[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19532-19538]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Altmire) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. Mr Speaker, we are here tonight as part of the 30-
Something Working Group. We will be joined tonight by several members 
of the working group, including Congressman Tim Ryan from Ohio. I 
believe Congressman Meek from Florida is going to be making an 
appearance, and anyone else who wants to join in that may be viewing 
us, certainly from their offices, is welcome to come down and join the 
discussion on a couple of issues that are facing this country and some 
things that are in the news this week and that we have dealt with in 
Congress this week.
  Number one, I am going to start with the economy. I don't think 
anyone can pick up a newspaper, watch a TV or do any reading of any 
kind without seeing that our economy is in crisis right now. The stock 
market on this day went down 450 points after going down more than 500 
points the day before yesterday.
  We are in the position right now, as a Congress, and as a Nation, 
where we have some very difficult decisions to make. The administration 
came in and did their third major bailout of a major corporate 
institution this week with the AIG Insurance Company, and we are going 
to talk more about that. We are going to talk about the reasons why we 
got to where we are today.
  There is an instructive part of this whole thing to take a walk down 
memory lane and to see what the economy was like 8 years ago and what 
the economy is like today, and to discuss how we got from where we are, 
where we were then, to where we are today.
  We also have to talk about what's happening today, what is the 
crisis, what, exactly, is next. In some ways we don't know, but there 
are things that we can do immediately to take immediate action to 
prevent this crisis from getting worse.
  We are going to have a discussion about how we got here. We are going 
to have a discussion about what we do now. That might be the most 
important part. There is urgency to this.
  Then we are going to talk about the future. What are the long-term 
safeguards that we can put in place to make sure that this never 
happens again?
  That's, for many onlookers, the worst part of this whole process, the 
fact that we had safeguards in the market that were supposed to work, 
that were supposed to prevent this from happening, and those safeguards 
didn't work. Then, as it applies to the securities industry and some of 
the leveraging that was taking place in the market, we have the fact 
that it was a completely unregulated market.
  It was a free-for-all, and it wasn't that there was deregulation that 
took place, in many cases these were markets that were never regulated 
to begin with. It was a laissez-faire attitude that this administration 
had, and the free-for-all that took place that led us to where we are 
today and how are we going to fix that, moving forward into the future.
  So with regard to the economy, those are the three things we are 
going to do, talk about the mistakes that were made in the past that 
led us to where we are today, talk about what this Congress is going to 
do, hopefully in a bipartisan way, working with the administration, 
because there is nothing more important than getting this crisis 
solved. What are we going to do in the near term to solve the problem 
and move forward? Then, what are we going to do to ever prevent this 
from happening again.
  To begin that discussion, I would ask the participants in the debate 
to take a walk down memory lane with me while we talk about where the 
stock market was 8 years ago. I think that now, now that we are in the 
crisis we are in, it's fair to compare periods of time. Let's compare 
the past 8 years to the previous 8 years.
  In the 8 years of the Clinton administration, the stock market in 
this country went up 226 percent, 226 percent increase in 8 years. Now, 
what is that by the historical average? You say, I don't know, is that 
a lot, is that a little? What is 226 percent?

[[Page 19533]]

