[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 25 (Wednesday, February 8, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H1456-H1459]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE CONTRACT WITH AMERICA IS GOOD FOR AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] is recognized for 30 minutes.
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, let me just start off by saying
that I have spent the last hour listening to my distinguished
colleagues from the Democrat Party talking about the Contract With
America and what is wrong with it. Let me start off by saying, before I
get into my special order, that the capital gains tax cut that they
maligned so viciously over the past hour would end up probably bringing
$2 to $3 trillion of investment into the economy which would create
jobs, $2 to $3 trillion.
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I am very sorry. I only have a half hour, but
I would be happy to have a colloquy with the gentleman at a different
time.
But when people sell a farm, when people sell stocks, when people
sell a business, that money just does not disappear. That money is
reinvested in our society, and we are talking about two to three
thousand, thousand, million dollars that would be reinvested in new
plants, and equipment, and job expansion in this country. That is one
of the things that they discounted.
Now their party had control of this place for the last 40 years, and
during those 40 years we saw the great War on Poverty that Lyndon
Johnson talked about that was supposed to eradicate poverty in one
decade end up being an abject failure, and the people of this country
have said, ``Enough welfarism, enough socialism. We want to get back to
the free enterprise concepts that made this country great,'' and that
is why the Republican Party won the majority in both the House and
Senate in the last election.
Now they talked about corporate taxes. ``Let's soak the
corporations.''
Corporations do not pay taxes. Those taxes are added to the price of
the product. If you raise corporation taxes on the automobile industry,
for instance, then they add that to the price of a car. It is the cost
of doing business, and when you go to buy a car, you pay more money for
that care because the corporation has a fixed profit margin in their
books.
So, when you raise corporate taxes, that means the consumer is going
to pay more for that car, so they in effect are paying the tax when you
raise corporate taxes. The consumer always pays, and the tax and spend
policies of the Democrats are the reason for their demise in the last
election, and I think that everybody in the country now realizes that,
at least a majority.
They talked about the Contract With America being bad for America.
The fact of the matter is every one of the 10 items in the Contract
With America was approved by more than 70 percent of the American
people. In polling data that we got before we came up with the Contract
With America, Mr. Speaker, we found the top 10 items that Americans
were concerned about, and many of those items were approved or
requested by more than 70 percent of the people of this country. The
problems is they do not have any ideas. They are attacking our Contract
With America, and they are going to lose that battle because the
American people simply want the things that we put in that Contract
With America to be passed by this Congress.
They want a balanced budget amendment. They want a line-item veto.
They want tax fairness for seniors. They want to stop violent
criminals. They want welfare reform. They want to protect our kids.
They want a strong national defense. They want to roll back government
regulations. All these things we are going to bring to the floor for a
vote, which they would not do over the past 40 years.
{time} 2320
I think the American people will see the difference very clearly in
the weeks and months to come. They are seeing it already, because
polling data shows American people support what the Congress of the
United States is doing under the new Republican leadership.
Tonight I want to talk briefly about some unethical contacts that
have taken place in the Whitewater debacle that has taken place over
the last several years we have been talking about in this body and the
other body, unethical contracts between the White House and the
Treasury Department.
Mr. Speaker, last November 7 members of the Senate Banking Committee
asked Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr to investigate possible perjury
charges by two
high-ranking White House officials, White House senior advisor George
Stephanopoulos and deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes.
Members of the committee believe these two men lied under oath to the
Banking Committee during hearings last August about Whitewater and
unethical contacts between the White House and the Treasury Department.
The charges against Mr. Stephanopoulos and Mr. Ickes are a very serious
matter. However, this only touches the tip of the iceberg of how
improper conduct within the Clinton administration was to slow down and
coverup the White House investigation. Tonight I would like to review
this whole matter, and the best place to start is at the beginning.
Criminal referrals from the RTC, the Resolution Trust Corporation:
When Madison Guarantee Savings & Loan in Little Rock failed, its debts
and its assets were inherited by the Government-run Resolution Trust
Corporation.
