NPR: Now, looking ahead to the next $350 billion, is the legislation that's been written, do you believe that will fix it, and how?
Dodd: Well clearly we need, and I think we've received this, by the way, President-elect Obama appeared before the Democratic caucus the other day, and clearly expressed determination that this program will be fundamentally managed differently. What we don't want to find out is, after giving these resources to the administration, we'll have a repetition of what occurred after the resources were provided to the Bush administration. In which we were promised, for instance, and the law certainly talked about this, there would be efforts to mitigate foreclosure problems. None of that happened over this period of time. So greater specificity is being given, more needs to be provided. But any repetition of what we've seen over the last few weeks will be met with very severe hostility.
NPR: With this, as you say, "greater specificity," some of these are what you might call "strings" as well. I mean, some of these are directions on how to use this money or how not to use this money. Would that be a problem for President Obama?
Dodd: Well, it's a great question Rene, and a legitimate one. And again, I, what we're talking about here is just an understanding in broad terms, but with some further assurances, foreclosure mitigation is essential. We may have as many as 8 million homes go into foreclosure, that's one out of six homes in the country.... Again, I don't want to say to the administration you must specifically have this plan or that plan, what I them to do is to listen to people with good ideas and do something to put a tourniquet on the hemorrhaging that's occurring with home ownership in this country.
I very much appreciate the follow-up call from the Senate banking committee (people in Congress have been surprising helpful to us this week), and I want to maintain the honest, reciprocal communication that we have seen so far. However, I also made it clear that I disagreed with Senator Dodd on this matter. Also, reading his quotes here, I am not even sure if I understand him.
First, Senator Dodd indicated that the Bush administration previously gave him assurances that TARP money would be used for home foreclosure mitigation. However, those promises were not kept. So, this time around, he asked for more assurances from the incoming Obama administration. The difference is that this time he asked for "greater specificity." Further, if the promises are broken once again, the result will be "very severe hostility."
Maybe it is because of the last eight years of "assurances" we have all been given by the executive branch on the economy and Iraq, or maybe it was the time when Obama reversed his position on telecom immunity in the FISA re-write, but this is not adequate oversight. "Very severe hostility" is not a substitute for legislation. And anyway, if you anger the Senate, what are they really going to do, anyway? Their recent track record on this matter is not promising. Are they going to ask for even more specificity next time?
I don't accept Dodd's claim that he doesn't want to tie the Obama administration down into a specific course of action. It would be easy to pass legislation that would both require certain minimums from the Obama administration and to also not tie the Obama administration into a specific course of action. All this would require would be a photocopy machine and a hardcopy of Barney Frank's bill. In fact, Senator Dorgan has introduced a similar bill to the Senate, S 195, which is currently sitting in Dodd's Senate Banking committee. That bill doesn't even require any specifics on how the money is spent, and only requires greater transparency and oversight. Dodd is not acting on that much weaker, far less restrictive bill, either.
Natasha called Senator Dorgan's office earlier today, and asked if they had a plan to push S 195 forward. The staffer with whom we spoke did not expect any quick movement on S 195. While I know that we are entering a three-day weekend which will be followed by the Inauguration, this lack of movement is something we will try to change. More soon. |
