Obama = Bush

If that title doesn't get your attention, nothing will. Unfortunately, it is spot-on.

Read this Washington Post article at MSNBC.COM detailing how Obama's Treasury Department is breaking the law in regard to allocating bailout money to distressed financial institutions. In a nut shell, the game goes like this. Congress put restrictions on the money handed out, including things such as executive pay caps and the goverment having to take an ownership interest in firms receiving the funds. Now, the Obama Administration is basically setting up shell entities through which it is funneling money to banks, instead of it being paid directly to them. This, they say, allows them to put no strings on the money. Yep, the banks can have it free and clear... or at the very least, without all of those pesky oversight rules -- (e.g. laws) -- that Congress set up.

If this doesn't violate the law -- and it almost certainly does -- it definitely violates the spirit of the law. It is the type of thing that the Bush Administration would have done and gleefully thumbed their collective noses at the rest of us. I expected better of Obama. I was wrong.

Certainly, this discussion sidesteps the issue of what might be the better policy on this question. To me, however, that is next to irrelevant. The law is the law and we've had our leaders breaking it willy nilly for far too long. If you don't like the law, change it. The president, however, must not simply break it.

4 April 2009