U.S. Sen. Richard Burr downplayed the flap over his withdrawing of money from an ATM during last fall’s banking crisis, saying he did what many people did.
Burr, a Winston-Salem Republican, said today that there were questions about the liquidity of the banking industry that led to the first emergency federal bailout.
So while he was in Washington, he called his wife, Brooke, at their Winston-Salem home, and asked that she withdraw $500 from an ATM over the weekend, reports Rob Christensen.
"There are individuals in this country who keep cash at home,” Burr said in an interview after a talk to coalition of officials from the biopharmaceutical industry. “I don’t happen to be one of those. I live from ATM machine to ATM machine. The reality is when you look at the financial industry that is not exchanging capital; it immediately says you better have a little bit of cash set aside.”
During the past two days, Burr has come under sharp criticism from liberal commentators. MSNBC Rachel Maddow called him “bank run Burr” and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, designated him as “the worst person in the world.”
The flame has been fanned by Democrats in Washington and Raleigh who hope to unseat Burr when he faces re-election in 2010.
More after the jump.
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Burr said he has told the story about asking his wife to withdraw cash during numerous speeches during the past two and half months without anybody raising any questions. But when his comments in a speech last week in Hendersonville were reported in the press it created national attention.
Burr said he told the story because he wanted people to understand the “frame of mind” of members of Congress when they authorized the bailout of the bank industry last fall.
“That was six months ago,” Burr said. “That was when the financial architecture of the industry was in jeopardy
“It was when cash was frozen from institution to institution. The purpose of TARP was to stabilize that architecture to free up the flow of capital from bank to bank and bank to business. That part of the economic crisis is over.”
He said news reports and blogs about what he said “had not done their homework.”
“The only people who are scolding me are people in the media who for some reason are rejuvenating accounts of what I said that are very inaccurate,” Burr said.
“There was no attempt to use proprietary information,” Burr said. “As I’ve learned over the last 36 hours that this story has been alive, there are a lot of North Carolinians who came up to me and said ‘I did exactly what you did. I went and got some cash.’’
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Re: Burr: I did what others did
The real story is not Burr's actions, but what was said in the briefing and by who that caused him to pick up the phone and call his wife.
Like he said, it's been six months, so the data in the briefing would be dated. Good, then you won't mind releasing the briefing details, won't you?
So Senator Burr, make it up with your constituency with openness and transparency from your public office. Who briefed you and and what was said in the briefing? If it's classified, then just tell us the details that you can tell us. Be open and transparent. The people need that in these troubled times.