[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 184 (Wednesday, December 9, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H14408-H14417]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 4173, WALL STREET REFORM AND 
                    CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT OF 2009

  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, 
I call up House Resolution 956 and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 956

       Resolved, That at any time after the adoption of this 
     resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule 
     XVIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the 
     Whole House on the state of the Union for consideration of 
     the bill (H.R. 4173) to provide for financial regulatory 
     reform, to protect consumers and investors, to enhance 
     Federal understanding of insurance issues, to regulate the 
     over-the-counter derivatives markets, and for other purposes. 
     The first reading of the bill shall be dispensed with. All 
     points of order against consideration of the bill are waived 
     except those arising under clause 9 or 10 of rule XXI. The 
     amendment printed in the report of the Committee on Rules 
     accompanying this resolution shall be considered as adopted 
     in the House and in the Committee of the Whole. General 
     debate shall be confined to the bill, as amended, and shall 
     not exceed three hours, with two hours equally divided and 
     controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the 
     Committee on Financial Services, 30 minutes equally divided 
     and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of 
     the Committee on Agriculture, and 30 minutes equally divided 
     and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of 
     the Committee on Energy and Commerce. After general debate, 
     the Committee of the Whole shall rise without motion. No 
     further consideration of the bill shall be in order except 
     pursuant to a subsequent order of the House.
       Sec. 2.  During consideration of H.R. 4173 pursuant to this 
     resolution, the Chair of the Committee of the Whole may 
     entertain a motion that the Committee rise only if offered by 
     the chair of the Committee on Financial Services or his 
     designee.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Perlmutter) 
is recognized for 1 hour.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, for purposes of debate only, I yield the 
customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier).


                             General Leave

  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
be given 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks 
on House Resolution 956.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Colorado?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  House Resolution 956 provides for general debate on the bill, H.R. 
4173, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009. It 
provides 3 hours of general debate, which will be evenly divided 
between the chairmen and ranking members of the various committees of 
jurisdiction. It self-executes an amendment to resolve jurisdictional 
concerns among the committees of jurisdiction of this bill. The

[[Page H14409]]

amendment also includes the text of H.R. 1728, regarding predatory 
lending, which the House passed earlier this year overwhelmingly. It 
also makes certain revisions to the bill to ensure it complies with 
pay-as-you-go rules.
  Mr. Speaker, for more than a year, the Financial Services Committee, 
of which I am a member, has held hearings and conducted a thorough 
oversight into the causes of last year's financial meltdown which 
caused our current economic troubles. After exhaustive work, the House 
now has before it a comprehensive package of reforms to address the 
numerous failures that led to the near collapse of our financial system 
last year.
  The banking system is our Nation's circulatory system for our 
economy; and last year that circulatory system had a heart attack. We 
cannot and will not let the banking system fail, which is why this 
House had to take bold action last year to stabilize it. However, now 
we must turn and look to the causes at the root of the meltdown and 
make targeted reforms and repairs to address the inefficiencies and 
failures we found in the system.
  The legislation before us is the most significant reform to our 
financial system since the New Deal of the 1930s. The bill creates a 
Financial Stability Oversight Council to monitor systemically 
significant institutions, counter-parties and potential threats to the 
financial system. This ensures that there is no place to hide by 
closing loopholes, improving consolidated supervision, and establishing 
robust regulatory oversights.
  We provide for the orderly wind-down of failing firms that are 
systemically significant, ending the notion of ``too big to fail.'' By 
dissolving these firms, we end them. We kill them. We put them out of 
their misery, so we say ``no'' to any more taxpayer bailouts.
  This legislation also makes robust consumer protection repair and 
reform. It puts the regulation of consumer protection on a level 
playing field with the regulation of safety and soundness of our 
financial institutions. It creates an independent agency focused solely 
on writing meaningful consumer protection standards and keeping watch 
over predatory practices that some lenders have shown a propensity to 
pursue.
  Additionally, we increase transparency and accountability by 
establishing a regulatory system for the over-the-counter derivative 
market. Now most derivative trades will be done on exchanges or through 
clearinghouses. Again, we have made sure that there is no place to 
hide. Other important pieces of this legislation include the 
registration of hedge funds and the doubling of SEC funding to hire 
more experts and investigators. Investor protection is substantially 
strengthened. A Federal insurance office is created to gather 
information, mitigate systemic risk and provide for insurance expertise 
to the Federal Government.
  In this legislation, we have also included two very important 
measures which passed the House earlier this year. First, is the say-
on-pay, and the second is on mortgage reform aimed at curbing the 
abusive and predatory practices that led to the subprime lending 
problems. This legislation is critical to protect taxpayers and 
consumers by reining in the abuses of Wall Street, while enabling a 
balanced environment for the financial markets to grow and stabilize 
our economy.
  These changes are essential to rebuilding Main Street and getting 
credit flowing to small businesses, creating jobs, and rebuilding our 
economy.
  I'm proud to stand here with my colleagues today while we consider 
this important set of reforms. We cannot afford another collapse as we 
had last fall. It cost this Nation trillions of dollars and millions of 
jobs, and is no longer acceptable. We need to repair and restore the 
system so that confidence is restored by the American public and people 
around world. We make these necessary reforms that establish robust 
regulatory oversight. This bill is another step toward economic 
recovery, and I urge its adoption.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume.
  (Mr. DREIER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I have to say at the outset that I have a 
slightly different take than was just offered by my Rules Committee 
colleague, the gentleman from Golden, Colorado. As our economy, Mr. 
Speaker, and our jobs market continue to struggle and families face the 
coming year with deep worries for their own financial futures, I 
believe that our responsibility here in this institution as Members of 
Congress is very clear. We must reform our financial regulatory system 
to prevent the kind of catastrophic breakdown that occurred last year. 
We both can agree on that. We know that what happened last year, I 
mean, a year ago right now, many of us were sensing that our economy 
was in peril, and we could have seen a major meltdown.
  We need to ensure that that doesn't happen again, the threat that we 
went through does not happen again. We must do so in a way that 
preserves access to credit for families and small businesses, promotes 
job creation, ends taxpayer-funded bailouts, and allows us to begin to 
pay down this horrendous national debt that we're all facing. 
Unfortunately, the proposal that is before us this evening fails on all 
counts.
  At a time when we need to reform and streamline our regulatory 
regime, the Democratic majority proposes to make it more complicated 
and less accountable, more unworkable and less transparent. The 
majority wants to keep the taxpayers on the hook for a permanent system 
of bailouts. Now, my friend said we were going to ensure that we no 
longer had bailouts. Clearly, from our perspective, this will continue 
the pattern of bailouts; and they're attempting to use repaid TARP 
funds as what is little more than a slush fund that will create a wide 
range of additional Federal spending.
  The net effect of the underlying bill that the Democratic majority 
has put forward will be to reduce consumers' access to credit, destroy 
jobs, and leave our deficit spiraling out of control. This is not the 
solution that the American people were hoping for from this 
institution. They understand while the circumstances leading up to our 
current economic crisis involved incredibly complex and arcane 
regulations, policies and institutions, the lack of accountability and 
transparency was the core problem.
  They understood that a lack of accountability, a lack of 
transparency, that that really was the core problem that led up to the 
crisis. Financial institutions took on unsustainable levels of risk and 
used highly questionable practices that fed into a bubble that we all 
know inevitably burst.