Madison Guarantee was owned by then Gov. Bill Clinton's business
partner, James McDougal, and the Governor. In March 1992, the RTC began
an investigation of possible criminal activity at Madison after the New
York Times broke a major story about the Whitewater Development Corp.
In September 1992, the RTC sent a criminal referral, criminal
investigation request, to the Justice Department. The RTC urged a
thorough investigation of a ``check kiting scheme'' in which over
$100,000 in Madison funds were alleged to be illegally funneled into
the Whitewater Development Corp. to pay its bills. President and Mrs.
Clinton were named as potential beneficiaries of this scheme.
A year later the Resolution Trust Corporation sent a second criminal
referral to the Justice Department regarding Madison Guarantee. This
referral contained nine specific allegations
[[Page H1457]] of criminal wrongdoing. The second referral named
President and Mrs. Clinton as possible witnesses.
The U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Paula Casey, had been appointed by
President Clinton. She let the first referral sit on her desk for over
a year without taking any action on it. She should have recused
herself, excused herself from acting in that capacity in this case
because she was a friend and political ally of the President of the
United States. In October 1993 she formally declined to investigate any
of the allegations in the first referral.
Later in October the second referral was reported in the press, and
only then did Paula Casey excuse herself from the entire matter.
Here are some questions that need to be answered. Why did the
Resolution Trust Corporation's first referral sit on Paula Casey's desk
for over a year? Was that because of her connections with people at the
White House? Why did she refuse to open an investigation into the
serious charges raised by the Resolution Trust Corporation? Why did
Paula Casey wait until the criminal referrals became public knowledge
before she recused herself? As a friend of President Bill Clinton and
one of his campaign workers, she should have recused herself
immediately because of that connection. Are Paula Casey's actions being
investigated by the Justice Department's Ethics Office?
Let's talk about Roger Altman and his Senate testimony. In March
1993, Roger Altman, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, became the acting
chief of the Resolution Trust Corporation. This became necessary when
Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen forced out the RTC chief Albert Casey.
At the time, the first RTC referral involving Whitewater and Madison
Guarantee was sitting on Paula Casey's desk gathering dust for over a
year.
In a routine hearing in February 1994, Roger Altman testified before
the Senate Banking Committee that he had participated in one
substantive meeting with White House officials about the RTC referrals.
Under questioning from the Senators, he testified that he could not
recall, remember, any other substantive contacts. In fact, from
September 1993 to February 1994, there had been a flurry of improper
meetings, phone calls, and faxes between the White House and the
Treasury Department about this case. Treasury Department general
counsel Jean Hanson has testified that she prepared talking points for
Mr. Altman--this is unethical--outlining all of the contacts that he
took, outlining all those contacts, and he took those talking points
with him to the hearing. Mr. Altman denied he ever saw those talking
points.
The full scope of these contacts became clear when the Senate Banking
Committee held full hearings on the issue last August. After the
hearings, even Democrat Senators criticized Mr. Altman and his
counterparts at the White House because of this involvement, one with
the other,
Senator Chris Dodd said, ``In my view, there were far too many
meetings, there were far too many people involved, and the testimony
gets just too cute for my tastes, quite frankly.''
Senator Shelby. ``I think he, Roger Altman, has been less than
candid. He has been very selective in his answers.'' Senators Reigle
and Sarbanes told Lloyd Bentsen they no longer had confidence in Mr.
Altman.
On August 17, Roger Altman resigned his position after his testimony.
The next day general counsel Jean Hanson also resigned her post.
Here are some questions that need to be answered. Did Roger Altman
lie to the Banking Committee during the February hearings, or did he
actually forget all but one of the contacts between the Treasury
Department and the White House?
It seems farfetched to me he would forget all of those meetings. Did
Roger Altman read the talking points Jean Hanson prepared for him
before the February hearing? These talking points listed the contact.
Three, were there any other meetings or contacts that we still do not
know about?
Four, how much information about the investigation of Madison
Guarantee did the Treasury Department give to the White House? And this
would be unethical, very unethical.
