CBNNews.com -- The failed $700B bailout plan lost in the House by 23 votes. The final tally was 228-205.
Rep. J. Gresham, R-S..C., voted against the plan.
Find out why by clicking on the play, or read the transcription is below.
Barrett: It leaves the taxpayers on the hook. Still. And it's too much government intervention in the free market. I know what's being said in the media that Nancy Pelosi insighted people to turn coat and all this other stuff. Listen, the Republicans that I've talked to, the Democrats that I've talked to - this is not a Republican issue or Democrat issue. This is about doing what's right. This is about saving and securing the free market process with no government intervention.
And there are some provisions in the bill that are good. There's no doubt about it. We can go a couple of steps further and sure up this market and not leave the taxpayers on the hook. We can allow the free market process to work, and I'll tell you a couple of them.
One of them is suspending mark to mark automatically. I signed a letter this morning to the SEC chairman, Chairman Cox which would allow company's holding to do that. That's one of the things that got us in this problem right now. There's a couple of other things we've talked about. We can repatriate money. We have companies that are off shore that can bring monies back into the country with zero tax ramifications. We can suspend the tax. We did this in the 80s it brought $350B back into our capital markets. We can suspend dividends for a month, two months, three months.
This would allow these companies should they choose to do so Robin, to keep these moneys in their business which would allow them more capital. I think it makes perfectly good sense, and I guess one of the biggest one that is out there, Part of this plan was an insurance program - kind of an FDIC-like insurance where the government was the backstop.
Where the company that was buying these assets could pay a premium for insurance, on this asset to guarantee if it's worth, if you bought it for a dollar, it guarantees it's worth a dollar. We make this program mandatory, so the people that are buying these assets, through the insurance, are guaranteed that these assets are good, that keeps the government off the tab.
So we've come so far. And we understand, we all understand Republicans and Democrats something has to be done, this bill yesterday was a resounding "no" because people understood that this is not the way that we do it. So it's going to be interesting to see, we will be back, I think the Senate will be back tomorrow.
We will be back in session on Thursday and there is a movement a foot right now. They're working on these bills, or this bill, and there will be something that will happen that will bring security, that will bring stability to the markets and the way we want to do it is to make sure that that is done without leaving the taxpayer on the hook.
Mazyck: What do you tell the taxpayers who, maybe, everybody's saying oh my goodness the world's coming to an end, we're looking at another Great Depression. People are nervous. What do you say to reassure them?
Barrett: Here's what I say to them: the sun came up today. The markets opened. The Asian markets have been pretty stable today. The United States market is actually up today, so it works. The free market process works. If you've got bad players out there, they need to be weeded out. If you've got bad companies out there, you need to be weeded out.
We need to make sure we have the stop gaps in there to make sure that people are doing the right thing. We're going to get through this. Even if the bill passes, or when the bill passes, 'cause there's something that's going to pass Robin, it ain't over - as they say in South Carolina.
There's still going to be some rocky times, there's still going to be some rough sailing ahead, but what we've got to do is make sure that we do this the right way. Because if we, I firmly believe, if we think more about fixing this problem in the short term, in the long term, we're going to do more damage than doing it right the first time.
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