Granger speaks to Republican women

Chelsea L. McGowan

cmcgowan@weatherforddemocrat.com

Congresswoman Kay Granger spoke Thursday at the monthly meeting of the Parker County Republican Women and attempted to illuminate some of the often-confusing aspects of America’s current financial crisis.

“I want to shed some light on some issues that are very emotional and very difficult,” said Granger, who represents the 12th Congressional District of Texas and is the only Republican woman from Texas currently serving in the U.S. House. “It wasn’t as if we didn’t know this was coming. Anyone who’s been watching the banks would know we were heading into a problem.”

Speaking to a group of approximately 40 women, Granger laid much of the blame at the feet of Americans living outside their means and lending entities making bad business deals.

“It doesn’t make sense to let people buy houses with no money down when they can’t afford the payments,” she said. “I want to keep people in their homes, but we need to stop these bad loans and make sure people are paying their mortgages.”

As daily stories of banks falling into the black have investors running scared, the congresswoman said lawmakers have had a fine line to walk in attempting to keep panic from spreading unnecessarily.

“We’re in a real jam and we all know it,” Granger said. “Our global economy is taking a big hit. How do you let people know that it’s serious enough that we have to act without spreading panic? Secretary Paulson had to walk a fine line when a frown or a raised eyebrow could cause a run on banks.”

Having opposed the original bailout package as proposed by the Secretary of the Treasury, Granger said the members of Congress knew something had to be done.

“A $700 billion bailout ... that’s about the worst packaging I can imagine being put together to get something done,” she said. “Everyone agreed, we’ve got to do something and we’ve got to do something right now. Every minute we waited was another minute the crisis gets worse.”

Granger went on to say in the original Paulson proposal there were “all sorts of problems.”

“There were no safeguards and all sorts of problems in that first two-and-a-half-page bill, and we just couldn’t support it,” she said.

Granger admitted the final bailout bill that was passed was still a relatively small bill, at only 267 pages. But in that document, she said many measures were taken to help “stop the hemorrhaging.”

“We knew that whatever vote we took was not going to fix this ... we wanted to stop the hemorrhaging,” she said. “Essentially, we cut the fund in half. Nothing over $350 billion can be done without a separate vote. We took out those golden parachutes, we put in more internal and external oversight. And now, as these companies improve and start showing a profit, they’ll have to pay back the taxpayers.”

Although she was still critical of some actions taken by officials during this time of crisis, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial speech before last week’s vote, Granger said the ultimate responsibility to enact reform will be squarely on the shoulders of America’s next president.

“Everyone was split on this,” Granger said. “It’s one of those things where people were left to vote their conscience, and we all had to hold our noses. If I could have written the bill I’d have written it differently. Of course, if I had, Democrats would never have voted for it and we couldn’t have gotten anything done. But this won’t fix anything. It’s going to be up to the next administration, whether that’s McCain or Obama. There’s a lot more work to be done.”