Did General Motors Really Repay Its Taxpayer Bailout?

Chuck Grassley

General Motors announced this week that it repaid its multibillion-dollar taxpayer-backed TARP loans. GM even bragged that it was able to “repay the taxpayers in full, with interest, ahead of schedule, because more customers are buying [GM] vehicles.” There was great fanfare, including expensive, around-the-clock GM TV commercials nationwide. But, the hype is not the reality. In fact, GM did not repay the loans with money it earned from selling cars. Instead, GM repaid the TARP loans with money it withdrew from another TARP fund at the Treasury Department.

The day before the GM story broke, Neil Barofsky, the government TARP watchdog, testified before the Senate 

Finance Committee. He explained that GM did not use earnings to repay its TARP debt. The April quarterly report to Congress from his office stated: “The source of funds for these quarterly [debt] payments will be other TARP funds currently held in an escrow account.”

GM filings with the SEC reveal that GM was paying 7 percent interest on a $6.7 billion TARP debt. The filings also confirm that the source of funds for GM’s debt repayments was a multibillion-dollar TARP-funded escrow account at Treasury; that means it was taxpayer money — not earnings.

Meanwhile, in all the fanfare and patting themselves on the back, Treasury and GM made no mention of what happened to the $2.5 billion loan GM owes its union health care plan. The union loan carries a 9 percent interest rate and runs until 2017. Don’t most Americans try to pay off their higher-interest debts first? Well, the union loan was not paid off. Why not? Does the union get to keep collecting 9 percent from GM until 2017, courtesy of the American taxpayer, while taxpayers give up a 7 percent return over the next five years in exchange for the hope that GM stock will be worth more than what we paid for it, someday down the road?

It is far from clear how GM and the Obama administration could honestly say, much less trumpet in prime-time television ads, that GM repaid its TARP loans in any meaningful way. The reality is that GM got additional TARP billions from a Treasury escrow account filled with taxpayer dollars. Taxpayers have not been paid back “in full” and are still on the hook for the TARP stock investment in GM. Whether taxpayer funds are ultimately recovered depends upon the administration’s ability to sell GM stock at a profit some day. Of course, we all hope it works out that way, and it might. But, the American people deserve more than puffed-up press releases and misleading commercials claiming that GM paid its loans back to the government with money it earned. I recognize that one of the goals of the GM ad campaign is to build trust, but GM did it all wrong, apparently with some help from the administration. Shifting bailout money from GM debt to GM stock is not the same as repaying it. Stock is riskier than debt. Maybe it’s a good idea. Maybe it’s a step in the right direction, maybe not. Only time will tell. But, we should be clear with the American people about what happened here.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Treasury is beginning to admit the truth. Treasury claims the source of the funds was “clearly disclosed” all along. Well, that might be technically true. However, to understand the disclosure you have to be a sophisticated investor with time to pore over the fine print buried in massive SEC filings and government reports prepared by independent watchdogs with teams of auditors. The average citizen, on the other hand, just sees the GM CEO saying that GM has paid back the taxpayer “in full.” The truth is that GM originally received over $49 billion from the US government and many billions remain to be recouped. That is why we were told at the Senate Finance Committee hearing that TARP losses related to the auto companies are expected to exceed $30 billion.

The timing of this maneuver also is troubling. The administration’s so-called Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee, a TARP excise tax intended to recover TARP losses, was the subject of the Finance Committee hearing. The Office of Management and Budget, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, estimate that overall taxpayer TARP losses will exceed $100 billion, and the auto companies will account for over 30 percent of that amount, more than $30 billion. So why does the president exclude the auto companies from his TARP excise tax proposal? I raised this issue at the hearing. I noted that GM refused to testify. The next day we learned that GM, with the permission of Treasury, withdrew billions from the TARP escrow fund and accelerated the repayment of the entire GM TARP loan. Immediately, GM and the administration launched a public relations campaign touting “repayment.”

Regardless of the motive, this situation is a perfect example of the shenanigans caused by excessive government intervention in the economy. Being honest with the American people is not optional. The sooner these extraordinary entanglements between taxpayer and the private sector are over, the better.

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Health Bill Estimated to Cost $940 Billion, Setting Up Possible Sunday Vote

FOXNews.com

Update: Congress Daily reporter Anna Edney reports a leadership aide tells her a final CBO score will be released Friday or Saturday.

House Democrats said Thursday that their revamped health care reform bill would achieve the deficit reductions needed to push forward with a delicate plan to finalize the package, setting up a possible vote for Sunday. 

Understanding Narcissism is Understanding Obama

Posted by Steph C

It’s often quite difficult to talk about once having been an abused spouse because it elicits expressions of sympathy and overshadows the point of the posts or articles. It’s not about sympathy for me but looking out for my country. I’m okay. We are not okay.