  Well, the historical average is an increase every year of 11 percent 
in the stock market, and that's the historical trend. It doesn't matter 
if you have a Republican president and a Democratic Congress, a 
Democratic president and a Republican Congress, both chambers 
represented by the same party, regardless of that, over time, no matter 
who is in control of the White House and the Congress, the average 
annual increase in the stock market is approximately 11 percent. In the 
8 years in the 1990s, and the economic policies that we conducted in 
the 1990s, we had a 226 percent increase over 8 years. Pretty good.
  What's happened over the past 8 years, because we have had a dramatic 
shift in our economic policies over the past 8 years. We are going to 
talk about what some of those policies were. That's part of the subject 
matter that is at hand with the Presidential race, the fact that we 
have two candidates with very different views on the economy.
  One of them, Senator McCain, has been a part of Congress for 26 
years, was involved in the economic policies of the past and wants to 
continue the policies of the past 8 years into the future. Let's talk 
about what were the policies of the past 8 years, and what was the 
impact? We are talking about the stock market.
  Well, the stock market today is almost exactly where it was 8 years 
ago. It's flat lined. It's gone up less than 1 percent. Now that's not 
1 percent a year over 8 years, Mr. Speaker, that's less than 1 percent 
total over the course of the entire 8 years.
  The previous 8 years the stock market went up 226 percent. The next 8 
years, the current administration's time in office, it's gone up less 
than 1 percent total over that entire period of time.
  It does not look like things are going very well moving towards the 
future. Hopefully that will correct itself, and we will see some gain 
in the stock market moving forward.
  The point is, the decisions that are made by this Congress, and the 
decisions that are made by whatever administration is in power, do have 
a very real impact on our economy. They make a difference.
  When you look at the fact that we have had 8 straight months of job 
losses, this administration, over the 8 years, is going to have the 
worst record of job creation of any presidential administration since 
Herbert Hoover. That's not a good record, 8 straight months of job 
losses. It does not look encouraging for the next several months. But 
it is the worst record of job creation over an 8-year period for any 
administration since Herbert Hoover's administration, and we all know 
what happened there. That's not good.
  Our financial industry is in crisis. It's in melt-down mode. Now we 
can turn that around. We can take steps, working as a Congress and 
working with the administration to turn it around, and we are going to 
make the difficult decisions that need to be made to put our house in 
order and get moving in the right direction.
  But when you look at what the mistakes were to get us to where we are 
today, let's take a look at the national debt, same deal. We will 
compare the previous 8 years to the current 8-year's administration, 
and I think that's a fair comparison.
  When President Clinton left office, we had just had 4 consecutive 
years of budget surpluses. Those surpluses were forecast as far as the 
eye can see.
  The Congressional Budget Office, which is an entity which scores over 
a period of years what the expected surplus is going to be, predicted 
that over the next 10 years, beginning in 2001 through 2010, we would 
have a surplus of more than $5.5 trillion.
  I would ask the participants that are here tonight, and anyone who 
might be paying attention to this debate tonight, to think about what 
the discussion was in the presidential election of 2000. We are a 
little less than 7 weeks away from a major election here in this 
country, presidential election, and you see what the debate is about.
  In the 2,000 debate between then Governor Bush and then Vice 
President Gore, the discussion was what are we going to do with this 
enormous surplus? We are awash in cash. We have a $5.5 trillion 
projected surplus over what were then the next 10 years. And we've just 
had 4 consecutive years of budget surplus. So the discussion was, are 
we going to pay down the debt? Are we going to shore up Social 
Security?
  What are we going to do with this money? Imagine what we could have 
done. We have had a debate on energy over the past several months, 
culminating with a vote last night in this House. What could we have 
done in the past 8 years with $5 trillion if we had chosen to dedicate 
that money to finding an alternative source of energy, getting us off 
of our dependence on foreign oil?

                              {time}  2045

  There are any number of things that we could have used that surplus 
for. We could have nearly paid down the entire national debt. One of 
the largest line items in the Federal budget today is interest on the 
national debt, $240 billion for 1 year. What could we do with $240 
billion if we had paid down the national debt and didn't have that line 
item in the budget?
  Well, that was 8 years ago. We are not having that discussion anymore 
because instead of those four straight budget surpluses we had at the 
end of the Clinton administration, we have had eight consecutive budget 
deficits. And the parting gift that President Bush is going to leave to 
this country as he leaves office is the largest single-year budget 
deficit in this Nation's history, more than $480 billion for 1 year.
  So we didn't have the $5.5 trillion surplus. No, we had a $4 trillion 
debt over the course of 8 years and counting, unfortunately, because 
now, instead of surpluses with no end in sight, we have deficits and 
debt with no end in sight because of the economic policies that have 
been conducted over the past 8 years.
  Part of the problem, among many problems that have developed with 
these policies, is the turmoil you are seeing in the market right now, 
is the stock market, the low U.S. dollar, which one of our previous 
speakers was talking about. We are going to get to that.
  I have talked about this before, and my colleagues in the 30-
Somethings have heard me mention this before. If you had said to an 
economist as President Bush was taking the oath of office, ``We are 
expecting a $5.5 trillion surplus, but what would we need to do to have 
a $9 trillion swing from positive to negative in the debt? What would 
have to happen?'' That is going from $5 trillion in the positive to $4 
trillion in the negative, a $9 trillion swing. If you asked what would 
we have to do from an economic perspective if we were trying to have a 
$9 trillion swing, what type of policies, well, any economist that you 
asked would have said that is impossible. You couldn't possibly 
mismanage the economy to such an extent you are going to have a $9 
trillion swing. Well, unfortunately, we have.
  Now, I know there are those who will say, well, it wasn't the 
administration in the 1990s that were responsible for the enormous 
surpluses, it was the Republican Congress. And people who look at 
history might say it was President Bush the First who put into place 
pay-as-you-go budget scoring. And pay-as-you-go budget scoring is one 
of the factors that led to the record surpluses we had in the 1990s in 
contrast to the record deficits we had in the 1980s.
  Unfortunately, one of the things that one of the previous Congresses 
did right after President Bush took office was to do away with pay-as-
you-go. What is pay-as-you-go? Pay-as-you-go budget scoring is what we 
do in our home checkbooks, what every American does in their bank 
accounts, and what every business in America does with their balance 
sheet. It is very simple. You have to have money on one side of the 
ledger if you want to spend it on the other.
  Unfortunately, we did away with that in this country after the 2001 
turn of the administration, and that has led to decisions being made 
where nothing had to be paid for, just charge it to the credit card. 
Whatever spending you want to do, don't worry, we don't have

