Virginia Foxx: “I will contend that in the original bill there was no oversight, there is no real oversight in the bill that was passed…”

“I will contend that in the original bill there was no oversight, there is no real oversight in the bill that was passed yesterday, no accountability. The American people expect the Congress to hold the executive branch accountable. When I speak to students about the Constitution, I say to them it is no accident that article I is about the Congress. That's what our Founders believed, the Congress was the most important branch of our government, and we have abrogated that responsibility. So I think it's important that there should have been a plan in the first bill, and I would say there is no plan in the bill that was passed yesterday. I think another point that needs to be made is that we are treating this money as if it's a silver bullet, but the original amount allocated for TARP was arbitrary. There was no correlation between the number the Treasury Department asked for and either the amount of troubled assets that needed to be bought, or the amount of capital injection that would be needed to stabilize the financial system.”