Barney Frank: “I apologize. I heard him say reserve, and I misunderstood that. I will say about this amendment that it is harmless and…”

“I apologize. I heard him say reserve, and I misunderstood that. I will say about this amendment that it is harmless and perfectly okay for people to claim credit for what's already been done, kind of like going to a taxidermist and shooting the bear. If this amendment didn't happen, the same result would be there. But here's the result: temporarily this comes out of tax funds. But because it's TARP money, it's subject to a--and by the way, we passed an amendment that says it goes back to the Treasury temporarily. I say ``temporarily'' because over Republican objections, and I hope they're going to relent in these, we put into the TARP legislation language that says that in 2013 whatever hasn't been paid back from the TARP to the general Treasury will be assessed to financial institutions. What that means is that if this does have a net cost to the Treasury, in 2013 the President in power at that time will be directed to send us legislation to require that this come out of the large financial institutions, that is, nothing from the Treasury. Now, I say I'm worried about it because we've had two further instances of this which the Republicans have opposed. We've just had a package of four bills. Two of them came out of the financial reform bill, their financing did: help for the unemployed homeowners and the neighborhood stabilization program.…”