[[Page 19534]]

to have an offset anymore because we don't have pay-as-you-go. So if 
you want to increase spending, put it on the credit card; somebody will 
take care of it.
  The problem is that eventually the bill comes due. This leads me to 
where we are today; the bill has come due. Anyone who has seen what 
happened with Wall Street over the past several months and certainly 
over the past few days can see that the bill has come due. And, 
unfortunately, it is the American taxpayer that is now going to have to 
pick up the bill.
  And because of the decisions that have been made to bail out the 
corporate executives and the big Wall Street financiers instead of 
middle-class Americans, it is middle-class families in this country 
that are going to have to pay the bill. It is middle-class families in 
this country that are going to get that bill in the mail while we are 
bailing out the big corporate executives.
  We are going to continue that discussion, but rather than give a 
monologue, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is here, and I would like 
to welcome him to the discussion and yield to him.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I thank the gentleman, and I appreciate you coming 
down here and anchoring the 30-Something hour.
  I think it is important as we are talking about the financial issues 
just over the last couple of days, and I think you laid it out pretty 
well, a 500-point drop and then a 100 or so increase, and then a 450-
point drop today, these are markets that are so destabilized that we 
are losing companies that were established since before the Great 
Depression. The only financial house that seems to be left is the 
Department of the Treasury. And this has been because of the lack of 
regulation on the markets, period, dot.
  It may be convenient, Mr. Speaker, to say we need to deregulate. You 
need law and order in order to build a capitalistic system. The 
capitalistic system doesn't come first. The magic with capitalism was 
that we had courts in place and regulatory bodies in place to make sure 
that contracts could be enforced, to make sure that investments were 
sound, not necessarily the decision that each person in the country 
would make would be sound decisions, not that every loan that they 
would take out would be sound, but there were precautions in place to 
make sure that this whole operation was stabilized and regulated.
  And you look at what happened to the savings and loan industry in the 
1980s, and you look at what is happening now; it is because there 
wasn't the proper watchdog in place.
  I think putting the Republicans--as you stated earlier, there may be 
a difference between some of our friends on the other side of the aisle 
a few years back and the ones today--it is like putting a drunk in 
charge of the liquor cabinet, putting the Republicans in charge of Wall 
Street. I mean, let's be honest. Total deregulation.
  The whole answer was, well, we will deregulate everything, and we 
will have competition. In Ohio, it was deregulate energy, and it led to 
an increase in prices. That's what has happened.
  So we have this destabilized market here in the United States now, 
not knowing what is going to happen from one day to the next, losing 
businesses that were around since before the Great Depression. A long 
history of stability has been destabilized by the Republican agenda.
  Now, look at all of the different things that have happened. I think 
this is the issue, the point. In 2000 the Republicans controlled the 
House, the Republicans controlled the Senate, the Republicans 
controlled the White House, and look at what has happened. Look at what 
has transpired in the past 8 years with President Bush.
  The only sign of any movement in another direction is when the 
Democrats took over the Congress a year and a half ago, with issues 
getting vetoed by President Bush. But look at what has happened over 
those years.
  My point is, before I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, is 
that we don't have to think about what America would look like with a 
neoconservative Republican agenda. We know. It has been implemented. 
And for all of our friends on the other side of the aisle to somehow 
erase history like you can erase your computer memory and think that 
the American people don't remember that they were in charge for all of 
these years and implemented their health-care policy, their energy 
policy, their education policy, their foreign policy, and where we are 
today on all of those issues, you don't have to believe me, you don't 
have to believe Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Speaker, you don't have to believe 
Jason Altmire, these are two diametrically opposed philosophies on how 
to govern.
  As you stated, in the 1990s with the Democrats in charge of the 
Congress and the Presidency, it passed a budget that led to the 
greatest economic expansion in the history of the country, 20 million 
new jobs. And you look at what President Bush did with the Republican 
Congress: Took us right off the cliff.
  We were talking about in the Clinton years what we were going to do 
with the surplus. One of the debates that President Clinton pushed 
forward was save Social Security first. So he was going to take this 
money and put it into the Social Security fund so we didn't have all of 
these IOUs for all of these years.
  Now the question in Washington and in Youngstown, Ohio, and in 
Georgia and in western Pennsylvania, here is the question: What if the 
Republican Party had their way when they wanted to privatize Social 
Security? Imagine, with everything that is going on in the market 
today, if President Bush and Senator McCain and all of the House 
Republicans who were down here on the floor fighting for a Republican 
privatization scheme for Social Security, imagine if that last base 
security system that you have in place here, the American people have 
in place, was all in the stock market today? Just think about what a 
radical idea that is.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. The gentleman sets me up perfectly because that is 
exactly the point I was going to try to make. When the gentleman from 
Ohio was talking about the policies of the past Congress and this 
administration and things like the energy bill of 2005, we have 
empirical evidence, what is the result when this Congress took action, 
passed, sent to the President and was signed into law? Well, gas prices 
skyrocketed, dramatically increased our dependence on foreign oil.
  So what is the impact on our economy by the economic policies that 
were carried out under this administration? You could not have more of 
a stark contrast in evidence, the way that the economy boomed in the 
1990s and what we are seeing here in the last 8 years.
  As I mentioned earlier, the economy over the past 8 years is driven 
by the stock market, and the stock market is up less than 1 percent 
over 8 years, almost exactly today where it was 8 years ago.
  The point I was going to make is we can lament, as the gentleman and 
I have done many times, the policies of the past and look for ways that 
we can solve the problem moving forward. But let's not forget a crisis 
that was averted by the American people, a policy that was thankfully 
not carried out.
  This President, in the previous 6 years in Congress before the new 
session came in, tried desperately to privatize Social Security. 
President Bush, you'll remember, around 2004, 2005, and Vice President 
Cheney traveled all around the country with their dog-and-pony show and 
charts and graphs talking about Social Security, privatizing Social 
Security, putting some of the money that is supposed to go, as it has 
always gone, into the pockets of senior citizens and instead putting 
that in the private market.
  We already have ways to invest in the private market, and we 
certainly encourage people to do that. And one of the things that we 
are going to do moving forward is figure out a way to further 
incentivize private savings through 401(k)s and IRAs and all the rest. 
The point is that is not what Social Security is for.
  If there was ever any doubt that was a good idea, and the American 
people

