Chuck Grassley signals that he would not vote for the financial-regulation bill in its current form. Here’s the statement from his office:

Mr. Grassley’s spokeswoman, Jill Kozeny, said he is “very concerned about the precedent of using the FDIC fees both as a credit to the FDIC and to count as [a way to pay for the bill], and it’s his view that TARP money ought to be used to pay down the debt and not for more spending.”

Kozeny is right: Rather than cut spending elsewhere to fund the bill and make it consistent with their own PAYGO rules, Democrats are resorting to accounting chicanery — double-counting FDIC assessments and “saving” TARP money that would not have been spent. Grassley is right to call them out on it, and Scott Brown should be making the same arguments.