You Don't Want Jack (Lew)
The Market Ticker ® - Commentary on The Capital Markets
Posted 2013-01-10 08:52
by Karl Denninger
in Editorial
 

Well now, at least we have one decent Senator....

A strongly worded statement by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. -- prepared in anticipation of that nomination and obtained by Fox News -- signals the bumpy ride Lew could face during the Senate confirmation process. Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, says Lew misled Congress about the White House's budget proposals and argues that should disqualify him from being put in charge of the government's finances.

"Lew, as the president's budget director, appeared before Congress and continued to insist that President Obama's budget-which Lew had crafted-would not add to the debt of the United States," Sessions said in the statement, calling Lew's comments "the most direct and important false assertion during my entire time in Washington."

"The most direct and false assertion"?  Oh I don't know about that.  There have been so many to choose from, including the $700 billion that was allegedly to buy "toxic assets" but Paulson knew good and damn well he intended to use elsewhere before TARP was passed, as was revealed during hearings under oath by Kashkari.

But I'll take this as at least a lie of the same degree, if not greater.  And the fact of the matter is that Congress has to stop accepting these lies and ratifying them, because once you take a lie told to you, act on and incorporate it and then do not bring the person(s) who lied to you to justice when that becomes apparent you are complicit in and an equal party to the lie yourself!

So I'm heartened to hear this from Jeff Sessions, but I remain deeply skeptical that Mr. Sessions, or anyone else for that matter on Capitol Hill, will actually force the truth to be told and accountability be enforced upon those both in the Administration and Congress who have enabled and promulgated this outrageous mess of deficit spending we have in the US today.

And make no mistake folks -- I've talked with enough Senators' offices to be utterly convinced that The Senate, by and large, knows full well how deficit spending screws everyone in America -- that it is exactly identical, economically, to a tax -- and yet they are unwilling to come before the people and both explain their conduct thus far in this regard and change it.

As I have noted before Lew is unsuitable for a whole host of reasons, including the fact that Obama could (and almost-certainly will) use him as a tool to play games with The Second Amendment.  But this is a function of his being tied below the waist to The President and not so much a matter of his personal ideology.  As a consequence it most-certainly applies on matter of the budget and fiscal policy as well; my original indictment was not limited to Constitutional concerns.

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