Obama Would Spend Bailout Funds on Housing Crisis

[FrenchieCat]

President-elect Barack Obama would spend the remaining $350 billion of a financial bailout fund on expanded lending and reduced foreclosures and would not use the money to help other industries, lawmakers said Wednesday after discussions with Obama emissaries.

The Senate was set to vote Thursday on whether to release the money. Lawmakers insisted that Obama advisers put their assurances in writing before the vote.

Seeking to secure votes from wary members of both parties, Obama aides fanned out across the Capitol on Wednesday. Their lobbying effort culminated in a closed door meeting between Senate Republicans and top Obama economic adviser Larry Summers and incoming White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

The private guarantees went further than what Obama's team has been willing to discuss publicly about his plans for the second half of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Obama has asked Congress for the money and has been trying to overcome misgivings from lawmakers over how the Bush administration spent the first half of the fund. Democrats were growing increasingly optimistic that the Senate would agree to release the money to the new administration. And even reluctant Republicans praised Obama's outreach.

''These folks have much more credibility already than Secretary Paulson,'' Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said, referring to the Bush administration's treasury secretary, Henry Paulson...
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/01/15/washington/AP-Obama-Bailout.html?_r=1


Republicans better get on board.....

Asked whether Republicans in Congress should do everything to stand firm for their party's principles and oppose the legislation, or look to compromise with the Obama administration, 68% of Republicans and independents chose compromise, with 20% picking standing firm.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123196999580982953.html

[firedupdem]

1. Good Information. Sounds like this will be done. The news

today made it sound like a big fight was brewing!

I love the second part. We have too many issues and no room for division.

[FrenchieCat]

2. That's the media for you!

They are so hoping for a good fight. Fuck the economy as far as they are concerned.
I hope they fucking lose their jobs.....Then they can scratch their asses and try to
figure out what happened. :crazy:

[firedupdem]

3. LOL!!

I gave up today when Chuck Todd started talking crazy about getting rid of DODT in the military. Damned if he does, Damned if he doesn't.

[Enrique]

4. the 20% that want to "stand firm" are the Freepers

the ones who say that McConnell always caves to the dems, that McConnell has no balls, that he's Harry Reid's bitch, that the republicans should not cooperate with Obama because the dems never cooperated with Bush. Hyperbolic rhetoric that ignores the reality that McConnell has been of course more oppositional than is normal in the Senate. For them, opposition to Obama -- "showing spine" -- is more important than the issue itself.

[FrenchieCat]

5. I'm suspecting a "fail" on this one by the Pub and the media.....

Folks are losing their homes, and they are gonna realize by tomorrow that this part of the bail out is going to end up coming to help them instead of getting lost in some unaccounted Bank hole.

[TTUBatfan2008]

6. This sounds much better than the current bailout...

Actual help for the little guy in the middle class instead of the fucking corporations, dammit. The first part of the bailout was corporate welfare/highway robbery. Paulson should be thrown in jail.