[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 27 (Friday, February 10, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H1604-H1608]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                          THE MEXICAN BAILOUT
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Zeliff). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 1995, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Mississippi [Mr. Taylor] for 60 minutes.
  Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Brown], my distinguished colleague.


                 remembering congressman chet holifield

  Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman 
yielding to me.
  [[Page H1605]] Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw the attention of the 
Congress and the Nation for a few moments to the memory of former 
Congressman Chet Holifield of California, who passed away on February 6 
from pneumonia at the age of 91.
  Mr. Speaker, Chet Holifield devoted 32 years of his working life to 
this institution and to serving the American people. To review his 
accomplishments in Congress is to review some of the key developments 
in American Government and public policy in the years after World War 
II.
  Chet Holifield was deeply involved in congressional policymaking 
about the peaceful and military applications of atomic power after the 
Second World War. He was a vigorous advocate for the peaceful use of 
atomic power and pushed hard to have the U.S. atomic energy program 
placed under civilian, rather than military, control.
  In 1957, he headed the first full-scale congressional hearings on the 
implication of radioactive fallout from nuclear testing. At the same 
time, Chet believed strongly in--and was a strong advocate for--the 
development of the hydrogen bomb and he was a strong supporter of Adm. 
Hyman Rickover in his program to build a nuclear navy and submarine 
fleet. Congressman Holifield's decades of experience and detailed 
involvement in nuclear policymaking gained him the respect of 
colleagues in both political parties, the scientific and professional 
communities, and environmental groups.
  During the last 4 years of his congressional service, from 1967 to 
1971, Chet Holifield was the chairman of the House Government 
Operations Committee, the House committee primarily involved in 
promoting the efficient operation of Federal Government agencies. Chet 
authored the legislation establishing the General Services 
Administration, which does most of the purchasing for the civil 
departments of the Government and manages most Federal buildings. And, 
during the growth of the Federal Government in the 1960's, Chet 
Holifield was personally involved in managing legislation that created 
two Cabinet-level departments: The Department of Housing and Urban 
Development and the Department of Transportation.
  Chet was born in Mayfield, KY, grew up in Arkansas, and spent some of 
his teen years working in the wheat fields of Kansas and the oil fields 
of Oklahoma. He later hitchhiked to California where he found a job in 
a Pasadena cleaning and dyeing shop.
  Ultimately, he worked his way up to his own small business: A men's 
clothing store. Chet was first elected to Congress in 1942 and was 
reelected 15 times by the people of eastern Los Angeles County, CA, 
finally becoming the dean of the California congressional delegation.
  He voluntarily retired in 1971, and returned to California to run his 
clothing store in Montebello. After finally retiring from his business 
work, Chet moved to the beachside community of Balboa, CA.
  Through his efforts in Congress and his involvement in the public 
affairs of our Nation, Chet Holifield's work helped shape modern 
America, and his life's accomplishments will live on for a long time.
  Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by 
apologizing to the approximately 80 House employees who will be kept a 
little bit late this afternoon as a result of this. What the people in 
the gallery and many of the folks back home do not realize is that 
under present system these employees have to stick around as long as we 
have special orders. There is a room right up there that has a 
television camera.
  I have asked the previous Speaker, and I'm going to ask that the 
Speaker try to change that policy. There is really no reason to keep 
these people around late, but I would not keep them here if it was not 
worthwhile.
  What we have to talk about today is of the utmost importance to our 
Nation. We are talking about $20 billion for the single largest 
expenditure on the part of this country that has ever been made without 
the consent of Congress, and the potential for an additional $15 
billion to be spent at any moment by the President of the United 
States, again without the consent of Congress.
  It is particularly frustrating as a Member of Congress that earlier 
in this week, when the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur], seven 
Republicans, an equal number of Democrats, and the body's only 
Independent Member offered a resolution to demand of the Comptroller 
General the information as to whether or not what President Clinton did 
last week, when he guaranteed the loan to bail out Wall Street, to bail 
out the Mexican peso, whether or not that was even legal.
