Jim Inhofe: “while I was given, very generously, 10 minutes, I will not take that time because I have had occasion to stand on the…”

“while I was given, very generously, 10 minutes, I will not take that time because I have had occasion to stand on the Senate floor since last October 10 on numerous occasions and talk about the way this vote took place in the beginning. Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that this had to start somewhere, and this start was when Secretary Paulson--and I to have say this is a Republican administration; he was the Treasury Secretary--came out with this plan on how to save the world. He said: We have to have $700 billion. It has to be spent to buy damaged assets. And even at that time, it didn't make any sense because, if you read the document, it didn't say anything as to what was going to happen to this money. It just completely was a blank check. Never in the history of Oklahoma have we voted to give anyone, elected or, in this case, unelected bureaucrat, $700 billion to do whatever he or she wants to do with it. It is mind- boggling that that could have happened, but it did happen. The other thing that makes history out of this is, this is the largest single vote on an authorization in the history of this country. This amount is so big, I have tried to explain to people what this really means: $700 billion, if you take all of the families in America who file tax returns and do the math, is $5,000 a family. That is what we are talking about. I opposed it originally and said that we are going to regret that we did this unprecedented thing.”