WASHINGTON   –  U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (MO-08) today joined legislation authored by U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson to place any funds repaid to the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program in a special account to reduce the public debt.

“From Congress’ and taxpayers’ points of view, the TARP has run amok.  It was chartered to acquire nonperforming assets and take them off bank books, but instead the TARP has been used to buy preferred stock in financial institutions and for other purposes. Now there’s talk of converting that stock to voting stock, which would make the federal government a majority shareholder with full voting rights in some of these public companies.  The federal government is far overstepping its boundaries,” Emerson said.  “It’s time to take the credit card away.  The money is not being used responsibly.”

H.R. 2603 would require the Secretary of the Treasury to use for debt reduction all funds repaid to the federal government TARP program, which would prevent the money from being recycled through the program to acquire more private assets.

“We have an $11 trillion national debt, and over six percent of that debt is in the form of TARP obligations.  I’m very disturbed that the Treasury has attempted to leverage the TARP, a program intended to respond to a credit crisis, into a federal holding company for stock.  The companies which came to the TARP for help are now scrambling to get out from under government loans and away from its obtrusive, often retroactive, government controls.  The worst thing we could do at this point is allow TARP to continue to use taxpayers’ money to acquire a stake in private companies, no matter how troubled they are,” Emerson said.

Earlier this year, Emerson opposed the release of an additional $350 billion to the TARP, saying that the Treasury had changed the rules under which the special account operates.