Obama says no bailout for banks

WASHINGTON, April 17 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama said Saturday taxpayers would not pick up the tab to bail out financial institutions under his financial reform plan.

"Never again will taxpayers be on the hook because a financial company is deemed 'too big to fail,'" Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

The president labeled "cynical and deceptive" a claim by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that the reform bill in the Senate "not only allows for taxpayer-funded bailouts of Wall Street banks, it institutionalizes them."

"He knows that it would do just the opposite," Obama said. "Every day we don't act, the same system that led to bailouts remains in place, with the exact same loopholes and the exact same liabilities. And if we don't change what led to the crisis, we'll doom ourselves to repeat it."

Defeat of the measure, he said, would "leave taxpayers on the hook if a crisis like this ever happens again."

The plan would "protect consumers, taxpayers and the economy from the kind of abuses that helped bring about the economic crisis," he said. "Every day without reform, those abuses, and the system which allowed them, remain in place. It is time to move forward with real reforms for Wall Street."

Obama blamed a "failure of responsibility" from Wall Street and Washington for the loss of 8 million jobs, "trillions in savings erased, countless dreams diminished or denied."

He said the Democrats' financial reform will close the "loopholes" that led to the economic crisis.

"It's these loopholes that allowed executives to take risks that not only endangered their companies, but also our entire economy," he said. "And we're going to put in place new rules so that big banks and financial institutions will pay for the bad decisions they make -- not taxpayers…. We will hold Wall Street accountable."