  Second, we wanted to know how often this fund has been used, and what 
amounts of money have been appropriated over the past. We also wanted 
to know who knew that the bailout was going to take place. We know that 
Speaker Gingrich knew; we know that President of the Senate, Senator 
Dole, knew. We know that the President knew. Who else knew that this 
was going to take place?
  The reason that this is so important is, they knew before the 
announcement that the value of the peso was going to jump dramatically. 
It has now been shown that it jumped 20 percent in less than 48 hours. 
For those who have a small savings account, for those who might own a 
stock, can they imagine having a guaranteed 20-percent return on their 
investment in only 48 hours?
  That is why it is important, and that is why it was so wrong, that 
this deal was cut with the Speaker, with the President, with the 
President of the Senate, in secret, without the approval of Congress to 
bail out the peso, but most importantly, to bail out Wall Street, the 
same people who just 15 months ago said ``We have to have NAFTA, even 
if it means that the garment workers down in rural communities like 
south Mississippi will be thrown out of work, even if it means that the 
fishermen and the shrimpers down in the Gulf Coast States will be put 
at a severe disadvantage,'' because they have to live by all of our 
laws, our minimum wage laws, our OSHA laws, the pollution laws. They 
have to pay our taxes.

                              {time}  1630

  And they will be competing with shrimp brought in from Communist 
China, for which there is no import fee at all. They said it was 
economic Darwinism and that we had to have NAFTA because the chips are 
just going to fall where they are.
  It is kind of strange, then, that 15 months later when Wall Street is 
hurting, when Wall Street is losing a few bucks on their investments 
down in Mexico that they run to this body, that they run to the 
President and demand to be bailed out. It is not right. It is not fair. 
And it is your money.
  I think the people of America need to realize that these are 
unsecured loans. Now, the President will tell you and Speaker Gingrich 
will tell you that the Mexicans have pledged the oil revenues to pay 
these loans back. Who's kidding whom? If those oil revenues had not 
already been pledged in a dozen different places, do you think they 
would be having to borrow $20 billion? That oil revenue has been 
pledged long ago and will not be available to repay those loans and $20 
billion of your tax dollars have already gone down the rathole.
  Some of the older Members of this body tell me that this is much like 
the S&L crisis where they came to Congress and said, ``You know, for $5 
billion we can solve the problem,'' only a few months later to come 
back and say, ``Well, you've now invested $5 billion, you have to 
invest some more to get your money back.'' There is not a doubt in my 
mind that within a certain period of time, the President of the United 
States will be asking for the remaining $15 billion. And it is your 
money. And it is the only money spent without the approval of Congress. 
It is the only money spent without the approval of the Senate. And if 
you take the time to read our Nation's Constitution, it is very clear 
in article I, section 9 which says the Congress shall have the power to 
coin money. No money shall be spent from the Treasury without an 
appropriation by the Congress. And yet what the President did was 
completely contrary to that.
  He will point to an old law from 1934 that was meant to get us out of 
the depression, that was meant to prop up our currency, that has never 
been used for more than $1 billion at a time and say that that $20 
billion somehow benefits us. Who's kidding whom?
   [[Page H1606]] Who is to bail out Wall Street? And again no one will 
ever really know if some phone calls were made to
 some people who happen to be Wall Street buddies and said, ``Go out 
and buy a bunch of pesos because the value's going to go up very 
quickly and very soon,'' and your money was used to guarantee that.

  It is wrong, and that is why what the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. 
Kaptur], the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders], a number of 
Republicans including the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher], 
the gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter], the gentleman from Kentucky 
[Mr. Bunning], that is why we are trying to find out what happened and 
that is why equally importantly we have a bill in the Banking Committee 
to say that this cannot happen again, that from now on these moneys 
have to be appropriated by Congress.
  At this time I would like to yield to my distinguished colleague, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur], who has been most instrumental in 
doing the research on this matter.
