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 Favorability and Power - White House Press Briefing by Dana Perino 10/14/08 — Tuesday, October 14, 2008 —
 Q According to some of those who were a part of the banking meeting yesterday, they were not all enthusiastic about signing off on this initially. In the President's dealings with banks, with the allies, with Congress, has he felt any impact related to his relatively low -- historic low job approval rating in the country? Has that had any impact, or been any disadvantage to him?MS. PERINO: The President is focused on leading; he doesn't focus on the approval ratings. And yet -- I wasn't in the meetings yesterday, but I would imagine that there was probably some reluctance to move forward with this, but a willingness to do it, because everyone recognizes that we have to do it in order to protect everybody and to get this economy moving again. So, sure, there's not a soul that wanted to have to do this. But if we're going to do it, we better do it right. And we better implement the legislation in a way that gets it done appropriately. This legislation got passed; this legislation is being implemented. The banks are going to participate in this program, and they have an incentive to get the government out of their business. We'll have a quarterly dividend that comes back to the American taxpayer at a 5 percent rate for the first three years. That jumps to 9 percent after those first three years. And so they have every incentive to work very hard to get their businesses back up to par, and return to normalcy. Q Has the President felt any impact from the poll numbers that are out this week giving him a historically low job approval rating? It hasn't had any impact on his dealing with foreign leaders or with Congress? MS. PERINO: Well, I think that if anybody who saw the statements yesterday by Prime Minister Berlusconi and others, all the conversations he's had, the United States is the one helping to provide the leadership necessary to steer this ship, so that we can all save our economies. That's what this President is focused on. He's not focused on the approval ratings as a lot of the media are. Dana Perino | Economy | Legislation | Polls | President Bush | Press Briefing | White House Press Corps Labels: Dana Perino, Economy, Legislation, Polls, President Bush, Press Briefing, White House Press Corps
Posted by White House Press Corps @ 7:53 PM  Bailout Pork - White House Press Briefing by Tony Fratto 10/3/08 — Friday, October 03, 2008 —
 MR. FRATTO: Yes, Mark.Q Tony, listening to the debate on the House floor, many of the opponents were quite alarmed by what they described as a "pork-laden, earmark-laden bill." They talked about tax breaks for rum producers in Puerto Rico, arrow -- wooden arrow makers in Oregon for Hollywood producers -- MR. FRATTO: I think you should look for -- Q How do you answer that? MR. FRATTO: Well, the ranking member, ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee just put out a very long statement addressing some of those things. And as he pointed out, this was the same package that was promoted by Republicans not too long ago. I think Representative Camp had sent it up as -- or put it forth on their motion to recommit, same exact package. There are -- the rum provision, it's not a tax break for rum producers. These are excise taxes that actually go back to the government of Puerto Rico. Some of these things have sort of interesting headline-making characteristics to them, but when you look deeper at them, they make a lot of sense. I mean, I didn't know anything about children's arrows, but I've learned a lot over the last 24 hours, and it turns out that the -- Q Did you get the point? (Laughter.) MR. FRATTO: You hit the bulls-eye with that one, Mark. (Laughter.) It turns out that the excise tax is -- would be 39 cents an arrow, but it only costs about 30 cents an arrow to make, so there are very real reasons why you wouldn't want to have that kind of tax on that kind of product. So I would point you to what Representative McCrery put out. He has a document that explains each one of these provisions. And the entire package of extenders is something that we are very, very comfortable supporting. Congress | Legislation | Pork | Press Briefing | Tony Fratto | White House Press Corps Labels: Congress, Legislation, Pork, Press Briefing, Tony Fratto, White House Press Corps
Posted by White House Press Corps @ 6:14 PM Raising FDIC Coverage - White House Press Briefing by Tony Fratto 10/2/08 — Thursday, October 02, 2008 —
 MR. FRATOO: Jennifer.Q I'm trying to understand this deposit insurance increase. MR. FRATTO: Sure. Q One of the reasons obviously that the vote went the way it did on Monday was that folks were uncomfortable with the idea of so much government money into the private markets, into Wall Street, that whole line of concern. But I'm trying to understand how protecting deposits that are over $100,000, which is a lot of money -- not -- most regular people don't have $100,000 sitting around in any one account --how is that getting to the Main Street regular people -- MR. FRATTO: Sure. Actually, it's one of -- America's small businesses use their local banks in order to fund their operations. That's where they keep their money for day-to-day operations -- their funds for payroll, for example. And so they would have -- in fact, a great many of them would have far more than $100,000 in their accounts. And