[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 22980-22981]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            ECONOMIC BAILOUT

  Mr. DOMENICI. Let me thank the distinguished Senator from Tennessee, 
Lamar Alexander, for his eloquent remarks here this morning. I would 
say to anyone who wants to try to understand the situation we are in, 
in terms that everybody can see and feel, they ought to read his 
speech.
  I also thank him because he used a metaphor I developed with some of 
my staff to try to explain this, and he has added to it and amplified 
it. He has taken the idea that we came up with in my office--I asked my 
staff to sit down with me and talk, and the only thing we could think 
of about the clogging of this passageway was a word that didn't sound 
as though it was a very good word to use, which was ``constipation.'' I 
said: Could we not think of some metaphor that is better than that?
  After 20 minutes or so, the idea came forth of a superhighway, with 
four or six lanes loaded with cars traveling at full speed, 65, 70 
miles an hour, and then there was a crash that took all lanes and 
stopped all of them and the cars piled up for miles back.
  As the good Senator from Tennessee, a wonderful friend of mine, has 
gone on from that simple beginning I just described to analogize the 
entire problem we have, that accident where--these cars that are all 
cracked up are the toxic assets we are buying. They are toxic because 
they are all broken down, they are not worth anything anymore, and we 
are going to buy them. That is why we are setting up this rescue fund.

[[Page 22981]]

When we buy them, eventually get them, all of the cars will be loosened 
from that long 20, 30 miles that they are blocked by this accident, 
which is the toxic assets, but it is really the cars stopping movement. 
And then he went on to explain what all those cars were, because so 
many people think this is Wall Street. This rescue plan is not Wall 
Street. Some of the large institutions that hold this paper that is 
clogging the highway, some of them are in New York, but we read today 
that some of them are in Europe. So we should understand that it is 
where the money moves, where the money comes from, and as it moves out 
into our country, to the hinterland, that is where the problem is 
because these assets, these cars that end up in a wreck, these toxic 
assets, were purchased by banks and institutions all over the country 
and all over the world, apparently. Some countries bought a lot of 
them, from what is coming out now, and their banks are having the same 
kinds of problems thousands of miles away from the United States.
  So we are going to be called upon as Senators to decide whether we 
want to rescue this American financial system which was the greatest 
delivery system for money that the world has ever seen. The reason we 
live in such high prosperity with so many material things of wealth, so 
much wealth that is material, from the number of houses--you might own 
two of them--from cars to appliances to everything that is there, it is 
financing; it is the financial system that is so magnificent in America 
that permits all of that to happen. And it is breaking down. We better 
rescue it if we can or look what we will be saying to our people: We 
are unable, in the worst kind of crisis as it pertains to the material 
wealth of our country, with that breaking down in front of our eyes, so 
that as my friend the Senator from Tennessee said, the things we want 
to have--will not be available. In essence, we will be a country that 
is bankrupt. You do not know where the money will be, you do not know 
what notes and instruments will be valid, you do not know who will 
deliver money to whom, and you will have a literal fiscal mess, a 
literal financial money mess.
  Fix it or be charged with letting it break down. Vote for this and 
fix it. Do the rescue plan or walk out of here as a Senator who can 
claim no victory, can claim they didn't see fit----
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator's 5 minutes has 
expired.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DOMENICI. That they didn't see fit to lend their vote to a rescue 
plan of this type. And I believe, no matter how much guff you are 
getting from your constituents, no matter how much they are talking to 
you on the phone and in letters and other ways, you have to explain it 
to them right and then you have to vote what is right for the United 
States. That is why we are here.
  Now, some will say: It is easy for you, Domenici; you are leaving the 
Senate after 36 years. But I hope that I could tell you that in my 
mind, I can carry back and say: I have only been here 12 years and I am 
still going to stay here, and I would vote this way if I were a Senator 
who had to go back and try to run again. It is unequivocal that my 
responsibility is to produce a rescue plan, and I hope the House passes 
it soon, and I hope our majority leader sees fit to call it up soon--
sooner rather than later. With each day, more damage is being done here 
and around the world.
  I think we are lucky to have two good people managing the affairs of 
the United States, and I want to close on that note. We could certainly 
have had leaders in the Treasury and in the Federal Reserve who were 
not as good as ours on this subject, and that is helpful because most 
of us who are studying this can go back to our offices and then talk to 
our families and our constituents and say: We are understanding it, and 
we think we are being dealt the right information and a good plan.
  With that, I once again thank Senator Lamar Alexander, my good 
friend, for his excellent speech this morning. I say to anybody who 
wants to understand it, read it--to understand our problem, read it. I 
thank him for using a little bit of my thinking in his speech. Once 
again, thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Connecticut.

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