[[Page 19535]]

certainly cast judgment upon that, imagine, I would ask my colleagues 
when they go back home and talk to their constituents, imagine if you 
had to retire and you reached the age at which you were going to start 
to claim Social Security at some point in the past 8 years.
  If you were retiring in 2000 and that stock market had just gone up 
226 percent over the past 8 years, boy, that was a great deal. That was 
quite an investment. It would have worked out just fine for you. But if 
you are one of the millions of Americans who would have qualified for 
retirement age in the past 8 years, maybe that wasn't such a good idea 
after all. You wouldn't have even got a cost-of-living adjustment. You 
would have flat-lined.

                              {time}  2100

  And that's certainly unacceptable with our Social Security.
  I would yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The point I want to add to what you're talking 
about is, what if this would have happened?
  It seems like we always have people in Washington, if something major 
happens, like a major insurance company or a major investment company 
or a major bank, it's like Washington, D.C. will step all over each 
other as to who's going to help them first, who's going to bail them 
out, who's going to give them something to make everything all right. 
And I don't want this to sound like we don't understand the ripple 
effect of what could happen if some of these entities aren't helped. We 
understand that.
  But when it was the average person who made a mistake with their 
housing loan, hey, you're on your own. Pull yourself up by your 
bootstraps.
  Well, Lehman Brothers, you pull yourself up by your bootstraps. 
Merrill Lynch, you pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
  I'm not saying you don't need to take responsibility for your actions 
because you certainly do. But when we needed to help 10 million kids 
get health care through the State Children's Health Insurance Program, 
President Bush says we don't have the money. $35 billion over 5 years. 
We spend $10 billion a month in Iraq, but the President and a small 
group of radical Republicans in the House said we don't have the money 
for this. It's too much. It would be 3\1/2\ months in Iraq.
  But if something like this happens where we have all this, a big 
major financial company, something happens, well, here we are, all of a 
sudden we've got more money.
  Think about what the Republican Congress and Republican President did 
to our financial situation, not just how they destabilized the markets. 
I don't know if you got into this, Mr. Altmire, before I got here or 
not. But think about what they did. They raised the debt limit five 
times. Maybe six. I may be missing one. Five times. They borrowed $3 
trillion from China, Japan and OPEC countries.
  Now you want to talk about putting the next generation behind the 
eight-ball, go borrow $3 trillion from our biggest competitor in China 
and watch them wipe out manufacturing in Pennsylvania, in Ohio and all 
over the industrial Midwest.
  Don't regulate the markets. Don't invest in education. Make tuition 
costs go up 8, 9, 10 percent a year all over the country. The Pell 
Grant was almost meaningless. Student loans were 6.8 percent last year.
  All of these issues add up to saying they weren't paying attention. 
Their philosophy of government just doesn't work. That's what this 
whole thing says.
  We're joined by the gentleman from Colorado, the host of the 
Democratic National Convention. I yield to Mr. Perlmutter.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I thank my friend for yielding. It's a pleasure to be 
here with the 30-Somethings, even though I don't fit into that category 
and haven't for some time. But this subject is so important, what you 
two are talking about tonight.
  We have a regime in place, in the personalities of George Bush and 
Dick Cheney, that can't be described in any other way than radical 
because we've got to go back to some basic principles of our country, 
some basic values, the basic values that we were founded on, of thrift 
and sacrifice, of investment, of opportunity for all.
  But instead, what we've seen in the last 8 years that this 
administration has pushed and promoted was a greed and gamble, 
immediate gratification, the theory that I want it now, and I'm not 
paying for it; my kids or your kids or somebody else is going to pay 
for it later.
  To have these tax cuts and prosecute a war immediately turned this 
country's budget upside down. So you start with that failure. And we've 
been running behind ever since.
  Then you forget about the lessons of the past. Now these guys wanted 
to reverse everything that's happened for the last 70 years, since the 
thirties. We came through the roaring twenties. We had our Calvin 
Coolidges, we had our Herbert Hoovers, and we paid dearly during the 
thirties because we understood at that point that we're going to give 
up a little bit of the upside so that we don't have the misery of the 
downside. But those lessons were lost on our friends in the White 
House.
  They said, no. Let's not have any kind of regulatory, any kind of 
constraint on the system.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Can I add one point?
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Yes.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Dick Cheney said debt doesn't matter when he first 
got into office; debt doesn't matter.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Debt does matter. And my friend from Pennsylvania was 
talking about how each of us has to live with the debt that we develop, 
or our borrowing affects us. It affects this Nation. This Nation has 
been on a drunken stumble through Wall Street down Main Street.
  Instead of doing the sacrifice and the thrift, we've been borrowing 
and spending. And I say we. George Bush, Dick Cheney and the Republican 
Congress established this kind of an approach, and it has set our 
country back so that we are a Third World Nation, borrowing from China, 
borrowing from the Middle East, borrowing from our friends in Europe. 
And we really are behind the eight-ball because when they don't loan we 
have trouble, a la, we've had AIG which we've had to bail out; Fannie 
Mae, Freddie Mac, and on down the line. Bear Stearns.
  We've had a radical regime. We can't have this radical kind of an 
approach anymore. But John McCain wants to subscribe to what George 
Bush and Dick Cheney have been pushing on this country for the last 8 
years. This country can't handle that anymore.
  We have to have a change. And we have to have a future that really 
looks at new ways to develop our economy and understand that there have 
to be some constraints. The free market isn't perfect. It works well, 
but it isn't perfect because we all have some tendencies that go 
against those basic principles of sacrifice and thrift and investment 
and opportunity for all.
  So what I look forward to, and Barack Obama intends to develop, is a 
new energy economy. That will put a lot of people back to work, and 
it'll help us so we aren't hooked on one product and subject to ransom 
when we go to the gas pumps.
  We've got a lot of work to do ahead of us because these guys, in 8 
years, have turned this country upside down. We can't allow it anymore.
  We need a change and we need a new direction, and we need it right 
now. Luckily, we've got an election coming in 40 days or 48 days. And 
this country can renew itself, can rejuvenate itself. That's the 
promise of America, thank God. That's the promise for America.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. A lot of us were saying in the 2004 elections that 
if you re-elect President Bush, you will not recognize this country in 
4 years. And sad to say, here we stand, here we sit in America 
thinking, you know, the stock market is under 10,000, unemployment is 
up again. We borrowed $3 trillion. President Bush and the Republican 
Congress have borrowed more than any previous administration in 
Congress, combined. Still $10 billion a month in Iraq, and no end in 
sight with what's going on. It's getting to the point

[[Page 19536]]

