[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 16]
[House]
[Page 22899]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              A $700 BILLION BAILOUT AND ITS REPERCUSSIONS

  (Mr. DeFAZIO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. DeFAZIO. I fear tomorrow that the House of Representatives, the 
people's House, will be rushed into making a risky $700 billion 
taxpayer financed bet on Wall Street, a big bet built upon a very shaky 
foundation, on the premise that Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, Henry 
Paulson, who presided as the Chair of Goldman Sachs while these weapons 
of financial mass destruction were created, is the only one who has a 
plan to disarm them.
  Despite the best efforts of the Democrats to change this plan, what 
we will vote on tomorrow at its core is still the Paulson-Bush plan 
that is still based on his idea that taxpayers should borrow $700 
billion and buy all of Wall Street's bad bets and that all will be 
well. It's sort of a financial surge strategy. Like the surge in Iraq, 
it might look in the short term like it's working, but it won't be 
sustainable, and I fear it will not in any way resolve the underlying 
problems of a weak economy and of a deteriorating housing market. More 
likely, it will lower the value of the dollar and drive up interest 
rates and drive up the price of energy.

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