On the recordJanuary 21, 2010
I wish to make it clear I am in very strong support of the amendment offered by the Senator from South Dakota. The amendment of the Senator from South Dakota would immediately end the Treasury's authority to spend unobligated TARP funds; that is, those funds that have either been repaid or were never spent in the first place as part of the so-called TARP. The amendment would also use repaid TARP funds to lower the deficit, bring down the debt ceiling-- which is, of course, the amount of legal U.S. debt--and is the ultimate issue we are going to be voting on at the end of our exercise, presumably sometime next week. I initially supported both tranches of the TARP stabilization money because I was told by the Secretary of the Treasury and others, and I believed, that the money would be used to shore up banking, thus stabilizing the financial system in the United States, and that would permit lending to resume. My State of Arizona was hit particularly hard by the collapse of the housing bubble, so we needed more lending--for small businesses as well as for commercial lending and other things such as auto finance, real estate lending, and so on.
