[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 86 (Wednesday, June 9, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H4289-H4297]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MOTION TO INSTRUCT CONFEREES ON H.R. 4173, WALL STREET REFORM AND
CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT OF 2009
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 1 of rule
XXII and by direction of the Committee on Financial Services, I move to
take from the Speaker's table 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, with the
Senate amendments thereto, disagree to the Senate amendments, and agree
to the conference asked by the Senate.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The motion was agreed to.
Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion at the desk.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Clerk will report the motion.
The Clerk read as follows:
Mr. Bachus of Alabama moves that the managers on the part
of the House at the conference on the disagreeing votes of
the 2 Houses on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 4173 be
instructed as follows:
(1) To disagree to the provisions contained in subtitle G
of title I of the House bill.
(2) To disagree to section 202 (relating to the
commencement of orderly liquidation and the appointment of
the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as receiver) and
section 210 (relating to the powers and duties of the Federal
Deposit Insurance Corporation as receiver) of title II of the
Senate amendment.
(3) To not record their approval of the final conference
agreement (within the meaning of clause 12(a)(4) of House
rule XXII) unless the text of such agreement has been
available to the managers in an electronic, searchable, and
downloadable form for at least 72 hours prior to the time
described in such clause.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 7 of rule XXII, the
gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus) and the gentleman from
Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) each will control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Alabama.
Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
This motion to instruct directs the conferees to insist that this
legislation end the possibility of taxpayer-funded bailouts once and
for all by stipulating that bankruptcy is the only available option for
liquidating a failed financial firm. The motion also requires that the
conferees and the public, by extension, have at least 72 hours to
review the contents of the conference report before its final approval.
We've heard time and time again that the Democrats ``resolution
authority'' to wind down systemically significant financial
institutions ends the too-big-to-fail doctrine and protects taxpayers.
That's an outrageous and false claim. Read the bills. Both the House
and the Senate let the FDIC do the following: lend to a failing firm,
purchase the assets of a failing firm, guarantee its obligations to
creditors, take a security interest in its assets, and even sell or
transfer assets that the FDIC acquired from it.
And while the House establishes a $150 billion bailout fund to pay
for the resolution of a failing firm, with an extra $50 billion line of
credit with the Treasury if the original $150 billion is exhausted and
cannot fully fund the bailout, the Senate approach is no better. The
Senate would allow the FDIC to potentially provide trillions of dollars
from the Treasury in order to pay off a failed firm's creditors and
counterparties in the aftermath of its failure with the hopes that the
funds can be recouped at some later date. But only a hope.
The Senate bill institutionalizes backdoor bailouts that have so
infuriated the American people by conferring on the FDIC the exact same
tools that were used to rescue the creditors of Bear Stearns, AIG,
Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac with the taxpayer price tag today of over a
trillion dollars. This would continue the misguided too-big-to-fail
bailouts that allowed U.S. regulators to pay Goldman Sachs and other
large European banks 100 cents on the dollar at the expense of hundreds
of smaller institutions and companies which were considered too
insignificant or small to save or to pay.
The Democrats like to call their plan a ``death panel'' for large
financial firms, but if you read the bill, in reality, it is nothing
less than the taxpayer-funded life support to pay off the creditors of
the failed institutions but not necessarily all of the creditors. They
could pay some of the creditors and let others hang out to dry. We saw
that with AIG and other bailouts.
And don't forget the so-called too-big-to-fail institutions have only
grown larger and more dominant through the regulator-directed but
taxpayer-funded bailout process, a process this legislation
institutionalizes.
The better, more equitable approach to dealing with failed nonbank
financial institutions--the only way to make sure taxpayers are
protected from paying for Wall Street mistakes--is bankruptcy, first
proposed by House Republicans. Unlike the FDIC, which can funnel
unlimited amounts of taxpayer cash to a failing firm's creditors as
part of a so-called resolution, a bankruptcy court has neither the
authority nor the funds to make creditors whole. Bankruptcy is an open,
transparent process administered according to clear rules and settled
precedent and preferences, preferences that, in this bill, could be
disregarded.
By contrast, the resolution authority proposed by the Democrats would
be carried out entirely behind closed doors with no guarantee of
adequate stakeholder participation and protection and without a
bankruptcy judge to ensure a fair and equitable outcome. The Democrats
have been careful to include in their bill a provision that explicitly
states that taxpayers will bear no losses from the government's
exercise of resolution authority. But that promise, like the promise we
heard in Fannie and Freddie, is an empty one, not worth the paper it is
printed on.
You will remember, on this floor we heard the Secretary of the
Treasury say, $300 billion that will never be used. It was used, and
almost another trillion dollars more was guaranteed.
The only way to ensure that the pockets of taxpayers will not again
be picked by Wall Street and government bureaucrats with the help of
this Congress--a coalition which sometimes I refer to as the reckless
and the clueless--is to insist that failing firms be resolved through
bankruptcy.
In conclusion, let me remind my colleagues that for 99.9 percent of
core companies and all individuals who find themselves unable to meet
their obligations or their creditors, bankruptcy--not a government
bailout--is the only alternative. It ought to be the alternative for
failing too-big-to-save corporations as well.
{time} 1530
This motion to instruct would eliminate the two big to fail/too small
to save double standard in the Democrat bill that has so infuriated the
American people and makes bankruptcy the only option for the
systemically significant firms, many of which created the crisis our
economy and the American people face today. I urge my colleagues to
support it.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as
I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, we have just seen an elephant stick wielded on the floor
of the House. The elephant stick refers to the man who's walking around
the Mall here in Washington carrying a big stick, and people say, Why
do you have that big stick. He said, Well, I've got to keep away all
the elephants, and the people say to him, Well, there aren't any
elephants here, and he said, Right, my stick works.
[[Page H4290]]
My friend from Alabama is determined to prevent from happening what's
not going to happen, what's not authorized in the bill. It is true that
we had bailouts, and of course, what we also have here is the latest in
a series of stunning repudiations of the Bush administration by its
former loyal followers. All the bailouts the gentleman mentioned, of
course, happened under the administration of President Bush, and I
believe President Bush's administration did the best they could with
weak tools at the time to deal with the problem.
What we have are ways to avoid that from happening. There is
reference to too big to fail. No institution will be too big to fail
under this bill. They will fail. The question is, will their failure
lead to consequences that you should have some ability to deal with.
We do model some of this after the FDIC. The FDIC, run by a very able
appointee, Sheila Bair, a former aid to Senator Dole and a Republican
appointed to the job by President Bush, had a major role in helping us
decide how to do this, and it is to say, first of all, the institutions
that get too far into debt will die.
My Republican colleagues were actually right in the wrong place
earlier this year, which is better than their usual average, when they
talked about death panels. We are legislating death panels this year
but for financial institutions, not elderly women. We don't have them
in the health care bill. We have them in the financial bill. There is
no too big to fail institution.