  Ms. KAPTUR. I want to thank Congressman Taylor for his extraordinary 
leadership on this effort and for gaining the special order time this 
evening. It is my privilege to join him and to thank him so very much 
for cosponsoring the special resolution of inquiry that was filed today 
here in the House of Representatives asking the President of the United 
States to submit information to this House within the next 2 weeks 
answering questions that we cannot answer for the American people 
simply because the executive branch chose to take a unilateral action 
without a vote of the Congress of the United States. Congressman Taylor 
has outlined the amount of money that is on the line initially, money 
that is flowing out of our Treasury, not just in the form of loan 
guarantees, although we cannot get specifics on this, but we understand 
direct loans as well. We do not know for what duration, we do not know 
what the terms are. We do not know exactly what the purpose is. But we 
know that part of the money is being used to help Mexico refinance what 
are called pesobonos, the bonds that she holds, that creditors hold 
against her that she has to refinance. Approximately 10 billion to 16 
billion dollars' worth of those are owed to U.S. investors.
  I would just ask our colleagues and people around the country to be 
aware that this resolution of inquiry asks very specific questions of 
the administration asking them to give us the assured source of 
repayment to our country for any of the short, intermediate or long-
term credit facilities that were designed by the administration and 
made available to Mexico, to give us any documents--we are just asking 
for facts here--concerning the net worth of Pemex, the state-owned oil 
company, the historical annual revenues of Pemex and as Congressman 
Taylor mentioned, to what other purposes those revenues have already 
been dedicated, which means that the collateral really is not worth 
anything.
  As one of our colleagues over in the other body said, we may have to 
send in the 82d Airborne to collect on the oil collateral because it 
has been so overpledged.
  We are asking for other information concerning what criteria the 
administration used in deciding to make loans from this fund to Mexico 
when in fact it has refused so many other countries around the world 
access to funds through that particular credit facility. So why should 
this situation be different and why should the Executive go around the 
Congress of the United States?
  We are also very interested in knowing what additional replenishment 
of funds will be required in the International Monetary Fund and Bank 
of International Settlements, because they have now been drawn into 
this agreement and the United States does provide some of their working 
capital. What are the nature of those arrangements and what additional 
amounts of taxpayer dollars will be required to replenish those funds?
  In any case, there are over seven pages of questions here, and this 
particular resolution was today referred to the Banking Committee. The 
Banking Committee under the rules of the House has 14 days in which to 
respond.
  If I just might take 2 extra minutes here, I want to say something 
very important tonight that we did not talk about during the day today. 
That is, as a result of press clips today in the Washington Post, the 
New York Times, and other newspapers, the President of Mexico evidently 
yesterday effectively declared an end to that Government's peace 
efforts in that country to try to keep the lid on the uprisings that 
are occurring, particularly in the southern part of Mexico, and I want 
to say something about this, because it cuts to the quick of what is 
happening in relations between our two nations.
  It is not enough for just the President of the United States to be 
friends with the President of Mexico or the biggest banks in America to 
be friends with the biggest banks in Mexico. Good relations between our 
countries depend on the people of the United States being friends with 
the people of Mexico. As we watch the people of Mexico stream across 
our borders, stream across our borders because they are hungry, our 
response as a nation is, well, we have to close the borders, because 
the exodus is so huge.
  But let me say this: That all the interests on Wall Street that are 
watching what we do here, and I will call some of them by name, 
Citibank, Chase Manhattan Bank, the Fidelity mutual funds. Over there 
in Illinois, Archer-Daniel-Midland, you sell a lot of grain down in 
Mexico, but I will say this tonight: There is not one share of your 
stock that is worth the life of one Mexican peasant fighting for enough 
to eat off their land that they are being divested of. And we have to 
speak out for those people here in the Congress of the United States. 
It is not reported in the press, it is not reported on television, it 
is hardly reported in the newspapers. In fact one of the newspapers 
says today, many investors in America here have said that continuing 
political instability in Mexico is the main reason that they are 
withdrawing their money from Mexico. They have been withdrawing their 
money from Mexico in recent months.
  It is very interesting that they are worried about the political 
instability. Yet you do not hear one call for democracy building in 
Mexico.
                              {time}  1640

  We do not hear one call out of Wall Street for human rights. We do 
not hear one call of sympathy for the farmers in Chiapas who literally 
plant coffee with their hands on the hillsides, and as a result of this 
NAFTA agreement are being thrown off of their land, and they call it in 
the paper, they call them rebels, and call them insurrectionists, and 
make them seem like they are traitors. Well, they are not traitors to 
the ordinary people of that land, and frankly, I think they had the 
real true belief in democracy in their hearts.
