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A $700 Billion Bailout and Its Repercussions

Date: Sept. 28, 2008
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Finance and Banking


A $700 BILLION BAILOUT AND ITS REPERCUSSIONS -- (House of Representatives - September 28, 2008)

Mr. DeFAZIO. I fear tomorrow that the House of Representatives, the people's House, will be rushed into making a risky $700 billion taxpayer financed bet on Wall Street, a big bet built upon a very shaky foundation, on the premise that Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, who presided as the Chair of Goldman Sachs while these weapons of financial mass destruction were created, is the only one who has a plan to disarm them.

Despite the best efforts of the Democrats to change this plan, what we will vote on tomorrow at its core is still the Paulson-Bush plan that is still based on his idea that taxpayers should borrow $700 billion and buy all of Wall Street's bad bets and that all will be well. It's sort of a financial surge strategy. Like the surge in Iraq, it might look in the short term like it's working, but it won't be sustainable, and I fear it will not in any way resolve the underlying problems of a weak economy and of a deteriorating housing market. More likely, it will lower the value of the dollar and drive up interest rates and drive up the price of energy.


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