what a lot of small businesses have had to do across the country is to split up their accounts as they felt that maybe banks were threatened -- split up their accounts in numerous banks, which is incredibly inefficient; it's not a very efficient way to do business. And you're also noticing that small businesses were moving their funds from banks that were perceived to be weak to banks that were perceived to be strong, and so really not normal ways of doing business. Raising the cap allows them to have the confidence that they can keep those funds in their local bank. They don't have to move them around. And so it's a much bigger cushion. Q Okay. Congress | Legislation | FDIC | Press Briefing | Tony Fratto | White House Press Corps Labels: Congress, FDIC, Legislation, Press Briefing, Tony Fratto, White House Press Corps
Posted by White House Press Corps @ 4:32 PM Add-ons to Financial Bailout Bill - White House Press Briefing by Tony Fratto 10/1/08 — Wednesday, October 01, 2008 —
 Q Tony, is the White House concerned at all about the possibility of losing votes in the House because of the add-ons in the Senate bill?MR. FRATTO: Right now we're focused on the Senate. We think the modifications are helpful and will help to achieve passage in the House. Q Didn't you want a clean bill, though? You didn't want a lot of add-ons and you're ending up with add-ons. MR. FRATTO: Well, we didn't want a lot of add-ons. We didn't want things that we felt would be harmful to the economy. But since we started working with the Congress 10 days ago on the actual legislation, we've made a number of changes and modifications. The things that are being added on right now, on the tax extenders, these are things that we have all supported. In fact, both Houses support extending the tax credits for renewable energy; both support AMT reform. There's a dispute in terms of whether they should be offset, and of course, we have opposed increasing taxes to pay for fixing a problem in the tax code. And the FDIC decision has been a recent one that we think will garner some additional support. So, yes, look, this is not -- it's never a straight line in trying to get legislation like this, and we're very appreciative of the Senate's efforts to try to develop this legislation in a way that will be successful. Congress | Legislation | Press Briefing | Senate | Tony Fratto | Wall Street | White House Press Corps Labels: Congress, Legislation, Press Briefing, Senate, Tony Fratto, Wall Street, White House Press Corps
Posted by White House Press Corps @ 5:26 PM Wall Street Bailout and McCain - White House Press Briefing by Dana Perino 9/26/08 — Friday, September 26, 2008 —
 Q What do you think -- what progress do you think happened between yesterday and just now for John McCain to say he's going to resume his campaign and go to the debate?MS. PERINO: I don't know. I couldn't tell you what his -- Q He says there's been progress since yesterday's meeting. MS. PERINO: Senator Reid said the same thing; so did Senator Gregg. And I'm going to let the negotiators continue. As I said, we've been -- we feel like we've been close, but we're not quite there yet. There are many members of Congress, especially on the House Republican side, who have a lot of concerns, and I understand those concerns. We get it. This President did not want to have to take this route, either. But it was after being briefed repeatedly by his Secretary of the Treasury and his Fed Chairman that if we did not do something drastic, that we would have -- we would be facing financial calamity, that the President of the United States said we can't sit by and let that happen. If we have a way that could fix it and to stabilize and strengthen the financial markets, we have an obligation to do that. Q Do you think the debate adds to or detracts from the work that will be done on the Hill? MS. PERINO: I just don't know. But I think it'll be fun to watch. (Laughter.) Congress | Dana Perino | John McCain | Legislation | Press Briefing | Wall Street | White House Press Corps Labels: Congress, Dana Perino, John McCain, Legislation, Press Briefing, Wall Street, White House Press Corps
Posted by White House Press Corps @ 5:53 PM Farm Bill & Veto - Air Force One Press Gaggle by Dana Perino 5/22/08 — Thursday, May 22, 2008 —
 Q Farm bill -- where are we with the farm bill?MS. PERINO: You tell me -- or the Democrats tell me. Q What did he veto? MS. PERINO: He vetoed -- the President vetoed the bill that the Democrats sent us. And, look, I understand there's a technical error and we'll have to see what the Congress decides to do, but maybe it gives them one more chance to take a look and think about how much they're asking the taxpayers to spend at a time of record farm income. The Congress had an opportunity to put forward -- I'm sorry -- to implement reforms, much needed reforms, and they decided not to. And I think with this move it shows that they can even up screw up spending the taxpayers' money unwisely. Q What was that -- MS. PERINO: Said they can -- they've proved that they can even screw up spending the taxpayers' money unwisely. (Laughter.) Laughter by reporters. (Laughter.) Air Force One | Congress | Dana Perino | Legislation | Pork | Press Gaggle | Vetoes | White House Press Corps Labels: Air Force One, Congress, Dana Perino, Legislation, Pork, Press Gaggle, Vetoes, White House Press Corps
Posted by White House Press Corps @ 10:14 PM
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