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Bailout Plan Lacks Oversight, Inhofe Says

By Chris Casteel

September 24, 2008

WASHINGTON — Sen. Jim Inhofe said Tuesday he won't support the $700 billion plan proposed by the Bush administration to bail out the troubled financial industry and that he wants to see an alternative approach.

Inhofe, R-Tulsa, said the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. raises too many questions about how mortgage-related assets would be handled and leaves the power to deal with them in too few hands without enough oversight.

"I can't see any accountability,” Inhofe said in an interview.

"I don't want to do nothing,” he said. "I want to see some intervention. But this is the wrong intervention.”

What's the right intervention?

Inhofe, the first member of the Oklahoma congressional delegation to come out against the plan, said he has been studying one by Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, that would create a trust to handle the mortgage-related assets, rather than consolidating power in the hands of the treasury secretary and his designees.

Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Cheyenne, a longtime member of the House Financial Services Committee that is handling the plan on the House side, said Tuesday that a bill is being crafted to create a corporation that would buy the mortgage-related assets.

"I look forward to working in a bipartisan manner to create a clean, straightforward bill that will correct the woes on Wall Street before they spread to Main Street, Oklahoma, while protecting the purse strings of the American taxpayer,” Lucas said.

Other members of the delegation are withholding judgment for now.

"I am watching the current discussion very closely,” Rep. Dan Boren, D-Muskogee, said. "At this point, however, I am still awaiting the full details of the plan to be presented.”

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