Senator calls TARP vote 'most egregious' in Senate history

The vote to authorize the $700 billion fund to bail out the financial industry was the "most egregious" in the history if the Senate, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said Thursday.

Inhofe condemned the vote to approve the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) just over a year ago, which many economists credit with having stabilized the U.S. financial sector.

"History will reflect someday that the most egregious vote in the 200+ history of the Senate took place on October 1st of '08," Inhofe told an Oklahoma radio affiliate in an interview today. "That's when we gave $700 billion to an unelected, liberal bureaucrat with no accountability."

It is not clear who Inhofe referenced with his remark about an "unelected, liberal" bureaucrat. The TARP fund is administered by the Treasury Department, headed last year by Henry Paulson until now-Sec. Tim Geithner was installed. Oversight of the fund is undertaken by several boards, mostly including cabinet secretaries, lawmakers, and some appointed individuals.

Inhofe had tried to redirect some of the $350 billion in unspent TARP funds toward highway reconstruction efforts, an effort that failed last week in the Senate.

The conservative senator blamed some of his colleagues for having voted against the recision of TARP funds, saying that they would prefer to use those remaining dollars for "social engineering."

The senator's words mark a slight break with his own party's leader in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who had said last week that the TARP program worked, and saved the U.S. economy.