"I'm for a balanced budget. I'm for the line-item veto.
"Federal spending is out of control! The federal government should have to balance its budget!"
As the CDPC continued to display their unwaivering endorsement of "Their Congressman" the printing company pronounced,
"Most candidates are fiscal conservatives during the campaign season; the proof is what happens when they get to Capitol Hill."
Exactly.
Tiberi is also a former member of the House Financial Services: Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government-Sponsored Enterprises and was present when that committee held a series of hearings on accounting irregularities at Fannie Mae way back on February 9, 2005 where the following statements were recorded from a line-up of Tiberi's fellow committee members and guest experts:
"The Office of Federal Enterprise Housing Oversight, known as OFHEO, [conducted] ... a forensic accounting audit of Fannie Mae. This was the first [such examination] in the enterprise's history.
"The audit, resulted in ... sufficient concern to result in a report to this committee of those findings."The unfortunate [but corroborative] findings of the Securities and Exchange Commission is that the accounting practices of Fannie Mae were not just a mere exercise of bad judgment or a one-time aberrant act, but a consistent misapplication at best, or at the worst an intentional act of accounting misrepresentation."
"I am concerned that if Fannie Mae encountered difficulties in accounting for these contracts, then other financial services providers may also have comparable problems that could cause difficulties for our economy."
"Although the accounting restatement amounts to approximately $9 billion, Fannie Mae has taken certain actions to recapitalize and to increase its capitalization with ... negotiations ongoing.
"Mr. Chairman, this hearing will play an important role in determining the type of legislation, if any, Congress will introduce and consider this Congress to reform the Government-Sponsored Enterprise system.
"We're all aware of the economic damage that took place in the wake of other corporate accounting scandals, be it Enron, WorldCom or Tyco. And in 2001--in terms of assets--Enron was only about one- sixteenth the size that Fannie Mae is today, and WorldCom and Tyco were about one-tenth the size of Fannie in terms of assets. These facts cannot be ignored.
"No one should dismiss this matter as inconsequential or not worthy of continued and detailed scrutiny. These are serious allegations that should not be politicized.
Meanwhile, 3 year and a half years later Tiberi sent glossy campaign postcards complete with sunny family photos--duly noted as having been paid for by US taxpayers--to his base back home. These publicly-funded postcards failed to tell the rest of US any of the aforementioned [yet inconsequential?] details of systemic economic failure, yet wouldn't that have been a better use of our resources?
In Tiberi's defense he did advise these same voters at Monday's debate that,
"If you break the law, there's a consequence to this. We are a nation of LAWS and people have made fun of the laws of this country. You have to have order in the United States."
For example, Pat Tiberi at the beginning of each of his four terms as United States Representative has made the following sworn statement:
"I, Pat Tiberi, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."
Yet while others in the market and throughout Congress appeared to be shocked, shocked! that such a massive bailout was suddenly necessary, "Our Congressman" feigned ignorance for 3 years, 7 months and 21 days as he strategized his own exit.
Of course, there is the possibility that his ignorance wasn't feigned.
The Democratic opponent, David Robinson described the need for oversight and taxpayer protection from bad debt at the debate. He told the voters,
"We need true oversight of the financial industries so we do not have this problem arise again.
"We have to protect taxpayers. We have to protect the taxpayers to make sure we aren't the ones caught holding the bag of toxic debts, while those that caused the problem get off scot free."
New York University's Nouriel Roubini said the plan was "totally flawed." and was,
"A disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders, and investors that provided little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that it would come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer."
Earlier in September, in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson said that he was surprised to learn just over two years ago that no federal agency regulated mortgage-lending, and that this was an area entirely left to the states.
Amendment X.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
What Paulson (the appointed 'King Henry' of the Treasury as of Friday, October 3) did not say was that every state in the Union had attempted to avert the disaster for the past 5 years, but they were prevented from doing so by the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
In a February 14 article published in the Washington Post, New York governor Eliot Spitzer, less than just one month before resigning in shame wrote:
"In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks.
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