Political Quotes

“I rise today to speak in support of a pending amendment. This amendment is called the Erasing Our National Debt Through Accountability and Responsibility Plan. I wish to start out today by saying I am very proud to be a cosponsor of what I consider to be a very commonsense amendment. The Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP, was enacted in the fall of 2008 for the U.S. Treasury to buy toxic assets, primarily mortgage-backed securities. It was sold to Congress as having a sole purpose of getting bad assets out of the market. It was sold as an idea of stabilizing the economy. At the time this was sold, this was it. This is what we told people this was going to do. Supposedly, it was going to be a one-time, very narrowly focused program during a time of the worst economic crisis we had seen in decades. Lawmakers at that time were warned that if we do not act now, if we do not take this action, the failure to act is going to be devastating. Yet Washington, after it got approval of this plan, almost immediately threw out the original game plan. Money was not used to buy those troubled assets. Instead, it was given to large banks with very few strings attached. The government hoped banks would generate small business loans, and would send the money out to allow people to do auto loans and mortgage loans. That simply did not happen.”