Republican senators want to wrap up TARP.

The Troubled Assets Relief Program – AKA the bailout – has served its purpose and should be ended, say 39 senators, including Georgia’s Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson. They wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to that effect. Isakson’s office released it today.

“As we approach the termination date for authority to spend federal funds allocated to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) through the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) (PL 110-343), we ask you to allow the authority to expire on December 31, 2009. As you know, the latest TARP report shows a significant amount of unobligated funds. Ending the authority for TARP would help improve the Federal debt going forward and reduce the need to increase the debt limit, which Congress has raised three times in the last 14 months.

Georgia’s Republican congressmen say AIG executives shouldn’t have received huge bonuses … but they shouldn’t have to give most of the money back through taxes, either.

All seven, including Rep. Paul Broun, R-Athens, voted against a 90 percent tax on the $165 million in bonuses, paid with federal bailout money. Broun said the bill was – you guessed it – unconstitutional.

The AJC’s Jim Galloway posted a blog entry this afternoon quoting political analyst Charlie Cook about “a certain Republican U.S. senator up for re-election in 2010, someone generally regarded as fairly conservative who might face a serious challenge from a very conservative fellow Republican.”

Galloway, surmising that the senator in question could be Georgia’s Johnny Isakson, knocks down a rumor that the challenger is Rep. Lynn Westmoreland.

But I have a different theory. If the senator is Isakson, then the challenger is our very own Rep. Paul Broun.

Congress will let President-elect Barack Obama spend the second $350 billion of the Trouble Asset Recovery Plan – over the objections of Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson.

The Glimmer Twins both voted in favor of the bailout plan last year, splitting with their Republican counterparts in the House. Chambliss almost paid with his political life, and they’re singing a different tune now.

“I supported the first round of the Troubled Asset Relief Program because it is critical to our economy to unfreeze the credit markets,” Isakson said. “However, the administration has used the money in different ways than what was planned originally, and the credit markets are still frozen. As a result, I cannot justify supporting the release of the remaining funds.”

Translation: I goofed.

Both Rep. Paul Broun and Sen. Johnny Isakson oppose using part of the $700 billion Congress appropriated in September to free up credit markets on bridge loans to domestic automakers. But they oppose it for very different reasons.

“I voted ‘no’ on this legislation because I believe the best way to bailout the auto industry is by allowing the free-market to operate completely free of any federal regulatory involvement in the automotive marketplace,” Broun said in a press release today. “I would also urge the manufacturers to reopen or build new factories in the South, and I urge Congress to promote innovation through tax cuts and credits. In fact, I believe it’s time to bailout the taxpayers and small businesses with tax-cuts and deregulation.

Same beef, different bailout.

Rep. Paul Broun, R-Athens, voted against a $14 billion auto bailout that passed the House 237-170.

Broun joined the six other Georgia Republican congressmen, as well as Democrat Jim Marshall, in voting against H.R. 7321. The bill, which faces an unknown fate in the Senate, offers low-interest loans to domestic carmakers (taxpayers would be first in line for repayment ahead of other creditors), requires the companies to restructure by the end of March and creates a “car czar” President Bush will name to oversee negotiations among executives, unions, creditors, retirees and dealers.

Broun, regrettably, did not use any colorful, folksy agricultural metaphors like “cow patty” to describe the bill, but he made clear his distaste in a press release:

Rep. Paul Broun has already told us through his congressional press office why he voted against the credit market bailout.

Fond of food comparisons, Broun drew ridicule from Conan O’Brien and John Stewart by comparing the first version of the bill to a cow patty with a marshmallow center – kind of like a grosser moon pie – then to something that includes raisins, yet is not a cookie (bread pudding, perhaps?).

In a Friday press release, he even quoted a psalm – “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” – in defense of his vote.

Broun, sadly, didn’t include any Bible quotes or snack references when he blasted another justification Monday for opposing the bailout, this one coming from his re-election campaign.

I’ll try to sort this all out later and give you some analysis and smartass commentary, but I’m just going to throw this out here for now. Here’s what Rep. Paul Broun, R-Athens, and Democratic opponent Bobby Saxon had to say about this afternoon’s vote on the revised version of the $700 billion credit bailout.

Saxon wrote an open letter to Broun urging him to support the bill:

“Vote Yes.

“I urge you to put aside partisan bickering and act in the best interest of your constituents. The downward spiral of the stock market combined with the tightening of the credit markets can not continue. Too many people are hurting and many more will be added to the list if Congress fails to act in a bipartisan way to do what is best for America.

“This bill is not about Wall Street. It’s about Main Street.

Following Wednesday night’s Senate vote to pass a revised bailout bill, twinsies Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss sent out separate (?!?!?) press releases defending their votes and urging their counterparts in the House to follow their lead.

“Today, I had a significant choice to make between two very different courses of action – do nothing at all or do what I truly believe is best for America,” Chambliss said. “I believe to the core of my being that doing nothing will devastate our economy, destroy the financial security of millions of Americans and could possibly force our nation into a depression. I just as strongly believe the bill as it has been negotiated, and that I just voted for, will provide stability during this crisis and will begin to turn our economy around.”

Rep. Paul Broun’s “cow patty” quote made it into the pages of Time, and columnist Bill Saporito says sometimes you just need to drench that sucker in ketchup and choke it down.

“There's just one problem, Congressman Cow Patty: A lot of us did eat it, including many of your constituents.” Saporito writes. “The $1.2 trillion — let's spell that out as $1,200,000,000,000 — that disappeared from the stock market on Monday didn't go down a black hole in lower Manhattan. It came out of America's 401(k)s, mutual funds, pension funds and personal portfolios. …