Retiring Republican Senator Judd Gregg this morning called passing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) the biggest accomplishment of the past decade.
Gregg, a fiscal hawk, said on MSNBC that TARP was “the most significant thing that’s happened in the last 5 to 10 years.”
TARP is commonly demonized by Republicans and Democrats alike, with many making their vote against the program a central issue in their campaigns leading up to the midterm election. Nonetheless, Gregg defended it as having staved off a financial disaster.
“We were on the verge of a cataclysmic event,” he said, “and if we hadn’t stepped forward as a government and done it in a bipartisan way in a short time frame, the trauma this country would have been put through as our banking system melted down and our economy melted down would have been devastating. Now the taxpayers will make money on this deal, it looks like to me.”
“I think the program worked the way it was supposed to,” he finished.