Obama, the Chicago Boys, and their 30 Billion Dollar Slush Fund
By Ed Lasky
The Obama administration is seeking to exclude from federal oversight its new $30 billion dollar small-business lending program. Obama's rhetoric about transparency during the campaign was as phony as his vow to end the era of lobbying (last year was that industry's best year ever in Washington).
David Cho writes in the Washington Post:
Senior Treasury officials have told the financial bailout program's inspector general that they are considering excluding a new $30 billion small-business lending initiative from the watchdog office's oversight.
The message, delivered at a meeting last week, sparked outrage from Republicans, who accused the Treasury of taking revenge on the watchdog for writing a series of scathing reports. Neil M. Barofsky, the special inspector general for the bailout, urged the Treasury to reconsider, arguing in a letter that the department was acting "contrary to the best interests of the taxpayer."
One representative, Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is decrying the plot by Treasury to remove Barofsky's office (known by the acronym SIGTARP) from its oversight role regarding the spending of taxpayer dollars.
SIGTARP has been an aggressive watchdog for American taxpayers and this attempt to circumvent their oversight must not go forward," Issa said. "It is disturbing, but not altogether out of character, that this Treasury Department would attempt to deny SIGTARP the ability to conduct oversight of this proposed program."
Barofsky contends that the decision to exclude the watchdog would leave the small business program "vulnerable to potential fraud".
Barofsky must have been biting his lip when he wrote that diplomatic passage. Of course, it would make the 30 billion dollar program "vulnerable to fraud". That is the goal: to have a vast slush fund and honey pot to reward supporters with taxpayer dollars. I have written before that programs such as the Small Business Administration are ripe for abuse: loans become bribes or payoffs. The default rates on these "loans" are high. Obama and his team of Chicago Boys are once again bringing the worst of Chicago alderman mores to the federal government: backroom deals, pressure, payoffs, and bribes.