I will say in the instruction motion some things that were done were
not done as well as they should have been--that's why we go to a final
conference--and to the extent that there are suggestions that some of
these institutions might survive, we will clean them out. The Senate
bill has some provisions I don't like, and section 202 of the Senate
bill I hope to change.
On the other hand, the notion that in this very complex system that
we have, with the debts that are out there, to only do bankruptcy is
simplistic. By the way, if my Republican colleagues really believe that
bankruptcy was the only way to deal with these institutions, they would
have an amendment or would have had an amendment to do away with the
dissolution authority in the FDIC. The major exception of bankruptcy
right now is in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. We don't
have simple bankruptcy for banks. We have a method given that
particular relevance in the society on how you wind them down.
So, there are many things in here that I agree with. As to the
conference report being open, again here I welcome my Republican
colleagues as converts to the cause of openness and interbranch
negotiations. When the Republicans controlled this institution for 12
years and had the Senate for most of that time, conferences were so
rare that I've had to explain to Members who came during the years of
Republicans how a conference works. Now they have become great
advocates of an openness they never implemented themselves.
We will have a conference, which I announced was my intention last
year, last fall. It will be open. Things will be presented. They will
be debated. They will be subject to amendment. They will be voted on. I
was asked if they were going to be televised. Now, I am not the
editorial director of C-SPAN. I hope it will be covered. I hope TV will
be there. I hope it will be widely covered, and I think it probably
will be given the interest.
So, when they talk about a 72-hour requirement, I expect that we will
beat that. The timetable I am hoping for will have this bill done in a
couple of weeks, and it should be reported out, if we can work this out
by a Thursday, and not come to the House until Tuesday which is more
than 72 hours. One never knows whether there is going to be some
emergency, what might happen. This will be a fully debated bill.
So there are aspects of the instruction report that I agree with.
There are aspects with which I disagree. Of course, we have to go to
the Senate. That's why instruction motions are not binding. But I do
disagree with two points.
First of all, the entirely enacted allegation that this perpetuates
bailouts, they have us confused with the situation that occurred in
2008. I don't blame the Bush administration for these bailouts in part
because I think some of them could have been conducted more sensibly
and better and with more concern for the impact on the average citizen,
but they didn't have the tools. This gives them tools that first the
Bush administration and now the Obama administration has asked for, not
to keep institutions alive but to put them to death in a way that does
not cause great perturbation in the rest of the economy. There will be
no taxpayer money expended under here. That's already done. I do not
doubt that years from now they will take credit for what we had already
decided to do.
The instruction motion, in other words, is a mixed bag. Some parts of
it I hope we will act on. The ex-ante fund we talk about of $150
billion, recommended to us again by Chairwoman Bair of the FDIC, many
of us thought that made sense. The Senate and the administration were
opposed to it. It will not survive the conference. People know that.
So, to that extent, that's going to disappear anyway.
But saying that you only have bankruptcy and nothing else that helps
you buffer the consequences of the failure of these institutions--and
failures they will be, they will be hard to fail and will be
dissolved--I think is reckless.
So I plan to vote against the motion to instruct, and given that it
is such a mixed bag of things and given that it's not binding, I will
predict that the outcome is likely to be very similar no matter how
this goes. That is, there are some things we are going to do, some
things we have to negotiate with the Senate. We haven't got the power
to order. So I think this will be a useful discussion, but I will go
back to just the last central point.
There will be no taxpayer funds, and there will be no institutions
that are not allowed to fail. There will be an effort--and this has to
be negotiated--to work with the Senate so that we do not simply say
that the consequences are of no interest, and I would repeat again.
Those who genuinely believe that only bankruptcy should be used have
made a major concession by not applying those rules to the banking
system. If only bankruptcy should be used, then where was the amendment
during the process to convert the FDIC dissolution process on which
this is modelled to a bankruptcy model?
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 4 minutes to the
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).
Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Speaker, the question before us, with apologies
to William Shakespeare, to bail out or not to bail out, that is the
question. The motion to instruct by the ranking member says no more
bailouts. Quite simply, it cannot be said any other way. Unfortunately,
whether you're dealing with the House bill or the Senate bill, they are
still identifying firms that in their view are too big to fail. Now the
phrase that is used is systemically significant, systemically risky,
but they are identifying firms for a specific regulatory scheme, and in
the House version, as the distinguished chairman of the Financial
Services Committee pointed out, is a prefunded bailout fund. In the
Senate version, they drop their prefunded, but there is an infinite
line of credit that the FDIC can draw upon with respect to the
Treasury. Again, if you have firms, Mr. Speaker, that are too big to
fail, then you are saying they can't fail. If they can't fail, then at
some point you're going to bail them out.
Now, I've heard the distinguished chairman of the Financial Services
Committee, the gentleman from Massachusetts, on many occasions say no
taxpayer funds will be used. I heard him say it seconds earlier and I
know he believes it and I know he means it, but unfortunately, the
track record for him and many of his colleagues on that side of the
aisle in predicting such is really not very good.
The distinguished chairman was the same one who told us he didn't
believe that taxpayers would be called upon to bail out Fannie and
Freddie. Well, approximately $150 billion later, we know that Fannie
and Freddie did have to be bailed out, that rolling the dice was not a
good strategy.
These are the same folks who also told us that the National Flood
Insurance Program would never go broke, the crop insurance program,
Medicare
[[Page H4291]]
will never go broke. We've heard it before, Mr. Speaker. To somehow
believe that ultimately taxpayers were not being called upon to have to
bail out these firms is asking us frankly to ignore history and to
suspend disbelief. Again, it is time to end the bailouts, and the
motion to instruct would do that. Too big to fail becomes a self-
fulfilling prophecy. Again, in many respects, the bill ought to be
renamed the Perpetual Bailout Act of 2010. It has the wrong scheme.
Bankruptcy is the proper scheme.
Now, I know the chairman has told us, well, we have death panels for
these financial firms. Well, what happened on Chrysler and GM on their
so-called death panels? Well, we know that Washington decided to play
favorites. Certain creditors were benefited at the expense of others.
Unsecured creditors, particularly the UAW, United Automobile Workers,
somehow they jet to the front of the line. Secured creditors, they go
to the back of the line. It creates avenues for political favoritism in
Washington, D.C. It will again lead to Washington picking winners and
losers.
We know how this ends. We know that AIG refused to make counter
parties whole. CIT was designated too big to fail. They got billions of
dollars. They failed anyway but it was resolved quickly. It is time to
end the bailouts. The Nation cannot afford to be on the road to
bankruptcy. It is time to end the bailouts, Mr. Speaker, and it is time
to approve this motion to instruct.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as
I may consume.
I would like to yield to any of my Republican colleagues who will
tell me why during this process they never moved to require bankruptcy
as the way of dealing with failing banks. If bankruptcy is the only way
to do it, why have the Republicans never proposed that we substitute
for the current FDIC proposal bankruptcy? Well, I'm used to being
unanswered when I ask hard questions. I think that proves the point.
