U.S. Has Already Contributed $100 Billion + to Bailouts;
“We Cannot Take the ‘Too Big to Fail’ Philosophy to a Global Level” 

Washington, D.C. – Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Vice Chair of the House Republican Conference, released the following statement today after International Monetary Fund (IMF) Director Christine Lagarde distributed a document at an IMF steering committee meeting warning that the IMF’s growing participation in European bailouts means the organization will likely need to increase its global bailout fund – a fund to which U.S. taxpayers have already contributed over $100 billion:

“At a time when the federal government is borrowing $5 billion every day on top of a $14 trillion national debt, we should not be funneling billions of dollars through the IMF to bail out Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and other wealthy European countries.  The European Union was set up to be an economic competitor to the United States, and therefore, any bailout funds should come from the E.U., not the U.S.  The global debt crisis was caused by too much spending and borrowing and that crisis will not be solved by more spending and borrowing.  We cannot take the ‘too big to fail’ philosophy to a global level.  The only thing ‘too big to fail’ is America itself.” 

The U.S. is the leading contributor to the IMF, providing the organization with 17.3 percent of its funding.

Since the European debt crisis broke, the IMF has committed $336 billion to bailing out European governments.  The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports the IMF is hoping to increase its total financial resources by another $360 billion.

On March 24, 2010, Rep. McMorris Rodgers was the first Member of Congress to publicly oppose U.S. involvement in a European bailout.  Greece became the first country to receive an IMF bailout seven weeks later. 

On June 24, 2011, Rep. McMorris Rodgers and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) introduced legislation that would rescind the IMF’s authority to spend up to $108 billion of U.S. taxpayer money that is currently available to fund these disastrous bailouts. 

A full compilation of the Congresswoman’s work on this issue can be found here.