As speculation mounted last week that Greece would be the first European nation to default on its $157 billion loan crafted and partially funded by the International Monetary Fund, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R.-Wash.) has stepped up the fight in Congress to stop the IMF from spending $108 billion of U.S. tax dollars on European bailouts.
“At some point, there has to be an end to this vicious cycle of the IMF borrowing to bail out others that threatens all of us,” McMorris Rodgers, vice chairman of the House Republican Conference, told HUMAN EVENTS in an exclusive interview Friday. The Washington State lawmaker has introduced legislation that would rescind IMF authority to spend the $108 billion Congress appropriated for the fund in 2009.
Officially, her bill, HR 2313, would also secure the return of any unused U.S. tax dollars from that $108 billion IMF package and apply it to the deficit. So far, McMorris Rodgers’ proposal has 15 co-sponsors in the House. Sen. Jim DeMint (R.-S.C.) has introduced similar legislation in the Senate.
Referring to the sensational arrest last month of then-IMF Managing Director Dominque Strauss-Kahn on charges of assaulting a hotel employee in New York, McMorris Rodgers told us that “the scandal has now focused attention and started fresh debate on reevaluation of what the appropriate role of the U.S. should be toward the IMF.” Even before the arrest of the man known as “DSK,” she noted, “The IMF has not been forthcoming in what it has done with our $108 billion. At this point, neither the IMF nor [Secretary of the Treasury Tim] Geithner has let us know how much of it there is left for us to recover. We just can’t go on this way.”
