[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 16]
[House]
[Page 22683]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  LETTING THE FOX GUARD THE HEN HOUSE

  (Mr. PERLMUTTER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, the Bush administration with its neocon 
philosophy either cut back, opposed, ignored or choked off restraints 
on the markets, especially those of Wall Street, while borrowing 
billions of dollars from China and Saudi Arabia to finance tax cuts for 
the wealthiest of Americans and while prosecuting the war in Iraq.
  The borrow-and-spend approach and the party atmosphere cannot go on 
forever, and the bailouts, takeovers and bankruptcies of the recent 
weeks demonstrate that the party is over.
  Bush's Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, is asking Congress for 
hundreds of billions of dollars to compensate for market excesses and 
wants the money within a week or two to restore confidence to the 
financial markets. I will listen to Mr. Paulson and his plea on behalf 
of the Bush administration about this immediate infusion of cash and 
the purchase of billions and billions of dollars in bad loans to take 
the burden of this bad debt out of the markets, but I must say I have 
my doubts about the foxes guarding the hen house or giving the Bush 
administration any more authority over anything. Thank goodness we did 
not privatize Social Security.

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