[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 15]
[House]
[Page 20803]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  OUR FINANCIAL MARKETS ARE IN TURMOIL

  (Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PENCE. Mr. Speaker, our financial markets are in turmoil. The 
administration was right to call for decisive action to prevent further 
harm to our economy, but nationalizing every bad mortgage in America is 
not the answer.
  This administration's request of this Congress amounts to the largest 
corporate bailout in American history. I believe Congress should act, 
but we should act in a way that protects the integrity of our free 
market and protects the American taxpayer from more debt and higher 
taxes.
  The strength of America resides in our faith in God and our faith in 
freedom, including our economic freedom. To have the freedom to 
succeed, we must also have the freedom to fail, and any solution to the 
present crisis must preserve that essential economic liberty.
  The next Congress should also consider all available options to put 
our Nation's economy back on its feet. There are no easy answers, but 
there are alternatives that this Congress can consider. Indexing 
capital gains to inflation, passing a real energy bill, even regulating 
the credit default market, as the chief of the SEC requested yesterday, 
these and other alternatives to a massive Federal bailout must be fully 
considered and debated before Congress acts.
  We must address this crisis with forethought and creativity rather 
than massive Federal resources.

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