                              {time}  1900

  Individuals took on an enormous amount of debt that they simply could 
not afford, and we all know that the Federal Government did the exact 
same thing. The result was frozen credit markets, declining growth, and 
hundreds of thousands of jobs lost. We're still trying to climb out of 
this hole, as we all know. The task at hand is not about increasing 
regulation or diminishing regulation. It is about making it smarter, 
more accountable, and more effective.
  The Democratic majority's so-called reform bill takes us in the 
opposite direction. By adding multiple layers of new bureaucracy and 
making agencies like the Fed even less accountable than before, they 
threaten to compound the very problems that led to our current 
situation.
  What's more, by further tangling this Byzantine mess of regulators 
and superregulators, they will further tie up credit that families and 
small businesses desperately need. This is credit that enables small 
companies to grow, expand, make payroll for current employees, and 
create positions for new employees. This is credit that enables 
responsible homeowners to make purchases and help get our housing 
market back on track. By exacerbating the credit crunch, today's 
underlying bill threatens further job destruction and stymied growth.
  The bill also creates this $150 billion fund paid for with new taxes 
to continue to bail out failing institutions. Now, if that $150 billion 
turns out to not be enough, who's on the hook for more bailouts? Well, 
surprise, surprise. It's the U.S. taxpayer.
  The Democratic majority was given the opportunity to remove these 
bailout provisions from the bill in committee, but they chose to keep 
them in place. And if that weren't bad enough, this bill will take the 
bailout dollars

[[Page H14410]]

that are repaid to the taxpayers and put them into a slush fund for 
more government spending rather than paying down the national debt. The 
Democratic majority has apparently forgotten that they voted last fall 
to consider the taxpayer first as bailout dollars are repaid rather 
than putting it off into some other fund. The path charted by this 
legislation is utterly reckless at a time when prudence and 
accountability are more needed than ever.
  But, Mr. Speaker, I'm happy to say that we, as Republicans, have an 
alternative. We have a very viable alternative. We put forth the 
proposal that reforms our financial regulatory system without 
threatening access to credit or job creation. We enhance rather than 
diminish accountability for agencies like the Fed. We tackle the issue 
of fraud and give shareholders greater rights when it comes to 
executive compensation. We put an end to the bailouts once and for all, 
and we return repaid bailout dollars to the Federal Treasury where they 
belong. Our alternative accomplishes the goal of guarding against 
future crises without imperiling our recovery. This is what the 
American people are demanding of us.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues--while we're considering this as a 
general debate rule, I'm urging my colleagues to reject this because we 
can do better. Reject taxpayer-funded bailouts, reject the credit 
crunch for small businesses with families, reject greater job losses, 
and reject a new slush fund for even more wasteful spending.
  With that, I reserve the balance of my time
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I yield myself as much time as I may consume.
  As much as I enjoy listening to my friend from California, I'm afraid 
that I would have to say, Mr. Speaker, he hasn't read much of this 
bill. And the reason I would say that is that under the proposal the 
Republicans presented to us in Financial Services, they were going to 
allow this thing to linger through a chapter 11. If there was a failed 
banking institution, it would linger, as opposed to the proposal by the 
Democrats which says, and which is the bill before us, a financial 
company that comes within the coverage of this title for resolution 
shall be placed in liquidation, period. It's over. It's done. Number 
one.
  Number two, with respect to this comment or his comments and general 
comments about job creation and the debacle that occurred last fall, it 
came under the watch of President Bush, who has the worst track record 
for job creation of any President since the job creation records have 
been taken. Also, we've lost trillions of dollars because of the types 
of casino-like approaches that were taken in and on Wall Street and 
other places that cost millions of investors thousands and thousands of 
dollars each and cost so many jobs.
  I would like to now yield 4\1/2\ minutes to my friend from Kansas 
(Mr. Moore).
  Mr. MOORE of Kansas. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight in support of the 
rule and in support of H.R. 4173, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer 
Protection Act of 2009, a comprehensive package that the House 
Financial Services Committee and other committees have worked this year 
to produce. I commend the leadership of Chairman Frank. Without his 
hard work and many committee hearings, long committee markups and 
behind the scenes to listen and address concerns, we would not be on 
the floor tonight with the bill we have.
  We spent over 50 hours debating the various pieces of this regulatory 
reform package, and our work was bipartisan. Over 50 Republican 
amendments were accepted along with over 20 bipartisan amendments. This 
package, Mr. Speaker, contains ideas put forward by Democrats and 
Republicans, as it should, creating a better and more thoughtful bill 
that we are considering tonight.
  We should never forget why we're here tonight with the most sweeping 
financial regulatory reform since the Great Depression. Last year, due 
to years of little oversight of our financial system, credit was 
overextended and financial firms were overleveraged to a point that was 
unsustainable.
  Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury in the Bush administration, 
said to a group of us, ``We may not have a market on Monday'' if 
Congress did not quickly approve the TARP legislation he requested. So 
more than a year later, it's well past time for Congress to take the 
next step and create strong, fair, and clear rules of the road for Wall 
Street.
  I believe in free and open markets, but I don't believe in letting 
people game the system. This bill will make sure that that can't happen 
by, number one, ending ``too big to fail'' and putting an end to 
taxpayer bailouts; number two, strengthening investor protections to 
prevent Bernie Madoff Ponzi schemes; and number three, improving 
consumer protection so that innocent people are no longer taken 
advantage of by terms of agreement they don't understand and can't 
afford.
  I worked with my colleagues in our committee offering amendments to 
strengthen and improve this regulatory reform package such as, number 
one, the Moore-Meeks amendment, which will require ``too big to fail'' 
firms and other large financial institutions to conduct stress tests to 
ensure, in good times or in bad, these firms are fully prepared for the 
worst; and second, my amendment to strike ``qualified receivership,'' 
which is a form of conservatorship which would have allowed the 
government or revive a failing firm. The amendment ensures the next AIG 
or Lehman Brothers will be required to fail and be put out of its 
misery. And three, the Moore-Lynch amendment creates a council of 
inspectors general on financial oversight. This I.G. council will 
conduct strong oversight of the systemic risk council, ensuring they 
respond to legitimate concerns that are raised by independent 
inspectors general.
  I urge my colleagues to support the Wall Street Reform and Consumer 
Protection Act to guarantee we have tough, new rules of the road for 
Wall Street to play by and to fully protect consumers, investors, and 
U.S. taxpayers.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, at this time I'm happy to yield 2 minutes to 
your Illinois colleague, the gentlewoman from Hinsdale, a hardworking 
member of the Financial Services Committee, Mrs. Biggert.
  Mrs. BIGGERT. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to this rule and the 
underlying bill. This massive financial overhaul would permanently 
entrench the Federal Government and taxpayers in the very position we 
have worked to avoid since the beginning of this economic crisis.
  We must crack down on illegal, unfair, and deceptive activity, 
eliminate regulatory gaps, and strengthen the effectiveness of the 
enforcement agencies. We should create a culture of transparency and 
accountability on Wall Street that will discourage, not promote, risky 
behavior, and never ever allow taxpayers to be left holding the bag 
when those deemed ``too big to fail'' cannot make their obligations. 
Instead, this bill creates a vast new government agency, permanently 
codifies the practice of bailouts, and doubles down on government 
intrusion in the financial sector.
  I have joined my colleagues in the Financial Services Committee at 
every step of the way to offer ideas for smarter, stronger financial 
regulations, and yet this proposal continues to weaken the economic 
competitiveness of our markets, limit consumer choice, and place 
taxpayers on the hook for Wall Street's mistakes.
  Mr. Speaker, American taxpayers cannot afford any more bailouts, and 
our financial markets cannot weather another storm of mismanagement.
  I ask my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule and the underlying 
big bill.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to my friend from 
Florida, a member of the Financial Services Committee, Mr. Klein.
  Mr. KLEIN of Florida. I thank the gentleman from Colorado and thank 
him for his work both on the Financial Services Committee and on this 
rule, and certainly I support the rule and the underlying bill, H.R. 
4173, Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
  And we think about the name, Wall Street Reform and Consumer 
Protection Act. This is self-descriptive, exactly what Americans have 
been looking for for the past year. Our current economic crisis is the 
worst in decades, and it certainly didn't happen overnight. It happened 
over the last number of years because of a failure of regulation and 
oversight.