  I would hope that our country would listen to the Catholic prelates 
who spoke out this morning in the New York Times, Bishop Samuel Ruiz 
Garcia, who said that this is a very, very serious situation. It is 
pointing to a solution of war, and it breaks the process of dialog.
  This is not a situation that will be solved with guns or with the 
President of Mexico sending in the federal police. We can take a lot 
more lives, and I would hate to see the biggest financial interests in 
this country part and party to killing the common people of Mexico. 
That will not build friendships over the years.
  But the biggest interests in this country, political and economic, 
ought to be for democracy-building south of our border, because only 
when the people there have a right to have a decent wage and to own a 
piece of property and have enough to eat will there be political 
stability and economic stability in that country and four our own 
country.
  I felt compelled to speak out. I am very worried about what could 
happen over this weekend when Congress goes home with that cease-fire 
having been lifted, and at least I wanted to put something on record 
about my deep concerns, and also that those who have their monied 
interests at heart would also put to heart the interests of the people 
of Mexico and be a voice for them.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Zeliff). The Chair would remind Members 
to address the Chair and not those outside the Chamber.
  [[Page H1607]] Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my 
time, I want to thank the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur] for her 
remarks. It is strange that she used the word ``rebel.'' It reminded me 
of some other people who really need to be commended for what happened 
earlier here in the week. There was a vote on Tuesday, or at least we 
had hoped to get a vote on whether or not we could investigate this. If 
you happen to have been following the House proceedings you would know 
the majority leader, Mr. Armey, stood up and called for tabling of that 
motion, and what that means is that it cannot even be debated, that the 
American people would not even have 1 hour to hear what was the 
information we were looking for, why we were looking for it, and what 
we hope to do with it and how we hoped to change things. It is 
interesting that there were 14 Republicans who went out on a limb and 
opposed their leadership because they knew that what was going on was 
so wrong that they would not give their blessing to it. I really think 
those Members, there were about 150 Democrats, and I thank all of them 
for their help, but in particular I want to thank Congressman Bilbray, 
Congressman Coble, Congressman Duncan, Congressman English, Congressman 
Hunter, Congressman Istook, Congressman Klug, Congressman Largent, 
Congressman Myers, Congressman Rohrabacher, Congressman Stearns, and my 
friend but not relative, Charlie Taylor from North Carolina, 
Congressman Weldon, and Congressman Whitfield.
  It was my understanding, as reported today in the Washington Times, 
that rather than being applauded by their colleagues in the Republican 
Conference for their brave stand in putting the American people before 
party politics, and I quote, ``they were castigated by House Majority 
Whip Tom DeLay for opposing Mr. Gingrich on the vote to bring this 
before the public.''
  I want to make it very clear to the Speaker, I want to make it very 
clear to the American public, this issue will not go away. They hope it 
will be forgotten. How can you forget $20 billion and how can you 
forget the potential for this Nation to lose another $15 billion? That 
is $35 billion, and for those who want to know what that is the 
equivalent of, that is the equivalent of what this Nation spends on the 
entire budget for the Veterans' Administration for a whole year, and it 
is gone, and it is wrong.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. I yield to my colleague, the gentleman 
from Vermont, the only independent Member of this body, and the 
gentleman who has introduced legislation to make this fund subject to 
an annual appropriation process like every other dollar that is in the 
Treasury.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much for 
yielding and congratulate him on his leadership, as well as that of the 
gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur]. It is nice to be here this evening 
with them. I share the concerns they have articulated.
  It seems to me to be rather incredible that at a time when we spend 
huge amounts of time right here on the floor of the House debating the 
appropriation for the National Council for the Humanities and the 
National Council for the Arts, and $100 million here and $100 million 
there, that this institution presumably which represents the American 
people has not been able to debate and vote on a $20 billion-plus 
package which puts taxpayers' money at risk. Maybe people agree with 
what the President and Mr. Gingrich are doing, maybe they do not. But I 
cannot believe that many Americans think it proper that the U.S. 
