In the 1985 comedy "Brewster's Millions," the late great comedian Richard Pryor played a minor league baseball player who had 30 days to blow through $30 million with nothing to show for it at the end, a feat he just managed to pull off in the nick of time. But Pryor's Montgomery Brewster had nothing on Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who's planning on asking Congress for the remaining $350 billion in bailout money after spending the first $350 billion in three months.
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Paulson is counting on Congress releasing the remaining Troubled Asset Relief Plan funds in order to bankroll
the government's bridge loan to the automakers. But with only a month
left before Barack Obama takes office, Paulson will have to do some heavy
convincing of a skeptical, angry Congress, which is already up in
arms about Paulson using about $335 billion of the first tranche to
increase bank capital instead of buying mortgage-backed securities as originally promised. And unlike the meticulous records kept of Brewster's spending
habits, Paulson & Co. haven't exactly been the picture of
accountability, with those at Treasury deploying the funds coming under fire from
Congress about poor oversight and a poor plan.
With the shifting use of the money and the lack of action about
restructuring mortgages, the Bush administration may be looking at a
much tougher sell to lawmakers than the one they faced in October when
the TARP bill was first passed -- not to mention President-elect
Obama, who also is chiming in before being handed an empty
checkbook on Jan. 20.
According to Bloomberg, Obama expects some explanations too, saying at a
press conference Friday that "at the point where the Treasury comes
forward" with a request for the remainder of the TARP, "I would expect
that they would provide a clear justification for why they need
additional dollars and how they intend to use it."
Still there's probably a happy ending for Paulson, who just like
Montgomery Brewster will walk off into the sunset with millions of his
own after beating out the naysayers and slick Wall Street lawyers who
thought he couldn't
fritter away put all that money to work. -
George White
See Corporate Dealmaker post on automaker bailout
See Bloomberg story on Paulson requesting funds