No. five, was the RTC or the independent counsel's investigation
jeopardized by these contacts?
Now, why were the contacts improper? When the Resolution Trust
Corporation investigates a failed savings and loan that the taxpayers
are going to have to bail out, it has two avenues it can pursue. First,
it can recommend investigation of criminal wrongdoing to the Justice
Department. That is called criminal referrals. Or, second, it can file
civil suits against people who are responsible for the S&L's failure
and try to recover some of those losses. When the RTC is in the middle
of an investigation, it is very important that the details remain
confidential. So if Mr. Altman was talking to Treasury and the White
House about these things, he sure was not keeping these things
confidential.
If information about an investigation is leaked to a potential target
of the investigation, that person could potentially destroy evidence,
like shred files, hide assets, or take other actions to impede the
investigation. If a police department investigates a bank robbery, it
does not share any of the information it has with any of the suspects.
And that is exactly the kind of thing that was taking place between Mr.
Altman, Treasury and the White House.
Neither of the criminal referrals from the RTC accuses the Clintons
of wrongdoing. However, the Clintons are named as potential witnesses
in one and potential beneficiaries in the other. Many of the top
officials at the White House were from Arkansas and friends of the
President. Some were probably friends and political allies of targets
of the investigation. Any details of the investigation could have been
leaked from the White House to people being investigated in connection
with the failure of Madison Guaranty which cost the taxpayers, get
this, $47 million.
Now, here is the chronology of events and contacts between Treasury
and the White House. In March of 1993, after becoming Acting Chief of
the Resolution Trust Corporation, Roger Altman was briefed on the first
criminal referral by RTC vice president William Roelle. Altman faxed a
copy of the New York Times article which broke the Whitewater story to
White House counsel Bernie Nussbaum, Mr. Nussbaum was the chief counsel
to the President of the United States.
He later testified that he does not remember either being briefed or
sending the article to Nussbaum. However, the fax cover sheet, which is
a document that tells when it was sent, the fax cover sheet confirms
that it did come from Mr. Altman's office.
{time} 2330
So once again, he conveniently forgot something that came from his
office to the White House, to Bernie Nussbaum, the chief legal counsel
to the President.
September 1993, the Resolution Trust Corporation is preparing its
second criminal investigation or referral. Treasury Department General
Counsel Jean Hanson briefs Altman on the confidential referral.
According to Hanson, Roger Altman then directed her to brief the White
House on the situation, which was against RTC procedure. That, once
again, is letting people who may be under criminal investigation
knowing what the investigation is about. You just do not do that. Mr.
Altman denies this.
September 29, 1993, Jean Hanson initiates the first formal contact
with the White House. At a White House meeting, she briefs Chief
Counsel to the President, Bernie Nussbaum, in detail on the referral.
Also at the meeting was Clifford Sloan, a lawyer on Nussbaum's staff.
Nussbaum appoints Clifford Sloan to be Hanson's designated White House
liaison on the issue. She should have not been talking to the White
House and here they are setting up an official liaison.
During the next several days, Hanson and Sloan have several follow up
conversations on the phone.
October 4, 1993. Senior White House aide Bruce Lindsey, who is
traveling with the President, informs President Clinton about the RTC
referrals.
October 7, 1993, Jean Hanson calls Clifford Sloan at the White House
to tell him about press inquiries into the Whitewater investigation.
October 14, 1993, a full-fledged meeting is called at the White House
to discuss the RTC investigation. Attending
[[Page H1458]] from the Treasury Department, Communications Director
Jack DeVore, General Counsel Jean Hanson, Chief of Staff Joshua
Steiner, and attending from the White House was White House Counsel to
the President, Bernie Nussbaum and Senior Advisor, Bruce Lindsey. They
should not have even been talking about this. Here they are having a
full-scale meeting.
