Putting an end to TARP

Earlier this month, I joined several other senators to urge Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to let the Troubled Asset Relief Program -- better known as TARP -- expire at the end of the year. We’re weighing in because the administration has signaled it may want to extend TARP until October 2010.  On top of shutting down the program, those of us who wrote to the Treasury Secretary also want every penny of the TARP money that is paid back by the big Wall Street banks to go to federal debt reduction, not to more government spending and bailouts. The nation faces record deficit and debt projections, and paying down the debt with this money would be a welcome change for taxpayers, especially with regard to this program.  Instead of using TARP dollars to buy up toxic assets, and stabilize the availability of credit in the marketplace, as officials involved in crafting TARP said would be done when the program was created, the Treasury Department has used TARP as a slush fund for the Treasury Secretary to pick winners and losers in the private sector.  Unfortunately, taxpayer dollars were used to bailout banks and auto makers with direct capital infusions. That’s not what Congress agreed to or what taxpayers support.

When TARP was created, I fought to establish a Special Inspector General for the program in an attempt to safeguard tax dollars as much as possible.  Almost immediately after the TARP program began, it became clear that the Treasury Department would abandon the original stated purpose of TARP.  In response, I worked to get legislation passed to expand the Inspector General’s authority to cover all TARP programs.    This year, when the new administration tried to stop the Inspector General from asking recipients of TARP dollars what they were doing with the money, I fought back so the Special Inspector General could access the data he needed to track how tax dollars were being used.  When the Treasury Department continued to put up barriers to additional requests for information, I pushed back on the Treasury Department.  I have learned that it takes constant vigilance to hold the administration to its pledge to govern in a transparent manner, especially with TARP.  It’s time to put an end to the program so that these games are done away with.