[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 1 (Wednesday, January 23, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H20-H21]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ENRON/ANDERSEN SCANDAL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I hope that we can begin this session of 
Congress in a spirit of cooperation by tackling some of the very 
serious domestic problems that face our country. I believe that we can 
learn from the repeated failures of last year when this Congress was 
unable to resolve with so many important issues, and from the several 
unproductive congressional sessions over the last several years. We can 
also learn from a rare and significant bipartisan success, namely was 
the completion of action on the new education law, just before the 
holidays, where members of both parties working together, developed a 
bill that offers great promise for improving the quality of American 
public education.
  One of the issues which we should devote our energies now, and we 
should

[[Page H21]]

work together to resolve, are those concerns, such as the use of tax 
shelters, brought to greater public attention through the Enron/
Andersen scandal. Certainly, we should be concerned when we look at the 
Enron/Andersen scandal with the lawless conduct that allegedly 
occurred, and there are prosecutors exploring that as I speak. But we 
here in the Congress need to be equally concerned about conduct by 
Andersen, Enron, and others that may be lawful but is simply awful in 
its impact on America.
  The Enron/Andersen scandal certainly demonstrates the error of many 
who have spoken in this House and who have insisted that a tax cut 
deregulation elixir is the cure for every ill afflicting America. 
Certainly Enron got plenty of that elixir. In recent years, they did 
not bother paying any income taxes whatsoever to support our great 
country. Rather in reviewing the conduct of Enron and Andersen, we 
learn much that appears to have been lawful but was awful in its impact 
on our country.
  This scandal is about more than dealing with a lack of oversight, it 
turns on the deliberate decisions of some policymakers in Washington to 
overlook loopholes, shortcuts, back doors, exemptions and exceptions 
that riddle our laws, providing special protection and special 
opportunities to special interests that lobby here in Washington--to 
the detriment of blameless employees at Enron, Andersen and other 
companies, of retirees, of investors, and of those many taxpayers, who 
work hard to contribute their fair share to our country.
  The Enron/Andersen scandal makes the case for long overdue reforms in 
many areas. One of those is the Abusive Tax Shelter Shutdown Act, which 
I have been urging Congress over three years to adopt. Too often major 
corporations use gimmicks similar to these offshore subsidiaries that 
Enron created as a scheme to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. 
This tax shelter legislation, which we voted on here on the House 
floor, suffered the consistent objection of companies like Andersen, 
who peddle their tax shelters to more than just Enron. There are plenty 
of other companies engaged in the same general type of abusive tax 
shelters that aided Enron.
  Second, the debate demonstrates the need to reform our campaign 
finance laws. There is so much focus in the press on what people are 
doing with their campaign checks from Enron. The attention ought to be 
on whether anything meaningful will be done to reform the campaign 
finance system for all contributions. We are now two or three 
signatures away from a discharge petition forcing the Speaker to bring 
this issue to the floor for full and fair debate. We ought not to have 
to force him, this ought to be the first item up for consideration next 
week in this House.
  A third area where prompt reform is definitely required is with 
reference to retirement security. These blameless folks who lost their 
retirement savings in their 401(k) plan as a result of being locked in 
to relying on company stock by Enron management presents a problem that 
working together we can act on now before others suffer the same fate.
  I hope that the leadership of this House and the Administration, both 
of whom have blocked reforms on campaign finance and abusive tax 
shelters, that they have learned from this outrageous, still unfolding 
scandal with Enron and with Andersen. If we approach these problems 
together learning from the mistakes of some, we can produce good 
legislation, do it, quickly but carefully, and thereby ensuring that no 
more similar scandals afflict American families.

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