Congress does not debate that issue and vote it up or vote it down 
right here on the floor of the House.
  As the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Taylor] indicated, I have 
introduced H.R. 867. What H.R. 867 does is it says that the world has 
changed markedly since 1934 when the legislation that the President 
authorized was first enacted. A lot has changed. Under H.R. 867 loans 
from the Exchange Stabilization Fund would only be allowed, as the 
gentleman from Mississippi indicated, to the extent that Congress has 
previously authorized it in an annual appropriation bill. In other 
words, like all of the other appropriations in this Congress that come 
through this Congress, this fund also would have to be appropriated by 
Congress.
  I would point out to my colleagues that this would mean that the fund 
would be treated in the exact same manner that we treat the funds held 
by the Export-Import Bank. Both funds are self-sufficient and do not 
require annual contributions in appropriation bills. However, loans 
made by the Export-Import Bank are subject to congressional approval 
given under authorization and appropriation bills. This bill would 
simply subject the Exchange Stabilization Fund to congressional 
approval.
  We have just introduced this bill on Wednesday, and I am delighted 
that we have already received significant support for it of both the 
gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur] and the gentleman from Mississippi 
[Mr. Taylor], but also on board are the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. 
DeFazio], the gentlewoman from Missouri [Ms. Danner], the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania [Mr. Klink], the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant], 
the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher], the gentleman from 
Illinois [Mr. Evans], the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Visclosky], the 
gentlewoman from New York [Mrs. Maloney], the gentleman from Illinois 
[Mr. Lipinski], and the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Metcalf]. 
Included in those Members are some who consider themselves pretty 
conservative and some who consider themselves pretty progressive. But I 
think the bottom line for all of us and for the American people is that 
at a time when this country has a $200 billion deficit, at a time in 
which Members of this Congress are talking about cuts in Medicare, 
Medicaid, veterans' programs, nutrition programs for hungry children, 
that before $20 billion-plus of taxpayers' money is put at risk, that 
issue must be discussed and must be debated and must be voted upon on 
the floor of the House, or else we as Members of Congress are not doing 
our job.
  I thank the gentleman for inviting me. I have to run, but I thank 
him.
  Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman 
for being here today, and I want to again remind everyone that this was 
never brought before Congress. The reason it was not brought before 
Congress is because both sides, the Democrats and the Republicans, knew 
that had it been brought before Congress, Congress would have voted it 
down, and that is the greatest outrage of all, that the will of the 
majority as expressed through their elected representatives was never 
heard. The gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] is trying to correct 
that. It is a shame that a little-known provision of a law had to be 
used to thwart the will of the majority.
  But I really do want to thank the gentleman for trying to correct 
that.
  Mr. SANDERS. If the gentleman will yield, and not only are a majority 
of Republicans against this bailout and a majority of Democrats, polls 
indicate that the vast majority of the American people are in 
opposition, and as the gentlewoman form Ohio [Ms. Kaptur] has pointed 
out on many occasions, a majority of the people in Mexico are in 
opposition to this bailout.
  So who is for it? I think we know who is for it, and that is the 
people who have the money, and that is the people who have the power in 
this country, our friends in the large commercial banks and in the 
investment houses on Wall Street. But we all and many of our colleagues 
are going to demand that this issue be debated and voted upon here on 
the floor of the House. We do not intend to abdicate our 
responsibility.
  Again I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Ms. KAPTUR. If the gentleman will yield, I just wanted to say it is 
rather interesting when you look at who will get the $20 billion as it 
is drawn down from the Treasury, it will not be the people in the 
United States who have lost their jobs to Mexico. We have had over 
18,000 Americans since January 1, 1994, lose their jobs to Mexico 
already because the wages down there are so cheap. Our plants, several 
thousand of them, have been relocating down there over the years, and 
after NAFTA that exodus accelerated. So our people will not be getting 
the money. In fact the 
[[Page H1608]] money is being taken from our taxpayers to bail out the 
big financial institutions.