[[Page H14411]]

  The one thing I'll agree with Mr. Dreier from California is that it's 
not a question of more or less regulation. It's smart regulation. It's 
the right type of regulation. It's the right type of people in those 
agencies that know what they're doing, that have the proper training, 
they're probably paid, and they're not outsmarted by some people who 
are trying to scam the system. That's what Americans have been asking 
for. That's what Americans are looking for Congress to do.
  And finally, after a tremendous amount of work--and again, a lot of 
it has been through good work by Democrats and Republicans--I'm very 
sorry to see that this moment it's becoming a partisan issue. But the 
good news is this bill is good quality, is one of the most important 
things that has been done in our economy and our financial system in 
over 50 years, and it will be an answer to not only figure out what 
went wrong in the past and learn from those mistakes, but also 
anticipate what can go wrong in the future. There are a lot of very 
smart people out there that have learned how to scam the system, and we 
as Americans need to make sure that we are anticipating what those 
kinds of problems may be so we can avoid those problems from happening 
again.
  Under the bill before us today, we've created a regulatory structure 
that will protect consumers and ensure that investors have the 
appropriate information to make knowledgeable investment decisions. 
There's no guarantee in investing, and every person has to take 
personal responsibility for themselves in making those decisions, but 
at the same time, you can't be fraudulently misled. You can't have a 
lack of information, a lack of context. And it's important to have an 
agency that will stand up for the consumers or abusive other financial 
institutions that are out there.
  This legislation also restores responsibility and accountability 
through Wall Street. Regulatory loopholes and gaps in regulation have 
been closed to make sure that there is common sense, transparency, and 
adequate oversight. Financial institutions that were previously 
unregulated--and we've already heard the stories of who they are--will 
now be brought under government supervision. Derivatives and other 
complex financial products that we've never even heard of--credit 
default swaps and other things--will now be tightly regulated to 
eliminate unnecessary risk taking by financial institutions. And 
executive compensation at these institutions has also been modified to 
discourage risky speculation for short-term gains that have negative 
effects on our overall economy.
  This bill also makes sure the American taxpayer, all of us, won't 
have to bail out Wall Street banks by putting in place resolution 
authority that will allow these firms to fail without damaging the 
financial system and the entire economy. No more ``too big to fail'' or 
we have to rescue them because, if they fall, the whole economy fails.

                              {time}  1915

  We cannot let it get to that point, and that's exactly what this bill 
does. It stops it before it gets to that point.
  We've also learned that both quality and the quantity of staff at 
regulatory agencies, as I said before, are very important. We want to 
have qualified technical staff, and we want to know that if someone 
blows the whistle and calls something out that the staff at these 
agencies will respond quickly and efficiently to make sure that that 
doesn't continue.
  It's also important to hold individuals who committed misdeeds to 
account. Many financial players committed abusive and fraudulent acts, 
from Wall Street to local mortgage brokers, and we have to hold these 
people accountable. Americans, all they ask for is a sense of fairness. 
They want to know if they play by the rules, that people who sell them 
products are also playing by those same rules.
  And unfortunately, there haven't been enough prosecutions for those 
who committed some of these very bad acts that brought us to our knees. 
That's unacceptable. People that commit these types of criminal 
fraudulent acts must be punished.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.
  Mr. KLEIN of Florida. Yet simply punishing these bad actors is not 
enough. We have to learn from the past and anticipate the future and 
make sure our financial structures are adapted accordingly. The reforms 
made by this legislation are essential to creating a functional, 
sustainable financial system that families and our businesses can count 
on.
  We cannot and will not, as Americans, allow what happened last year 
to happen again. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the 
Congress, to the passage of this bill, to the President signing it, and 
to Americans knowing that they will have confidence in their financial 
system. I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I am very privileged to yield 
2 minutes to the senior Republican Californian on the Committee on 
Financial Services, my friend from Fullerton, Mr. Royce.
  Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, as our colleague has said, this crisis 
occurred over the last several years. I will remind the body that the 
Democrats have controlled this Congress over the last 3 years, and I 
agree here tonight with my Republican colleagues who oppose permanent 
bailout authority which is put in this bill, and the fact that this 
legislation institutionalizes the ``too big to fail'' model. I would 
like to focus on one other critical shortcoming in this legislation, 
and that's the failure of this bill to address one of the key causes of 
this financial collapse.
  While others may claim it was a lack of government involvement in the 
market, I think history is going to show that government intervention 
in the market also had a major role. And let me show you how. It was 
government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that were 
at the heart of the housing market and largely responsible for the 
proliferation of subprime and Alt-A mortgages throughout the financial 
system. Over the years, they loaded up on over $1 trillion of these 
junk loans, pushed by initiatives on the other side of the aisle, and 
they signaled to the market that these were safe loans when we know, in 
fact, they were not. There was $1 trillion in losses out of this.
  It was the Federal Reserve also, and the central banks around the 
world setting negative real interest rates, when measured against 
inflation, for 4 years running. And the effect of those negative 
interest rates was devastating, because instead of mitigating the ups 
and downs in the economy, the Fed's actions had the opposite effect. 
The negative real interest rates intensified the boom-and-bust cycle, 
and it encouraged excessive risk-taking throughout the economy, 
especially in the financial sector and in housing, something economists 
have been warning about for decades.
  While there have been other blunders that contributed to the crisis, 
these two steps taken by the Federal Government were at the heart of 
the boom and subsequent bust in the housing market and the broader 
financial system. And until we address these market distortions, we are 
simply treating the symptoms rather than the disease.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my 
time.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I'm very happy to yield 2 
minutes to my good friend from Roswell, Georgia (Mr. Price).
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from 
California for his leadership on this issue and so many other things. 
Here we go again, Mr. Speaker. Here it is. We got the bill right here. 
Another late night, another thousand-plus-page bill that virtually 
nobody in this House has read, and another government takeover.
  This ought to be called the ``unending bailout authority, credit-
restricting, and permanent job loss act,'' Mr. Speaker. It not only 
doesn't solve the problem of government bailouts, it codifies them. It 
writes them into law. It makes them permanent, putting us into a 
permanent political economy, politicians picking winners and losers.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a very dangerous time. The American people are 
concerned about jobs and the stagnant economy, and the majority party 
comes to this floor with this bill that will destroy hundreds of 
thousands of jobs and further harm the economy.

