CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES
WRONG
TURN
didn’t work. Later that afternoon,
Rick Santelli of CNBC called for a
“Tea Party” gathering in Chicago
to protest the president’s plan,
which he said would “subsidize
the losers’ mortgages.”
The plan Treasury crafted was
meant to limit the government’s
role in the process. Rather than
buying up troubled home loans and
then working with borrowers to restructure them, as the federal government had done during the the
1930s under Franklin D. Roosevelt
— and as Republican presidential
candidate John McCain had pro-
HUFFINGTON
11.04.12
posed during one of the debates
— the Treasury Department would
use Troubled Asset Relief Program,
or TARP, bailout money to pay
mortgage companies to restructure
loans at a lower cost.
The choice to use TARP money
made sense given the politics at
the time. The previous fall Congress had essentially written the
federal government a $700 billion check to spend as it saw fit
to save the economy from a complete meltdown. Using money
already earmarked for economic
relief without having to create a
Mitt Romney
holds a
campaign
event in
front of a
foreclosed
home on
January 24,
2012, in
Lehigh Acres,
Fl.