Virginia Foxx: “You know, this bill is being promoted as necessary to increase the availability for small businesses. But as my…”

“You know, this bill is being promoted as necessary to increase the availability for small businesses. But as my colleague from California so eloquently pointed out, it's really a bailout for banks that are in shaky positions. And what nobody has pointed out yet is, incredibly, this money doesn't have to be available for 2 years and probably will not be available for 2 years. So what is that going to do, again, to help small businesses that need help right now? Again, as my colleague pointed out, it creates a $30 billion lending fund for banks with less than $10 billion in assets. It also is going to appropriate $2 billion to States to shore up their small business lending and guarantee programs. But we shouldn't be doing that either. We have no business going in and shoring up programs that the States have when they haven't been responsible with the use of their money. But what this bill is going to do is deepen our debt problems, duplicate the goal of the original $700 billion TARP program, as Mr. McClintock pointed out. We have nearly 10 percent unemployment, and the so-called economic leadership of the ruling liberal Democrats has proven to be a failure. This is TARP III, and its $32 billion price tag is not going to be any different from the previous mechanisms that they've used to try to stimulate the economy.”