Another One For The Fire

GOP Rep Darrell Issa is going to be a busy man should the Republicans take back the House.  Issa, as presumptive Chair of the House Oversight Committee, is adding yet another promise to investigate the "crimes" of the Obama Administration, this time saying he'll dive into Fannie, Freddie and subprime mortgages, but the real task is to determine if the Feds should be involved in the housing market at all, and find a way to pin the 2008 financial crisis on President Obama months before he actually took office.

The conservative Republican from California, who would become chairman of the powerful House oversight and government reform committee, said hearings would focus on whether the federal government should be involved at all in sponsoring home loans for the poor.

The investigations would centre on the roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the nationalised government-sponsored lending institutions, which Republicans say contributed strongly to the 2008 meltdown by promoting subprime lending.

Mr Issa said the role of Countrywide, the bankrupt subprime lender, would also be investigated.

He did not spell out whether he would investigate alleged connections between subprime lenders and Democratic politicians.

“We need to look not only at the failure of Freddie and Fannie but even after that whether the federal government should be involved in financing home loans at all,” Mr Issa said.

It's funny.  If Issa really was interested in seeing what caused the housing meltdown, he'd be looking at the banks, not Fannie and Freddie.  After all, the government had to come in and clean up all the bad loans private sector lenders like Countrywide made in the first place.

But no, he's looking for "transparency" and is promising to find a way to pin this all on the Donks.  Just like his other laundry list of avowed investigations:

Examples of the type of investigations that would “open up government” included looking into the role of the department of agriculture in regulating the food industry.

Mr Issa also said he would investigate the Wikileaks disclosures, which he said “animated him at a time when we are at war”.

And he spoke vaguely about “looking into dangers to democracy, dangers to the well-being of people and issues that distort democracy”.

Elsewhere, Mr Issa has hinted he would investigate last year’s “climategate” scandal as part of the alleged “politicisation of science”.

And he has also mentioned the White House’s alleged role in trying to interfere in Democratic primary elections to influence challengers to drop out.

“If you have the power of subpoena, then your letters get answered,” he said.

Really?  Somebody ought to tell Henry Waxman that, because in 2007 and 2008 his subpoenas went unanswered by the Bush administration, and in 2009 and 2010 President Obama asked the Dems to back off in the name of bipartisanship.  It's a good thing Obama promised to look forwards and not backwards, otherwise the Republicans might have done something crazy like promise to start multiple witch hunts.

Oh wait.