CBS/New York Times poll has it at 12%, well less than half of the already low level it stood at when the Republican Congress was being tossed out in 2006.

The Democratic Congress did a great job, if what you’re looking for in a Congress is continual investigation of Republicans…

What Congress would not investigate was anything about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  In fact, they fought against such investigations and cast aspersions against anyone who would even doubt the soundness of those institutions.  Here is what Barney Frank said:

These two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis.  The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.

You can also see on YouTube how Democrats treated the regulators trying to reign in Fannie and Freddie.

But now we know what happened.  Fannie and Freddie were run corruptly and ineptly and went bankrupt.  Their $1.5 trillion portfolios had to be rescued by the government this year.  Franklin Raines, the Clinton-appointed CEO of Fannie Mae who was vigorously defended by Congressional Democrats, was sued by government regulators for cooking the books to the tune of $10 billion to increase his own bonuses to the tune of tens of millions.  He settled his suit for an estimated $25 million.