where we can't recognize what we're doing, and it's critical what's 
happening to this country. It's sad what they have done.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. It's worth mentioning, both of the gentlemen, I'm sure, 
remember, early in this session of Congress, in the beginning of 2007, 
we wanted to work with President Bush on a way to stabilize and shore 
up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We, as a Congress, went to the 
administration and said, look, there's going to be trouble down the 
road if we don't take action. Will you work with us on that? And 
President Bush said, no, I'm not interested in that and I won't support 
that. So away we went.
  And then we came to the beginning of 2008, the economy starting to 
take a dramatic turn for the worse, so working together in fairness, in 
a bipartisan way, the House and Senate, with the administration, 
Republican and Democrat alike, and we put together very quickly a 
stimulus package to put money immediately in the hands of people who 
needed it, who were going to put it into the economy, get the economy 
jump-started, and it worked. If you look at the second quarter, we had 
an up tick in the economy because of the work that this Congress did.
  Well, part of the stimulus that was not included, we, again, went to 
the administration and said, you know what? Can we revisit that issue 
that we asked you about a year ago? Can we revisit the Fannie Mae and 
Freddie Mac issue, because we really see trouble on the way here if we 
don't act. Again we were told, well, we're not interested in including 
that in the stimulus.
  And guess what happened?
  Now there's a multibillion-dollar bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie 
Mac that's taken place. The government actually had to come in and take 
over those two GSEs.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I just love how our friends say, oh, this is going 
to be socialism. You try to provide health care for 10 million kids. 
It's going to be socialism. We can't do that.
  Or if you try to provide any kind of preventative health care for 
women, it's going to be socialism. Don't you dare do it.
  But then we're taking over major investment groups, financial groups, 
just taking them over. Here's billions of taxpayer dollars. We're now 
investors in all these things.
  But we want to invest in the 10 million kids, Mr. Altmire, and we 
don't have the money to do that.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Would my friend yield for a second?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. But that goes to another basic value that they have 
that just is wrong. They want to focus on the wealthiest 1 percent. 
They don't care about the 99 percent of hardworking Americans who are 
affected by this. It's hardworking America that are going to have to 
pick up the pieces after this administration. And really it's going to 
take all of us, in concert, together, pulling together, like only 
Americans can do, to deal with the shambles that we have, whether it's 
the way people were treated with Katrina, the fact that we have bridges 
falling down in Minneapolis, I mean, this is a time when we all have to 
pull together, and we have to look forward.
  We can't go with the same old policies, the same old approaches of 
the Grand Old Party. It just doesn't work. We're in a new century, and 
it is time for some new ideas because we've got to move forward.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. The gentleman reminds me of a point, which I meant to 
bring up, that I'm amused when I hear the discussion about, is John 
McCain's economic policy identical to George Bush's economic policy? Is 
he a third term of George Bush?
  The fact is, readers of history will know, actually, if you go back 
and look at the economic policies of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge 
and Herbert Hoover, you'll find a lot of similarities in what happened 
over the previous 8 years, the mistakes that were made with the lack of 
regulation.
  I talked earlier that it wasn't, for the most part, deregulation. It 
was non-regulation. We didn't take regulation away that existed. There 
was just never any regulation at all; very similar to what took place 
in the 1920s, leading up to the calamity of the Great Depression.
  So I would ask readers of history and people who are interested in 
this subject, compare the economic policies that have led us to where 
we are today through President Bush and what Senator McCain is 
proposing to those three presidents I mentioned.
  And I would just say, before I transfer to Mr. Murphy from 
Connecticut, or Mr. Ryan, if you wanted to comment, but I get asked a 
lot recently, about bailouts of these three big companies, Fannie Mae 
and Freddie Mac and then AIG and Bear Stearns before; and what's the 
reason that we picked those while we let Lehman Brothers go under, and 
who's minding the store here, and why are these decisions being made, 
and who's next. What's the next shoe to drop is what you hear.
  This is a systemic problem. This is not a problem with individual 
financiers. This is not a problem that Bear Stearns had all on their 
own or AIG had all on their own or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This is 
a system-wide problem that needs to be dealt with, and we can't 
continue to take a piecemeal approach and decide on a day-by-day basis 
who survives and who doesn't.
  Well, Lehman Brothers, you can go under. We're sorry. But today we're 
going to bail out AIG, the next day.
  We can't continue down that road. We have to address the systemic 
root of the problem to prevent this from happening. The first thing is 
to stabilize.
  I'll go to Mr. Perlmutter, and then we'll go to Mr. Murphy from 
Connecticut.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I'd just like to make two points. And it is the 
administration that is choosing who lives and who dies. I mean, this 
really is about winners and losers, and this administration is choosing 
Bear Stearns, does not choose Lehman Brothers, chooses Fannie Mae, 
doesn't choose Merrill Lynch, chooses AIG.

