Maxine Waters Blames Bush for Her Own Ethics Violations

Maxine, the bottom of the barrel of excuses called. It says: “I’m empty, stop scraping.” 

Embattled Rep. Maxine Waters on Friday blamed the Bush administration for her ethics problems — saying she had to intervene with the Treasury Department on behalf of minority-owned banks seeking federal bailout funds — including one tied to her husband — because the Treasury Department wouldn’t schedule its own appointments. The California Democrat said in a Capitol Hill news conference — an event rarely held during a congressional recess — that she reached out to then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in late 2008 when his department failed to respond to the National Bank Association’s request for a meeting.

Let’s see…the Treasury Department would’nt come when Maxine snapped her fingers, so she took it upon herself to not only meet with the bank in question, but use her position to protect her financial interests. I believe that’s called conflict of interest.

But the House ethics committee, which is investigating Waters for allegedly improperly using her position for personal gain, says in its report of charges that when the meeting was held, the officers of only one bank came — OneUnited.

That’s a problem for Waters since her husband, Sidney Williams, served as a member of OneUnited’s board of directors from January 2004 until April 2008, and was a stockholder in the bank.

OneUnited eventually got $12 million of the $50 million in bailout money it requested, enough to keep the bank afloat. The ethics panel says that kept Waters’ family stock from becoming worthless, which the committee says shows that she personally benefited by using her office. Waters said she wasn’t concerned about her husband’s stocks in the bank, which were worth about $350,000 at the time and which her husband still owns, if only because he can’t unload them.

For someone who ‘wasn’t concerned’, she sure moved in pretty fast to save her assets.

Waters said the media need to distinguish between making a call on behalf of one bank and making a call for an entire trade association. She added that even Paulson told the ethics committee that she never approached his office to speak about only one bank.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/13/rep-waters-violated-house-rules/

Oh excuse us, she only pulled rank on behalf of one bank; which just so happens to be the one that held her and her husband’s financial holdings.

It’s all Bush’s fault.