Barney Frank - always classy

The sooner this odious little turd is out of power, the better. The man is a craven idiot. From John Hinderaker at Powerline:

Quick, Spend the Money Before the Taxpayers Find Out!
Byron York catches Barney Frank with his hand in the till. The issue is TARP: recall that the banks that received TARP money are supposed to repay it to the Treasury, along with dividend payments. President Obama has held out hope that the taxpayers may, in the end, make money on the TARP program. Recall, too, that TARP was billed as an extraordinary response to an unacceptable risk--that the nation's financial system might come crashing down. So the federal government bailed out the banks, but the banks were supposed to repay the money and the TARP statute provides that when the money is repaid, it "shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt." Which, of course, benefits the taxpayers who put up the money.

The greedy Congressman Frank apparently can't bear the idea of taxpayers getting their money back, so he has proposed to divert the money to a more politically appealing purpose. York explains:

Now Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has come up with a proposal to spend any TARP profits before they can be returned to the taxpayers. Last Friday, Frank introduced the "TARP for Main Street Act of 2009," a bill that would take profits from the program and immediately redirect them toward housing proposals favored by Frank and some fellow Democrats. ...

The original TARP legislation required that money made from the program "shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt."

But now Frank wants to spend the money before it can be used to pay down anything. First, the "TARP for Main Street" proposal would take $1 billion "from dividends paid by financial institutions that have received financial assistance provided under...the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and apply it to a trust fund that Frank has long wanted to create for low-income rental housing. (The measure, unfunded, was part of last year's bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.) Next, Frank would take $1.5 billion from TARP dividends for a so-called "neighborhood stabilization" fund. Republican critics have charged that both measures might allow federal dollars to be distributed to activist groups like the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, or ACORN.

The "TARP for Main Street" bill would also spend $2 billion, apparently from remaining TARP funds, to subsidize people who are delinquent on their mortgages, and another $2 billion to "stabilize multifamily properties that are in default or foreclosure."

So TARP would be transmuted into another slush fund for pet Democratic Party projects and constituencies. Phone or email your Congressman and Senators.

These people are supposed to be representing us. Instead, they spend their time playing with our money in their own private sandbox, isolated from their constituants. This kind of naked power grab is obscene and makes the United States look bad to other Nations.