Leave It to Congress: A New Way to Recycle that Green Stuff

No doubt you've heard that the Obama administration has been refusing to accept returns of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money from some regulation-shy banks.

Some small banks have already returned smallish amounts of money, but Obama's crew of regulators are picking and choosing which big banks will be permitted to return their huge TARP loans and when they will be allowed to do so.

A variety of considerations come into play for the Obama administration when it comes to deciding which big banks will be allowed to hand back their relief checks and when. But whatever the reasoning, most Americans will welcome the return of their money.

But wait! That money, once returned, isn't going to pay back the massive debt that America incurred to finance the $700 billion TARP bank bailout.

Nope. That money goes straight into Congress's enormous pile of unspent tax money just waiting to be spent again, this time on something different--and we just can't wait to find out what that's going to be.

From Clusterstock via Scott Jagow at Marketplace:

You see, returned TARP funds become part of the general revenue of the federal government. The money is treated just like money paid by taxpayers. It simply becomes part of the income of the government that will be spent by politicians and bureaucrats. There's no lockbox or segregated fund. It works just like Social Security taxes: the income just gets spent for whatever the government decides to spent money on.

Pretty slick, eh? Especially for a bunch of legislators who couldn't even read the TARP legislation.

Maybe they can figure out a way for the rest of us to recycle our paychecks.