I will yield to the gentleman from Texas.
Mr. HENSARLING. Well, I would say to the distinguished chairman that
depositors are very different from investors, and when we have taxpayer
money specifically at risk, it calls for a different regime.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Well, the gentleman is wrong about that
because, yes, depositors are different than investors and depositors
are insured, but we have deposit insurance. If you on the other side
generally believe this, Mr. Speaker, they would provide deposit
insurance and then bankruptcy. The gentleman's incorrectly answered the
question. Deposit insurance takes care of the depositors, but there are
other things that are done to try and reduce the cost to the
government. So bankruptcy and deposit insurance has not been the
method.
Mr. HENSARLING. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Yes.
Mr. HENSARLING. Is the distinguished chairman suggesting that we need
deposit insurance for firms like Citigroup and Goldman Sachs? Is that
what the gentleman is suggesting then?
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I would take back my time to say that's
even by the standards of this debate wholly illogical. No, I'm not
remotely suggesting that. What I'm suggesting is the glaring
inconsistency between saying bankruptcy is the only way you put an
institution out of business and the failure to apply that to the
banking business.
By the way, I don't mean to be rude but the gentleman mentioned
Citicorp. There's a bank there that has deposit insurance. So maybe the
gentleman wasn't aware that the bank there has deposit insurance.
{time} 1545
Mr. Speaker, there is another error in the comments. This is that the
bill designates institutions too big to fail as systemically important.
That is misleading as stated.
In fact, the bill in the House does not designate any institution as
being systemically important. The only way an institution would be
designated as systemically important is if it was found to be troubled.
So there would be no situation in which an institution would have that
label and go out and be able to do things with it.
Under the bill that we have, only a finding that the institution is
in difficulty triggers a systemic importance designation, and it is
accompanied with restrictions on that institution. It is exactly the
opposite of this being a badge to get more loans. It is publicly
identified as a troubled institution.
The last point I would make is this. Yes, there was flood insurance,
Medicare, a number of things. None of them have the language we have in
this bill. This bill has very specific language banning those things
because we have learned from experience.
We have learned from the experience of 2008, with all those bailouts.
And, again, remember, every single bailout activity was initiated by
the Bush administration. And I say that not for political purposes but
to indicate the inherent difficulties here.
And it was the people in the Bush administration who first said to
us, ``Give us different tools. We have to be able to deal with putting
these institutions out of business, but not ignore the consequences.''
So, with that, Mr. Speaker, I reiterate: This bill very explicitly
prevents bailouts. It designates no institution as systemically
important. It says that regulators may step in when they find an
institution to be troubled. And if they think that that troubled
institution could cause damage, they don't just designate it, they put
severe restrictions on it.
So it is exactly the opposite suggestion that some will be too big to
fail. They will be on notice that they have to increase their capital,
decrease their activity. And people will be told that if that
institution does fail under this bill, those who have invested, et
cetera, will be wiped out.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to another gentleman from
Texas (Mr. Paul).
(Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. PAUL. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this motion to instruct. I think it
is a good idea that we don't have the taxpayers bailing out eternally
institutions that are bankrupt.
But there is an important thing to remember, that when an economy
gets out of kilter, the marketplace demands a correction of that. And
that's usually called the recession. Of course, we are not discussing
here today exactly how we get into the excesses, but we do. And,
unfortunately, debt gets too high and mal-investment gets too
excessive, and the market wants to correct this.
Now, it's essential that this excessive debt be liquidated. It can be
liquidated in two different ways. It can be written off by inflationary
currency and paid off with bad money, or it can be liquidated actually
through the bankruptcy process.
So I am in strong support of this, but I also want to make a point
here and a suggestion to the conferees that they pay attention to the
provision in the House version of our bill dealing with the Federal
Reserve. And that provision is called H.R. 1207, which deals with the
auditing. And there is a difference between the Senate version and the
House version.
So, although we are not talking about that specifically, to me it's
important, not only for the issue of oversight and transparency, but
there is also an opportunity for the Federal Reserve to provide bailout
provisions for certain organizations, as well. We are talking about
taxpayers' funds, the appropriated funds, TARP funds and others. But
when we come to extending loans, in a way this very much is a bailout.
So I would like to suggest that we look at that and stand by the
House provision. We do have 319 cosponsors of this provision.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. If the gentleman would yield, as you
know, I was for some form of that. And I guarantee, because the Senate
has acted, we will have tough auditing provisions of the Federal
Reserve in the final bill.
And I do want to note to my friend from Texas that, when the
Republicans offered a motion to recommit to the bill, they would have
wiped out a number of things, including his audit provision. So despite
the fact that my friend
[[Page H4292]]
from Texas temporarily abandoned his audit provision to the perils of a
recommittal provision, I will join with him in reviving it.
And, as he knows, we have in our bill a severe limitation on this
power under section 13(3) for making these loans. What they did with
AIG will no longer be possible. There will be no more loans to
individual institutions.
But he has been the leader on the audit situation, and I intend to
continue to work with him to make sure it is well done.
Mr. PAUL. I thank the chairman.
And I would just like to reemphasize that it is the responsibility of
the Congress to commit to oversight of the Federal Reserve, something
that we have been derelict in doing. I think the mood of this House and
the mood of the Senate and the mood of the country is more transparency
and more oversight.
The provision in the Senate version is not adequate for an audit of
the Fed. So I am encouraged that we are getting more attention because,
ultimately, it is necessary that we understand exactly how the business
cycle comes about and how the Federal Reserve participates in this.
Because, under the circumstances of today, on what we are doing, we
are prolonging our agony. And someday I would hope to see that our
recessions--and now we are talking about depressions--are minimized and
shortened. And I am concerned that the programs that we are working
with today are prolonging those changes.
So the most important thing that we can do is make sure that we exert
our responsibilities, have oversight of the Federal Reserve, commit to
these audits of the Federal Reserve, and not to endorse the idea that
the Federal Reserve is totally secret, can do what they want, can bail
out other companies and banks and foreign governments and foreign
central banks without fully knowing exactly what they are doing.
Once again, I thank the chairman of the committee for his support for
auditing the Fed.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may
consume to the chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions,
the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kanjorski), who had a major and
constructive role in this bill and was pushing for things like reform
of the Volcker rule before it was popular in other quarters.
Mr. KANJORSKI. Mr. Speaker, I rise maybe to make a suggestion. I know
it may drop on deaf ears, but, you know, we are about to undertake an
historic event, both in this institution, the Congress of the United
States, and in the United States of America, and that is to enact laws
by a democratic society through their elected representatives that will
cause occasions to happen that may actually save the economy of this
Nation or the economy of the world.
It seems to me at this first preparation date we are awaiting the
appointment of our conferees here on the House side, that we are
already indicating that there will be a political flavor to this
conference as opposed to an attempt by both sides of the aisle to find
what is best for America and what is best for the economy of this
country.
