DORGAN STATEMENT ON TODAY'S VOTE ON THE SECOND HALF OF THE FINANCIAL RESCUE FUNDS
Thursday, January 15, 2009
CONTACT: Justin Kitsch
or Brenden Timpe
PHONE: 202-224-2551
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) today issued the following statement on the Senate’s vote to release the second $350 billion of the financial rescue package.
TEXT OF STATEMENT
BY SENATOR BYRON DORGAN
JANUARY 15, 2009
“I opposed the original $700 billion financial bailout legislation last October because I didn’t think the Treasury Secretary had a plan that made any sense. I worried that there would be no oversight, transparency, or accountability for the money that he would use to bail out the big financial firms. And, I believed that we needed to include new regulations that would prevent the actions that caused this crisis.
“In recent months the serious mishandling of the first $350 billion by the Treasury Secretary demonstrated my point. Today I opposed the release of the second half of those funds because those needed safeguards to protect the American taxpayers are still not in place.
“I cannot support providing taxpayer dollars to the very institutions and people who caused our economic crisis, without having at the same time a commitment that there will be effective regulation to make sure this kind of behavior is never allowed to happen again.
“I am working on an economic recovery program that will try to jumpstart this economy. We will be voting on that in the coming weeks. But, adding $350 billion to a financial bailout program that will go to the largest financial institutions in the country, whose actions helped cause this financial crisis, is not the way to strengthen our economy.”
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