In a bit of outrageous distortion former vice president Dick Cheney said in an interview with Larry Kudlow that will air on CNBC tonight that the Obama administration is solely to blame for the government takeover of failing industries and corporations. I have three letters for Dick Cheney A-I-G.

Here is the video:

Kudlow asked, “Did the Bush-Cheney administration really launch government controlling private businesses?” Cheney answered, “No I don’t believe we did. I don’t recall any debate within the administration — there may have been some over in Treasury or some place — that focused on the extent to which government would try to control these institutions once they provided financing for them.”

Apparently Cheney has forgotten what has been called the most far reaching intervention into the private sector by the Federal Reserve, when in September of 2008 the Bush administration bailed out AIG with $85 billion in taxpayer money. In return for the cash, the government got an 80% stake in the company. This is yet another Dick Cheney lie.

This policy was not only debated by the White House, but it was enacted by the Bush administration. Cheney is trying to play a semantic game where he pushes the blame for AIG off on Treasury, but the president is the boss of the Secretary of the Treasury. What Cheney has offered up here is a bold faced lie. Cheney has as much credibility on the economy as he does on national security. In other words, he has none.