Earlier today, Congressman Marsha Blackburn  issued a statement on the proposed bailout plan. I didn’t have time to get it up earlier, so my apologies.  But I thought many of you might like to read what she has to say.  

I do not support a straight bailout of Wall Street firms funded by hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. 

I am concerned that unless Congress acts soon, the country’s economy will find itself in a significant and protracted economic crisis.  In Tennessee, this crisis may first be felt by our small business community; who could experience a credit tightening that threatens their livelihood in very short order. These small business owners are the foundation of our economy and largely blameless in this crisis.  From there, credit tightening would spread across the economy and leave nobody untouched. Congress must act to make sure that they do not suffer at the hands of Wall Street excess.

While the situation is very serious, there are better ways to address it than the plan before us.  The first step is for the President and Congressional Leaders to lay out a predictable and reasonable legislative process that will yield a responsible solution.  This process, and its associated timeline, may be enough to calm the market in the short-term.  This must include legislation that can be debated and amended in Congress. 

President Bush and Secretary Paulson need to start over. We must find a solution that will allow Wall Street to work its way back to health through its own resources and ingenuity. Such a solution should put a premium on driving new private wealth into the market, holding negligent executives responsible, and turning to the taxpayer as the lender of absolute last resort.  The plan should deal with all of those impacted, to include regional and community banks as well as major Wall Street firms. 

To infuse more private capital into the Market, I would like to have a suspension of the Capital Gains tax considered as part of any proposal.  To the extent that taxpayer funds must be used, they should be offset by spending reductions in other places, and be distributed in the form of short term bridge loans. Congress has established a similar bridge loan program for the auto industry.   I have also proposed a 5% across the board spending cut- excepting defense and homeland security funds- that could yield over $100 billion annually. 

Finally, this is a serious crisis and Congress and the White House need to deal with it seriously.  All ideas, including those I listed above, should be on the table.  Congress should stay in session, with this issue at the top of our agenda, until we find a resolution.

Here is the pdf of her ideas: blackburn-bailout-fact-sheet