“The president is right to call on Congress to enact financial regulatory reforms.  I strongly opposed efforts over the past two decades to strip away the sensible safeguards that had protected consumers and businesses since the Great Depression.  Congress should have made restoring those protections a condition of the taxpayer-funded bailout of financial firms.  The failure to do that will make enacting meaningful reform much more difficult, but even so Congress should make it a priority in order to shield taxpayers and the economy from another devastating financial crisis.”    

On October 1, 2008, Senator Feingold voted against the bailout for the financial industry. In a statement outlining his opposition, Feingold stated the Wall Street Bailout asked “the taxpayer to bear the burden of serious lapses of judgment by private financial institutions, their regulators, and the enablers in Washington who paved the way for this catastrophe by enacting measures removing the safeguards that had protected consumers and the economy since the great depression.”