Contact: Michael Steel, Kevin Smith, 202-225-4000

WASHINGTON, April 21 /Standard Newswire/ -- At a press conference this morning with House GOP leaders, House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) made the following comments on the Democrats' job-killing Wall Street bailout bill:

"The American people continue to ask the question, 'where are the jobs?'  All they see out of Washington is this job-killing agenda by the Democrats here that is only making matters worse for American families and small businesses -- and this bailout bill is no exception.  It will bail out Wall Street at the expense of small banks and small businesses all over the country.  The President says that he wants to clean up Wall Street, but when you look at this bill, what he actually does is protect them from ever having a financial problem.  Because there is, in fact, a permanent bailout fund here. 

"Even if they take the $50 billion fund out of the Senate bill, when you look at the authority given to the FDIC and the Treasury, they've got the ability to go in and bailout anybody they deem in need of it, or anyone who's systemically at risk. 

"But this idea of institutionalizing 'too big to fail' will in fact hurt all kinds of businesses around the country.  Because as an investor, if you look at one of these big firms that can't possibly go out of business because they are 'too big to fail,' why not invest there?  It's going to be the safest investment in the world and it's going to have an implicit government guarantee, just like Fannie and Freddie again.  This is a bad bill and Republicans are going to stand with the American people, who are standing on their tip-toes yelling, 'stop!'"

NOTE: The Democrats' bailout bill does nothing to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government mortgage companies that sparked the financial meltdown by giving too many high-risk loans to people who could not afford it.