Now, I suggest, and I will concede, having worked with the chairman
and Members on the other side, the ranking members and others, for
these last 15 or 16 months, that this is not a perfect bill or a
perfect solution. I wish it were. But I think we will all have to wait
until another day of a higher order to get to perfection.
All we are trying to do here is to work in the regular order of the
legal process to see if we can make certain that we don't bring down
our economy or our government or the world's economy or the world
governments. And that's what we are attempting to do.
Now, you know, we have all these titles, and I am probably as guilty
as others, ``too big to fail.'' And we talk about that like that's an
easily definable entity. Well, in reality, it isn't.
The fact of the matter is, some things are so interconnected and
intertwined and involved in our economic system that, for all intents
and purposes, they would appear not to be a risky organization, but
that when you examine them and you see the tentacles that they send out
through our society and other organizations throughout the world, that
their failure can precipitate a failure of the economic system of the
world.
That's what we experienced in an organization known as AIG. You know,
an organization in excess of 100,000 people, working in tens of
countries around the world, had a little organization in London,
England, called AIG Financial Products. Those 400 people were able to
take a name, AIG, American International Insurance Group, and utilize
that to get into the derivative business to the tune of $2.8 trillion
without the support of adequate assets to meet their counterparty
positions.
And what happened? It started to fail to meet its counterparty
positions and immediately would have put at risk most of the major
banks of not only the United States but of the world.
Now, when that was happening--and that occurred after other failures
in the United States had occurred--we had several choices. We could
have sat by and said, ``Well, the market will cure all things.'' And I
guess if you are a purist, that's not a bad position philosophically to
take, because it is correct. I will concede to that.
But I am one of those people that favor affecting the market and
taking the actions that will, in some instances, short-circuit the
effects of the market when the effects of the market will be so severe
on our population that it warrants such action. And that's exactly what
happened at AIG.
If we had sat back and allowed that to occur and the ripple effect
around the world, we would have collapsed the economy of the United
States and the world, probably, some of our best economists in the
world indicated, within 72 hours. We would have been in a position of
no one knowing what the world's economy would have looked like.
We were called upon to take certain actions, and that was way back in
September or October of 2008. And many of us came back to Washington
just before our vital elections that year, and we went to work and we
created something.
Can I reconstruct for you gentlemen what it was about? We didn't come
back to the Obama administration. We didn't come back to a situation--
--
Parliamentary Inquiry
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Halvorson). The gentleman will state
it.
Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, doesn't our House rule require that the
address be made to the Speaker and not to each other?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to address their
remarks to the Speaker.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
Mr. KANJORSKI. It is certainly a pleasure to address the Speaker, and
I will. I am sure we should adhere to the decorum of the House and the
rules of the House, and I will definitely do that.
I wouldn't think of calling the attention of my observations to my
colleagues on the other side. That could be frightful if we did that
because they may have to respond to those observations. So we won't
call those observations.
I was going through how we got here and why we are here. And how we
got here was we met in rooms around this Capitol for a number of weeks,
2 or 3 weeks, as I recall. And the President of the United States,
George W. Bush, in his last year of presidency, or in the last several
years of his presidency, indicated that his Secretary of Treasury and
the Chairman of the Federal Reserve were his designees to work with
Congress to see what we could do to prevent the potential meltdown or
catastrophe to the world's economy. And we went to work to do that.
Now, as I recall--and I sat in some of those meetings, not all of
those meetings--we would periodically tune the conference telephone to
economists, Nobel Prize-winning economists around the world, of all
political persuasions and philosophical positions. And, to my best
recollection, there were several dozen. And to a man, or woman, not one
of them disagreed that what we were facing was total meltdown and that
precipitous action had to be taken.
And the precipitous action that was taken was to provide a rescue
package, giving unusual, incredible authority to the executive branch
of government, to
[[Page H4293]]
be utilized by the Secretary of the Treasury, to do what we could to
prevent a meltdown in the United States.
{time} 1600
Now, at all times, as I recall, those eminent economists were telling
us that it was their opinion that even if we did these strange and
unusual activities of empowering the President and the Secretary of the
Treasury to borrow monies, use monies, buy assets, do all kinds of
things, the chance of success was rated at about 50/50.
As I recall, we worked for about 2 or 3 weeks crafting what
originally was a three-page bill that ultimately became a 400-page bill
and became known as the ``rescue'' bill. We brought it to the House
floor, if all of you will recall, and it failed. And the day that it
failed, the hour that it failed, the half hour that it failed, the New
York Stock Exchange dropped 900 points. And finally, there was a
realization across the country and across the world that if this rescue
package was not passed, we probably were looking at the beginning of
the failure of the American economic system, and we went to work to see
if we could put a coalition together to get it passed, and that took
another week, if I recall.
Now, we did those things in the midst of an election. We did those
things with a Republican President and a Democratic Congress, and it
seems we did it pretty successfully. And we didn't call it a
``bailout'' bill. That became a political terminology so that people
could be misinformed, misdirected, and have a visceral reaction to what
the Congress has done when they really didn't understand it. And what
occurred? Well, that prevailed. Rather than calling it a ``rescue''
bill anymore, it became known as the ``bailout.''
I want to correct that because I've heard that term used here at
least a dozen or two dozen times. I asked the question, what did we
bail out? We made extensive commitments to banks in the United States.
To the best of my knowledge, all those banks have now repaid those
commitments to the Treasury or to the Federal Reserve. What was the
success of that? Most of them did not fail and our economic system did
not fail, in totality, so it was pretty good, but we were losing
employment and falling like a rock, the economy, to the tune of, in
January, when the new President of the United States was sworn into
office, this Nation lost 750,000 jobs and had been losing jobs at that
rate for several months before and it continued several months after.
And we started to get into, as opposed to discussing economics, free
market situations and legalities of how we handle this problem. We got
into a political ramble that has continued to this day. I think that's
what I got up to address.
If we stay on this course and this direction, the only thing that's
going to happen at this conference committee--and ultimately the bills
that are enacted into law and signed by the President--will be very
limited-capacity pieces of legislation that will not nearly accomplish
what could happen. On the other hand, I say to my friends on the other
side and the Members and colleagues of this Congress, if we can put our
personal prejudices, our political advantages to the side and spend the
next 2\1/2\ or 3 weeks in an honest effort to get the best bill
possible to reform the financial markets of the United States, and
indeed the world, we can do something that is so historic in nature
that we place the stability of our economy for the next 75 years as it
was ably put together in the 1930s.
If we don't accomplish that, what we're going to end up with is a
temporary solution to a disastrous problem, fighting a lot of silly
political questions which will long disappear before most of us do from
the face of the Earth, but not accomplishing anything for the American
people.
So I just end this dialogue with saying this--to the gentlemen on
both sides of the aisle, so I'm not charged with directing it towards
one side--let's put our disagreements aside for the next 2 or 3 weeks.
