The Dodd-Frank Financial Takeover bill has passed the Senate 60-39. The bill will now be sent to Obama’s desk.
Bill Wilson, President of Americans for Limited Government, said of the Financial Takeover bill that “the American people have lost one more piece of their liberty, as the Senate has voted to create a hidden, permanent bailout that will enable faceless bureaucrats to levy taxes, bail out politically-privileged institutions and to seize and liquidate politically-unconnected ones, redistributing their assets to favored constituencies, like unions.”
“There will be no votes in Congress like TARP ever again, as Congress has abdicated the power to tax and spend elsewhere,” Wilson explained, adding, “Which solves a political problem for members of Congress, but is really just a con game so that they don’t have to take responsibility for unpopular bailouts and government takeovers.
Wilson said “the American people can thank these 60 senators that voted to invoke cloture on the Dodd-Frank bill,” which included all but one Senate Democrat and Republican Senators Olympia Snowe, Scott Brown, and Susan Collins. The vote ending debate was 60 to 38.
Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold was on the only Democrat to vote Nay, whom Wilson said “had the intellectual honesty to say he wanted to address the root causes of the financial crisis,” and thanked him for his votes to bring an end to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and to audit the Federal Reserve.
Wilson called the bank tax by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) on about 60 bank holding and insurance companies with $50 billion or greater in assets included in the legislation “taxation without representation”.
“The taxes which will finance the ‘orderly liquidation fund’, the cost of which will be passed on to savers, investors, and anyone who uses the financial system,” Wilson said, citing a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of a similar bank tax proposal by the Obama Administration, “the ultimate cost of a tax or fee is not necessarily borne by the entity that writes the check to the government. The cost of the proposed fee would ultimately be borne to varying degrees by an institution’s customers, employees, and investors, but the precise incidence among those groups is uncertain.”
“These taxes, bailouts, and takeovers will happen arbitrarily, by faceless, unelected bureaucrats at the FDIC, Treasury, and Federal Reserve. When there’s another bailout — not if, but when — and any of these 60 Senators dare attempts to condemn it, they need to be called out for the liars that they are,” Wilson concluded.
