Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter helped defeat what promises to be the first of a couple financial bailout plans.
Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter says she’s convinced some action must be taken to prop up the nation’s financial markets.
She says there’s a very, very strong sense of urgency in Washington to do that.
6:09... We will be back...we are watching the stock market, we are deeply concerned. We’re obviously worried about people’s money. But we can’t get this wrong.
The Dow Jones dropped more than 700 points as House members killed the bailout plan.
The legislation, in part, would have given the Treasury $350 billion dollars to purchase failing assets from banks and other firms.
It would have given Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson the power to decide which assets to purchase and the ability to set the price.
Shea-Porter says one key reason the legislation failed is because lawmakers balked at giving one person so much power, especially a political appointment like Paulson.
With continued trouble in the market, the Congresswoman expects her colleagues to continue hunting for solutions.
The measure failed by fewer than 30 votes.
Shea-Porter says Congressional leadership knows what it needs to do to attract more support.
8:20 I know that some including a large number felt that we didn’t address the home owners struggles. I would agree with that. We could have done better with homeowners holding onto their homes.
Shea-Porter also says she favors creating some type of body to oversee the purchase of the assets.
She also continues to worry about so-called golden parachutes for CEOs.
Over the weekend, her Republican opponent Jeb Bradley echoed Shea-Porter’s call for action.
:57 taxpayers have to be protected. We can’t be rewarding people who caused this mess. And we have to make sure that whatever happens, full accountability and full transparency...we can not be saddling people that did not cause the problem with the bills.
It’s not clear if Bradley would have supported the specific proposal Congress defeated.
In a written statement he did say there weren’t enough protections in the bill for Main Street and working Americans.
Shea-Porter says she told a friend over the weekend, ‘if you pray, this is a good time to pray that Congress gets a solution to the financial rescue plan right.
For NHPR News, I’m DG.
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The Americans need to be protected. I would like to suggest that the small local banks be given low interest loans for the express purpose of letting people keep their homes. That way the loans would be paid back. I would also suggest that the massive amount of money be put to employing Americans and giving loans or grants money to green factories and green production that will employ american citizens only. In the meantime I suggest we stop outsourcing American jobs immediately and raise the tariff on imports until we can be self supporting again. If we bail out failed companies we will have more foreclosures ( a million more according to NPR today.)These foreclosures will trickle down to affect small banks. There will be more foreclosures, more homeless men women and children with winter coming and fuel beyond purchase. More money will be needed to support people that would be happy to work and support themselves. These companies have failed due to incompetence. The US congress cannot give money for failure and it will solve nothing in the end.
How can the public make a decision without information? We're just being told the problem is big. How far will the $700B go against the problem loans?
When is someone going to actually describe the extent of the financial problem? What's the dollar value and number of mortgage backed securities that the $700B bailout is suppose to fix? Can someone stratify the problem loans by number and dollar value (i.e., value and number of liar's loans, loans with zero down, 5% down, 10% down on fixed rate, ARMs and no interest loans)? I doubt the fixed rate loans are the problem but they'd allow citizens to compare the other problematic loans to them in order to actually size the problem.