WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama expressed confidence Saturday that lawmakers would approve his proposed tax on banks to recover bailout money, despite opposition from Republicans and the financial industry.
“Like clockwork, the banks and politicians who curry their favor are already trying to stop this fee from going into effect,” he said, using his weekly radio and Internet addresses to promote the plan he announced this past week.
“The very same firms reaping billions of dollars in profits, and reportedly handing out more money in bonuses and compensation than ever before in history, are now pleading poverty.”
If banks can afford to pay out all those bonuses, he said, then they can repay taxpayers too.
“We’re not going to let Wall Street take the money and run,” he said. “We’re going to pass this fee into law.”
Congress must approve the tax, and that is not assured, given the immediate opposition from Republicans. Democrats could lose their 60-vote majority in the Senate, with Democrat Martha Coakley in an unexpectedly close race against Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts to fill the seat held for decades by the late Democrat Edward M. Kennedy. Brown opposes Obama’s bank tax.
The proposed 0.15 percent tax would last at least 10 years and generate about $90 billion over the decade, according to administration estimates. It would apply to about 50 of the biggest banks, those with more than $50 billion in assets, and include many institutions that accepted no money from the $700 financial industry bailout.
Obama said although the banks were facing a “crisis of their own creation,” the bailout prevented an “even greater calamity for the country.”
