[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 151 (Tuesday, September 23, 2008)]
[House]
[Page H8582]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page H8582]]
             SECRETARY PAULSON AND THE BAILOUT LEGISLATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, 2007 was a great year on Wall Street, 2007, 
bonuses of $38 billion to themselves. Secretary Paulson came to us just 
having received a $39 million bonus from Goldman Sachs, came here to 
the applause of the Wall Street elites and others.
  His first crisis was Bear Stearns. He bailed out Bear Stearns, or he 
had them acquired with Federal guarantees. But he said, don't worry, 
the fundamentals of our economy are sound. Then along came Fannie Mae 
and Freddie Mac. He wanted Congress to give them an unlimited line of 
credit, but don't worry, it's only a crisis of confidence. Their 
fundamentals are sound. They probably won't even need the line of 
credit. Congress went along with that. I voted ``no.'' The fundamentals 
of America are sound, he said.
  A month later he had to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, 
unprecedented, accumulating maybe $5 trillion of debt onto the books of 
the Federal Government all at once. But not to worry. We'll work our 
way through it. The fundamentals are sound.
  Then came Lehman Brothers. It's just one firm, he says. Let 'em go, 
let the market work. Our fundamentals are sound. Two days later AIG, a 
big company, a lot of money in insurance, annuities, other things, too 
big to fail, broke a 50-year precedent, put Federal money into an 
insurance company. But not to worry, this is just a little blip. Our 
fundamentals are sound.
  Then Thursday night he has a closed-door meeting with congressional 
leadership, and he says, if we don't do a bailout plan tomorrow, the 
economy is going to collapse.
  Now, wait a minute. This guy has been consistently wrong and out of 
touch or he has been lying to Congress and the American people about 
how sound our fundamentals are. Now he wants us to trust him with the 
keys of the treasury and no restrictions on how he would spend the 
money in his next bailout. He is compromised, in my opinion, because of 
his relationship with Goldman Sachs and Wall Street, not with Main 
Street America. My small banks are not clamoring for this. My credit 
unions aren't clamoring for this. They are still making loans. They're 
saying there's a credit crunch. Guess what, if you've got good credit 
in Oregon, you can go to the credit union, you can go to a small bank, 
and then the small bank can sell the loan to the Federal Government, 
that is, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, thanks to Mr. Paulson.
  But he's saying to us here I've got a deal for you. Let's think of 
Henry Hank Paulson as a realtor. Here's the deal: He's got a great 
house he wants to sell you. Now, the thing about that is he can't give 
you an appraisal on the house. There are no market comparables. And he 
can't tell you what it's going to cost. But it is a great deal for you.
  That is the bailout he is proposing, to take this junk from Wall 
Street that no one understands and put it on the Federal books. What if 
we spend, borrow $700 billion and the market continues to go down? 
That's what the Asian market said yesterday. They said, wait a minute, 
it sounded good at first, but where is the U.S. going to get the $700 
billion? Who's going to lend it to them? Or are they just going to 
print it and cause inflation? And what if it doesn't work? What will 
they do then? We aren't dealing with some of the fundamental underlying 
problems that we have now.
  And now I find out by reading the Washington Times that very quietly 
they have folded in all student loan debt, all automobile debt, and all 
credit card debt. So the Federal Government is now not only going to be 
in the housing business, it's not only going to be in the insurance 
business, suddenly we are going to be in the repo business, out there 
collecting cars around America so we can sell them to try to get back 
some of the taxpayers' money.
  This is nuts. Congress should not do this this week. We need to 
understand what's going on. They can't be slipping in little things 
like this and trying to jam this bill through. This is way too much 
like the rush to war when Congress was under pressure to go home for 
elections. Forget about the elections. This is about the future of the 
United States of America and our financial system. And if we have to 
stay here every day in October to understand this and get it right, we 
should.

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