[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 24012-24013]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        RE-INFLATING THE BUBBLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. McCotter) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCOTTER. Mr. Speaker, we have confronted the first financial 
panic of the ``New Global Economy''--an economy spawned by the fall of 
the Berlin Wall--and the precedent we set will affect our prosperity, 
liberty, and posterity for generations.
  Unconscionably, we have rushed to misjudgment and approved a $700 
billion Wall Street bailout the American people know is intrinsically 
unfair to them. This truth is self-evident in how, initially, an 
exiting President and his Treasury Secretary incited a panic amongst 
our people and the world, all to compel a compliant Congress to deliver 
upon this demand: ``Main Street must bail out Wall Street, or how the 
people will suffer.''
  Justly, the people's House voiced the will of the sovereign people 
and refused. Recalcitrant, the administration zealously intensified its 
attempt to shift $700 billion worth of consequences from Wall Street 
onto Main Street and pronounced a new ransom dictum: ``No bailout for 
Wall Street, no tax relief for Main Street, and how the people will 
suffer.''
  To this demand, the Congress capitulated. The saddest part of this 
immorality play is how the people will suffer regardless, and they know 
it. Working Americans, whose well-deserved tax relief must never be 
predicated upon rewarding others' misdeeds, understand this self-
described, short-term stabilization bill cannot claim with certainty to 
attain its professed intent, let alone solve the new global economy's 
latest structural dysfunctions.
  Worse, as a multitude of economists and entrepreneurs prove, this 
bailout bill will reinflate the bubble by $700 billion and thereby only 
delay our day of economic reckoning. It cannot be otherwise because the 
bailout bill's central economic construct is patently and grossly 
unfair to Americans.
  Succinctly: Congress will buy ``toxic assets'' with your money that 
private investors won't buy with their own money. What a deal for you. 
Therefore, belying the ludicrous claims, this bailout is designed to 
save Wall Street, not Main Street. It is small wonder Americans 
rejected this odious proposal, and equally unfathomable how Congress 
ultimately approved it.
  In the aftermath, a deeper truth emerges from the ruins. In setting a

[[Page 24013]]

new economic precedent during this pregnant moment fraught with 
consequence, we also face a transcendent choice between two competing 
visions for our Nation's future: Global materialism versus American 
traditionalism; ``creative destruction'' versus ``innovative 
restoration''; Wall Street versus Main Street.
  In the tumultuous transition from our humane American traditions into 
an insane global age, we viscerally glean the evolving forces dwarfing 
our mortal power to protect the cherished realms of faith, family, 
community and country, while in each heart beats the murmur of Yeats: 
``Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed 
upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the 
ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction, while 
the worst are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is 
at hand.''
  From this Congress, Americans sought reassurance their representative 
institutions remained vibrant and sufficient to shelter and steer our 
Nation through the amoral global flood tide's enveloping chaos. We have 
answered them today. In voting ``yea,'' you have not solely chosen Wall 
Street over Main Street, you have chosen the big over the beautiful, 
the giant over the gentle, the great over the good.
  And this decision now shapes our destiny. This being the case, we 
bailout opponents must grudgingly admit a tinge of envy for its 
supporters. Tonight, you will go to sleep praying you are right; we 
will go to sleep praying we are wrong, while in each breast the murmur 
returns.
  Now the future beckons from its ominous shadows, and through the 
impending gloaming we can but glimpse how the people will suffer. As 
breaks that nightmarish day, let us arise and combine to transcend the 
insanity of our age, forge a humane global economy, and restore our 
American home to a God blessed land of hope, devotion and dreams.

                          ____________________