[[Page H14412]]

  Why? Well, Mr. Speaker, as a physician, I'm here to tell you, I think 
they got the wrong diagnosis, just like in health care. Their 
prescription for health care was a government takeover, and now they 
want a government takeover of our economy and our financial services 
area because their prescription is wrong.
  If we conclude as a society that we are here because of a failure of 
free-market capitalism and a failure of deregulation, then our kids and 
our grandkids will lose, because all of the solutions will harm free-
market capitalism, depress the economy, and increase regulation, which 
will destroy jobs and destroy our economy.
  We're not here because of a failure of free-market capitalism, Mr. 
Speaker. We're here because of a failure of the government distorting 
the market, because of politicians getting involved. We're not here 
because of a failure of deregulation. We're here because of foolish and 
inflexible regulation and because of government edicts that made it so 
people couldn't do their jobs.
  The Democrat prescription for this, then, is to take over and control 
the entire economy, thereby destroying jobs and destroying our economy. 
The shame of all of that, Mr. Speaker, is that there are wonderful 
solutions. We believe that there ought not be any more bailouts.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I thank the gentleman.
  We believe there ought not be any more bailouts. No more bailouts. 
Like the American people, we know what the American people know, and 
that is if there is no risk, there can be no reward.
  Mr. Speaker, we believe that government ought to get out of the 
business of picking winners and losers. This bill doesn't create jobs; 
it destroys them, absolutely destroys them. We know that markets must 
be allowed to function and to innovate in order to be profitable. And 
the economy cannot and will not recover without these things.
  In so many ways, this bill kills jobs and harms the economy. The 
American people want to end the bailouts, the Wall Street bailouts that 
the majority party so desires to have that they wrote it into this law, 
and they want to make certain we get back to the business of freeing up 
the economy to increase jobs and allow free-market capitalism to work. 
That's what will restore the confidence of the American people.
  I thank the gentleman from California for this time.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, how much time does each side have?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Colorado has 16 minutes 
remaining. The gentleman from California has 16\1/2\ minutes remaining.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I yield myself so much time as I may consume.
  I just want to respond to my two colleagues from the Financial 
Services Committee. After all the hearings we had, after all the 
witnesses that we heard from, it's almost as if they forgot everything 
they heard. The Wild West mentality that permeated Wall Street 
permeated the investment community and the banking system and brought 
this country to its knees last fall. And as a consequence, trillions of 
dollars of wealth were lost, and millions of jobs have been lost, and 
it was based on a belief within the Bush administration and the 
Republican Congress that participated with it that you don't need 
regulation, these markets will take care of themselves. Well, what they 
ended up doing is, we had three of the biggest Ponzi schemes ever, 
Madoff, Petters and Stanford, under that regime, under that 
administration. And that's just wrong.
  Our bill has nine sections to it, Mr. Speaker. The first is on 
consumer protection. The second is on investor protection. The third is 
on hedge funds. The fourth is on credit rating agencies, the fifth on 
derivatives, the sixth on life insurance companies, and the seventh on 
dealing with banks that are so big or financial institutions that have 
so many components to them that they are a threat to the system. And we 
force those institutions to either raise all their reserves and their 
capital or sell different parts of their company if they are a threat 
to the system, and if they finally fail, we put them out of their 
misery. We don't let them linger like the Republicans would have us do, 
and bail them out some more. We are done with those bailouts.
  The last sections of the bill, one is ``say on pay.'' Executive 
salary got completely out of control and was part of the gambling that 
was going on. And so now we allow the shareholders to have some 
opportunity to say what their executives should be paid. And the final 
piece deals with subprime mortgages where people were allowed to just 
get into mortgages that had teaser rates and were impossible to repay. 
And we now require that financial institutions have skin in the game.
  These are nine sections of reasonable regulation to restore 
confidence in the system and stop the kind of failures that we saw in 
this last administration that cost this country trillions of dollars, 
trillions of dollars and millions of jobs. And we're not going to let 
that happen again.
  With that, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I am happy to yield 2 minutes 
to a very hardworking member of the Committee on Financial Services, my 
friend from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).
  Mr. HENSARLING. I thank the gentleman from California for yielding.
  I've listened to my friend from Colorado say that under their plan, 
they are done with the bailouts. Well, Mr. Speaker, it kind of begs the 
question: Why do they have a bailout fund? Why do you have a bailout 
fund if you're not going to bail people out? My wife and I started a 
college fund for our children, and the reason we are having a college 
fund is because we intend to send our children to college.
  Why is it, Mr. Speaker, that the Democrats have a bailout fund, but 
now they expect us to suspend disbelief that they won't use it? If I 
can paraphrase a line from the famous Kevin Costner film, ``Field of 
Dreams,'' ``if you build it, they will come.'' If you create a bailout 
fund, people will come for bailouts. That's what this is. This is the 
TARP bill in perpetuity.
  So, Mr. Speaker, if the American people like bailouts, our friends on 
the other side of the aisle certainly have the bill for them.
  But as I talk to my constituents in the Fifth Congressional District 
of Texas, they are tired of the bailouts. The school teacher in 
Mesquite, the fireman in Malakoff, the farmer in Henderson County--they 
are tired of the bailouts. They are tired of paying for this. And yet 
they create a $200 billion bailout fund.
  Worse than that, Mr. Speaker, this is a job-killing bill. It is a 
bill that creates a huge Federal bureaucracy to ban and ration credit. 
I mean this is the group of people who have brought us double-digit 
unemployment, the worst unemployment in a generation. I would just ask 
my friends on the other side of the aisle, how many more jobs have to 
be lost under your plan? Small business needs credit. You're going to 
crush it.
  Reject the rule. Reject the bill.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I would yield 5 minutes to the chairman 
of the committee, Mr. Frank.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, few people in this House 
apparently recognize, or in the country, the enormous significance of 
January 21, 2009. That is apparently the day in which a number of 
extraordinary things happened. It's the day on which bailouts began. 
According to my Republican colleagues, there weren't any before. 
Bailouts, you may think they started under George Bush, the bailout of 
General Motors, of AIG, of Chrysler, and the TARP bill. Some people may 
think they happened in 2008. No. Apparently, they started on January 
21, 2009. That's also the day, of course, that the war in Afghanistan, 
which was going wonderfully, began to go bad. It's the day in which a 
surplus magically became an enormous deficit. It's also the day in 
which we had a recession.
  My Republican colleagues talk about job loss. Job loss was, of 
course, I thought, begun with a recession that started in 2007 and got 
worse and worse during 2008 and is only now beginning to moderate.
  And not only did all those bad things happen on January 21, 2009--the 
bailout began, the TARP sprang full-blown, the deficits came, the war 
in Afghanistan turned south, but it was also the day in

[[Page H14413]]

which we had one of the worst outbreaks of illness in American history, 
mass amnesia on the part of the Republican Party, who forgot everything 
that had happened before.
  Every single bailout now going on in America started under the Bush 
administration. In some cases, some of us thought we had to cooperate 
because the lack of regulation, the ideologically driven opposition to 
any regulation of derivatives, of subprime mortgages, of excessive 
leverage by banks; all of those things were Republican policy. And now, 
Members have said, that's their answer.

