Countrywide scandal

(The Patriot Post) - Congressional Democrats have a scandal brewing, and two top senators are caught up in it. Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Kent Conrad (D-ND), Chairman of the Budget Committee and member of the Finance Committee, have both received highly favorable loans from Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender and a hot target for blame in the whole sub-prime mess. Both senators claimed not to know that they received loans much more favorable than those granted to average customers, which means they are either horrible liars or they are stupendously ill-equipped to be running their respective committees.

Both senators received their juicy home loans from Countrywide honcho Angelo Mozilo, as did Jim Johnson, a top Demo operative who was slated to handle Barack Obama’s vice-presidential search committee until his relationship with Mozilo became public. Other friends of the toxic Mozilo include Alphonso Jackson, the former HUD secretary who resigned in April, and Donna Shalala, former HHS secretary under Bill Clinton.

Republican Study Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) called for an investigation into the sweet deals given to Dodd and Conrad, but his fellow Republicans are loath to leap at the opportunity, signaling that this scandal could spread beyond just one party. Why else pass up a great opportunity to expose the Democrats’ hypocrisy in an election year? Democrats had been hoping to plow a mortgage bailout through Congress before this whole mess gets exposed, but President George W. Bush has threatened a veto because of the overly generous terms for Countrywide and similar lenders. Now we will have to wait and see if Republicans have the courage to take this issue to the bank, as it were, and call the Demos out before the story gets swept away.