Perry on TARP support: No 'Ma'am'

After an appearance in Newton, Iowa today, Rick Perry denied to an unidentified woman that he'd ever supported the 2008 bank bailout known as TARP.

"I thought I saw a letter where you had written encouraging the support of TARP legislation," he persisted.

"You saw wrong," he replied flatly, as shown in this video, taken by a tracker, of this morning's event.

This isn't the first time the issue has come up, and the questioner might be excused for having read Perry's October 1 letter that way. The letter, co-signed by then-Gov. Joe Manchin in their capacities as heads of the RGA and DGA, came three days after TARP's failure to pass the House rocked the markets.

The AP covered the letter with the headline, "Governors, Business Up Pressure for Bailout Bill." It's very hard to read otherwise.

"We strongly urge Congress to leave partisanship at the door and pass an economic recovery package," they wrote. "It is time for Washington, D.C. to step up, be responsible, an do what's in the best interest of American taxpayers and our economy."

Perry, later that day, released a statement that seemed aimed at countering the impression left by his letter without clarifying what he was calling for: "[G]overnment should not be in the business of using taxpayer dollars to bail out corporate America. Congress needs to take off its partisan gloves and work together to bring both short and long term stability to the credit markets....”

The two of you thrive on being the central part of a thread. You start the trouble and then pretend you’re above it all. Both of you are very passive-aggressive.

All I did was point out that the letter never said anything about TARP (which it doesn't), and that Palin supported TARP (which it did). Even the OP changed his story later in the thread saying it could have been about the "Porkulus" bill. Kind of defeats the purpose of this thread, doesn't it?

Neither one of you are interested in discussing a thread and determining the truth. What you are interested in is pretending your smarter than everybody.

So, is it the "truth" that Perry supported TARP? Or did he support "Porkulus", as the OP asks later in the thread? Has that been decided in this thread? If so, tell me where. I'd say I'm one of the few actually seeking the truth in this thread. If you don't agree, I think you're off-base in your accusation.

I’m sure I’m not the first one to tell the two of you, but you’re both full of it.

Full of what? Wanting to beat Obama, and not wanting to rip apart the GOP base because of wild smears like this thread? If so, then yes, I'm "full of it".

The two of you thrive on being the central part of a thread. You start the trouble and then pretend you’re above it all. Both of you are very passive-aggressive.

Neither one of you are interested in discussing a thread and determining the truth. What you are interested in is pretending your smarter than everybody.

I’m sure I’m not the first one to tell the two of you, but you’re both full of it.

Full of what? Wanting to beat Obama, and not wanting to rip apart the GOP base because of wild smears like this thread? If so, then yes, I'm "full of it".

"he supported" -- the letter is from the two governor's associations, which represent together the governors of all 50 states. It is not a personal letter from Rick Perry.

No. The letter was from the two governors. The two governors were the only two people who signed the letter. The wording in the letter specifically expresses that the opinion in the letter was that of only the two signers, Perry and Manchin.

"the legislation -- when written, there was no legislation yet written, just discussions of ways to solve the crisis. The letter supports taking action, without specifying what action should be taken.

No. There was legislation written before October 1, 2008. There was the original bill, and then the original bill was expanded and put forth as an amendment to HR 3997, which failed to pass the House on Sep. 29, 2008.

that legislation was TARP -- The letter says "an economic recovery program", not TARP

The original bill and then the expanded legislation put forth as an amendment, were all commonly referred to as "Economic Recovery Packages".

Anyway, Perry never specifically said what he wanted in a recovery package. He only said that he wanted one passed soon. Given the legislation that was being offered at the time, Perry's (and Manchin's) letter offered no contrustructives ideas and offered no objections to the TARPY legislation that was circulating at that time.

No. The letter was from the two governors

The letter head was for the two associations. The e-mail subject was "RGA and DGA release joint Letter to Congress. The signatures are annotated with the official position of the two signatories as the respective chairs of their organizations. Organizations get very upset when someone in the organization claims to speak for the organization when they are in fact speaking on their own behalf. I did a google search, and found NO objection from ANY governor to the letter -- so I believe it was accepted as the official position of the two associations.

