April, 14, 2010

After weeks of playing defense, congressional Republican leaders on Tuesday fired back at the White House on financial regulatory reform, calling it another bailout bill.House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.), in a speech to New York hedge funds, called Democratic financial bills “TARP II,” and said they would lead to future bailouts. The reference is to the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program used to bail out Wall Street.

Back in Washington, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took to the Senate floor and said the pending bill in the Senate “not only allows for taxpayer-funded bailouts of Wall Street banks, it institutionalizes them.”Hours later, the Treasury Department fought back against the Republican criticisms, particularly McConnell’s.Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin sought to refute several arguments made by the senator. McConnell, for example, argued that the bill’s $50 billion industry-supported fund wouldn’t be enough to cover the costs of future crises and that taxpayers would be left to foot the rest of the bill.

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