[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 23758-23759]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        BAILING OUT WALL STREET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Madam Speaker, the American public needs to know that there has been 
a tremendous amount of discussion about Main Street, about credit for 
people to get students loans and car loans and home loans and all that, 
and talk about jobs. But those are all things I support. I think every 
Member of this body supports that. They recognize we have a deepening 
recession here in the United States.
  But the American public also needs to know that we are going to 
borrow $700 billion in their name for the bailout package, and not one 
penny of it goes to any of those issues. It is not aimed at the real 
economy of America. It is aimed solely at the froth on Wall Street, the 
speculators on Wall Street, the non-productive people on Wall Street, 
the certifiably smart ``masters of the universe,'' like Secretary of 
the Treasury Henry Paulson, who created these financial weapons of mass 
destruction, and now as Secretary of the

[[Page 23759]]

Treasury a week ago last Friday lit the fuse by projecting worldwide 
economic collapse if we didn't bail out those firms on Wall Street.
  I believe there are simpler answers. I just came from a meeting with 
William Isaacs. He was the head of the Federal Deposition Insurance 
Corporation. They deal with banks. Mr. Paulson was a speculator on Wall 
Street. He deals with speculation. He doesn't understand regulative 
banking. In fact, one of his first big moves 10 days ago was he said 
guarantee all the money markets in an unlimited way. Know what that 
did? It took $12 billion in deposits from banks, and they moved over 
into money markets because bank deposits are limited in their insurance 
and they pay lower rates of interest. He doesn't even understand this 
industry. But he understands Wall Street and speculators, and those are 
the people he grew up with and worked with and dines with and wines 
with, and those are the people he wants to help, in addition to the 
fact there is a tremendous amount of pressure being put on by some very 
powerful creditors, and one of those happens to be the People's 
Republic of China, who owns a lot of this junk, and they want their 
money back or they are threatening us.

                              {time}  1800

  Now, that's not a good reason to go ahead with this faulty proposal. 
It does not deal with the underlying crisis in housing. If we don't 
deal with the underlying crisis in housing--with the foreclosures, with 
the deteriorating values--when the values drop another 5 or 10 percent 
and when that next big adjustment comes on March 1, you're going to 
find there's another $1 trillion in junk securities out there, and 
we'll have already maxed out our credit, and people will have lost more 
jobs.
  The auto dealers are saying people aren't buying cars. It's not 
because they can't get a loan. My credit union is giving out loans 
right now, to anybody who is creditworthy, to go buy cars. People don't 
have confidence that their jobs are going to be there. Their wages 
haven't increased. They're worried about the real economy, not the Wall 
Street economy. This is the problem, this disconnect in this body and 
particularly in the Senate--which is full of millionaires. You know, 
that is not going to solve the underlying problem, what is being 
proposed here. There is a cheaper, low-cost, no-cost alternative.
  The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation should declare an 
emergency. Mr. Isaac just counseled us on this. It gives them 
extraordinary powers. They could use that to assess the same guaranty 
to all bank depositors, to all people in banks, that they did with 
Wachovia--to all general creditors, not to investors but to general 
creditors. He said that would immediately free up interbank lending and 
that it would immediately bring a flood of foreign deposits into the 
U.S. because we would be a safe haven for banking and for people's 
deposits, but he is a regulator, a regulator with experience, who 
piloted this country out of the savings and loan crisis and saved us a 
bunch of money. He's not a big-time Wall Street speculator who came 
down here and got appointed by George Bush with three-quarters of $1 
billion in his pocket for money he had made in creating these financial 
weapons of mass destruction. So we're listening to the wrong guy here.
  Who believes George Bush? Does anybody in America believe him? 
Remember the last time there were weapons of mass destruction 1 month 
before an election, and we got stampeded into a war? They're doing the 
same playbook here. Don't buy it. Step back. Take your time. Use all of 
the no-cost emergency powers first. If that doesn't work, then we can 
talk about some other big appropriation of money, but don't appropriate 
the money first and give it with unlimited powers to Mr. Paulson.

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