[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 9 (Tuesday, January 17, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H249]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              HOW ABOUT LOAN GUARANTEES FOR WEST VIRGINIA?

  (Mr. WISE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. WISE. Mr. Speaker, I want to rise and challenge the loan 
guarantee program that is going to get rammed through this House 
probably this week. It started out a couple of weeks ago as a $9 
billion loan guarantee program as the Mexican peso was devalued. Then 
it rose to $18 billion, then $25 billion, and the last I saw in the 
newspaper, $40 billion loan guarantee program.
  As I traveled the Second District of West Virginia this weekend, I 
ran into questions. In Calhoun County, for instance, where they are 
running short of money for the Arnoldsburg sewer project, why can we 
not have a loan guarantee program that will help that project? What 
about the eastern panhandle homebuilders I met with? When the farmers' 
home money has run out, hundreds of homebuilders are sitting there 
without homes they are able to finance. How about a loan guarantee 
program for them?
  How about central West Virginia as we try to renovate the Western 
State Hospital? That could use a loan guarantee program. Or in the 
Kanawha Valley as we try to move ahead in economic development and some 
threatened extinction of the Economic Development Administration that 
creates jobs; how about a loan guarantee program for that?
  Forty billion dollars is a large guarantee.

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