                              {time}  1930

  Leave it to the market, because if you try to regulate, you will kill 
the economy.
  Well, Members who are impressed by that don't have to wait and listen 
to my Republican colleagues say it. Go back and read the Congressional 
Record from 1900 when they were saying that about Theodore Roosevelt 
and the antitrust, actually 1902, 1903.
  Read what they said when Franklin Roosevelt set up the SEC during the 
1930s. Yes, we believe that there should be some regulation. We are 
told, leave it to the markets.
  Leave it to AIG to sell as many credit default swaps as they want to 
without any ability to pay them back; leave it to people unregulated to 
sell subprime mortgages to people who shouldn't have them. Leave it to 
the rating agencies to then say to AIG, Hey, those are a great deals, 
buy them, or insure them, rather, through the people who bought them.
  Do nothing about executive compensation. Do nothing about a salary 
structure that incentivizes excessive risk. Don't let the shareholders 
have a say. Now, one of my colleagues said, I guess the gentleman from 
Texas, that it is a bailout fund. No, there is not.
  He talks about a bailout fund as if it were a reality. Here is the 
deal: we did have bailout starting with the TARP bill in September, 
which I voted for when the Bush administration, I think, said, look, as 
a result, not--they didn't say this--but as a result of lack of 
regulation, we were in a terrible crisis.
  We, in this bill, end those. The authority that the Federal Reserve, 
George Bush's appointees to the Federal Reserve, they were all his, 
used to give money to AIG, that's abolished in our bill. Section 13.3 
will no longer allow them to do what they did with Bear Stearns or do 
with AIG.
  It will allow a facility to be set up, and here we agree--the 
Republicans said the same thing in their bill--to provide for some 
liquidity for solvent institutions, but there is no more of the Federal 
Reserve doing what they did with AIG and Bear Stearns.
  We do take a fund, not from the taxpayers, as we were asked to do by 
the Bush administration, and as I went along with, along with the 
Republican leadership of the House and the Senate--because I didn't 
think we had an option at that time to avert disaster--but we now with 
some time will assess the financial institutions for that fund. The 
fund is not used to bail out any failing institution.
  The bill specifically says the money only comes to put that 
institution to death. There is nothing in here that allows a failing 
institution to be continued with Federal money. There is a dissolution 
fund, not a bailout fund; and it does say that it may be that to 
dissolve this in an orderly way, as opposed to Lehman Brothers, where 
you just had a flat bankruptcy, that you need to put some money into 
it, maybe pay off some of the States that would otherwise be hurt 
because they got into investments they shouldn't have gotten into. 
That's the only fund, so there is no bailout. The institution has died.
  Here is another difference, though. The Republican bill does zero, 
proudly, does zero to prevent those institutions from getting to that 
point. The bill that we are putting forward says the regulators, as a 
systemic risk council, will monitor institutions and will monitor 
activity. If we see an institution getting to that point, we step in 
and say, raise your capital, stop selling CDSs, stop selling mortgages, 
giving mortgages to people who shouldn't get them, divest yourself of 
this or that.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I yield the gentleman 1 more minute.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I know that some of my 
conservative colleagues who have aligned themselves with people who 
came to be the new American patriots want to emulate the people who 
revolted against George III, but there is another monarch who comes to 
mind when I come to think of them. When in the 19th century the 
Bourbons were restored after the French Revolution, it was said of them 
that they had forgotten nothing because they learned nothing.
  That's my Republican colleagues. They have learned absolutely nothing 
from the fact that a total absence of regulation caused this enormous 
financial crisis.
  Do we care about jobs, yes. We don't want, as their bill would do, 
their substitute to allow an AIG to continue to do what it did to allow 
subprime mortgages to continue, to allow executive pay to have that 
perverse incentive. Yes, we are trying to prevent another job loss like 
the one President Obama inherited from President Bush.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, at this time I am happy to yield 3 minutes 
to the very distinguished chairman of the Republican Conference, the 
gentleman from Columbus, Indiana (Mr. Pence).
  (Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and the 
underlying bill, the so-called Wall Street Reform and Consumer 
Protection Act of 2009. Unfortunately, as has been said, there is not 
much taxpayer protection in the bill, and there is even less Wall 
Street reform.
  Now, I see this bill as nothing more than a permanent bailout and a 
job killer. I must say I relish the opportunity to rise in the 
immediate aftermath of the formidable debating skills of the chairman 
of this committee, who I respect, both personally and as a colleague.
  But I respectfully differ with him on this bailout, as I did on the 
bailout that he authored last year during the Bush administration.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PENCE. I would be pleased to yield.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I didn't offer it. It was offered by 
President Bush. I did vote for it, but it was President Bush's offer. I 
give credit where credit is due.
  Mr. PENCE. Reclaiming my time, I believe it was a bill that bore the 
gentleman's cosponsorship.
  I opposed the Wall Street bailout last fall, and I oppose this Wall 
Street bailout today. The truth is the American people that are looking 
in tonight really have got to be astounded that Washington DC, in 
response to these extraordinary economic times, is now launching and 
making permanent the policies of bailouts that millions of Americans 
have rejected over the last year.
  After more than a year of the Federal Government's heavy-handed 
intervention in our financial services industry, this bill continues to 
take the country in the wrong direction: more government, more 
bailouts. The legislation before us today makes permanent the failed 
policy of taxpayer-funded abortions that led to record deficits and 
undermined our economic freedom.
  In this cause, House Republicans stand with the American people who 
have said virtually with one voice in the last year: no more bailouts. 
No more bailouts by Republican administrations; no more bailouts by 
Democrat administrations. We stand with them in their cause.
  This Democrat plan for regulatory reform will vastly expand the power 
of the Federal Government and further empower Washington bureaucrats 
over the financial decisions of America's families and businesses. It 
creates a so-called credit czar that will have the authority to 
determine what financial products are available for consumers.
  The President yesterday said at the Brookings Institution that we 
need to address ``the continuing struggle of small businesses to get 
loans.'' He is right about that. He said the same thing at a White 
House meeting I attended today, but apparently Democrats in Congress 
didn't get the message.
  The bill before us today will severely restrict the flow of credit. 
At a time

[[Page H14414]]

when families are struggling to make ends meet, small businesses are 
trying hard to keep the doors open.
  I say with respect to my Democrat colleagues and to the President, 
American small business doesn't want a hand out; they want the Federal 
Government to get out of their way. Instead of providing taxpayers with 
an exit strategy for government involvement in Wall Street, this bill 
makes it permanent.
  Now, House Republicans have a good alternative, regulatory reform 
that ensures that the era of taxpayer bailouts will come to an end. 
It's an interesting choice tonight, Mr. Speaker. Do we want to make 
bailouts permanent? Do we want to set our Nation on a path of ending 
the era of bailouts once and for all?
  I urge support of the Republican alternative in opposition to this 
rule and this bill, which is really the Wall Street bailout and 
protection act, rightly understood.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I just want to respond to my friend from Indiana, who 
continues to call this a bailout. All it does is put big institutions 
that fail out of their misery, just like we liquidate banks who have 
failed. Big financial institutions on Wall Street, whether they are 
insurance companies or credit companies or banks or stockbrokers, are 
placed into liquidation and finished.
  With that, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, at this time I am happy to yield 2 minutes 
to our great new colleague from Eden Prairie, Minnesota, a hardworking 
member of the Financial Services Committee, Mr. Paulsen.
  Mr. PAULSEN. I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight in opposition to the rule for H.R. 4173 
and the underlying legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, the effects of this bill, as we have already heard, will 
further harm our economy, draining capital from our economy and 
reducing overall lending by over as much as $55 billion, as studies 
have shown. The effects of this bill further harming our economy will 
hurt small business and consumers alike. They are going to considerably 
find it much more difficult to access the credit they need in a very 
challenging economy in addition to dealing with more government 
bureaucracy.
  This bill, this legislation, will create a new credit czar with a 
mandate to limit consumer choice, to ration credit, and to increase the 
cost of financial transactions. Congress should be focusing on measures 
that will lead to job creation and encourage American prosperity, not 
implementing policies that will increase the unemployment numbers. 
Again, studies have shown that this legislation will literally cost 
hundreds of thousands of jobs in our economy.
  We should be putting an end to all Washington bailouts and the 
Washington bailout mentality. This legislation does not firmly put an 
end to taxpayer-funded bailouts. Rather, it could increase the 
likelihood of future bailouts. This legislation should also be ending 
the ``too big to fail'' mentality that has dominated Washington. 
Instead, this legislation will institutionalize it.
  By creating institutions that are too big to fail, we are implying 
that certain financial companies will be sheltered by a Federal safety 
net. Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I would like to ask again how much time each side 
has.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Colorado has 7 minutes 
remaining, and the gentleman from California has 10 minutes remaining.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. DREIER. At this time, Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to yield 1\1/
2\ minutes to my friend from Mesa, Arizona (Mr. Flake).
  Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I wish the gentleman from Massachusetts were here to hear this 
discussion. Earlier in the year we had a discussion about moral hazard. 
I think all of us recognize that moral hazard played a role in the mess 
that we got in last year and have been in for a couple of years. The 
implied guarantees that we had at Freddie and Fannie played a role, a 
rather large role, in the problems that we later had.
  I had mentioned to the gentleman from Massachusetts that some 
legislation we were passing earlier this year would further foster that 
principle of moral hazard. He said to me that, yes, that would be a 
problem if what we were doing were permanent, but it wasn't. It was 
simply temporary.
  But here what we are doing is very permanent. We are establishing a 
permanent, in a sense, a permanent bailout fund. We are told only to 
believe that we are establishing a bailout fund that will never bail 
out any companies but, rather, will be used to shut companies down, or 
something like that, to establish a fund.
  Fifty billion seed money from the Treasury, 50 billion in taxes from 
other companies to establish a fund to shut companies down? I don't 
think so. I think what we are establishing here, it's rather clear, is 
a bailout fund, a permanent bailout fund.
  If you want to talk about moral hazard, this is it. This is moral 
hazard institutionalized that will lead to the types of problems that 
we have seen. It's not a Republican issue or a Democrat issue. This is 
a principle, an economic principle that simply we cannot ignore.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire again how much time remains on 
each side.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from California has 8\1/2\ 
minutes remaining, and the gentleman from Colorado has 7 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. DREIER. Let me just say to my friend, if I might, Mr. Speaker, 
that we are winding down. If the gentleman has no further speakers, we 
are prepared to close.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I have one.
  Mr. DREIER. At this time I am happy to yield 2 minutes to my very 
good friend, the former Rules Committee member from Charleston, West 
Virginia (Mrs. Capito).
  Mrs. CAPITO. I would like to thank the ranking member and my former 
Chair for yielding this time to me and thank him for his leadership on 
every important debate.
  My colleagues, our friends on the other side of the aisle would have 
us believe that the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act 
derives its name from the assumption that the underlying text will 
prevent Americans from the impact of future economic disturbances like 
the one we experienced last fall. If only that were true.
  Instead, this bill is nothing more than a continuation of the bailout 
mentality that has put trillions of taxpayer dollars on the hook for 
the mistakes of Wall Street. Are we finally putting an end to the 
bailout culture on this bill? No, we are not.
  Rather than ending the bailouts, this legislation institutionalizes 
them. Instead of protecting taxpayers, this bill puts them at further 
risk. The Democrats' bill will grant authority to both the Treasury and 
the Federal Reserve to create a new $200 billion fund to finance future 
bailouts of the big banks and financial institutions. Who will be 
paying for this fund? The consumers.
  Furthermore, if there is another market-wide disturbance like the 
experience last fall, it will be the taxpayers who will be called upon 
to pick up the tab. Unfortunately, the chairman's bill also fails to 
put an end to ``too big to fail.'' If certain institutions are too big 
to fail, then that means that the rest are too small to save.

