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Carl Levin\u2019s retirement announcement today was delicious.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0millionaire Michigan senator<\/a>\u00a0who\u00a0gifted himself a $7500 tax break<\/a>\u00a0to buy his $40,000, 2012 Chevy Volt said his Number One priority in his last two years in office is cleaning up fat cat tax breaks. We\u2019re not making this up.<\/p>\n \u201c(My wife and I) decided that I can best serve my state and nation by concentrating in the next two years on the challenging issues before us,\u201d said Michigan\u2019s longest serving senator\u00a0on his website today<\/a>. \u201cYears of bipartisan work by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that I chair have shed light on tax avoidance schemes that are a major drain on our treasury. They add to the tax burden of ordinary Americans who have to pick up the slack and accelerate the economic inequality in our country.\u201d<\/p>\n Present company excluded, of course. Levin meant\u00a0corporate<\/i>\u00a0tax breaks. We\u2019re still not making this up.<\/p>\n But Levin\u2019s prize hypocrisy will forever be his outrage at banks for their part in causing the 2008 financial crisis. In truth, the crisis began with pols like Levin and their forced mandates on banks to lend to poor credit risks. Levin\u2019s part was as a pit-bull supporter (see his 1999 defense\u00a0here<\/a>) of the Community Reinvestment Act\u00a0which he protected from reform<\/a>\u00a0even as other federal officials saw disaster coming down the tracks.<\/p>\n Good politics for Levin was bad economics for the country. The bad paper issued by mortgage companies \u2013 and mandated by senators like Levin \u2013 was passed through Fannie and Freddie Mac then bundled into financial instruments by Wall Street (shame on them too) where they\u00a0hid as a ticking time bomb under America\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n