I don't know, others who voted against the whole thing, but for those of us who voted for it...

I would have made that my first point, because in a way, I happen to believe... the failure to address the mortgage, the residential mortgage crisis 2 years ago

We cannot restore the credibility of our financial institutions and put our economy back on track until we restore the credibility of the Government's response.

We are going to look carefully at those.

I think it would be tremendously worthwhile.

I would strongly recommend--in fact, I will ask you that as this moves forward...

I believe the absence of meaningful congressional involvement in crafting the original TARP plan will be viewed historically as a critical error that helped produce a flawed program and undermined public confidence in Washington's ability…

the Congress adopted a measure... of a commitment of some $50 billion out of these TARP resources that you have toward mitigating the foreclosure crisis

Americans want the plan to work. My colleagues want it to work. I believe all of us do.

Let me commend my colleague from Nebraska. We have new members of this committee who are just tremendously valuable and I include my colleague from Nebraska; just very, very good, excellent questions.

You have had this job for 14 days. The President has had his for twenty-one.

This is a very important opportunity and an important moment, maybe the most important those of us ever will serve during our tenure in this Congress.

I think we have had some 82 different hearings or meetings----

I happen to believe as between the choices of spending our time on going back and reviewing how we got here and the question of how do we get out of this, I don't have any question in my mind which is the more important issue for the…

I find myself sort of in an awkward position. I don't want to be in the position of disagreeing with trying to do something about foreclosure mitigation. But we end up doing this and the next and we get to 75 or in excess of $75 billion…

We are going round and round on this, but I find this debate--again, I want to make the point that I am grateful to both of my colleagues for raising the issue of foreclosures in housing. I find myself somewhat at cross-purposes because…

I was recently approached, along with my colleague Senator Shelby and leaders of the House Financial Services Committee, by the Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Sheila Bair, with a request to increase the FDIC's…

first of all, acting now or acting later-- assuming we vote on this amendment offered by my friends from South Carolina and North Dakota, within minutes after that, I will be offering the amendment that would require that the $50 billion…

I realize it doesn't relate to the funding in this bill--it would require that $50 billion of TARP money that will now be allocated be dedicated to foreclosure mitigation, including looking at the Sheila Baird FDIC proposal, but not…

There is only in this sense. This bill has a specific requirement that a particular plan be adopted and funded with this proposal. I admire Sheila Bair's proposal, but we also recognize there are others. At the same time, if we are dealing…

This is the amendment dealing with executive compensation. There are a number of proposals. This is one that would set some limits, basically allowing for some reaching back if, in fact, TARP businesses are found to have violated various…

It is important we hear from you, obviously, but our constituents also want to know what we believe about this.

I want to commend you and the Ranking Member for holding this hearing to examine TARP.

I am going to recommend that we try to set up some more frequent, even with our staffs necessarily, so there is a more ongoing relationship.

There is a legitimate debate about how well the program has been managed, and history will determine whether or not the decision we made in September and October was the right one.