When an organization speaks on an issue, the letter is signed by the chair of the organization. This is standard practice. On your side of the argument, I will agree that the letter is written with personal references that suggest it was a decision of the two leaders. But the lack of protest by the organizations to me trumps the wording of the letter. No organization would sit by, much less two organizations, while their leaders pretended to speak for them.

No. There was legislation written before October 1, 2008 - You are correct, and I shouldn't have used "yet written", I repeated the when written from the letter. My bad. At the time they wrote the RGA/DGA letter, the current version of the legislation had just been rejected by the house. The letter implies that the congress should do something different -- stop the partisanship and find a real solution. There is no indication that this means pass the bill that was just rejected. The conservative position in rejecting the first bill was to go back and re-write it; the letter doesn't reject that position, it just says do something.

The original bill and then the expanded legislation put forth as an amendment, were all commonly referred to as "Economic Recovery Packages". - that is true, but it doesn't change the fact that they didn't reference the specific bills being considered, either by name, or by bill number.

I agree with that statement. You could not interpret this letter as calling for something different. You also can't interpret the letter as calling for what was passed. You are left in the dark as to what Perry was actually thinking at the moment, or what the RGA/DGA wanted to do at that moment.

I've felt that way all along with this letter. It is a standard type of letter an association writes when it isn't sure what the solution is, but knows something is needed. Objecting to the bi-partisanship is also valid, although as I've argued elsewhere from a republican perspective, arguing for "bi-partisanship" in this case was arguing for the democrats to back off their position and accept at least some of what the MINORITY republican party wanted.

Republicans had no chance to get their way, at best they could vote no and force the democrats to put together their own package.

That was made worse though because Bush was a republican, and he was pushing a form of TARP (not quite what passed, because theoretically it was made better, although in the end it didn't turn out that way). So in the midst of a market meltdown, a cash flow freeze, money markets going belly up, and the real possibility of a bank panic/run that would wipe out a lot of small community banks and leave people hanging, the republicans in the house and senate could either do nothing and hope not to be blamed, or could urge "bi-partisanship" and hope to get some input into the final bill. They chose the latter.

And I know people here are upset with that, and I know I'm in the minority when I agree with Sarah Palin on that point, but at the time I saw panic and uncertainty and thought that what was passed was a reasonable attempt to solve the problem without too much government interference. I'm afraid to say I was stupid, because in my mind that would be saying that everybody who thought that way was stupid, and there were others who said the same thing that I don't want to be accused of calling stupid.

And if there is any doubt as to what Perry's actual position is on the actual bill that passed AFTER the letter was written, you only have to look at the letter he wrote in December of 2008, a mere 2 months later, which attacked the bailouts, rejected more money for states, and denounced the payoff to the car companies. If he "changed his mind", he did it within 2 months of the bill's passage, and as soon as the effects were becoming clear. And his statement rejecting the bill rejected it for all the right reasons, and sounds like something any solid conservative arguing against him here would have written.

I don't think he changed his mind, I think the december letter reflects how he felt about the final solution. But in any case, it puts to bed the fiction that he supported the TARP until he wanted to run for President, or that he supported the TARP because he wanted a bailout for his state, or that he supports bailing out car companies and other businesses -- all those things started a couple of months after the bill passed, and he immediately denounced them.

Charles: Are you saying that, as a Palin supporter, I should never expect you to post anything that you think is negative about her? Virginia Ridgerunner: No, I've known you long enough that I don't think you are a supporter at all.

I was afraid that my sentence construction was going to confuse you.

What I SAID, re-written to make it clear, is "Are you saying that, since you support Palin, I should never expect you to post anything that you think is negative about her?"

I said that because you charged that if you found me making anything you thought was negative about Sarah Palin, it would mean that I wasn't a Palin supporter -- thus implying that Palin supporters wouldn't write anything negative about her. SO I was asking if that means I shouldn't expect YOU to ever write anything negative about her, which would then mean that your opinion about things related to her was essentially worthless.

I'm sorry you didn't get to respond to that because you thought the "as a Palin Supporter" referred to me, when in the sentence as constructed it clearly referenced the final clause, which was about you.

Now, onto your charge:

And yet you are another freeper who has presented NO evidence to support your personal opinion. If I'm no supporter, you'd think it would be easy to find postings where I say negative things about Sarah Palin.

