[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 16]
[House]
[Page 21780]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     A SHOOT-FROM-THE-HIP DECISION?

  (Mr. POE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. POE. Madam Speaker, they tell us that we are facing financial 
Armageddon. They tell us we must buy our way out of this. They tell us 
we must act now or the country will fall into the abyss.
  The plan? A $700 billion bailout will be given to the very people who 
are responsible for this financial mess: Wall Street money grabbers. 
And to top it off, the idea for this bailout is from the same financial 
schemers who themselves are responsible for this chaos.
  We in Congress have to resolve three issues first: What is the 
problem? What caused the problem? And what is the solution?
  We are still debating what the problem is and what caused it. Until 
we figure that out, we should not come up with a shoot-from-the-hip, 
quick-draw decision on what to do.
  We have spent more time in congressional hearings on steroids in 
baseball than we have in discussing this $700 billion ripoff of the 
American people.
  Before we strong-arm American citizens into paying for the sins of 
New York City financial markets, we need to do more investigation. Then 
we can come up with the right thing to do and make sound judgments--
sound judgments that the so-called experts from Wall Street don't make.
  And that's just the way it is.

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