On the recordJune 9, 2010
The question before us, with apologies to William Shakespeare, to bail out or not to bail out, that is the question. The motion to instruct by the ranking member says no more bailouts. Quite simply, it cannot be said any other way. Unfortunately, whether you're dealing with the House bill or the Senate bill, they are still identifying firms that in their view are too big to fail. Now the phrase that is used is systemically significant, systemically risky, but they are identifying firms for a specific regulatory scheme, and in the House version, as the distinguished chairman of the Financial Services Committee pointed out, is a prefunded bailout fund. In the Senate version, they drop their prefunded, but there is an infinite line of credit that the FDIC can draw upon with respect to the Treasury. Again, if you have firms, Mr. Speaker, that are too big to fail, then you are saying they can't fail. If they can't fail, then at some point you're going to bail them out. Now, I've heard the distinguished chairman of the Financial Services Committee, the gentleman from Massachusetts, on many occasions say no taxpayer funds will be used. I heard him say it seconds earlier and I know he believes it and I know he means it, but unfortunately, the track record for him and many of his colleagues on that side of the aisle in predicting such is really not very good.