                              {time}  2115

  It is not a congressional action. These are happening within the 
administration. They're making these choices. Now, maybe we would 
agree, but we're not given that chance. They're doing these things 
overnight.
  Now, there's a Latin saying, ``Res ipsa loquitur.'' Now, many might 
say, what the heck does that mean? It means, the thing speaks for 
itself.
  What's happened in this Nation with these two guys, these two oilmen 
in the White House leading the charge, this country has turned upside 
down. And they may want to spread the blame to whoever. You know, Harry 
Truman had the old saying, ``The buck stops here.'' Those guys would 
like to spread the blame. They're the leaders, and they've led us down 
this path.
  John McCain wants to follow that Bush path. He's trying to run away 
from it now, but his votes were with the Bush administration over 90 
percent of the time. We have to have a change.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And how many times do you hear our friends on the 
other side say, ``Government shouldn't pick winners and losers,'' 
``Government shouldn't pick favorites,'' you know, ``Government has no 
business picking out this kid should succeed and this kid's not going 
to have the same opportunity,'' ``Government has no role there''? 
Unless it's Wall Street.
  Now, who do we need to help to keep things rolling? And as we've 
said, I'm not saying that this is necessarily right or wrong. What I am 
saying is this is a pretty complicated mess that we are in. And we're 
not saying that you shouldn't get the buckets and go down to the river 
and fill them up with water and throw water on the house that's 
burning. That's not what we're saying. What we're saying is you're 
supposed to have a fire code, and you're supposed to have fire trucks, 
and you're supposed to have, you know, gas in the fire truck and 
equipment for the firemen.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. And the best firefighters you can have.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And the best firefighters you can have.

[[Page 19537]]


  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. The Wall Street fire department is well-
equipped. The Main Street fire department, it's gone underfunded and 
undermanned and unequipped for the last 12 years, particularly for the 
last 6 years.
  We were very quick to go and help out our friends on Wall Street, but 
everybody sat here with their hands, you know, on their seats, tied 
behind their backs, when all these families needed a little help, when 
a kid who couldn't get an education in an inner city needed to access 
the apparatus to opportunity that all the rest of us had, when that 
small business that was about to go under because it couldn't find the 
health-care insurance to keep its employees on staff needed a little 
assistance. The little guys, when they needed the fire trucks, they 
weren't there. But when the big guys needed them, they got there.
  And so I think you're exactly right, it's just a matter of 
consistency. Listen, government certainly can be an agent of help to 
people who need some assistance. But it shouldn't just be the big Wall 
Street firms. It should be regular, average, everyday families out 
there.
  And to Mr. Perlmutter, just a word of warning. I know you're sort of 
new to the 30-Somethings here, but we don't use Latin. It's just a 
rule, and I hope you will take that under advisement if you join us 
from here on out.
  Listen, I thank my friends for letting me join a little late here. I 
just wanted to maybe add one thought to this, and maybe you have 
covered it already. But I think people are searching today for the 
reasons, as Mr. Altmire said, as to why last night AIG got the brass 
ring. Now, why did they get help and Lehman Brothers didn't and IndyMac 
didn't? Exactly why did they get help?
  Well, part of it I think is that this is a company that does 
tremendous international business. This is, at some level, a 
representation of American economic power throughout the globe, 
economic power that has been so greatly compromised by this 
administration as we have sold this country to foreign banks and 
foreign governments, that part of the reason, I think, that we have 
decided to choose AIG is because we are in such a precarious situation 
with regard to all of the foreign lenders and foreign governments that 
hold our currency, that hold American money through the $9 trillion, 
$10 trillion that we have given out in notes through the Federal debt, 
that we are now in a crisis position, that when an American firm that 
is a representation of our power across this globe comes under threat, 
we have to prop them up. Because if we are seen as economically weak 
around this globe, those countries are going to start calling their 
notes, those countries are going to start asking for their money back.
  And that's when the real economic ruin happens, when the $9 trillion 
that we have out to lenders across this globe, the record amounts that 
foreign governments hold, when they start to call in that money that 
the Bush administration and the Republican Congress sent out to them in 
record deficits and record debts, then we're in real trouble.
