Another case against Jacob Lew
January 15, 2013 at 6:36 pm in News by Dustin Siggins 6 Comments
Last Thursday, Tea Party Patriots outlined concerns regarding President Obama’s nomination of White House Chief of Staff Jacob Lew for Secretary of the Treasury. As we explained, Lew has spent most of his career in government or on Wall Street, and has shown a complete lack of regard for the fiscal straits of America.
This morning, Timothy Carney of The Washington Examiner looked into Lew’s career a little more deeply:
Jack Lew, President Obama’s nominee for treasury secretary, is a revolving-door K Streeter and Wall Streeter who pocketed a near-million-dollar bonus from Citibank three months after taxpayers bailed out the failed financial titan.
Obama has spent years denigrating revolving-door lobbyists and “fat cats” from Wall Street, yet he has populated his administration with them.
Later:
With Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, Lew passed back through the revolving door, serving eight years in the White House, including a stint from 1998 to 2001 as director of the Office of Management and Budget.
After that, Lew spent a few years as an administrator at New York University before going to Wall Street.
In June 2006, Lew joined Citigroup, one of the five largest banks in America, where he worked under fellow Clinton alumnus Robert Rubin. In January 2008, Lew became chief operating officer of Citi Alternative Investments.
And more:
In autumn 2008, Wall Street began to crumble, and so Washington stepped in with a string of taxpayer-funded bailouts. The U.S. government funneled tens of billions of dollars in emergency aid to Citi, soon buying a huge share in the company. Absent the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Citigroup would likely have collapsed.
On Jan. 15, 2009 — three months after Congress passed TARP and in the midst of a stock market collapse — Lew received a payment of $944,518 from Citi, according to his personal financial disclosure forms. Because the Treasury was covering Citi’s losses in order to save the failed bank from liquidation, that was, in effect, a check from taxpayers to Lew, days before he entered the Obama administration.
Carney closes his piece by noting that “[b]y all accounts, Jacob Lew is a serious, smart hard worker.” However, between his government-centric career and his ties to Wall Street, he appears to be typical of the Big Government/Big Business collusion that led to TARP, green energy bailouts, and the auto bailouts. Even if he is a smart, serious, and hard worker, Americans should demand a Treasury Secretary who has the interest of the people in mind, not the special interests, and a Secretary who actually takes the national debt seriously.
Screw Obama’s cronies, Why not put Paul Ryan in the position of Treasury Secretary, at least he had a plan to get out of debt and he is for the american public
You guys are going nuts tomorrow when Obama uses executive order to ban assault rifles!
The fact that Lew was Management and Budget chief at the end of Clintons tour is profoundly amusing. While we were being told of the dot-com millionaires generating so much revenue that we were showing a profit and considering paying down the national debt, the economy was in recession.
Of the heavy trucks built for model year 2000, almost 30% were not sold until well into 2001, the top-line trucks holding over till 2002. This indicates that the transportation industry was showing a loss, as trucking companies held older-paid off power units rather than roll them over for tax-advantages.
That particular bump was bad enough for Daimler-Benz, who controlled Western Star, to shift production from British Columbia to Mexico, as well as the Freightliner models, the Columbia and the Coronado lines.
So, the smoke and mirrors specialist of the Clinton years is back on the staff, I gotta see this pitch!
We have not had a budget for the government for 4 years. Even now they are not discussing a budget, but individual program appropriations. Given our level of debt, you cam’t get more insane than that. We need a plan for government, a budget.
How about this course of action:
Generate a budget in the House. Send it to the Senate.
Use the rules of the Senate to prevent ANY AND ALL other actions until Congress approves a plan for government to stop borrowing money.
No cuts, no deal.
And, NO MORE DEBT. NOT FOR ANY REASON.
If the president acts unconstitutionally and attempts to borrow money without the approval of Congress, impeach him. If necessary, make Obama spend his entire term in the Senate fighting a conviction and removal from office until he understands what is written in the Constitution.
Well you have to hand it to Lew. He knows how to work the system and make money. But than you see big business, Banks, ETC, doing it every day.
As far as a budget, forget it. Neither side wants one. As far as excessive spending, you can forget that to. Obama will get his debt increase and spending will keep getting worse without a budget. The Conservatives, it’s like, well we don’t like it, but for the better good you can have it Obama.
Sickening!
The ONLY sane way to approach the government’s spending problem is to have a plan for government. The only plan for government is a budget. If Congress does not produce a budget, then curing the government’s spending problem will be an impossibility.
Those in government that oppose curing the government’s spending problem will oppose any budget. A budget must be forced on them. Stop any and all appropriations discussions until a budget is agreed upon. When they understand that the government will be shut down until there is a plan for government, then they will approve a plan for government.
The very reason we have not been able to control spending is the fact that we have not had a budget. Get a budget first. We cannot approve appropriations without a budget.
No more debt. Not for any reason. Give us a plan, then we’ll talk about other things, like appropriating funds for the government agencies to continue functioning.