Like his colleague Jim DeMint, Oklahoma Republican Senator Jim Inhofe gets it. He's asking Congress to pull the plug on the $700 billion financial bailout and save whatever is left of it. Inhofe has called out Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for selling us all a bill of goods. Paulson, Inhofe now sees, got "blank check" bailout authority from Congress on the premise that the government would be buying up high risk assets from troubled fragile banks and other institutions, "then he didn't do it. . . . That's enough reason right there" to revoke Paulson's authority.
Well said Senator. But if that wasn't blunt enough, Inhofe plainly and simply accused Paulson of lying to Congress. Whenever people come to Congress and advised that something "has to be done and has to be done immediately, you have to sit back and take a deep breath and nine times out of ten they are not telling the truth. And this is one of those nine times."
Inhofe also opposes bailing out the "Big Three" Detroit automakers. "If we keep on nursing a broken system," he said, "then we cant expect to have a different result come later on. . . . I think we have to draw the line someplace, and the time is here."
Republicans in the U.S. Senate have the chance to use their positions to rebuild a conservative and principled party. Jim DeMint and Jim Inhofe seem ready to lead.
2 comments:
Creation of an oversight panel has not - it seems - kept Paulson and Company in check. And the existence of such a panel has certainly not kept Treasury Department on track doing what they told Congress it would be doing. That's a problem.
I think that you might "get it" too Jason - to quote your post on Friday at your blog, ( nomedals.blogspot.com) . . . "Paulson has the ability to do [this "180-degree turn"] because Congress has failed to use its congressional oversight to protect the American people."
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