                              {time}  1650

  We know the money will not go to feed the people of Mexico. The 
people of Mexico understand that their government will not help them, 
because it is in fact a one-party government and an authoritarian state 
that has been in power since before my grandmother was born. So they 
know that they will not get assistance from there. So it is interesting 
to think about who the money is really going to and at the same time as 
those dollars flow between the central bank of Mexico and its public 
treasury and Wall Street here in the United States and the central bank 
of Germany and Japan, when you think about that movement of money, and 
then you think about the fact that some of those very same 
institutions, especially the private creditors, have said very quietly 
to our government it is all right, let Mexico clean up its problems in 
Chiapas, clean up its problems in Tabasco state, in other words, kill 
the people of Mexico who are fighting because they basically do not 
have enough money to survive for life, enough to eat.
  I remember one woman said to me when I visited down there, ``Well, 
Ms. Kaptur, you do not understand. We work for hunger wages.'' I said, 
``I beg your pardon? I never heard that term.'' She said, ``People get 
about 80 percent of the calories that it takes to keep a person's 
weight in balance,'' so in the part of the countryside that we were in, 
the people were very thin, and they were very hungry, and it was very 
hard to even get tortillas. The children were eating tortillas. They 
did not have fresh water. It is hard for Americans to imagine if they 
have not visited the inland area how people are actually living in that 
nation of nearly 100 million people, yet the dollars will not go to 
help those people. In fact, the people that are suffering most, the 
ones who are crying out for their own government, for their own 
government to help them, are being felled by the federal police.
  And so we ask ourselves, what are we doing as a country; what are the 
major institutions of this country doing, political and economic? Are 
we standing up for the best ideals that are in the Constitution?
  I think not.
  And so it is my pleasure to join with the gentleman from Mississippi 
[Mr. Taylor] this evening and to be a voice for people on both sides of 
the border who feel that this money is being incorrectly used to 
support a government that does not represent the majority of people in 
that nation.
  Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. I say to the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. 
Kaptur], it has really become apparent to me in phone calls I have had, 
letters, faxes from around the country that the American people feel 
powerless against Wall Street. They feel powerless against the people 
who benefited from this.
  You pointed out very well that is not the Mexican people. It is Wall 
Street. It is the people who reaped tremendous profits down there last 
year, because they took risky investments. When those risky investments 
went sour, then they called upon the taxpayers to bail them out, and 
that is wrong, that is not free enterprise.
  Ms. KAPTUR. USA Today last week had a big page in the business 
section that showed all the different funds, the stock and bond funds, 
the mutual funds in the United States and what their earnings had been 
since 1991, and the emerging market fund under which this would fall, 
investments in Mexico had yielded a 66 percent return over the last 
four years.
  So the companies that we are talking about are not poor little lambs. 
These institutions have made incredible profits, and as they made those 
profits, why should they not eat their losses? And for the big banks, 
this has been a great time to be in banking in America. They put a fee 
on everything, right, if we go down here to the little checking machine 
and I try to get some money from my bank in Ohio, they charge $2.50 or 
$3.50 for the transfer. You pay for your checks. You pay for 
everything. You practically pay to go into the bank. They are making 
lots of money off of customers.
  So this is true. Banking has been very profitable over the last 5 
years. Why should they not eat their losses? Why have they come to the 
taxpayers?
  Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Reclaiming my time, I want to thank the 
gentlewoman for her help.
  I would like to encourage those who are listening to get in touch 
with their elected Representatives. I think a few questions are fair to 
ask: Who agreed to the bailout? What were the names of the 
congressional leaders who met with the President and agreed to the 
bailout? When did they know? Who did they tell prior to the bailout so 
that people could call and buy millions of pesos and get a 20-percent 
return on their investment with your money that they get the profits? 
And above all, what can we do as a Nation to keep this from happening 
again?
  And I hope that the American people will not let this slide. There 
are still $15 billion in that account that could be spent, and we have 
already seen the President use it once. It should not be used again.
  But until we can pass legislation which is going to take awhile and 
will only take place if the people of America demand it, then they have 
to be held accountable by the voice of the American people.
  I again want to thank the approximately 80 House employees that we 
have kept late. It is almost 5 o'clock, Friday afternoon. I would like 
to let them go home. I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur] 
very much.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. 
Taylor] for this special order.


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