Barney Frank: AIG Bonuses Reward Incompetence

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This is a rush transcript from "Glenn Beck," March 31, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

We have his involvement in giving $12 million in TARP funds to a troubled One United Bank in Boston, even though the treasury said it's only going to give money to the healthy banks, they gave it to a bad one for some unknown reason which — by the way, isn't Maxine Waters the head of the House, you know, the Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing? Wasn't her husband the bank's director until last spring? It's so great. It's like Congress is one big happy family, strangling us all to death.

A little further into the past, a pesky little conflict of interest where his boyfriend was at Fannie. When he was overseeing it, the House Banking Committee from 1991 to 1998 — I mean, you know, hey, that's no big deal.

So what is it we're giving Mr. Barney Frank? We're giving him $174,000 a year of your money, with unbelievable great health care. I mean, you can't get it. He's also entitled to $93,000 a year in retirement benefits as soon as he leaves office. That's just — I mean, hmm, it makes me feel good.

I'll tell you what. I'm going to let you decide. Do you think Barney Frank, you know, is using the people's money in the right way, or should he be held to a higher standard? How about all of those in Congress? Maybe that's what these tea parties should be all about.

Relinquish your pay! I mean, until we fix just a couple of things — I mean, the budget that's completely out of whack, an economy that's on the skids, two wars, officials that are either incompetent or totally corrupt — I mean, I just think that you maybe you — how do you sleep at night?

By the way — Happy Birthday, sweetie pie.

He is a Republican of South Carolina. He is the governor there. He is Mark Sanford.

And you are not amused by these antics on this program. How are you, governor?

(LAUGHTER)

GOV. MARK SANFORD, (R) SOUTH CAROLINA: I'm always amused by you, Glenn. I never know what's coming next.

BECK: I'm not really what that means.

OK. Governor, listen I — first of all, good for you for standing up against taking this — this is heroin that they're trying to put into the veins of the states. And good for you for standing up and saying — no, we're not going to take it.

But I read something that was amazing to me. They're now going around you and saying the state has no right to reject these funds. Could you explain that a little bit?

SANFORD: Yes, it's kind of scary. It's "federalism is dead" 101. And, you know, the Founding Fathers believed in this notion of states being incubators of different changes that they would have different applications because we're different. I mean, California is very different than South Carolina.

And what they're basically saying is, no, you do it our way, you take the program as we have configured it. We have proposed twice, saying, wait a minute, based on our debt levels, based on some needs that we have as a state, we want to put some money aside for a rainy day. And basically they said, no.

But not only did they say no, the DNC, the Democratic National Committee ran ads against me all last week saying, you know, call the governor and tell him to do as we told him to do.

(CROSSTALK)

BECK: You got to do it the right way. This is the way they always do — you call Governor Sanford's office and tell him we don't want any of his shenanigans around here!

That's the way they always do it. OK, go ahead.

(LAUGHTER)

SANFORD: I can never do it quite the way you can do it, but what's interesting is, you know, why do you have governors? Why do you have state legislative bodies if there's no discretion in altering things as you see fit at the local level.

And if you think about this in a military sense, you know, they give discretion to the commander in the field. In the business world, they give discretion to the person that's out there at the plant manager level. And in this case, we're being relegated to very strange rules that I think are ultimately hazardous to this republic's existence that go beyond the weight in scale of printing money that you don't have which in itself is obviously a huge problem.

BECK: OK. You know, a lot of people are watching. They're — and they're frustrated and, you know, I don't understand why there are not more, you know, die-hard liberals that are as frustrated, the ones who were saying, this budget is out of control, this spending is out of control, now we don't even hear about any of that. And quite honestly, the hypocritical Republicans who didn't have a problem with the budget before and now do, I mean, we've got to talk about principles and that's what you were talking about.

But — the new Department of Education head who — what a surprise — is from Chicago. But he said that he cares about the children, and he's going to just take care of these children because you just won't take care of these children because there's a lot of new programs. But — your point if I'm not mistaken is — no, no, no, you're taking care of the children in South Carolina by not taking it. Can you explain that?

SANFORD: Yes, I mean, a couple of things. One, give me a break. And this is the ultimate in nanny state when you have an unelected superintendent of education at the federal level dictating to an elected governor, an elected House and Senate, what they're going to do and how they're going to do it.

I would, secondly, say, what we said was, wait a minute. Since we don't have any of this money that's now being dispensed from Washington, D.C., since we're going out and printing money and reissuing debt to solve a problem, mind you, that was created by too much debt. Since that's taking place, and since those costs will be borne by the next generation, in fact, it is sort of fiscal child abuse to do what we're doing.

BECK: Yes.

SANFORD: And we'd say, spending matters but it ought to be sustainable, and therefore that which is not sustainable should not be jammed in the next generation.

(CROSSTALK)

SANFORD: ... in trying to rebuff what the secretary was saying.

BECK: I'm sorry, sir, I've got to go. Just yes or no, are you going to stop —- do everything you can and stop this money from coming across your border?

SANFORD: We've tried in a lot of different ways, we'll continue to try.

BECK: Good. Thank you very much, governor. We'll keep in touch.

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