CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s remarks about the stimulus bill rewarding bad behavior sparked a sharp rebuke from the White House.

From ABC News’ Jake Tapper

The White House lashed back today at CNBC’S Rick Santelli, a CNBC personality who assailed President Obama’s housing rescue plan Thursday on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

“I’m not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives or in what house he lives,”  said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs during a press briefing. “But the American people are struggling every day to meet their mortgage, stay in their job, pay their bills, to send their kids to school, and to hope that they don’t get sick or that somebody they care for gets sick and sends them into bankruptcy. I think we left a few months ago the — the adage that, if it was good for a derivatives trader, that it was good for Main Street.  I think the verdict is in on that.”

“Mr Santelli doesn’t know what he’s. talking about,” Gibbs said a little later. He was responding to a question about public anger at the fact that some people who acted irresponsibly may benefit from the president’s plan, a question which mentioned “that cable rant on the floor of the exchange.”

“Mr. Santelli has argued — I think quite wrongly — that this plan won’t help everyone,” Gibbs said. “This plan will help, by the money that’s invested in Freddie and Fannie, will drive down mortgage rates for millions of Americans.”

 

Concluded Gibbs, “now, every day when I come out here, I spend a little time reading, studying on the issues, asking people who are smarter than I am questions about those issues. I would encourage him to read the president’s plan and understand that it will help millions of people, many of whom he knows.  I’d be more than happy to have him come here and read it.”

“I’d be happy to buy him a cup of coffee,” Gibbs wryly added, in remarks he seemed to have prepared. “Decaf.”

“Let me do this, too,” Gibbs said. “This is a copy of the president’s home affordability plan.  It’s available on the White House Web site, and I would encourage him, download it, hit print, and begin to read it.”

It would be nice if the White House would just come clean on the stimulus bill and admit that he has snookered the American public into believing that his plan will solve all their problems and that foreclosures will end and everyone will be happy once again.  But that isn’t what this administartion represents.  There is no honesty, there is no transparenecy.  Instead Gibbs tries to be glib and avoid the real issue.

Maybe we should follow Santelli’s lead and call for a Tea Party in every state to show our dissatisfaction with the Obama plan.

 

 

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