Charles Krauthammer vs. Obama on TARP spending; Obama's ungraciousness towards Bush & Obama Care

On President Obama’s intention to use TARP monies to pay for a jobs program:

Look, it proves, as if we need any extra evidence, that Democrats have a congenital inability to claim an unclaimed pot of money and not seize it and spend it.

Everyone knows how this money was to be used. It was not intended for spending. It was supposed to be a loan. It was supposed to be [for] a dire emergency — when the banking system (and the economy) was at risk. It was money that was going to go out, and a lot of it — most of it — would be returned.

And now, as it is returned as the banks are getting healthy, the Democrats want to spend it.

Now, I said last week that the Democrats would be completely unable to resist any temptation in this regard, (a), because it will allow a “Stimulus 2” and it will look as though it will not increase the deficit, and secondly, because (as we saw in that [sound] bite from Obama) they will be able to portray it in the perfect populist way: Money intended to go to Wall Street will end up, because of our munificence, on Main Street.

It is a perfect political ploy. The Democrats will not resist it. And even though it is against the law as written in the TARP law — [the monies are] supposed to be returned — today the Democrats are the law, and they will change it if necessary.

On Obama’s blaming the Bush administration for the problems with TARP:

But there was also somebody else in the collateral damage of his attack on Bush. Who, after all, was at the center of the TARP in the Bush years? It was Geithner, his own treasury secretary.

So if he's going to attack the program administered under the previous administration, he is attacking his own treasury secretary — in the same way that when Obama attacked the Bush administration over the supposed lack of troops [for Afghanistan] that were requested at the end of the second Bush administration, well, who was in charge of the Defense Department at the time? Who, if Obama is correct, had hurt his country in denying the request at the request of the [military] commanders? The secretary of defense — Bob Gates, who is the secretary of defense today under Obama and who was under the Bush administration.

So he [Obama] has a way of attacking everybody — even if they are serving him today — simply because of the tic he has about attacking President Bush.

On ultimate Congressional passage of Obamacare:

Yes, I think in the end the left will give up on its objections because it knows [that this] is a historic occasion in which the [federal] government will seize control of health care — and they won't allow [the opportunity] to die over small details or smaller issues.