A plurality of Americans think bank bailouts started under President Obama, according to a new Pew poll.
In Pew’s most recent “News IQ Quiz,” 47 percent of respondents thought Obama initiated the Troubled Asset Relief Program, compared to just 34 percent who correctly guessed it was former President George W. Bush.
Yo, anyone interested in the truth….George W. Bush signed the TARP bailout on October 3, 2008, well before Barack Obama was even elected president. Spread the truth…it hurts Republicans. The interesting thing about it is that prior to signing, the bill was supported by the American people. Before the congress started debating it, from Pew…
By a margin of almost two-to-one the American public thinks the government is doing the right thing in investing billions of dollars to try to keep financial institutions and markets secure. Reacting to initial reports of the federal bailout plan over the weekend, 57% said the government was doing the right thing, while 30% said it was doing the wrong thing. At the same time, only 19% of the public believes that the government is currently doing an excellent or good job in handling the financial problems on Wall Street. Support for the administration’s plan to bailout many of the nation’s troubled financial institutions is largely bipartisan.
After the debate, those numbers changed but still showed a plurality of people supporting it, from a Pew poll a week later….
As Congress debated the financial bailout bill over the past week, public support for government action has declined. A new Pew Research Center survey conducted Sept. 27-29 finds a narrow 45%-38% plurality of the public saying that a government plan to invest or commit billions of dollars to secure financial institutions is the right thing to do.
Of course our amnesic public with the help of the brain dead media and the lying Republicans have succeeded at placing this at President Obama’s feet like several other actions by Bush and his gang. But wait, there is more, the majority of the TARP has been paid back
The Troubled Asset Relief Program has reached a significant milestone: The amount of TARP money paid back to the federal government has surpassed the amount that remains outstanding. Through the end of May, $194 billion in TARP money had been repaid, compared with $190 billion in TARP still owed to the government.
Every time someone in the media allows this misinformation to be spewed onto their airwaves, we must stand up to it. The lying and misleading has to stop or us Democrats will pay the price in November.
Extreme Liberal's Blog 
Except that Obama had far more to do with crafting the TARP abomination than Bush did, so truth is a bit slippery here – especially if a poll asks who “initiated” the bill as opposed to who signed it.
Both Obama and McCain made a lot of hay over TARP during their campaigns and both men tried their best to be “leaders” in shaping the bailout. Bush, on the other hand, had very little to do with it other than signing what Congress put in front him.
your right of course extreme liberal. I’ve gotten so disgusted with the media that I’ve seriously stopped paying attention to it. I just don’t find listening to their bs as being helpful in my life. Like your blogs though.
Actually it was Paulson that took the lead. Obama and McCain went to the WH for the summit McCain asked for. So don’t put all this onto President Obama.
It was signed on October 3rd, 2008….a month before Obama was elected. If you, jonolan, think that he had that much power even before being elected…well, I don’t know what to say to you.
Tarp was indeed signed by Bush under his administration and, for the most part, did what it was created to do.
The “stimulus” package is all about Obama and it has been a waste of taxpayers money. There is so much waste in that package and very few new jobs.
Well Ralph, except that every single economist in the world says it worked. It stopped a depression and put us back on the road to recovery. I know this doesn’t fit with your world view, but it is the truth. I heard Erin Burnett on Morning Joe this morning say that every single leader on Wall Street thinks that the economy is heading up, she said there wasn’t one that thought it was going down. Not one, dude. Now I guess if you want to keep sticking your head in the sand and believing whatever your buddies on the right feed you, go right ahead. The stimulus worked and the economy is going to pick up momentum as we head into Christmas. I know you will throw out the ole’ unemployment rate being stuck at 9.5%, but considering where we were 18 months ago, it could be much worse. Saving people from losing jobs….teachers, firefighters, police, road crews, auto workers and more isn’t creating new jobs, but for those people who are still collecting checks, it’s pretty fucking awesome.
EL, Every economist says we are on the road to recovery, I doubt it is every economist who says that. I agree we are on the road to recovery but that is not because of the “stimulus” package. We are on the road to recovery because economy’s have cycles and after a down cycle it will go up.
The “stimulus” package has greatly impacted the massive debt the government has amassed since the democrats gained control in 2007 and total control in 2009. Not a pretty picture you are leaving your grand daughter who will have to pay for all of these social welfare, ruin healthcare so all can share, vote getting programs for the uninspired.
I know I’m right when you are on the opposite side of the issue Ralph, you are very much like Bush as far as being a barometer. Up is down, down is up. Thanks for reassuring me. :)
You are right that the economy goes in cycles and the most the Fed of the Pres or the Congress can do is tinker around the edges. The true measure of government is improving the quality of life of it’s people and this president is kicking some tall ass. Check out this link and weep, Ralph. http://owiki.shoq.us/the-achievements-list#top
That’s what a real president does even when he has no help from the Republicans and the idiots on the left who are bitter about losing the election.
I wasn’t “putting it all” onto Obama. If that had been my goal I would have pointed out McCain’s involvement.
Obviously you’re even more of a subhuman idiot that the average Liberal. That must be the “extreme” part – in your case extremely misborn and a poor mockery of humanity.
What sane human – for your edification, those would be the other bipeds that you vaguely resemble – would believe that a largely despised lame duck President had more say in Congressional legislation than the two candidates to replace him, especially when both of them were already in the Senate?
:) Funny shit, dude. Yea, someone who wasn’t even elected had more say in legislation…sure, because they just knew he was going to get elected and the lame duck president Bush just let the democrat, who hasn’t been elected yet, to write the bill that he just signed for him, a month before he gets elected and 3 and 1/2 months before he is inaugurated. OK! And this begs the question, so you think everything would have been just great if the financial markets were allowed to crumble? Everything would just be fine and dandy now? I didn’t trust Bush as far as I could throw Cheney, but it seemed like something had to be done to prevent a collapse of our entire economy. I remember back those 2 long years ago.
Both Obama and McCain were sitting Senators and one of them was going to be the next POTUS. Of course they had more to say in the matter than Bush did. Frankly Bush did very little insofar as shaping the bailout was concerned, which was probably a good thing in all truthfulness.
As for the bailout – I was against it then and still against it now. While it would suck even more right now, it would have been better in the mid-to-long term to let the market readjust.
TARP reinforced and codified what the long ago Chrysler bailout started – Too Big To Fail. It proved that good business is no longer a prerequisite for continued success because the taxpayers will be forced to bail you out.
Do you really think that businesses don’t know that and add that to the risk calculations?