Let's listen to the chairman of the House committee and the ranking
member. Let's listen to the chairman of the Senate committee and
ranking member and the other 30 participants of this conference
committee, with the commitment of doing the best we can within our
powers to prevent this from happening, certainly in the near future, or
potentially ever again. If we fail to do that, we will have failed our
job.
Mr. BACHUS. May I inquire of the Speaker as to how much time is
remaining on each side.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Alabama has 16 minutes
remaining, and the gentleman from Massachusetts has 7 minutes
remaining.
Mr. BACHUS. Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the very able ranking
member of the Oversight Committee, Mrs. Judy Biggert.
Mrs. BIGGERT. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I rise in support of the motion to instruct.
Madam Speaker, taxpayers are tired of paying for the mistakes of
others and fed up with bailouts. It's time for Congress to recognize
that financial managers that drive their firms into insolvency should
be met with bankruptcy and not bailouts.
Unfortunately, both the House and Senate financial regulatory reform
bills allow the government to take over any financial business
Washington bureaucrats deem as ``too big to fail.'' In other words, if
Federal regulators like Treasury Secretary Geithner fail to do their
job, then these same regulators can simply take over, dismantle, or
prop up any financial institution that they choose at taxpayers'
expense, and that's what I would call a bailout. That's the government
picking winners and losers in the marketplace. That's the same reckless
approach that caused the markets to undervalue risk, inflated the
bubble, and left taxpayers to clean up the mess when it burst. And it
must end.
House Republicans say ``never again,'' and we have developed a
responsible alternative--bankruptcy. It's a fair and unbiased process,
insulated from inappropriate political pressures, and removes taxpayers
from the equation. During a recent hearing, Federal Reserve Bank of
Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig agreed, calling enhanced bankruptcy
``a process that assures everyone that the largest institutions will be
dismantled if they fail.'' And he continued, ``I prefer a rule of law
that takes away discretion from the bureaucrat or from the policy
person so that in the crisis you don't have that option to bail out, so
that you have to take certain steps to control, to prevent a financial
meltdown.''
Madam Speaker, I couldn't agree more. Effective financial reform must
end the bailouts and prevent the next financial meltdown. Bankruptcy is
central to the solution. It will give certainty to the marketplace,
discourage risky practices, and eliminate taxpayer liability and
political interference.
The bottom line is that stronger, nimble and more coordinated
regulators must do their job, exercise strong oversight, and bar
excessive, risky, deceptive and fraudulent marketplace behavior.
Washington shouldn't control the market; it should regulate it.
Through smarter regulation and enhanced bankruptcy rules, we can
prevent the next financial meltdown. Millions of American businesses
and families that work together every day to play by the rules and
invest wisely deserve nothing less.
I support the motion, and I hope we will have a great conference and
come up with a bill; but I think this is an important motion to
instruct to consider before that.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Jackson of Illinois). The gentleman from
Alabama has 13 minutes remaining. The gentleman from Massachusetts has
7 minutes remaining.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to
say that I'm intrigued. We were talking about bankruptcy, now we have a
new concept--enhanced bankruptcy. We were told earlier that it should
just be plain bankruptcy like everybody else. Now, apparently, there is
something special so we get enhanced bankruptcy. Maybe we will have
enhanced bankruptcy explained to us. And if bankruptcy is good for
everybody, why does enhanced bankruptcy need to be done here, and what
is it? Is it another name for doing more than bankruptcy?
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the ranking member of
the Government Oversight Committee from California (Mr. Issa).
[[Page H4294]]
Mr. ISSA. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, 3 minutes is all I need because we're going into a
process, one in which I would like to be optimistic, one in which I
will have 72 hours to pore over a 2,000-page bill to see where we can
make it better.
Mr. Speaker, I, too, like the gentleman from Pennsylvania, remember
2008. I remember helping lead the charge against a wholesale bailout, a
slush fund for then-President Bush to pass around $700 billion and to
pass on to the next President a piece of that left over to spend it,
and if you happen to get paid back, to spend it again.
Mr. Speaker, the American people are tired of endless bailouts of the
select few. When the gentleman spoke of AIG, AIG still owes us $100-
plus billion we'll never see back, in spite of the fact that much of
that money went outside the country.
I'm part of a Congress that saw the Bush administration make
mistakes. I'm fortunate that I voted against it and I'm happy that I
voted against it. As we go into this financial reform, I would hope
that we remember Milton Friedman once said, Capitalism is a profit and
loss system: the profits encourage risk-taking and the losses encourage
prudence.
Mr. Speaker, we must have freedom to fail in this country. We cannot
have ``too big to fail.'' And more importantly, we cannot have the
politicalization of the process by picking and choosing people like
Freddie and Fannie to get $6 trillion worth of full-faith funding from
the American people in order to guarantee what ultimately was to a
great extent their fault. We went into a financial collapse because
when homes became unaffordable, gimmicks were produced. The American
people watched their government create most of those gimmicks, and even
today the American Government continues to fund a 3.5-percent-down form
of financing as though homes will only go up in price. So I look
forward to working on a bipartisan basis to get this bill right in
conference.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield 3 minutes to the chairman of the
Oversight Committee of the Financial Services Committee who has been a
major force for stability in this system, the gentleman from Kansas
(Mr. Moore).
Mr. MOORE of Kansas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the
Republican motion to instruct but in support of the work the House and
Senate Conference Committee will begin in crafting a final bill on Wall
Street reform.
For most of last year, my colleagues on the House Financial Services
Committee, under the outstanding leadership of Chairman Frank, along
with other committees, worked hard to produce the Wall Street Reform
and Consumer Protection Act. The work was bipartisan; over 50
Republican amendments were accepted along with over 20 bipartisan
amendments. This package contains ideas put forward by Democrats and
Republicans, as it should, creating a better and more thoughtful bill.
While the bill is large and complex, it does some very important
things: it ends ``too big to fail.'' It ends the need for bailouts and
fully protects taxpayers, and it has tough new consumer investor
protections that will better protect families' retirement funds,
college savings, and small business owners' financial futures from
unnecessary risks by Wall Street vendors and speculators. And something
we were careful to do in the House bill was to make sure this new
financial oversight system would focus on the true problems that
created the financial crisis and not responsible actors like most
community banks and credit unions.
While the bill provides needed new oversight to the $600 trillion
derivatives market, it is well balanced, allowing farmers and small
businesses in Kansas to conduct good risk management and hedge their
business risks in a responsible manner.
I commend the Senate for also passing a tough financial overhaul bill
last month.
The conference committee should take the best ideas from both bills
and combine them into one final bill that our colleagues can support
and that will finally restore our constituents' trust in our financial
system. I urge my colleagues to oppose this motion to instruct that
serves as a distraction to the need for a well-balanced, strong
financial reform package.
{time} 1615
Mr. NEUGEBAUER. It is now my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the
ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, the gentleman from Texas
(Mr. Smith).
Mr. SMITH of Texas. I thank my colleague from Texas for yielding me
time.
