INHOFE: CONGRESS TO BLAME, TOO
December 22, 2008
On October 10, 2008, a huge majority in the House and Senate voted to give an unelected bureaucrat, Treasury Secretary Paulson, an obscene amount of money, $700 billion, the largest sum in the history of America, to spend as he wished.
I said at the time of the vote that this was Congress’s worst vote in my time in Washington. It gave one man unprecedented power with NO oversight whatsoever.
Paulson turned out to be one of the most convincing salesmen in history. Paulson promised he would use it to buy damaged assets....but he didn’t. Instead, he gave it to his Wall Street banking buddies, and one of the banks Paulson had interest in. Paulson is the former head of Goldman Sachs - a firm which received $10 billion.
Now, I opposed President Bush using 2% of that money to bail out the auto industry. But let’s be clear – Congress is as much to blame as the President.
Congress gave him the money, no strings attached.
I said at the time they gave Paulson the money it was a mistake of monumental proportions and that Congress must accept the responsibility for their vote.
Half of the $700B is gone now, but we can cut our losses in half by freezing the remaining $350B, and saving it for the taxpayers.
My legislation, S.3697, does that. I ask all the members of the Senate who voted for the bailout to join those 24 of us who opposed it by supporting S.3697.
We can save half of the $700B for the taxpayers.
To learn more, go to my website, inhofe.senate.gov.
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