More Bailout Baloney

Factcheck.org www.factcheck.org/2010/09/more-bailout-baloney/ Four more freshman House Democrats are claiming in ads to have voted against the Wall Street bailout. Five ads are being run by first-term Democrats claiming they voted against the bailout, which created the unpopular Troubled Asset Relief Program. But Congress approved the bailout program before these lawmakers were even elected, much less sworn in. It appears the misleading claim is contagious: Now Betsy Markey of Colorado, Walt Minnick of Idaho, Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona and Mark Schauer of Michigan all have new ads that contain the assertion. What they did was vote for a resolution to block the Treasury Department from getting the second half of the $700 billion allocated by the bailout. But the vote was purely symbolic, as we wrote. Both the Senate and the House would have had to approve the resolution to prevent the money from being released. Since the Senate had defeated the resolution a week earlier, Treasury already had the money and was in the process of giving it out. The House vote had no impact on that process although viewers of these ads may be led to believe otherwise.