Barney Frank's TARP Plan Slides Through House Without Committee Hearings

While America was distracted by the arguments over health care, Copenhagen, terror trials in New York and a "jobs" summit, a new type of TARP proposal that would set up a tax-and-spend process involving hundreds of billions of dollars and that would bypass Congress has been adopted by the U.S. House.

The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act by U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., was approved recently on a 223-202 vote without a single cosponsor and no hearings. Its major congressional actions were its introduction on Dec. 2 and its adoption on Dec. 11.

It is, according to Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., worse than Democrat plans to have the government take over health care across the nation and the massive new taxes proposed in the global warming "cap-and-trade" proposal, combined.Essentially, she described the plan by Frank, which has yet to move through the U.S. Senate, as a new Troubled Asset Relief Plan like the original that gave truckloads of money to banks or financial institutions at the direction of the government.This plan, likewise, would involve the government handing out billions of dollars to companies it chose; it also would have government oversight over even minute details of those corporate operations; and further it would allow the collection of taxes – or "fees" – to fund operations. But worst of all, Bachmann said, such decisions would be left to the whims of the president and someone who would be appointed to a newly created "credit czar" post.

"President Obama would be able to bypass Congress and have a permanent bailout authority – at his sole power and discretion," she warned.

It also, she said, would give the president the authority to impose billions of dollars in taxes – or "fees" – without any further congressional input.

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