Welcome. It is Vertical Center Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson with you and Senator the biggest

news story of the week many Americans are concerned about their banks. They're concerned

about banking. They're concerned about what's happened with a fallout of Silicon Valley

bank. This wasn't a little bank. This was a big bank. It was one of the top three failures

of my lifetime. I want to get your initial reaction to this and what you've heard, at least

from those in Washington that were supposed to be keeping an eye on this bank and many

others every day. Well, this has been a very chaotic time in the markets. We've seen two

different banks fail, including the 16th largest bank in the United States, Silicon Valley

bank with $210 billion in assets. That has called into question a lot of the financing for

the tech industry. It's called into question a lot of the financing for venture capital

and it has potentially imperiled a significant number of mid-sized banks. In response to this,

the Biden administration rolled out a major bailout, conveniently bailing out the politically

collected friends of the Biden White House in a way that will have lasting repercussions

for the economy and will almost certainly incentivize future bad conduct by other banks.

When you look at this from a standpoint of it being called a bailout, a lot of people have

been calling it that, but this administration keeps saying this is not a bailout. Is this

a bailout or the taxpayers going to have to foot the bill for this? Is this a delayed

bill for taxpayers? How should the American Bureau be reacting to this?

This is 100% a bailout and the Biden administration is spinning like crazy trying to pretend that

it's not. What they are arguing is the money, there's $120 billion in a fund that is paid

by banks and they say, well, that's not taxpayer money. Well, the last time I checked, banks

are taxpayers. Banks pay quite a bit in taxes, not only that, but the fees that the banks

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