February 2, 1994, the second full-fledged meeting on the Whitewater
investigation is held at the White House. This meeting was reportedly
called to discuss potential civil claims against Madison and people
associated with Madison by the Resolution Trust Corporation. Attending
this meeting from the Treasury Department, Deputy Treasury Secretary
Roger Altman, General Counsel Jean Hanson. Attending from the White
House again, White House Chief Counsel Bernie Nussbaum, Chief Counsel
to the President, Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, Hillary Clinton's
Chief of Staff, Margaret Williams comes. According to those in
attendance, the substance of the case was not discussed, only
procedures. But once again, a formal meeting involving this
investigation which should not have been discussed between those doing
the investigating and those who are being investigated.
February 24, 1994, as I mentioned earlier, on this day, Roger Altman
appeared before the Senate Banking Committee at an RTC oversight
hearing. He testified that he attended one meeting concerning the White
House investigation and denied any recollection of any other contacts.
He had a lot of failures of memory.
March 4, 1994, then independent counsel Robert Fiske subpoenaed 10
Treasury and White House officials who participated in the contacts and
questioned them before a grand jury. Here are some questions that need
to be answered.
Did Roger Altman order Jean Hanson to brief the White House about the
first criminal investigation or referral in September of 1993 as Hanson
alleges? Would Hanson go and brief the White House officials without
approval from higher up? I do not think so. Why would she go over there
and start briefing them unless somebody asked her to do it?
Number two, why was it necessary for Jean Hanson to have a liaison at
the White House with whom to discuss the Resolution Trust Corporation's
investigation of Whitewater and Madison? She was not even supposed to
be discussing the investigation with the White House.
Number three, did officials from the Treasury Department who had
attended the three White House meetings discuss only procedures and
policies of the RTC as they have claimed or did they reveal substantive
information about the Madison Guarantee case as well? And how can we
ever know for sure.
Number four, did White House officials share any of the information
they received through these meetings and phone conversations with any
potential targets of the investigation, and how can we know about that
for sure?
All of the details about these meetings that I have been just
discussing became public knowledge
during the Senate and House banking committee hearings last August.
And additional detail that was revealed at that time concerned White
House efforts to stop Roger Altman from excusing, recusing himself from
the Whitewater investigation?
In January 1994, Altman was considering recusing himself, stepping
aside, from the entire Madison-Whitewater case because of his close
friendship with President Clinton. They had attended college together
at Georgetown University and had been friends ever since. Treasury
Department General Counsel Jean Hanson advised Altman that he should
recuse himself, step aside, according to her testimony. Prior to the
February 2 meeting at the White House, Altman reportedly had decided to
step aside and recuse himself. However, during the meeting, the Chief
Counsel to the President, Bernie Nussbaum, talked Altman out of it.
Nussbaum testified that he simply asked Altman to reconsider his
decision. However, Treasury Department Chief of Staff Josh Steiner
tells a different story in his personal diary. Steiner's diary says
that Nussbaum told Altman this his decision to excuse himself or step
aside was ``unacceptable''. They didn't want him stepping out of the
picture because there might be some incriminating evidence that he
could stop. At least that is what it appears to be.
After the meeting Jean Hanson spoke to White House Deputy Chief of
Staff Harold Ickes. According to Hanson's testimony, Ickes asked her
who else knew that she had advised Altman to step aside or recuse
himself. Hanson told him that only three people knew. According to her
testimony, Ickes told her that that was good that nobody else should
know about it. According to Jean Hanson's testimony at the hearings
last August, Mr. Ickes asked me, this is her quote, ``Mr. Ickes asked
me who else knew that I had recommended to Mr. Altman that he recuse
himself, and I gave him three names. He said, `that's good, because if
it gets out, it will look bad.'''.
When Harold Ickes testified before the Senate banking committee in
August, he denied ever making such a statement. Ickes maintains that
all he said to Hanson at the meeting was, hello, nice to see you and
goodbye.
At the beginning of my statement, I said that the 7 Members of the
Senate banking committee have asked the independent counsel to
investigate possible perjury by Mr. Ickes. The Senators were
particularly concerned about his statements about his conversation or
lack of conversation with Jean Hanson. The whole episode raises a
number of questions.
