Mike Pence is a member of the Republican Congressional leadership, specifically, chairman of the House Republican Conference. That seems to mean he lies for a living.

This is how he characterized the Wall Street reform bill yesterday morning:

The American people are tired of runaway federal spending, borrowing and bailouts. The legislation being considered by the Senate, which passed the House, is nothing but a permanent bailout and House Republicans are determined to oppose it. Last week, some Democrats said there wasn’t a permanent bailout in this bill. Other Democrats, by the end of the week, said there was a permanent bailout fund in the bill. This may be one of those instances where the left hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

The truth is, the American people are not deceived here. They see that what’s being passed under the cloak of financial services reform is nothing more than making permanent the Wall Street bailouts that passed, a year and a half ago, in the form of the TARP. House Republicans are determined to bring about financial services reform that begins with ending the era of bailouts.

That was six bailouts in eight sentences. (Let’s hope that doesn’t mean he will get penalized for failing to meet his quota.)

It’s one hell of a bailout plan. If a large bank gets into financial distress, it won’t be rescued. The management will be fired. Shareholders will be wiped out. The assets will be liquidated. The company will be dissolved.

Yes, there is a fund to finance this mandatory corporate euthanasia. The money comes from assessments on the banks themselves, not from taxpayers.

So if it’s a bailout, Mike Pence, who exactly is being bailed out?

Not the management. Not the shareholders. Not the company. So who does that leave, Mike Pence? I guess it’s just little old us. The taxpayers. We’re the ones getting bailed out. We’ll no longer be on the hook, like we were last time around.

Why don’t the Democrats take this Republican meme, and turn it on its head? If they start unanimously describing the Wall Street reform bill as a bailout of taxpayers, the mainstream media will have to pick up on it, right? (Because “What a story!”, etc.) Which means that every time Republicans describe it as a bailout of banks, the media will have to remind viewers/readers that Democrats, on the other hand, call it a bailout of taxpayers.

Republicans would have no choice but to drop their absurd permanent bailout rhetoric.

(And that’s how easy it is to write fairy tales. Nothing to it at all.)