[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 152 (Wednesday, September 24, 2008)]
[House]
[Page H9408]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          FINANCIAL ARMAGEDDON

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, they tell us that we're going to have financial 
Armageddon and the answer is to bail it out. You know, the phrase 
``bailout'' is an interesting term. Having spent most of my life as a 
judge and a prosecutor in the criminal justice system, we used that 
term to bail somebody out of jail. Bail them out of a mess that they 
have created and somebody else pays the price. Appropriate term I think 
for the situation we're in now.
  We want to bail somebody out of making mistakes, the rest of us are 
going to have to pay for. And the bailout now we're talking about is 
bailing out the financial institutions, financial institutions that are 
incompetent, that made bad judgment calls, mismanagement, bad risk, and 
maybe a little corruption to boot. But yet those people, those fat cats 
on Wall Street, New York City, expect America to pick up the pieces, 
and they pay for the mistakes that these people made. That is not, Mr. 
Speaker, the American way.
  In this country and where I come from, we are all responsible for the 
decisions we make, and we're held accountable. We cannot expect 
somebody else to be held accountable for the mistakes we made, and Mr. 
Speaker, the same ought to apply to Wall Street and New York City.
  Now, bailout's been a term we've been using in Congress the whole 
year. I have this poster over here. Mr. Speaker, it's entitled, ``It's 
a sad time to be an American taxpayer,'' and here's the reason. This 
Congress and the government has authorized bailouts already this year 
for troubled financial institutions and expected somebody else to pay.
  First, it was Bear Stearns' bailout. Oh, that was just $28 billion. 
Right after Bear Stearns came the old Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 
bailout, another situation of financial mismanagement, incompetence, 
maybe corruption. That was only $200 billion. Taxpayers paid. The 
responsible people did not pay. And then the AIG bailout just a couple 
of weeks ago. That was $85 billion to bail out that financial giant 
from making bad decisions, mismanagement, maybe corruption. And today, 
today, lo and behold we bailed out the automobile industry in the 
United States to the tune of $25 billion.
  But we're not through, Mr. Speaker. Now they tell us, because of a 
financial crisis on Wall Street, we need to pay $700 billion to fix the 
system. Now, what does all that mean? That means it's $1 trillion of 
money belonging to people in the United States to have to pay for all 
of this mismanagement. What does that mean? Well, if you take every 
man, woman, child and even illegal in the United States, that means 
they've got to pay $3,000 apiece for this mess somebody else created.
  Mr. Speaker, that ought not to be. That certainly is not the American 
way. But yet we're expected to do it, and why, Mr. Speaker, I'm not 
sure. It seems to me that maybe these folks have a little more 
political clout than the average American citizen.
  The district I represent down in southeast Texas, it's about 60, 70 
percent blue collar. City councilman from Bay Town, Texas, is a friend 
of mine. He's named Sammy Mahon. His real job, he runs a wrecker 
service in southeast Texas. Yes, city councilmen in southeast Texas are 
wrecker drivers. And he has a hard time making ends meet because of the 
cost of diesel fuel, which is another issue. But he looks at it kind of 
the way I think most Americans. He says, Congressman, if I go out of 
business for whatever reason, I shouldn't expect my neighbor to pay for 
my business. And he's right, because he's just a little guy.
  But these big guys, they expect us to pay for mismanagement. Hold us 
ransom. Pay this $700 billion in ransom, and it's all because of 
incompetence and mismanagement.
  Responsible Americans have to pay for irresponsible conduct by the 
others. That ought not to be.
  And this didn't happen universally to all banks. Some banks, small 
banks, community banks, they didn't make these mistakes. They didn't 
take those risky loans, give loans and money to people who had no 
business borrowing money in the first place. Why should we bail out 
those people that took those loans knowing they couldn't pay them back? 
Why should we bail out the banks who didn't take that risk but passed 
it on to the rest of us?
  They tell us, Mr. Speaker, that we must act now or the sky will fall 
or we'll have financial Armageddon. I think not. The politics of fear 
is certainly not the answer.
  You know, we have spent more time as a Congress studying steroids in 
baseball than we have been studying the financial crisis this week. And 
why is that? Political clout. This ought not to be.
  We have a problem. We have a cause. We have to figure out the 
solution. We don't know the answer to those three, and Mr. Speaker, 
it's time we get busy and solve this problem but not expect somebody 
else to pay for the conduct and misconduct of others.
  And that's just the way it is.

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