But other than the blow-up about the use of the word "retarded", I don't remember a time when I posted negatively about her. I do believe that when she resigned, I posted that I thought it would be bad for her career. I don't think that was a negative post, just my being a pessimist about what it would do to her. But I write a lot of stuff, so I'm betting if you worked at it, you'd find SOMETHING that you would claim proves your point.

But my hope is that, in searching for all the things I've said about Sarah Palin, before you find that one thing that "proves" you right, you'll see everything positive that I've written and realise you are wrong. That's why I'm taking the chance of challenging you.

actually, I would just as soon simply correct errors and point out facts, and move on. I made the mistake in this thread of seeing a comment that made me think, and expressing my general opinion about attacks as a response to that one poster. That got me into a tangential argument which was quite a distraction and left me personally annoyed at myself for being so imprecise in what to me was a throw-away comment of feelings.

Neither one of you are interested in discussing a thread and determining the truth.

The thread is about whether Rick Perry was telling the truth when a woman asked if he supported TARP and wrote a letter supporting TARP and he said no.

I posted directly to that question, and provided facts to support my contention: the letter was an RGA/DGA joint release signed by the chairs of those two organizations; it didn't specify ANY particular legislation, even though one bill had just been rejected so they could have mentioned it if they supported it.

Both signatories are on record numerous times later opposing the TARP, which is another good indication that their letter didn't support the TARP. The letter certainly never mentioned the TARP.

Perry wrote a letter 2 months after TARP, attacking the bailouts, raising the spector of the debt, rejecting money to the states, opposing the car deals, and in general voicing solid conservative principles. So it is clear that he opposed TARP well before he decided to run for President.

Since some objected to Perry even voicing ANY support for ANY action by congress, it was appropriate to also mention that Sarah Palin was calling for action by congress, as were MANY OTHER CONSERVATIVES. I mention Sarah Palin specifically beause she is the most revered conservative I could name-drop. I'm not attacking her, I'm using her to refute the charge that conservatives would never have called for any legislation to pass at the time.

So, you can pretend that I am ignoring the thread, but you would be dead wrong. I dealt specifically with the charges, and built a solid argument against the claim that Perry wasn't truthful in this case.

Now, maybe you could tell me what your opinion is of the article -- or would you like to make more tangential, off-topic personal attacks on people discussing the article instead?

First, I don't believe the TARP can be described as a "bank bailout that was in the hundreds of billions of dollars". I don't have all the figures, but from what I remember, the banks have largely paid back all the TARP money, or the government has sold the preferred stock and received the nearly the full price back. The parts of TARP that put it in the red are primarily the car company bailout and the Obama TARP re-distributions.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the final cost of the TARP, including all the repayments, was $25 billion dollars. Not hundreds of billions. There were hundreds of billions involved, but most of it was loans and temporary purchases, and they have been unwound.

I'm sure some will argue that the CBO numbers are not accurate, but even if they are off by 100%, that's still 50 billion. As government programs go, the TARP was a steal.

The problem with TARP from a money standpoint is mostly that, because we do budgets on a year-to-year basis, it "cost" hundreds of billions charged to the Bush administration's watch, and all the money was paid back during the Obama administration, which somehow managed to spend it all. Obama's deficits are actually higher than advertised if you treat TARP as a true loan/repayment, while Bush's deficit is lower.

But because conservative hate the concept of the bailouts so much, we haven't done the work to point out that little fiction of Obama's. BTW, getting all the money back doesn't justify everything done with TARP, but it does make some of the criticism less valid. And it certainly shows, in my mind, that what Sarah Palin said about the original TARP was largely true; she also couldn't have anticipated what Bush and Obama would do with the TARP money.

Sorry, but I'm not going to defend Perry against rediculous charges of "crony capitalism" by accusing Palin of it. TARP as originally sold wasn't an example of crony capitalism. It was supposed to be a fair, even-handed purchase of assets and debt that was artificially deflated because of the economic crisis, at prices that were our best guess at real value, in the hopes that liquidity would be restored and then we could sell off the assets, collect on the debts, and get our money back. It wasn't supposed to be a slush fund to pay off preferred companies, much less to buy out car companies, and all the crap Obama did with it.

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