Dodd: If Obama Pinky-Swears He'll Be Responsible, Let's Give Him $350 Billion

So, Chris Dodd thinks the first installment of TARP funds has been "terribly mismanaged" by President Bush and his administration (forget for the moment that he was one of the lead negotiators and voted for the plan as is). As the leader of the Senate Banking Committee, he wants us to know that he is committed to making sure this terrible mismanagement doesn't continue if the Obama administration gets the rest of the $700 billion tax dollars. And this, apparently, is how he is going to go about it (from Politico, H/T TPM, emphasis mine):

Dodd said he’s prepared to draft legislation, mirroring a bill proposed by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass) last week, to call for a broadening of the TARP program and for more oversight, but he said that a letter from Obama’s team – instead of additional legislation – could be sufficient to alleviate concerns in Congress.

Got that? The new plan is to make Obama promise to be more responsible than GWB, cross his heart and hope to die, stick a needle in his eye. Even HuffPo doesn't buy it.

I understand that an awful lot of people across the country drank the Obama Kool-Aid and believe that he is going to save the country from whatever George Bush did to it. But it is a little frightening to think that our senior senator has apparently done the same thing, to the point that he thinks he can just take O's word for it.