There have been a few times when I’ve said that Obama reminds me of my ex-husband. My ex-husband is not a black man. You see, I lived with a narcissist for 23 years. That experience is why I recognize the same in President Barack Obama.

Narcissistic personality disorder symptoms may include (Source: Mayo Clinic):

Believing that you’re better than others
Fantasizing about power, success and attractiveness
Exaggerating your achievements or talents
Expecting constant praise and admiration
Believing that you’re special and acting accordingly
Failing to recognize other people’s emotions and feelings
Expecting others to go along with your ideas and plans
Taking advantage of others
Expressing disdain for those you feel are inferior
Being jealous of others
Believing that others are jealous of you
Trouble keeping healthy relationships
Setting unrealistic goals
Being easily hurt and rejected
Having a fragile self-esteem
Appearing as tough-minded or unemotional

You can look at that list all day long and not understand what you’re seeing in Obama without some examples.

During the last months/weeks of finalizing my divorce from the narcissist in my life, one of my friends confessed something to me one day. She lived on a hill in a wooded area that had been discovered to have old Indian burial grounds. I seemed to have a knack for finding things like that. One time when my husband and I were visiting I had gone off looking for something. She and he struck up a conversation about me, her telling him things about me he apparently didn’t know but should have after 23 years of marriage. The problem was, he didn’t recognize those qualities in himself and I was not a separate person from him in his world. It was when he asked her who she was talking about when it dawned on her that he didn’t even know me.

The narcissist sees everyone in his life as extensions of himself (or herself, although clinical narcissism is more common in men). They are not recognized as separate entities with individual strengths and weaknesses. This country as a whole, is now an extension of Obama. We are not separate beings with our own thoughts and failings or strengths and weaknesses.

The matter of the terrorist trials being held in New York give us an example via Politico.com:

“I don’t think it will be offensive at all when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him,” Obama told NBC’s Chuck Todd.

When Todd asked Obama if he was interfering in the trial process by declaring that Mohammed will be executed, Obama, a former constitutional law professor, insisted that he wasn’t trying to dictate the result.

In Obama’s mind he’s setting right a wrong, according to the view of his world. It’s inconceivable that his right thing would be very wrong for those whom it most concerns, namely those who experienced deep loss from the attack on the World Trade Center. 9/11/2001. And he exhibits no understanding they would feel any different about the issue.

““What I said was, people will not be offended if that’s the outcome. I’m not pre-judging, I’m not going to be in that courtroom, that’s the job of prosecutors, the judge and the jury,” Obama said. “What I’m absolutely clear about is that I have complete confidence in the American people and our legal traditions and the prosecutors, the tough prosecutors from New York who specialize in terrorism.”

Read the rest of this article on RedState.

President Obama's Porpoise Show

By Harold Witkov

I remember the Porpoise Show audience being virtually all teachers and students, and the whole lot of us sitting together shoulder to shoulder like sardines in a can. I remember the porpoise tricks, the leaps, the playing with the ball, and the intentional and playful splashing, all to the delight of the crowd. Most of all, I remember studying the trainer with his voice commands and hand signals to the porpoises awaiting instruction.  I remember the trainer’s nearby bucket and the fish chunk rewards he liberally doled out to each porpoise after every trick.  “How cool to be a porpoise trainer,” I thought.

When the show was over the crowd filed out, passing near the edge of the pool. As fate would have it, I was able to get the attention of one of the porpoises. I raised my right hand to shoulder height and, pretending I had a piece of fish between my closed fingers, I began a horizontal zigzag motion with my wrist.  To my shock and astonishment, the porpoise began vertically rising out of the water.  With my classmates screaming and my teacher turning menacingly to see whom it was causing the commotion, I lowered my hand down by my side as quickly as I could and the porpoise correspondingly dropped in the water.

The excitement was over as fast as it had begun.  But what I remember most of the incident was the porpoise watching me as I filed out of the complex with the rest of my classmates.  I could swear that porpoise was giving me the dirtiest of looks for not having tossed him his duly earned fish chunk.

Looking back at my experience, I see it as a type of metaphor for today’s political situation.  I see the porpoise trainer as President Barack Obama, the audience representing the world, and the porpoises in the pool as the American people.

Plucked from the freedom of some vast ocean and to the cheers and delight of the world, President Barack Obama is taking away our liberties and training us to be world pleasers, rather than world leaders. Look how entertaining we can be with every trick he gets us to perform.  Through his techniques of behavior modification, look how he weakens our military, takes over our banks, our auto companies, and before you know it, our health care! Watch us jump through his hoops and make a big splash. Do what he says and get your fresh stimulus fish chunk handouts. Be careful though. If you do not perform to his liking or choose to cause trouble, you might just go without. 

Read the rest at The American Thinker.com