Mr. Speaker, as Congress weighs the question of Wall Street reform,
the answer the American people want us to give is clear: ``No more
bailouts.'' We should give that answer by passing legislation that
sends any failing financial institution to bankruptcy, not to a Federal
agency that might bail it out.
The Democratic Senator who guided this legislation through the Senate
agrees that bankruptcy must be our primary response to failing
institutions. Bankruptcy is fair. Its rules are clear. It is
administered transparently by impartial courts. It has existed for
generations because of one unmistakable truth: Free enterprise without
the possibility of failure is free enterprise without the possibility
of success.
The Senate improved the House bill by recognizing a role for
bankruptcy, but it failed to give the bankruptcy courts what they need
to make that role meaningful. As a result, the legislation's escape
hatch from bankruptcy, one that allows agency takeovers of firms,
threatens to become the first option under the bill.
When agencies take over firms, we all know that they will bail them
out. Let's finish our work. Let's close every loophole that invites a
bailout.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this motion.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my
time.
Mr. BACHUS. At this time, Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the vice
ranking member of the Financial Services Committee, the gentleman from
Texas (Mr. Neugebauer).
Mr. NEUGEBAUER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I rise in support of the motion to instruct.
Mr. Speaker, the American people want financial reform. They don't
want a financial reform replay. Financial regulatory reform is
something we can all agree is needed, but we owe it to the taxpayers,
who have picked up the tab for the endless bailouts, to get it right.
The House and Senate bills both lead us a long way from getting it
done right. Both the House and Senate bills give the government
permanent authority to continue these AIG bailouts of failing firms.
Both bills let the government continue to pick winners and losers by
deciding which financial companies will get on the too-big-to-fail list
and which will benefit from government backing. As it stands right now,
these bills give the very same regulators, who, by the way, failed to
get the job done right in the first place, more authority and more
power. These bills don't provide real reform. They only make bailouts
and government protection for failure explicit and permanent, leaving
taxpayers on the hook indefinitely.
These bills reduce choices and increase the cost of credit. At a time
when small businesses all across the country are having a hard time
getting credit, we are going to take action now that will reduce the
ability for them, leading to fewer jobs and to more unemployment in our
country.
Finally, these bills fail to address the two companies that have cost
the taxpayers the most: Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. $175 billion, to
date, of the taxpayers' money is already invested in these two
entities. Yet this bill fails to make any attempt at any kind of reform
of these two entities.
Our motion instructs conferees to fix the biggest problems with this
bill by removing all of the new and permanent bailouts. Our motion says
that financial companies that fail should be allowed to fail and to use
the rule of bankruptcy law, not backroom deals, which give some
creditors more preference over others and which give different
treatment to different creditors. Our motion says that the regulators
should be held accountable, that they should not being given free rein
to pick winners and losers and to decide who is too big to fail. The
taxpayers want the
[[Page H4295]]
financial regulatory system fixed, but they don't want it fixed with
permanent bailouts.
Support the motion to instruct to remove the bailout provisions from
this bill and insist on real protections and reforms for the taxpayers,
for our financial system, and for our economy. Mr. Speaker, the
American people want reform. They don't want another replay of
bailouts. Support the motion.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I remember when the gentleman from Texas was a little
less harsh on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when an important amendment
that he offered was adopted over the objection of the Secretary of the
Treasury, but we've all tended to evolve some on some of these issues.
I want to repeat the central theme here: History is one of bailouts
initiated by the prior administration. Some have been supported by this
Congress. Some have died by the administration on its own. This bill
prevents that legally.
The gentleman from Texas who just spoke referred to the AIG bailout
by the Federal Reserve or the Federal Reserve's picking one company or
another. The power that the Federal Reserve has had for over 75 years
to do that is repealed in this bill. The Federal Reserve is allowed, if
there are solvent institutions that are liquid and have a 99 percent
chance of repayment at least, to advance money based on their paper,
but there can be no more AIGs under the Federal Reserve's authority.
The gentleman said, Well, they can get on the list of too big to
fail. There is no such list. There is literally no such list. This is a
hard-held myth by the Republicans. What there is is this: If the
regulators have been given more power to watch you and if you say the
regulators have failed, well, they were a different set of regulators.
The SEC today is not the SEC under the prior administration, which
looked the other way at Madoff. This is a different and tougher SEC.
What they do is say to an institution that's now being much more
carefully monitored, You need to be reformed. You need to be
restrained. You must have higher capital requirements. You must reduce
the amount you are doing.
So there is a tight limitation on what these entities can do. So the
privilege of being named important is--and it's not called
``important.'' It says you're going to be subject to stricter
standards. People are on notice that the authorities are worried about
you, and then it says explicitly in the bill there can be no bailouts.
There have been prior cases of bailouts on all sides--the Congress, the
President, both parties--but they never had this language. There is no
example of this explicit antibailout language being flouted, because it
never existed before, so there are no too-big-to-fail institutions.
The question between us is this: When an institution that has gotten
overly indebted is put out of business, as this bill requires it to be,
do you simply do that and ignore the consequences or should there be
some capacity in the Federal Government to look at the consequences?
Now, again, my colleagues have not applied their own logic to the
FDIC, and I hope that the final speaker will explain what ``enhanced
bankruptcy'' is. Remember, we started out being told that bankruptcy
was the answer. Bankruptcy got enhanced somewhere, and we still haven't
heard what that ``enhanced bankruptcy'' is. We insure the depositors,
but that's not all. The depositors are taken care of, but then there
are costs outside of the deposit, and the FDIC is told to follow the
least cost method, and that will sometimes mean spending some money to
wind it down in a way that diminishes the impact.
So, apparently, even my colleagues on the other side aren't quite as
devoted to bankruptcy as they think. They are not prepared to put it
into the FDIC proposal. It's a form of enhanced bankruptcy, and I hope,
in their remaining time, they will explain it. When they offered a
recommittal motion on this bill, Mr. Speaker, they didn't say, Let's
fix bankruptcy or let's do this. They said, Let's kill every single
form of consumer and financial reform.
The gentleman from Texas was alluding to the consumer agency. They
wanted to kill an independent consumer agency. They wanted to kill a
fiduciary responsibility for broker-dealers. They wanted to kill a
requirement that leverage can never go more than 15-1. This is a little
piece of what they are trying to do. They remain opposed. Their view is
that the regulators in prior years didn't do a good job--regulators,
yes, who followed the nonregulatory philosophy of the prior
administration--and they have been opposed to any single form of
reform. They are cloaking that in an argument that they are stopping
bailouts which are already made illegal by this bill.
Now, the instruction motion has some things in it that Members should
support, and it has some things that Members should not support. It is
obviously done in a way that, I think, will have an ambiguous impact,
and it isn't binding in any case. So what the vote is is less important
than what the message is, and let's be very clear about the message:
There are no bailouts allowed under this bill.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 3 minutes to the
ranking member of the Capital Markets Subcommittee, the gentleman from
New Jersey (Mr. Garrett).
Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, would that it be true that there are no more bailouts in
this 1,400- or 1,500-page bill that Congress is about to be considering
in conference. Would that it be true that the American taxpayer is
potentially no longer on the hook, as it has been over the last year
and a half under this administration and past, as far as the bailouts
that are costing the taxpayers literally tens of billions of dollars.
Would that it be true that we pass a piece of legislation and be able
to keep in place the laws of this country for the last 200-plus years
to protect private property rights and to protect the rights under the
Bankruptcy Code so that investors and institutions know exactly what
they are going to get when they invest in a company, more importantly,
when you are a secured creditor, that that name would actually mean
what it says: You are secured by the assets of the company.
We certainly saw that that was not the case in the Chrysler
situation. You had a situation where the administration basically
stepped in, using taxpayer dollars, and used the system of saying,
We're not going to go through bankruptcy court--as Members of this side
of the aisle would suggest should have occurred--but we are going to
act in an extracurricular manner and allow the secured creditors to be
tossed aside and the assets of the company to be divvied up willy-nilly
as the administration and others decided they would have.
Now, that's, in essence, what we will be perpetuating with this piece
of legislation that's before us. What happened in that situation?
Well, in that situation, you had the unions, which basically had no
interest in that company whatsoever, end up with basically a 55 percent
interest in the company at the end of the day, basically a gift valued
at $4.5 billion, and Fiat was given a 20 percent stake for free to take
it over. At the end of the day, the secured creditors who thought that
they should have been at the front of the line, well, ended up at the
end of the line. Instead of getting, maybe, 43 cents on the dollar,
they ended up getting some 29 cents on the dollar and said, You should
be happy about it.
Why do I bring up that case? Because, basically, at the end of the
day, Mr. Speaker, we're going to be perpetuating that same sort of
ability for regulators to be making those same decisions going forward.
Yes, maybe they won't be able to give it to their friends again at the
unions like they did in this case. Maybe they will. We're really not
sure.
Yet, at the end of the day, we'll be perpetuating the ability to say
to secured creditors, secured creditors, you want to make an investment
in a company, thinking that you are secured and that if the company
were to fail and to go into bankruptcy that you would be first in line.
Guess what? That is not going to be the case.
We are going to put into statute a system to say that an unelected
bureaucratic regulator is going to say,
[[Page H4296]]
Maybe not. Not so fast, secured creditor. Not so fast, investor. We're
going to put someone else ahead of you.
You know, that actually happened to real-life people in the case of
the Chrysler situation where three Indiana pension funds--representing
who?--policemen, firemen, what have you, thought they were secured
creditors. At the end of the day, they said that they were stripped of
their rights by a system that this bill will perpetuate. This is what
we were trying to do.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. BACHUS. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.
Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I appreciate the gentleman's yielding.
We have the idea that the ``rule of law'' should mean something in
this country, and it has meant something for the last 200-plus years,
and the Bankruptcy Code is part of that law.
You know, an article published in the UCLA Law School said, ``What
happened'' over this last year and a half ``was so outrageous and
illegal that, until March of this year, 2009, nobody even
conceptualized it.''
The judge in that case that I was referring to commented from the
bench that the poor pension manager from Indiana, who was representing
the teachers and the firemen and the like, was kind of like the
gentleman in Tiananmen Square when the tanks came rolling over.
Well, Mr. Speaker, I do not want the investors in this country,
whether they be firemen or policemen or other senior citizens down in
Florida or in other places around the country, to feel like they did in
that case. I want them to know that their rights are protected by the
rule of law through the bankruptcy process and not by some politically
appointed bureaucrats or regulators who can strip them of their rights.
That is what Republicans stand for, and that is why we are opposed to
this language in the majority's bill.
Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time left on both
sides, knowing that I have the right to close.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Alabama has 3 minutes
remaining. The time of the gentleman from Massachusetts has expired.
The gentleman from Alabama has the right to close.
Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, we heard the gentleman from Pennsylvania say
that there were really no bailouts. I think, if you submit that
statement to the American people, they would tell you that there were
bailouts because, in fact, there were bailouts.
The majority has made a statement on the floor of the House in
defense of this bill that it has all been paid back. Well, in fact, it
has not all been paid back, and I think, on further examination, Mr.
Speaker, we would all have to remember the inconvenient fact that AIG
still owes the American people about $150 billion and that Freddie and
Fannie not only owe hundreds of billions of dollars but that the
President, back on December 25, guaranteed their obligations, which
could run in the trillions.
Now, in addition to all of that, a few statements by the chairman,
Mr. Speaker.
The chairman says that they have to be troubled, that instead of
going through bankruptcy, they will go through this thing where you can
guarantee their obligations, where you can take a security interest in
them, where you can purchase their assets, where you can lend money to
them. They have to be troubled.
Well, who decides that?
Well, according to the bill, the Secretary of the Treasury sits at
the head of a small group. I think the Senate bill includes Ms.
Elizabeth Warren, but it includes the OCC.
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. BACHUS. Yes, I will yield.
{time} 1630
Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. The statement that the Senate bill
includes Elizabeth Warren is breathtaking. I do not believe the Senate
bill refers to Elizabeth Warren.
Mr. BACHUS. Well, I will withdraw that statement. I am glad to hear
that it does not.
Now, let me ask you this. This bill, and I'm going to quote from
section 210, it says that the FDIC is authorized to borrow up to 90
percent of the fair value of the failed firm's total consolidated
assets. Ninety percent of the total consolidated assets.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I would ask the chairman, maybe he can give us this
figure or review my figures. But the largest corporation in America,
Bank of America, which would qualify under this program has total
assets of $2.34 trillion. That means that the FDIC could borrow $2
trillion.
Now, I would ask this: Where do they borrow it from? But, more
importantly, if they borrow $2 trillion to allow Bank of America to go
into this process, if they are not paid back, who pays it? And the
answer is: the taxpayers, a $2 trillion investment right there.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. All time has expired.
Without objection, the previous question is ordered on the motion to
instruct.
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion to instruct.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. BACHUS. 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 the motion to instruct will be followed by 5-minute
votes on motions to suspend the rules with regard to House Resolution
1330, H.R. 5278, and H.R. 5133, if ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 198,
nays 217, not voting 16, as follows:
[Roll No. 343]
YEAS--198
Aderholt
Akin
Alexander
Austria
Bachmann
Bachus
Bartlett
Barton (TX)
Biggert
Bilbray
Bilirakis
Bishop (UT)
Blackburn
Blunt
Boehner
Bonner
Bono Mack
Boozman
Boucher
Boustany
Brady (TX)
Bright
Broun (GA)
Brown (SC)
Brown-Waite, Ginny
Buchanan
Burgess
Burton (IN)
Buyer
Camp
Cantor
Cao
Capito
Carter
Cassidy
Castle
Chaffetz
Childers
Coble
Coffman (CO)
Cole
Conaway
Connolly (VA)
Courtney
Crenshaw
Culberson
Davis (KY)
Dent
Diaz-Balart, L.
