Shut Down TARP

Along with other senators, I’ve introduced a bill to end TARP, the Troubled Assets Relief Program.

Right now, the Secretary of the Treasury has the power to extend the program through October 3, 2010.  The bill I introduced with Senator John Thune and others revokes this authority so that TARP would end on December 31, 2009.  Our bill is needed because Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has indicated that he wants to extend the bailout program.  And, according to the Special Inspector General for TARP, more than $300 billion of the $700 billion approved for TARP remains unobligated.

This bailout program was supposed to make sure credit flowed to Main Street, America, but instead it has been used as a slush fund to pick winners and losers in New York and Detroit.  Clearly, this kind of massive spending by the government hasn’t helped the struggling economy, especially small businesses struggling to keep their doors open and employees on the payroll.  With unemployment at a 26-year high, taxpayers have had enough, and the responsible thing to do is to shut down TARP and protect taxpayers from further risk and additional spending.

I’ve been an outspoken critic about the lack of transparency with how TARP funds have been used.  A Special Inspector General for the program was created because Senator Max Baucus and I pushed for it, and when the Treasury Department changed the focus of TARP less than a month after it began, I worked with Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri to retool the Inspector General’s authority and empower the office to adequately scrutinize TARP spending and management.

I’ve had to go to bat for this independent watchdog all year, when the White House and Treasury Department put up barriers to the Inspector General looking out for taxpayers by asking tough questions and collecting information about where the money has gone.  The program must be ended, not extended, and the administration should require bailout participants to pay back loans.  TARP money that gets paid back should be used for deficit reduction, not more government spending, and I’ll continue to vote for legislation to make that happen.