First, why would Jean Hanson lie about her conversation with Harold
Ickes?
Two, why would Bernie Nussbaum, legal counsel to the President, try
to talk Roger Altman out of stepping aside, recusing himself, when
Altman was clearly such a close personal friend of President Clinton?
Three, how forcefully did Chief Counsel to the President, Bernie
Nussbaum, discourage Mr. Altman from recusing himself? Is Nussbaum
lying or is Josh Steiner lying?
Four, did Bernie Nussbaum, Chief Counsel to the President, take this
action on his own or did someone higher up in the White House urge him
to do so?
Now, let us talk about Jay Stephens. As I mentioned earlier, the
Senators also asked the independent counsel to investigate the
testimony of George Stephanopoulos from the White House.
Stephanopoulos' alleged perjury involved the hiring of Jay Stephens
from by the Resolution Trust Corporation as an outside counsel in the
Madison Guarantee case. Jay Stephens was hired by an independent board
at the Resolution Trust Corporation for the Whitewater investigation.
Stephanopoulos and other officials at the White House were really
upset. They were furious because Stephens was a Republican and had been
a U.S. Attorney under President Reagan.
In his testimony before the Senate banking committee in August,
Stephanopoulos testified about a conversation he had with Treasury
Department Chief of Staff Josh Steiner. He said that he complained
about Stephens to Josh Steiner, but he denied trying to get rid of him.
Mr. Stephanopoulos testified, and I quote, ``I did blow off steam in
the conversation, based on my belief that Mr. Stephens could not be an
impartial investigator. Mr. Steiner informed me that the decision had
been made by an independent board. That ended the conversation. I took
no further action.'' That is what Stephanopoulos testified. However,
Josh Steiner's personal diary tells a different story.
The February 27 entry reads: ``Stephanopoulos and Ickes also asked
about how Jay Stephens had been hired to be outside counsel on this
case. Simply outrageous, they said, that RTC had hired him, Stephens,
but even more amazing when George Stephanopoulos then suggested to me
that we needed to find a way to get rid of him.'' Obviously because he
did not want him to go on and conduct an investigation. ``Persuaded
George,'' he persuaded George Stephanopoulos, ``that firing him would
be incredibly stupid and improper.''
Stephanopoulos's testimony was also contradicted by Roger Altman.
[[Page H1459]]
{time} 2340
Altman testified that in a phone call on February 25, Stephanopoulos
and Ickes complained about Stephens being hired by the RTC. Altman
testified that he told Josh Steiner that he thought it was unwise for
them to be complaining so vocally about Jay Stephens, because he was a
Republican and he might get too deeply involved in the investigation.
Stephanopoulos was also contradicted by Jean Hanson.
Here are some questions:
No. 1, did George Stephanopoulos and Harold Ickes lie to the Senate
Banking Committee, and if they did, should they be prosecuted for it?
Two, what motive could Josh Steiner, Roger Altman, and Jean Hanson
all have to falsely contradict their testimony? Why would they do that?
Three, how many other people did George Stephanopoulos call to
attempt to get Jay Stephens fired?
All of these questions need to be thoroughly investigated and
answered by the independent counsel. There is so much that smells about
what has gone on between the RTC, Mr. Altman, Treasury, and the White
House that a full and thorough investigation needs to be conducted, not
only by the independent counsel but by the committees of Jurisdiction
in this House and in the other body, and possibly hiring other people
to conduct this investigation.
The House, the Senate, and the independent counsel need to thoroughly
investigate this. If there is lying, if people have committed perjury
before the House and Senate Banking Committees, they need to be brought
to justice. We need to follow this all the way to its final conclusion.
There are all kinds of questions about shredded documents involving
Whitewater and Madison that go all the way to the top.
We need to get to the bottom of it for the benefit of the American
people. We are talking about $47 million of taxpayers' money that has
been squandered or stolen. We need to get to the bottom of it, no
matter where it leads us.
____________________