CREDIT CRISIS: TARP Proposal Dismays Congress

Skepticism about the government’s $700 billion financial bailout plan transcended party lines today as Republicans and Democrats alike took turns hauling four federal regulators out to the woodshed – the “woodshed” being the Senate Banking Committee.

On the block were Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart, and they garnered a less-than-favorable response to their so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) plan from senators during four hours of testimony.

“After January 20, 2009, you aren’t going to be here,”said Sen. Jim Bunning [D-Ky.]. “I still have to answer to my constituents, along with the other Senators on the committee who have to answer to theirs. What am I supposed to tell them if this doesn’t work? I am fearful to the point of panic. I do not see a solution in your plan.”

Bernanke responded.

“We are as frustrated as you are,” he said. “Our concern is for the taxpayers; I am convinced that this approach will cost taxpayers less than the alternative frozen markets, and bad credit. The best protection is to have this work and unfreeze credit in the market.”

Much of the debate today centered on the urgency of the proposed plan, its details, and the repercussions if it does not cure the economy’s financial ills. Bernanke and Paulson urged Congress to act quickly, because of the lack of available credit and confidence in the markets. But Sen. Sherrod Brown [D-Ohio] could not understand “why we are given one week to determine what to do with $700 billion.”

Paulson and Bernanke discussed what they see as the benefits to TARP, including restored confidence in the market, restored credit availability to homeowners. Paulson, Bernanke, Cox and Lockhart did not say how the program would directly facilitate those benefits. They also did not say how the troubled assets would be valued or who would be assigned to value them.

About all they did say on the topic of valuation was that assigning values to the “complicated, intertwined assets” would be determined by industry experts, Bernanke said. But he reiterated what he has said previously, that the government hopes that its involvement will spur an auction for the assets. (That’s a big “if” in our opinion.)

Paulson and Bernanke lauded the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac conservatorship, arguing that the government’s recent success in its takeover of the GSEs bodes well for the proposed TARP.

“Be glad you gave us the bazooka, mortgage lenders were stabilized,” Paulson said, referencing his request for broad regulatory authority from Congress some weeks ago, authority he called “a bazooka.”

Republicans and Democrats on the committee were not convinced the $700 billion plan is the best way out of the financial mess, however.

“The proposal is aimed to help the very people who caused it,” said Sen. Richard Shelby [R-Ala.]. “I want to know that all the other options were exhausted.”