                              {time}  1945

  This will no doubt continue the troubling practice of government's 
picking winners and losers in the marketplace. This bill will do 
nothing more than set up an unlevel playing field that penalizes 
consumers, puts taxpayers' dollars at risk, and restricts the flow of 
credit at a time when our small businesses need it most.
  Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee have put forth 
a better proposal. We believe it's time to truly put an end to the 
bailouts. Business decisions have consequences, and Wall Street needs 
to know that taxpayers will not be there to help them pick up the 
pieces of their risky business practices. Instead of permanent 
bailouts, we propose a new chapter of the bankruptcy code capable of 
ensuring the orderly unwinding of failed firms.

[[Page H14415]]

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield my friend an additional 30 seconds.
  Mrs. CAPITO. We would give bankruptcy judges the authority to stay 
claims by creditors and counterparties to prevent runs on troubled 
institutions, alleviating potential panics if a large institution faces 
trouble. Under this proposal, all market participants, large and small, 
will know the rules of the game. If they take on too much risk, they'll 
face bankruptcy just like any other failed business.
  We'll also protect consumers with increased investment fraud 
enforcement. We'll monitor systemic risk through improved coordination 
between regulators. Yet, most importantly, we'll provide market 
certainty by making it clear to Wall Street that no firm is ``too big 
to fail.''
  I urge my colleagues to say ``no'' to bailouts and oppose the 
underlying bill.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I say to my good friend from West 
Virginia she continues to use the word ``bailout,'' but as it's clear 
in the bill, this is not any taxpayer-funded money. The continued use 
by my Republican colleagues of the word ``bailout'' is simply wrong and 
misleading because what is stated in the bill is the creation of a fund 
based on assessments paid by the biggest financial institutions in the 
world, $50 billion and bigger in terms of assets, so that those 
institutions, if they fail, will have a liquidation fund to put 
themselves out of their misery. That's what this is all about, to just 
be finished with it.
  Now, one thing I would like to say about my Republican colleagues. 
They've forgotten. They've talked about two sections of the bill: 
consumer protection, which is absolutely essential in this bill, as 
well as dealing with huge financial institutions that are risky to our 
financial system and could create a domino effect like we had last 
fall.
  The seven other sections of the bill--hedge funds, credit rating 
agencies, derivatives, life insurance, executive pay, and subprime--
those were bipartisan sections of the bill. So this bill covers a lot 
of topics to rein in our financial system and restore it and strengthen 
it as we go forward.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, at this juncture I am happy to yield 1 
minute to the gentleman from Savannah, Georgia (Mr. Kingston).
  Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the chairman for yielding.
  I stand in opposition to the rule and in opposition to the bill. One 
reason is that in 1969, when Congress passed Truth in Lending, it was 
with great intent. Nobody would argue against the purism of the heart. 
But the reality is, in 1969 before the bill even went into effect, 
before the new law became effective on the books, there were 34 
official interpretations of what the rule would mean, and 10 years 
later there were over 13,000 lawsuits about it just trying to figure 
out what does this thing mean.
  Now here comes this bill and there are all kinds of terms in there 
like ``excessive,'' ``unreasonable,'' and ``abusive,'' and they're not 
defined. Those are going to be defined in a court system by trial and 
error over a period of time.
  We need to send this bill back to the committee and ask for 
definitions on this stuff so that we can, during these uncertain 
economic times, not put one more ambiguity on the private sector. I 
think that's the better way to do reform.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from California has 5 minutes 
remaining, and the gentleman from Colorado has 5\1/2\ minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman 
from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. I thank the gentleman very much for 
yielding.
  There's nothing like delay, delay, delay when we begin to talk about 
helping the American people. If my good friends on the other side of 
the aisle would look at what the intent of this bill is, I think we'd 
find common ground. So I rise to support the rule and the underlying 
bill because it does point to some of the major crises that we have 
been contending with.
  I am glad that we are ending the bailout and preventing the rise of 
institutions that are ``too big to fail.'' We're dismantling large, 
failing institutions, and we're getting money back for the taxpayer. I 
am very glad that we have a financial stability council that has been 
enhanced by the Congressional Black Caucus where we will have diverse 
membership so the oversight will be effective and consistent. Executive 
compensation gives shareholders a say on pay. Never before have we had 
that. This is long overdue. Investor protections and certainly to be 
able to respond to too big and too fat cats like Madoff, it's long 
overdue.
  Then to emphasize the importance that I have heard from so many of my 
constituents on the whole question of mortgage foreclosure 
modification, and that is they need to have real foreclosure 
modification, and only 6 percent of those that have been in trial 
modifications have now been moved to permanent foreclosure 
modifications. The process is too slow.
  We are kicking this down the road by adding $3 billion from the 
Federal Troubled Assets Relief Program toward mortgage relief for 
jobless Americans. The measure would designate another $1 billion for a 
program that gives grants to State and local governments to purchase 
foreclosed properties and use them for many productive purposes, 
according to the members of the Financial Services Committee and the 
Congressional Black Caucus task force that have worked with 
Congresswoman Maxine Waters. We stand together united on the idea that 
the financial structure has not worked for the jobless, the poor, and 
working Americans. This legislation helps to generate that kind of 
pathway and that kind of roadway.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I yield the gentlewoman an additional 15 seconds.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. I thank the distinguished gentleman.
  I think it is extremely important that we protect and consider our 
credit unions. I have met with those today, and I want to ensure that 
if this bill has any language in it about the overdraft not being 
protected that, in essence, we work through that process. They are very 
much a part of this, and I want to make sure that this bill is 
supported.
  I support the rule and the underlying bill.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, at this time I am happy to yield 2 minutes 
to a hardworking member of the Financial Services Committee, the 
gentleman from Wantage, New Jersey (Mr. Garrett).
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Delay, delay, delay? Ms. Jackson-Lee just made the comment. It's 
absolutely delay. We've been waiting here for the last 4 hours for your 
side of the aisle to come to the floor to be able to debate this bill. 
So Ms. Jackson-Lee, I would ask, through the Chair, who it is on your 
side that was delay, delay, delay, and I would be glad to bring that 
person to the floor to ask, Why are you delaying trying to reform the 
system in this country?
  But I rushed to the floor because I was just doing a telephone town 
hall and people were watching what is going on on the floor right now, 
and they said, Congressman, you must go down to the floor to end the 
bailouts, end this piece of legislation that will cut jobs in this 
country, and end this piece of legislation that will expand the size of 
government.
  Now, I understand the reason the gentleman from Colorado says that we 
are mistaken with regard to whether or not there are bailouts in the 
bill. This bill is larger than the health care bill. It's larger than 
the cap-and-trade bill. You remember the bill that no one read before 
they came here or the health care bill that no one read before they 
came here? Maybe the reason why the gentleman from Colorado is perhaps 
mistaken on this point is because, quite candidly, enough people on 
your side of the aisle haven't read the bill. And if you did, you would 
see that there are bailouts and that the taxpayer is ultimately on the 
hook to the tune of upwards of $150 billion.
  How does that work? Well, we set up this system where, in essence, 
we're going to say we're going to set up a slush fund that eventually 
will tax businesses that are causing cuts in jobs across this country, 
but until we get

