[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 21157-21158]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     WHAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WANT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Tim Murphy) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. TIM MURPHY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, while Congress and our 
Nation is concerned about the crisis in our financial markets, it is 
important that we keep our ear to what the people of this Nation are 
saying. They're hearing words about liquidity, about the markets, about 
margins, there are even concerns about mortgage-backed securities. What 
they want to hear is the talk about three basic principles to get this 
Nation's economy back on track.
  First and foremost is to protect the people--their nest eggs, their 
pensions, their homes. It is more important that we look at 
establishing that as the base of what we should be working on and not 
simply talking about Wall Street and protecting millionaires there. It 
is what people have in their own funds, their own accounts that they 
want to make sure we're attending to.
  Second is the issue of accountability. Most workers, most employers, 
most executives are good people, honest and decent, God-fearing, 
ethical people who are trying to do the right thing, whatever their job 
is. But there are also those who bend the rules, break the rules, 
ignore the rules, or create their own rules. This is what has gotten 
our Nation into this mess. And there has to be accountability, strong 
accountability to investigate and prosecute anyone who bankrupted their 
firms on Wall Street--or on Main Street--and then expect the taxpayers 
to pay for it.
  Third, it is important that Congress, in the future, review the 
regulations carefully to close loopholes and to prevent further 
mismanagement and misconduct.
  But there is a fourth principle which we have to make sure that we in 
Congress take care of, and that is to do something about our economy.
  Over the last couple years, many times in this Congress we've debated 
and discussed issues where we could be boosting our economy. One of 
those has to do with health care. I have spoken many times about the 
$400 billion waste in our health care system each year, money that 
people pay out of

[[Page 21158]]

their own pockets each month to pay for health care that we're wasting. 
We're spending money we don't have to try to protect our economy when 
we can save money on such things. In the health care area, for example, 
we waste $50 billion a year on health care acquired infections. We 
could be saving that money to make our hospitals accountable. 
Unfortunately, Congress has not acted on that.
  We could save money by using electronic medical records or electronic 
prescribing to take care of the waste, fraud and abuse in our health 
care system, and we have far to go. But another major area where our 
economy can get going is to stop spending $700 billion a year on energy 
that we're purchasing oil and gas outside of our Nation.

                              {time}  2145

  Much of that, of course, several hundred billion dollars, is to go to 
OPEC. OPEC buys its lavish palaces, its beautiful hotels, its built 
islands, and unfortunately they also buy up our debt. We're going to 
owe them on our national debt for several years because they buy that 
up. And recognize also what OPEC is doing with that is not only are 
they owning our economy, they will own it for the future, they are also 
nations building weapons and threatening our national security and our 
economic security.
  Oddly enough, while Secretary Paulson is asking us for $700 billion 
to help get Wall Street back on its feet, it's $700 billion a year we 
spend each year on energy. If we drilled our Outer Continental Shelf, 
if we went for the Colorado shale oil, if we looked at the North Slope 
of Alaska, while just drilling the Outer Continental Shelf alone would 
yield $2.6 trillion in Federal income. But we continue to set that off-
limits. That does not include how much we could have in Federal income 
if we also use a shale oil in Colorado and also the North Slope of 
Alaska.
  We put together a bipartisan bill. Congressman Abercrombie, 
Congressman Peterson and several of us worked and drafted a bill which 
unfortunately this Congress has ignored. It is not enough just to say 
we will open up by default these areas for oil drilling, because the 
oil companies know they won't invest in that because they expect 
Congress to once again pull the rug out from under them.
  We have to take definitive action to get our economy back on its 
feet. So follow these principles. Protect people and their money, have 
accountability to those who did wrong, and work on reviewing the rules 
and regulations. But above all, I hope that Congress in these final 
waning days of this session does not continue to ignore how we could be 
boosting our economy and change it from the largest bust in our history 
to the largest boom in our economy. That is what we can do. That is 
what I still hold out some small ray of hope that our Nation can do.

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