  And so part of the reason I think we're standing here and trying to 
answer the question as to why AIG is at the top of the headlines is 
because we are trying now to make up for the terrible economic policies 
of the Bush administration that John McCain seeks to perpetuate.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. What I was going to say is we are in a predicament, 
and there is a crisis of confidence, both domestically as well as 
around the world, because of so many steps that this administration has 
taken, whether it's to go into Iraq, whether it's, you know, how we 
dealt with Katrina, all of this mismanagement and unregulation or 
nonregulation or anti-regulation of the financial markets.
  The good news, the good news about our country, the good news about 
America and Americans is that, with good leadership, we can do 
anything. Times of crisis are also times of opportunity. With good 
leadership, we can have this new energy economy, we can innovate, and 
we can be ingenious, and we can imagine things that will really 
transform this country and this world.
  That's the kind of vision that is necessary, and we're not going to 
see that with the other side. Those are old policies. Those are old 
answers. That's the old way.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. They had the opportunity to do it. They were in 
charge of everything.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. And they couldn't do it. In fact, they did just the 
opposite.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Just to highlight how radical of an agenda our 
friends on the other side have, the one thing--deregulation or lack of 
regulation, whatever the case may be, and then ignore the warning 
signs, as Mr. Altmire stated, with Freddie and Fannie, ignore the 
warning signs about the mortgage crisis that's coming, and to then also 
to have as a part of your philosophy, deregulation, ignore the 
warnings, let's put Social Security in the stock market too. That is 
the Republican agenda.
  We, with the 30-Something Working Group, started to fight President 
Bush's Social Security privatization scam. The first time I walked on 
this floor to speak was 4 years ago or 5 years ago when President Bush 
wanted to start the Social Security privatization, and then-Minority 
Leader Pelosi asked Kendrick Meek and I to come here and to combat it.
  Now, can you imagine if they had won that battle down here, that 
monumental battle? Your parents' and grandparents' Social Security 
would now be sitting in Wall Street in a deregulated market that looks 
like the Wild West with a Starbucks, is what it looks like.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. And when I go back to western Pennsylvania and they hear 
the word ``regulation,'' small businesses and families, they get a 
little nervous, rightly, because in a lot of ways we are over-regulated 
in this country.
  And I want to just, before we close here, I want to make sure 
everybody understands what we're talking about. We're not talking about 
the small businesses. We're not talking about the small corner bank. 
We're talking about the huge Wall Street financier, the conglomerates, 
these people who are getting the $30 billion golden parachutes when the 
CEO gets canned.
  The small businesses in this country, the reason you're having 
trouble in the credit market right now, the reason you may not be able 
to get loans for capital development and whatever else it is that 
you're working on is because the intra-bank lending, the staple of our 
economy, bank-to-bank lending, is frozen. The credit market is in 
crisis and it's frozen, and that's affecting small businesses.
  Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut. I just wanted to throw something on top of 
that, just to give you an example. You're giving one kind of example. 
Let me throw another one on, as to what it means when you regulate the 
small banks but you don't regulate the investment banks, you don't 
regulate the Fannies and the Freddies of the world.
  Local banks are still in business, largely, because they have 
government regulation--sensible regulation, some of it; some of it a 
little bit too much--that requires them to be appropriately leveraged. 
They have 4:1, 5:1, 6:1 leverage rates. Fannie and Freddie had 60:1 
leverage ratios, just unsustainable. The investment banks that went 
under, Bear Stearns, 35:1 leverage ratios, money they didn't have. So 
that's what we're talking about here.
  We need to do something about the regulatory burden that is crippling 
a lot of those small businesses. But we need to understand that it's 
really the big guys that need to be part of the conversation that the 
small businesses, the small banks have been a part of for a long time.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. That's exactly what I want to clarify, and I thank the 
gentleman.
  We're talking about asking the big Wall Street firms to comply with 
the same rules and regulations that the small business, that the corner 
banks have to comply with. Now, it's not exactly the same, and we 
understand that. But I understand the fear that it strikes in the heart 
of ordinary Americans when we start talking about the word 
``regulation.'' We are not talking

