Hearing Of The Senate Budget Committee

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SEN. WYDEN: The Budget Committee will come to order this morning. Our chairman, Senator Conrad, who unquestionably knows more about the budget and the fiscal matters than anybody, in my view, in the Senate, is not able to be here today, Chairman Bernanke, but he did want me to convey that he's looking forward to talking with you in detail about the issues that we're going to explore this morning on another occasion.

Mr. Chairman, we thank you very much for coming. The public always pays attention to what you have to say. And I think it's right to begin this morning by asking, what do the American people want to hear from you at this critical time? I believe the American people want you to be brutally honest about the true extent of our economic challenges and confident that the solutions to these challenges are being put in place.

I think it is fair to say they aren't tuning in for more bad news. Americans aren't glued to their televisions, hoping to learn about something else that's gone wrong. CNBC doesn't have record ratings because anybody wants to see the market continue to go down. Rather, I suspect they're all watching for the opposite. They're looking for hope. They want to be confident. They want to believe that there are solutions being put in place that are going to work.

Americans certainly have confidence in the American dream, the dream of a land with opportunity for each according to ability and achievement. But right now, as Warren Buffett said recently, "it is much better to be a financial cripple with a government guarantee, than a Gibraltar without one."

Just yesterday, after it was reported that AIG lost $62 billion last quarter, an estimated $460,000 per minute, the federal government offered AIG yet another check. How is this rewarding ability and achievement? Right now, small businesses across the country who've played by the rules, paid their bills on time, can't get a line of credit while AIG seems to have an open spigot for taxpayer money.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I share your view that stabilizing the financial sector is a necessary component of a sustainable recovery, but so is confidence. And to earn the confidence of the American people, in my view, there needs to be an injection of openness, accountability and, most of all, a sense of fairness.

You're in charge of the program that is supposed to get consumer and small-business lending going again on Main Street. It seems to be slow getting off the ground, while AIG, as we've just learned in the last day or so, seems to be getting pledges of money almost overnight. Nothing's going to increase confidence like rewarding hard work and know-how on Main Street. Giving those who have earned the opportunity to get credit to grow again, which is what Main Street is all about, is critical.

The federal budget is an opportunity to provide more honesty about the economic challenges ahead and set in place policies that will generate confidence needed to get investors back in the marketplace. We're looking forward to working with you on crafting just such a budget. Let me now recognize our friend, the ranking minority member, Senator Gregg.

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