Diaz-Balart, M.
Djou
Dreier
Duncan
Edwards (TX)
Ehlers
Emerson
Fallin
Flake
Fleming
Forbes
Fortenberry
Foxx
Franks (AZ)
Frelinghuysen
Gallegly
Garrett (NJ)
Gerlach
Giffords
Gingrey (GA)
Gohmert
Goodlatte
Granger
Graves
Griffith
Guthrie
Hall (TX)
Halvorson
Harper
Hastings (WA)
Heinrich
Heller
Hensarling
Herger
Hodes
Hunter
Issa
Jenkins
Johnson (IL)
Johnson, Sam
Jones
Jordan (OH)
King (IA)
King (NY)
Kingston
Kirk
Kirkpatrick (AZ)
Kline (MN)
Lamborn
Lance
Latham
LaTourette
Latta
Lee (NY)
Lewis (CA)
Linder
LoBiondo
Lucas
Luetkemeyer
Lummis
Lungren, Daniel E.
Mack
Manzullo
Marchant
Markey (CO)
McCarthy (CA)
McCaul
McClintock
McCotter
McIntyre
McKeon
McMorris Rodgers
McNerney
Mica
Miller (FL)
Miller (MI)
Minnick
Mitchell
Moran (KS)
Murphy, Tim
Myrick
Neugebauer
Nunes
Olson
Owens
Paul
Paulsen
Pence
Perriello
Peterson
Petri
Pitts
Platts
Poe (TX)
Posey
Price (GA)
Putnam
Radanovich
Rehberg
Reichert
Rodriguez
Roe (TN)
Rogers (AL)
Rogers (KY)
Rogers (MI)
Rohrabacher
Rooney
Ros-Lehtinen
Roskam
Royce
Ryan (OH)
Ryan (WI)
Scalise
Schauer
Schmidt
Schock
Schrader
Sensenbrenner
Sessions
Shadegg
Shimkus
Shuster
Simpson
Skelton
Smith (NE)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (TX)
Space
Spratt
Stearns
Sullivan
Taylor
Teague
Terry
Thompson (PA)
Thornberry
Tiahrt
Tiberi
Turner
Upton
Walden
Wamp
Westmoreland
Whitfield
Wilson (SC)
Wittman
Wolf
Young (AK)
Young (FL)
NAYS--217
Ackerman
Adler (NJ)
Altmire
Andrews
Arcuri
Baca
Baird
Baldwin
Barrow
Bean
Becerra
Berman
Berry
Bishop (GA)
Bishop (NY)
Blumenauer
Boccieri
Boren
Boswell
Boyd
Brady (PA)
Braley (IA)
Brown, Corrine
Butterfield
Capps
Capuano
Cardoza
Carnahan
Carney
Carson (IN)
Castor (FL)
Chandler
Chu
Clarke
Clay
Cleaver
Clyburn
Cohen
Conyers
Cooper
Costa
Costello
Critz
Crowley
Cuellar
Cummings
Dahlkemper
Davis (AL)
Davis (CA)
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
Delahunt
DeLauro
Deutch
Dicks
Dingell
Doggett
Donnelly (IN)
Doyle
Driehaus
Edwards (MD)
Ellison
Ellsworth
Engel
Eshoo
Etheridge
Farr
Fattah
[[Page H4297]]
Filner
Foster
Frank (MA)
Fudge
Garamendi
Gonzalez
Gordon (TN)
Grayson
Green, Al
Green, Gene
Grijalva
Gutierrez
Hall (NY)
Hare
Hastings (FL)
Herseth Sandlin
Hill
Himes
Hinchey
Hinojosa
Hirono
Holden
Holt
Honda
Hoyer
Inslee
Israel
Jackson (IL)
Jackson Lee (TX)
Johnson (GA)
Johnson, E. B.
Kagen
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Kildee
Kilroy
Kind
Kissell
Klein (FL)
Kratovil
Kucinich
Langevin
Larsen (WA)
Larson (CT)
Lee (CA)
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Lipinski
Loebsack
Lofgren, Zoe
Lowey
Lujan
Lynch
Maffei
Maloney
Markey (MA)
Marshall
Matheson
Matsui
McCarthy (NY)
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
McMahon
Meek (FL)
Meeks (NY)
Melancon
Michaud
Miller (NC)
Miller, George
Mollohan
Moore (KS)
Moore (WI)
Moran (VA)
Murphy (CT)
Murphy (NY)
Murphy, Patrick
Nadler (NY)
Napolitano
Neal (MA)
Nye
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Ortiz
Pallone
Pascrell
Pastor (AZ)
Payne
Perlmutter
Peters
Pingree (ME)
Polis (CO)
Pomeroy
Price (NC)
Rahall
Rangel
Reyes
Richardson
Ross
Rothman (NJ)
Roybal-Allard
Ruppersberger
Rush
Salazar
Sanchez, Linda T.
Sanchez, Loretta
Sarbanes
Schakowsky
Schiff
Schwartz
Scott (GA)
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Sestak
Shea-Porter
Sherman
Shuler
Sires
Slaughter
Smith (WA)
Snyder
Speier
Stark
Stupak
Sutton
Tanner
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Tierney
Titus
Tonko
Towns
Tsongas
Van Hollen
Velazquez
Visclosky
Walz
Wasserman Schultz
Waters
Watt
Waxman
Weiner
Welch
Wilson (OH)
Woolsey
Wu
Yarmuth
NOT VOTING--16
Barrett (SC)
Berkley
Calvert
Campbell
Davis (TN)
Harman
Higgins
Hoekstra
Inglis
Kennedy
Kilpatrick (MI)
Kosmas
McHenry
Miller, Gary
Quigley
Watson
Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore
The SPEAKER pro tempore (during the vote). There are 2 minutes
remaining in this vote.
{time} 1702
Ms. FUDGE, Messrs. HOLDEN, CRITZ, PETERS, Ms. BEAN, Mr. FARR, Ms.
RICHARDSON, Messrs. BUTTERFIELD, DONNELLY of Indiana, WILSON of Ohio,
Mrs. MALONEY, Messrs. TIERNEY, CARSON of Indiana, MARSHALL, COOPER,
FATTAH, ANDREWS, AL GREEN of Texas, Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Messrs.
SCOTT of Georgia, PAYNE, ROSS, BERRY, ELLISON, BISHOP of Georgia,
SHERMAN, DRIEHAUS, LANGEVIN, CLYBURN, Ms. SLAUGHTER, Mr. WELCH, Ms.
SUTTON, Messrs. WEINER, SCOTT of Virginia, and RUSH, and Ms. ESHOO
changed their vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
Messrs. SULLIVAN, RODRIGUEZ, CONNOLLY of Virginia, and BOEHNER
changed their vote from ``nay'' to ``yea.''
So the motion to instruct was rejected.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
____________________