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[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 6 (Monday, January 12, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S280-S282]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                                  TARP

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I was somewhat shocked last October when

[[Page S281]]

the vote came up and actually 75 Senators in the Senate and about 75 
percent of the House of Representatives voted to give an unelected 
bureaucrat $700 billion to do with as he wanted with no accountability. 
I believe that 20 or 30 years from now, historians will look back and 
say that was the most outrageous vote, maybe in the history of these 
institutions. The administration has now requested the second $350 
billion sometime this week.
  If you are a reasonable person and were to assume that a major event 
in the financial world has prompted the negotiations that led to the 
decision to release the second $350 billion, you would be wrong. The 
true reason Congress may be asked to release the second $350 billion--
it is just politics. It is a hot potato; nobody wants it, but they all 
want the money, and that is what we are faced with now. Again, no event 
in the financial world has prompted the request for the second $350 
billion.
  I was critical of the Bush administration, and particularly of 
Secretary Paulson, since the October 10 vote giving Paulson, an 
unelected bureaucrat, $700 billion to do with as he wished. It is hard 
for me and it is hard for most Americans to understand, when they talk 
about these huge numbers--billion dollars and trillion dollars, 
whatever it means. But I think the time has come to count the actual 
number of families who file tax returns in America and, if you do your 
math, with your $700 billion it comes to $5,000 a family. That is what 
we are talking about. This is not a little deal. It is huge. I think, 
if people look at some of the things that have happened since then, it 
is the fault of passing the $700 billion bill; that precipitated all 
the problems we have.
  Congress is asked as an institution to prepare to say yes to the next 
$350 billion in deficit spending simply because we received a letter of 
assurances. I do not know what letters of assurance are, or what a 
letter of assurance is, but I suppose it is the same kind of assurance 
we got from Secretary Paulson when he said to us we have to have $700 
billion, and it has to be used to buy damaged assets.
  The letters of assurances are a bunch of promises on paper and that 
is not sufficient justification for this institution to let go of the 
$350 billion in taxpayers' money. Congress needs to put itself back in 
the process when we are talking about this kind of money. That is why I 
introduced legislation, S. 64, with a bipartisan group of Senators. 
That says the executive branch can only have access to the remaining 
$350 billion if Congress approves the submitted plan and votes on that 
plan.
  What is so bad about that? This is the way we have been doing 
business for years and years. The administration will make a request. 
That is what they do in the budget process. It comes to Congress. We 
evaluate that and determine whether we, who are elected 
representatives, believe it is something that should take place.
  We have already seen the legislation we passed last fall is a blank 
check for one person to do whatever he wants with billions of dollars. 
Take, for instance, the auto bailout. The interesting thing about the 
auto bailout is everyone expressed all this outrage over the auto 
bailout. I said back in October, when 75 percent of the Members of the 
House and the Senate voted to give Secretary Paulson $700 billion to do 
with as he wished: Who is going to be next in line to be bailed out? I 
suggested aviation, then the auto industry and farmers and everybody 
else. That is exactly what did happen. So those people who expressed 
such outrage with the auto bailout should stop and realize, if it had 
not been for that vote to turn loose and turn over $700 billion, that 
could not have happened.
  People talk about whatever it was, $15 billion or whatever it was in 
the auto bailout. That only constituted 2 percent of the $700 billion. 
That is what we have to keep our minds on, as to what precipitated the 
problem we have now.
  We were told what was going to be done with the money. Paulson came 
to us in September and said if we didn't immediately come through with 
$700 billion--that is what he said it would take to buy bad assets--the 
total economy would collapse. It was a panic scenario.
  Then the plans changed and Paulson began--and this happened right 
after he got his hands on the $700 billion. He didn't use it to buy 
damaged assets. He used it to pass out to various financial 
institutions--banks. It is my belief the rationale for releasing any 
more of the $700 billion no longer applies. As a matter of fact, a 
prominent economist from the Reagan administration last Wednesday said 
the first $350 billion did absolutely no good, in terms of dealing with 
the recession we are currently in.
  It was clear to me at the time it was a mistake to sign a blank check 
to one man for such a tremendous amount of money. Although there are 
still significant challenges in the financial markets, it appears the 
threat of the financial crisis spinning so out of control that we face 
another Great Depression--which was the original justification for the 
grant of such sweeping authority--has subsided. Has the need to allow 
one person, whether it is Secretary Paulson or Timothy Geithner, to 
give away hundreds of billions of taxpayers' dollars to banks subsided 
as well? That is a question that needs to be asked, and that answer is 
yes.
  I fully understand the severity of the ongoing financial crisis that 
erupted in this past year. I am fully aware of the need to take 
extraordinary actions in such situations. From the rescue of Bear 
Stearns in March to the announcement of the bank equity purchase 
program in mid-October, to two bailouts for AIG, to hundreds of 
billions extended to Citigroup, the U.S. Government has, indeed, 
undertaken extraordinary efforts to calm financial markets. However, it 
is clear to me and many of my colleagues that the Treasury accessing 
the remaining $350 billion would do little to fix the recession we are 
in now.
  It is time for the U.S. Government to cease announcements of new 
programs or plans designed to inject confidence in markets. Moreover, I 
think confidence would be better instilled by halting the announcement 
of new billion dollar programs designed to fix markets. I understand 
the need to move in accordance with changing conditions. I simply think 
the time has come to stop having the Government trying to fix markets. 
The markets are going to have to fix themselves.
  That is going to take some time. It is not going to be a pleasant 
process, but we are fooling ourselves if we think we can come up with 
some easy shortcut to solving these problems.
  One of the major causes of this crisis was the accumulation of far 
too much debt on the part of some financial institutions. The U.S. 
Government can make the same mistake. We are now anticipating an 
astounding $1.2 trillion deficit this year alone, and that is before 
any accounting of the roughly $800 billion stimulus proposal.
  I can remember so many people in this body criticizing President Bush 
on his deficits. If you take the total deficits in the Bush 
administration and add them up and divide by 8, the years he has been 
in there, the average is $247 billion. Now we are looking at $1.1 
trillion.
  This massive debt accumulation poses a serious threat to future 
stability and economic growth. We are on track to have a budget deficit 
this year that exceeds the size of the entire Federal budget only a few 
years ago. However, we can immediately make progress on reducing that 
deficit amount by not releasing the $350 billion. That is something 
that deserves sufficient debate.
  Finally, as a fiscal conservative, the thing that concerns me about 
the $700 billion bailout is it permanently changed the perception about 
what is ``big'' in big government from now on. What is another $50 
billion here or another $100 billion there, after we give $700 billion 
to banks? What is the big deal about a trillion dollar deficit or $800 
billion stimulus package or a multibillion health care proposal or 
whatever plan is dreamed up around here to spend the taxpayer money on, 
once we gave $700 billion to an unelected bureaucrat with no oversight. 
We have simply lost our perspective. People now think that the amount 
has changed.
  I will close by noting the cost of the following defining events in 
the 20th century, much our shared history, and compare them with the 
$700 billion bailout, to hopefully bring a little perspective to the 
debate over the request for the second half of the $700 billion 
bailout.

