Congress Must Keep Taxpayer First When Assisting Wall Street

CONGRESS MUST KEEP TAXPAYER FIRST WHEN ASSISTING WALL STREET -- (House of Representatives - September 27, 2008)

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, it is becoming painfully clear to us and now we know that Americans should not be forced to endure a prolonged and painful economic downturn to pay for the sins of Fannie, Freddie or discredited Wall Street executives. The question that is being asked by many of our constituents is, all right, now what are we going to do?

So let me be clear. I do not support a bailout of Wall Street firms funded by hundreds of billions of taxpayers dollars. There are smarter ways for us to handle this.

The President and congressional leaders should set a timeline for legislation, come to mark it up, and look at things from both the short and the long-term. We have learned that the ad hoc approach to bailing out companies in the past few weeks just has not worked. What we need is a workout plan that leverages Wall Street's assets and ingenuity to bring the economy back to health while protecting the American taxpayer.

Any deal that comes forward should limit the cash available to Secretary Paulson. We cannot write one man, no matter how experienced or smart, a check for $700 billion of the taxpayers' money.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that we continue to work forward on this and keep the American taxpayer first and foremost in our thoughts.

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