[[Page H14416]]

that up and running, where are we going to get that money? Well, we're 
going to get it by essentially allowing the U.S. Treasury to go to the 
American public and ask them once again, once again, to bail out the 
mistakes on Wall Street.
  Well, we say enough to the bailouts. Enough of putting the taxpayer 
on the hook for the bailouts. Enough for all the mistakes, both by Wall 
Street and government. And enough to these bailouts passed in 
legislation that this administration has passed and that the chairman 
in this committee has ushered through in the past. Whether it's the 
past administration or this administration, that side of the aisle has 
been at the forefront of having the American taxpayer bailing out Wall 
Street and the government as well.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Speaker, this has been a very interesting debate as we talk about 
where we are economically and the challenges with which we are trying 
to contend. It's a very serious time. The American people are hurting. 
People are losing their businesses, their homes, their jobs all across 
this country. They want us to get our economy back on track, and they 
want us to ensure that we do this in a very, very responsible way.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, my colleague Mr. Garrett has just put before us 
the 1,279-page bill that is to be considered under this measure, and I 
have to say that as we look at it, it is voluminous. And I will admit I 
haven't read every single page of that bill and I doubt that there are 
many of our colleagues who have.
  The fact of the matter is we have a 170-page alternative. This one, 
by the way, is on both sides of the pages, and ours is on one side, Mr. 
Speaker. It's 170 pages, and it's a proposal that clearly will ensure 
that we don't proceed down the road towards bailouts. It will make sure 
that we don't jeopardize our economic growth. It will make sure that we 
create greater transparency and accountability, and that is a key 
priority that I believe the American people want us to pursue.

                              {time}  2000

  We all hear David Letterman's regular Top 10 list. I was just handed 
a Top 10 list as to why we should support the 170-page bill that 
provides transparency and accountability and will work to get our 
economy back on track without increasing taxes or permanent bailouts, 
and to oppose this 1,279-page bill.
  Number one: This one creates a permanent TARP-like bailout authority.
  Number two: It imposes a massive tax during a credit crisis and weak 
economy.
  Number three: It expands the powers of the Federal Reserve.
  Number four: It creates a credit czar with the authority to restrict 
access to credit and impose taxes on consumers and small businesses.
  Number five: It undermines the ``safety and soundness'' regulation of 
financial institutions.
  Number six: It rewards trial lawyers at the expense of investors.
  Number seven: It kills jobs by undermining the ability of Main Street 
companies to manage risk.
  Number eight: It empowers regulators to impose wage controls on 
workers and enterprises.
  Number nine: It continues ``business as usual'' at Fannie Mae and 
Freddie Mac.
  And number 10: Our Republican substitute ends the bailouts, restores 
market discipline, and protects consumers, small businesses, and 
taxpayers.
  Reject this rule. Reject this legislation. We can do better. We have 
it in our hands right here, Mr. Speaker.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, my friend from California wanted to 
compare the 170-page proposal that they have versus the 1,300 pages of 
the bill that we have. I would just say to him, in his proposal, he 
doesn't deal with hedge funds, he doesn't deal with credit rating 
agencies, he doesn't deal with derivatives, he doesn't deal with 
excessive compensation to executives, he doesn't deal with life 
insurance. He doesn't deal with a whole range of things. He just deals 
with one thing: Let's put them in bankruptcy. Let's do a chapter 11. 
Let's let these things go on forever in a chapter 11.
  Well, ladies and gentlemen, we can't afford this anymore. The status 
quo, which is more or less what the Republicans are proposing--they 
should call their bill ``Let's Protect Wall Street'' because that's all 
it does. It doesn't change anything.
  When we lose trillions of dollars and people's livelihoods, and 
retirement funds, and pension plans, and jobs are lost, and they come 
in here and say, Oh, theirs is 1,300 pages, that's got to be bad 
because ours is 170 pages, when people's lives have changed, the debate 
on this floor and the debate about American futures is more than that. 
This is about restoring confidence in a financial system that was 
allowed to be the Wild West under George Bush and under the 
Republicans. This is no longer going to be the case. We are going to 
have reasonable regulation that people can rely on; certainty will be 
restored and confidence in the system regained.
  There are nine sections: Consumer protection; investor protection; 
dealing with derivatives; dealing with credit rating agencies; dealing 
with executive compensation; dealing with hedge funds; and 
specifically, and most importantly, dealing with those financial 
institutions that have become so risky that they are going to cause a 
collapse of our entire banking system, which we cannot allow. So we 
require those institutions to post themselves $150 billion so they can 
be liquidated without any cost to the taxpayer.
  Their proposal is nothing but bailouts. Their proposal is nothing but 
protecting Wall Street. We've got to change that. This bill changes the 
future of our financial system in a way that we haven't seen since the 
New Deal. We need to restore confidence. That's what we do.
  I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question and on the rule.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the 
previous question on the resolution.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the resolution.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, this 15-
minute vote on adopting House Resolution 956 will be followed by a 5-
minute vote on suspending the rules and passing H.R. 86.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 235, 
nays 177, not voting 22, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 945]