[[Page S282]]

  The Marshall Plan was a long time ago, but if you bring it up-to-date 
that would amount to $115 billion. This is after inflation. The race to 
the Moon, $237 billion; the entire Korean war, $454 billion; the New 
Deal, $500 billion; the Vietnam war, $698 billion; and then 8 years in 
Iraq, in the liberation of Iraq--people were complaining about how much 
money it cost--it is less than the $700 billion we are talking about 
here.
  We cannot put on fast track the remaining $350 billion in this 
package. Congress is going to have to actively debate any further 
funding.
  What my legislation does, first of all, if we do not do anything at 
all, if we sit back and act like everything is fine and wait until the 
proposal comes to us, then the only thing we can do under the law we 
passed in October of this past year is to have a resolution of 
disapproval.
  If the leadership, if Senator Reid and the leadership decide we 
should not have a vote on that, I am sure they will have procedural 
ways to have this kept from having a vote, but even if there is a vote, 
they would have that control. That doesn't do any good at all. The only 
way to do it is to pass this bill that says we cannot spend the last 
$350 billion until they come forth with a program, we evaluate it, we 
take our prerogative as given to us in the Constitution and determine 
whether this is a wise expenditure of these funds.
  I hope I will have several others wanting to join S. 64. Who can 
argue with accountability?
  I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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