Democrats in Denial: Financial Crisis Began with Clinton

Democrats have a short attention span, especially when it comes to confessing their political sins and owning up to their blunders.

Conveniently, it never goes beyond George W. Bush's presidency. Everything bad has happened in the past seven-and-a-half years; anything good came about during the Clinton administration. It's pointless for them to look past 1993 because their party has such a terrible record at picking their presidential candidates the past 40 years: John Kerry, Al Gore, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey. Their one "success" was Jimmy Carter, a one-term disaster who is considered below average among the presidents by scholars and historians and continues to be a national embarrassment as an "elder statesman." I suppose you can't blame Democrats for trying to be forward thinkers rather than look back at their track record of failures.

The current financial crisis is a good example, particularly the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac institutions. When it comes to the blame game, Democrats love to play as long as they don't have to look beyond the Bush administration. When Tennessee Conservative Watch looked back at where it all began, they found a New York Times article dated September 30, 1999 BB (Before Bush) in which the Clinton administration advocated the ease of credit requirements for home mortgages to people with "generally not good enough" credit. Granted, this was not one lone smoking gun in this mess, but it was certainly a contributing factor.

"Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits."

Fast forward nine years later and Bill Clinton rejects the insinuation by President Bush in his televised address on Wednesday that the economic problems developed "[f]or more than a decade." Yet he does concede in Clintonesque style that he could be partially to blame:

[Clinton] also acknowledged that there was possible danger in his administration’s policy of pressing Fannie Mae, the mortgage company, to lower its credit standards for lower- and middle-income families seeking homes.

“I think, through the lens of this, it looks like that was true,” Clinton said. “But let's go back to where we were at the time. At the time, they had lots of money, were making lots of money, and I thought too much of the money was being given out in value to the shareholders and compensation to the executives. And, at the time, we had a balanced budget and a surplus and a rapidly growing economy in other areas.”

Regardless whether there was a balanced budget and a surplus at the time or not, pushing banks and financial institutions to accept risky mortgages is just bad business.

Do the Democrats acknowledge any blame at all--even a smidge? Of course not. And the Liberal Media accepts it as gospel and goes on blaming President Bush. At least Fox News has the gumption to show Congressional Democrats for what they really are and show that John McCain has been an advocate for regulatory reform.