[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 43 (Wednesday, March 11, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H3319-H3320]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     WHERE IS THE TARP MONEY GOING?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, the people of this country last 
year saw us appropriate $700 billion for what they called TARP. And 
that money was supposed to be used to help out financial institutions 
that were in difficult trouble. It was also supposed to help out with 
the home problem, the houses that were being foreclosed on. And those 
of us in Congress that didn't support it said we didn't support it 
because there was no plan. We didn't know where the money was going to 
be spent.
  So today we had a hearing on this. And during that hearing we asked

[[Page H3320]]

questions about where the money was allocated and who got it and what 
they did with it. And we found out some very interesting things. Eight 
billion dollars was loaned from the TARP money to Citigroup--they got a 
lot more than that, I think they got about $35 or $40 billion--but 
Citigroup loaned $8 billion from the TARP funds to Dubai. Dubai is one 
of the wealthiest countries in the world, and their public sector 
borrowed $8 billion from Citigroup, here in the United States, that had 
just gotten about $30 or $40 billion from the taxpayers in the TARP 
funds. And that just made my hair stand on end. Why would the taxpayers 
in this country want to give money to Citigroup and then have them turn 
right around and loan it to Dubai, halfway around the world, which is a 
very wealthy country? One billion dollars was invested by the J.P. 
Morgan Treasury Services in development of cash management and trade 
finance solutions in India. There's another billion, another thousand 
million dollars, that J.P. Morgan took from the American taxpayer in 
the TARP funds and then loaned it to an organization called Trade 
Finance Solutions in India.
  And then $7 billion was invested by the Bank of America in the China 
Construction Bank Corporation. Now, China has quite a bit of our money 
already and quite a bit of our business, and I don't know why in the 
world American taxpayers should be having their money that is given to 
the Bank of America to keep them afloat to be given or loaned to the 
China Construction Bank Corporation. It just doesn't make any sense to 
me.

                              {time}  1600

  We had $700 billion that was put into the TARP fund. Of the $700 
billion, there are only about eight or nine places that we know where 
the money went. There are another 297 places that are unaccounted for. 
We had a hearing today to try to find out where the money went and what 
it went for, and we couldn't find it, but we know that there are 297 
areas where we don't have any idea what the money was used for or where 
it went.
  In addition to that, we had other expenses or places where we put our 
money. We put $14 billion into the auto bailout, and there's going to 
be another $30 billion in that before this is over; $780 billion, I 
believe it was, that went into the account that was supposed to 
stimulate the economy, the stimulus bill, and that is almost another 
trillion dollars. We passed a $410 billion supplemental yesterday, and 
we're going to pass a $3.6 trillion budget before too long that's going 
to include 660 some billion dollars for a new socialized national 
health care program.
  The reason I bring all this up, my colleagues, is because I think the 
American people and my colleagues ought to know that we are spending 
trillions of dollars of taxpayers' money, and in many, many cases we 
don't have a clue where it went. And I think that this government and 
this administration and the Congress should demand, demand, that the 
TARP funds and all the other funds that are being expended by the 
taxpayer to take care of these financial institutions to keep our 
economy above water and to help bail out homeowners who are losing 
their homes ought to be accounted for. Most of that money so far, as 
far as I can tell, isn't doing anything to stimulate economic growth or 
to help the homeowners or the financial institutions to solve this 
problem.
  And in addition to that, the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Geithner, 
said that they're going to have to put another $2 to $3 trillion into 
the financial institutions to keep them buoyed up and survivable.
  Now, just add all that together in your mind and you're looking at $5 
or $6 or $7 trillion, and that money is not there. We're going to have 
to print it. It's going to be passed on to our kids in the form of tax 
increases or inflation. We need to have an accounting.

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