                               YEAS--235

     Abercrombie
     Ackerman
     Adler (NJ)
     Altmire
     Andrews
     Arcuri
     Baca
     Baird
     Barrow
     Bean
     Becerra
     Berkley
     Berman
     Bishop (GA)
     Bishop (NY)
     Blumenauer
     Boccieri
     Boren
     Boswell
     Boucher
     Boyd
     Brady (PA)
     Braley (IA)
     Brown, Corrine
     Butterfield
     Capps
     Capuano
     Cardoza
     Carnahan
     Carney
     Carson (IN)
     Castor (FL)
     Chandler
     Childers
     Chu
     Clarke
     Clay
     Cleaver
     Clyburn
     Cohen
     Connolly (VA)
     Conyers
     Cooper
     Costa
     Costello
     Courtney
     Crowley
     Cuellar
     Cummings
     Dahlkemper
     Davis (AL)
     Davis (CA)
     Davis (IL)
     DeFazio
     Delahunt
     DeLauro
     Dicks
     Dingell
     Doggett
     Donnelly (IN)
     Doyle
     Driehaus
     Edwards (MD)
     Edwards (TX)
     Ellison
     Ellsworth
     Engel
     Eshoo
     Etheridge
     Farr
     Fattah
     Filner
     Foster
     Frank (MA)
     Garamendi
     Giffords
     Gonzalez
     Gordon (TN)
     Grayson
     Green, Al
     Green, Gene
     Grijalva
     Gutierrez
     Hall (NY)
     Halvorson
     Hare
     Harman
     Hastings (FL)
     Heinrich
     Herseth Sandlin
     Higgins
     Hill
     Himes
     Hinchey
     Hinojosa
     Hirono
     Hodes
     Holden
     Holt
     Honda
     Hoyer
     Inslee
     Israel
     Jackson (IL)
     Jackson-Lee (TX)
     Johnson (GA)
     Johnson, E. B.
     Kagen
     Kanjorski
     Kennedy
     Kildee
     Kilpatrick (MI)
     Kilroy
     Kind
     Kissell
     Klein (FL)
     Kosmas
     Kratovil
     Kucinich
     Langevin
     Larsen (WA)
     Larson (CT)
     Lee (CA)
     Levin
     Lipinski
     Loebsack
     Lofgren, Zoe
     Lowey
     Lujan
     Lynch
     Maffei
     Maloney
     Markey (CO)
     Markey (MA)
     Marshall
     Massa
     Matheson
     Matsui
     McCarthy (NY)
     McCollum
     McDermott
     McGovern
     McIntyre
     McMahon
     McNerney
     Meek (FL)
     Meeks (NY)
     Melancon
     Michaud
     Miller (NC)
     Minnick
     Mollohan
     Moore (KS)
     Moore (WI)
     Murphy (CT)
     Murphy (NY)
     Murphy, Patrick
     Nadler (NY)
     Napolitano
     Neal (MA)
     Nye

[[Page H14417]]


     Oberstar
     Obey
     Olver
     Ortiz
     Owens
     Pallone
     Pascrell
     Perlmutter
     Perriello
     Peters
     Peterson
     Pingree (ME)
     Polis (CO)
     Pomeroy
     Price (NC)
     Quigley
     Rahall
     Rangel
     Reyes
     Richardson
     Rodriguez
     Ross
     Rothman (NJ)
     Roybal-Allard
     Ruppersberger
     Rush
     Ryan (OH)
     Salazar
     Sanchez, Linda T.
     Sarbanes
     Schakowsky
     Schauer
     Schiff
     Schrader
     Schwartz
     Scott (GA)
     Scott (VA)
     Serrano
     Sestak
     Shea-Porter
     Sherman
     Sires
     Skelton
     Slaughter
     Smith (WA)
     Snyder
     Space
     Speier
     Spratt
     Stupak
     Sutton
     Tanner
     Teague
     Thompson (CA)
     Thompson (MS)
     Tierney
     Titus
     Tonko
     Towns
     Tsongas
     Van Hollen
     Velazquez
     Visclosky
     Walz
     Wasserman Schultz
     Waters
     Watson
     Watt
     Waxman
     Weiner
     Welch
     Wilson (OH)
     Wu
     Yarmuth

                               NAYS--177

     Aderholt
     Akin
     Alexander
     Austria
     Bachmann
     Bachus
     Bartlett
     Barton (TX)
     Biggert
     Bilbray
     Bilirakis
     Bishop (UT)
     Blackburn
     Blunt
     Boehner
     Bonner
     Bono Mack
     Boozman
     Boustany
     Brady (TX)
     Bright
     Broun (GA)
     Brown (SC)
     Brown-Waite, Ginny
     Buchanan
     Burgess
     Burton (IN)
     Calvert
     Camp
     Campbell
     Cantor
     Cao
     Capito
     Carter
     Cassidy
     Castle
     Chaffetz
     Coble
     Coffman (CO)
     Cole
     Conaway
     Crenshaw
     Culberson
     Davis (KY)
     Deal (GA)
     Dent
     Diaz-Balart, L.
     Diaz-Balart, M.
     Dreier
     Duncan
     Ehlers
     Emerson
     Fallin
     Flake
     Fleming
     Forbes
     Fortenberry
     Foxx
     Franks (AZ)
     Frelinghuysen
     Gallegly
     Garrett (NJ)
     Gerlach
     Gingrey (GA)
     Gohmert
     Goodlatte
     Graves
     Griffith
     Guthrie
     Hall (TX)
     Harper
     Hastings (WA)
     Heller
     Hensarling
     Herger
     Hoekstra
     Inglis
     Issa
     Jenkins
     Johnson (IL)
     Johnson, Sam
     Jones
     Jordan (OH)
     Kaptur
     King (IA)
     King (NY)
     Kingston
     Kirk
     Kirkpatrick (AZ)
     Kline (MN)
     Lamborn
     Lance
     Latham
     LaTourette
     Latta
     Lewis (CA)
     Linder
     LoBiondo
     Lucas
     Luetkemeyer
     Lummis
     Lungren, Daniel E.
     Mack
     Manzullo
     Marchant
     McCarthy (CA)
     McCaul
     McClintock
     McCotter
     McKeon
     McMorris Rodgers
     Mica
     Miller (FL)
     Miller (MI)
     Miller, Gary
     Mitchell
     Moran (KS)
     Murphy, Tim
     Myrick
     Neugebauer
     Nunes
     Olson
     Paul
     Paulsen
     Pence
     Petri
     Pitts
     Platts
     Poe (TX)
     Posey
     Price (GA)
     Putnam
     Rehberg
     Reichert
     Roe (TN)
     Rogers (AL)
     Rogers (KY)
     Rogers (MI)
     Rohrabacher
     Rooney
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Roskam
     Royce
     Ryan (WI)
     Scalise
     Schmidt
     Schock
     Sensenbrenner
     Sessions
     Shadegg
     Shimkus
     Shuler
     Shuster
     Simpson
     Smith (NE)
     Smith (NJ)
     Smith (TX)
     Souder
     Stearns
     Sullivan
     Taylor
     Terry
     Thompson (PA)
     Thornberry
     Tiahrt
     Tiberi
     Turner
     Upton
     Walden
     Wamp
     Westmoreland
     Whitfield
     Wilson (SC)
     Wittman
     Wolf
     Young (AK)
     Young (FL)

                             NOT VOTING--22

     Baldwin
     Barrett (SC)
     Berry
     Buyer
     Davis (TN)
     DeGette
     Fudge
     Granger
     Hunter
     Lee (NY)
     Lewis (GA)
     McHenry
     Miller, George
     Moran (VA)
     Murtha
     Pastor (AZ)
     Payne
     Radanovich
     Sanchez, Loretta
     Stark
     Wexler
     Woolsey


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (during the vote). There are 2 minutes 
remaining in this vote.

                              {time}  2029

  Mr. TERRY and Ms. KAPTUR changed their vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
  Messrs. SPRATT and PERRIELLO changed their vote from ``nay'' to 
``yea.''
  So the resolution was agreed to.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________