Republicans are upset with the
White House on two fronts.
First, they say that administration officials haven’t done enough to keep them in the loop on its plans for addressing the crisis.
Second, they don’t much like the plans: Intervening — as the administration has done with
Fannie Mae,
Freddie Mac and now
AIG — doesn’t comport with the
GOP’s core belief in the free market.
“There is confidence in [Federal Reserve Chairman Ben] Bernanke, but that reservoir is not limitless,” House Republican Conference
Chairman Adam Putnam (R-Fla.) said. “People need to understand what the guiding principles are behind this ad hoc strategy.
“How do you decide that AIG is worthy of a bailout, but
Lehman Brothers is not? There has to be some better understanding of that.”
But understanding the “guiding principles” means talking them through, and Putnam said the White House hasn’t done enough of that. “The communication lines are not operating efficiently,” he said.
Although Bernanke and
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson traveled to the Hill on Tuesday evening to brief lawmakers on the AIG bailout, many Republicans said they were caught off guard by the bailout when it was announced a few hours later.
Putnam said
the Treasury Department and the
Federal Reserve should dispatch an envoy to
Capitol Hill to keep members up to speed on the latest developments.
The chairman of the 100-strong conservative Republican Study Committee, Rep. Jeb Hensarling of
Texas, said that the administration has stumbled down a road that makes many conservatives uncomfortable.
“It’s time to bail out the taxpayers from bailout mania,” Hensarling said. “Neither the secretary of the Treasury nor the Fed has articulated a clear standard” for who gets bailed out and who doesn’t. “We’ve given a blank check to the secretary of the Treasury.”
Republican Sen. Jim Bunning of
Kentucky was more blunt.
“To say I am outraged by this would be an understatement,” Bunning said. “The greed on
Wall Street is only exceeded by the stupidity of the Treasury secretary and the chairman of the Federal Reserve.”
Bunning compared the federal government’s interventions with the actions of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez — and not favorably. “The only difference between what the Fed did and what Hugo Chavez is doing in Venezuela is Chavez doesn’t put taxpayer dollars at risk when he takes over companies — he just takes them,” he said.
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