Steve Sailer proves that George Bush’s fingers are all over the mortgage meltdown by quoting a 2004 White House press release:
As part of President Bush’s ongoing effort to help American families achieve the dream of homeownership, Federal Housing Commissioner John C. Weicher today announced that HUD is proposing to offer a “zero down payment” mortgage, the most significant initiative by the Federal Housing Administration in over a decade. This action would help remove the greatest barrier facing first-time homebuyers – the lack of funds for a down payment on a mortgage.
This doesn’t absolve Democrats like Barney Frank from their own culpability in creating the crisis, instead, it demonstrates the ongoing problem with America’s left-leaning bifactional ruling party. And the fact that there are a few reliable Republicans who still stand strongly for limited government doesn’t relieve the Republican leaders in the White House, House, and Senate of their responsibility for the party’s absolutely abysmal performance of the last eight years.
On a related note, George Will notices that the GOP hasn’t exactly been shy about “spreading the wealth”:
America can’t have that, exclaimed the Republican ticket while Republicans — whose prescription drug entitlement is the largest expansion of the welfare state since President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society gave birth to Medicare in 1965; a majority of whom in Congress supported a lavish farm bill at a time of record profits for the less than 2 percent of the American people-cum-corporations who farm — and their administration were partially nationalizing the banking system, putting Detroit on the dole and looking around to see if some bit of what is smilingly called “the private sector” has been inadvertently left off the ever-expanding list of entities eligible for a bailout from the $1 trillion or so that is to be “spread around.”