Comrade Obama expected to be hardest hit.
(Daily Caller)– Backed by top GOP leaders including House Speaker John Boehner, Republican Rep. Mike Turner is introducing a constitutional amendment to ban the federal government from owning corporations in whole or part following aggressive intervention by the Treasury Department during the financial crisis.
The proposal, like all constitutional amendments, faces major hurdles to becoming law.
But, part of a flurry by constitutional activity by congressional Republicans, the proposal could signify a new reluctance in Congress to grant the Treasury Department broad powers to intervene in private businesses like it did with the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailouts.
Turner voted against TARP, which he thought would give Treasury only the authority to purchase “toxic assets.” But he watched with increasing alarm as the Obama administration used the law to take over entire companies, including General Motors, where his father worked for 42 years.
“My father’s a General Motors retiree and lost his health care as a result of General Motors’ bankruptcy and as a result of the decisions that were made down in Sec. [Timothy] Geitner’s office,” Turner said in an interview.
Turner’s constitutional amendment “would stop a bailout where the end result is that the federal government owns a private company. The federal government would still be able in financial crisis situations to step in and provide loans, loan guarantees. But I think it’s particularly troublesome to Americans that the federal government could end up owning private industry,” he said.