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George Bush's $700bn bailout of the financial industry, known as TARP, turns out to have been larger than needed. So many banks have now repaid funds to the Treasury Department that the outstanding cost is now just $141bn. That latest estimate was covered from the White House by both ABC's Jake Tapper and CBS' Chip Reid. ABC's Tapper predicted that $80bn will never be repaid, money spent on AIG, the insurance conglomerate, and on General Motors and Chrysler. CBS' Reid expected some of the TARP to be spent on aid to state and local governments, on tax breaks for small businesses, on energy efficiency programs and on infrastructure projects: "Critics say it is nothing more than a second stimulus at a time when the first one still has not proven its long-term value," CBS' Reid asserted, invoking a straw man, since the rationale for stimulus spending is to have value in the short run, never the long term.
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