[[Page 19538]]

about everyday Americans. We're talking about what happens at the 
absolute top of the food chain.
  These large banks and institutions that you see right now that are 
teetering on the brink, the Lehman Brothers of the world that are no 
longer part of the process now, and the ones that we have to come in 
and bail out with an $85 billion bailout at taxpayer expense, these are 
things we want to avoid. So that's what we're talking about. We are not 
talking about the small businesses and the corner banks.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I just think one last comment I'd like to make is 
that there has been a transfer of wealth the likes of which we've never 
seen in this country. Whether it's to the big oil companies or to some 
of the Wall Street firms and to other nations, that has come out of the 
pockets of middle America.
  And it is time that we come up with new ways to power this Nation. It 
is time that we, this country, instead of living on a borrow-and-spend 
philosophy, which is what has been the Bush administration's approach 
and is what McCain wants to pursue, that we start remembering the 
values that made us so strong, of thrift and sacrifice and investment, 
and opportunity for all, not just a select few at the very top.
  The focus has been on the top 1 percent. It needs to be on the rest 
of America. And when it's there, that's when we're strong. That's when 
we are that shining light at the top of the hill, the beacon at the top 
of the hill.
  We are a great Nation, and we have stumbled because of bad leadership 
over the last 8 years. But come November 4th, things are going to 
change, and we will have a new direction.
  Mr. ALTMIRE. I thank the gentleman from Colorado.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan), I thank Mr. 
Murphy from Connecticut, and I thank the Speaker for allowing us this 
time to discuss the economic crisis in this country. I think it's safe 
to say that this is not the last time the 30-Something Working Group 
will address this issue on the floor.
  And I would also say that I do look forward to my good friend Mr. 
Westmoreland, who is going to come after us, and I'm sure he's going to 
have something to say. He sat patiently through the entire hour and 
listened to us speak, and I know he comes from a different point of 
view. And I would encourage those interested in this topic to listen to 
what he has to say as well. We've had many conversations about this and 
the energy issue and other things. So we look forward to hearing him.

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