[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13263-13268]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             BAILOUT FEVER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Madam Speaker, I thank you for the recognition, and I 
want to thank Leader Boehner for granting me the leadership hour on our 
side to share some thoughts this evening with you, Madam Speaker.
  As the Speaker's well aware, our economy is in pretty tough shape, 
and people all over the country are suffering. But despite the fact 
that people continue to suffer, there is sort of this bailout fever 
here on Capitol Hill, and it's not uncommon for me to go home to Ohio 
and have somebody come up to me on the street and say, Hey, where is my 
bailout like the guys on Wall Street and like many others? Literally 
billions and billions of dollars. Taxpayer dollars. People get up, work 
hard, pay their taxes just trying to raise their kids and keep a roof 
over their head. Billions and billions of dollars have been sent out in 
these bailouts.
  And we have come to the floor on a pretty regular basis to talk about 
AIG, the insurance giant on Wall Street, that, to date, has received 
about a $185 billion of taxpayers' money in the form of a bailout. We 
were told that they are too big to fail, and quite frankly, even though 
I happen to be a Republican, this started on the former President's 
watch when his Secretary of the Treasury, came to us and said, If you 
don't give us $700 billion, here's a three-page bill, if you don't give 
us $700 by the end of the week, we're going to have a collapse. And 
sadly, in my opinion, some Members of this body abdicated their 
responsibility of oversight and bum rushed $700 billion to Wall Street.
  But a funny thing happened in that bill that has caused some in this 
House some chagrin and has led us to come to the floor on a regular 
basis and talk about a game that's pretty well known by most people in 
America. It's a game I loved playing as a kid. It's a game I continue 
to love playing with my kids called Clue made by Hasbro.
  And the reason we bring Clue to the floor and have is that in the 
conference, first of all, is this $700 billion--have to fast forward to 
the President's stimulus request earlier this year. As this bill was 
being crafted, there was an amendment placed into the stimulus package 
that said that you know what, we've given billions and billions and 
billions of dollars to these Wall Street firms, but perhaps we should 
put some conditions, or strings, on the multimillion-dollar bonuses 
that are being paid out to these folks.

                              {time}  1845

  And the amendment was put in over in the other body, in the United 
States Senate, by a Democratic Senator, Senator Wyden from Oregon, and 
a Republican Senator, Senator Snowe from Maine. And that was in the 
bill. It wasn't in the House bill; it was in the Senate bill.
  So you get together in a conference report. Madam Speaker, you know, 
but some folks don't necessarily know, that when the House and Senate 
pass a separate version of a bill, we have to have a conference 
committee. And the conference committee works out the details and then 
that conference report is brought back to both Chambers for a vote on 
the conference report.
  Well, in the conference committee somehow the Snowe-Wyden language 
that indicated that we were going to put some restrictions on these 
million-dollar bonuses--multimillion-dollar bonuses to AIG and other 
executives, that language was taken out and, over on the second easel, 
this language, subparagraph (iii), was inserted.
  And this language, Madam Speaker, not only removed the Snowe-Wyden 
language, it put in these about 40 words that specifically protected 
the bonuses paid to AIG executives and other executives on Wall Street 
who had received, again, billions of dollars of money through the TARP 
program. And so the stimulus bill came to the floor with this language 
protecting the bonuses.
  It was a partisan vote on the stimulus bill, pretty much. And all of 
the Democratic Members of the House, save 11, I think, voted for the 
President's stimulus initiative. And by casting that vote, they were 
approving, among other things, a piece of legislation that specifically 
protected the $173 million in bonuses that were then paid to AIG.
  Well, shortly after it was brought to light, because this was a big 
bill--and I should tell you that I don't think that a lot of my 
colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle did this intentionally, 
because this was a bill of over a thousand pages. And the Tuesday that 
the stimulus bill was being considered on the floor, there was a motion 
made that Members of the House should have 48 hours to read whatever 
the final bill was, a thousand pages, and that, here's a novel idea: It 
should

[[Page 13264]]

be put on the Internet and anybody in America that was interested in 
what was in these thousand pages would have the opportunity over 2 days 
to reflect on it and, if necessary, if they felt the need, to 
correspond with their Member of Congress or their United States 
Senator.
  Well, a funny thing happened to that. Even though every Member in 
this body that was present that day voted to give every Member in this 
body 48 hours to read the bill and the American public 48 hours to read 
the bill, we came up and the bill wasn't ready until Thursday night at 
midnight that same week. Somehow, the commitment to give everybody 48 
hours was forgotten and this thousand-page page bill was filed at 
midnight on Thursday.
  It was voted on the next day, Friday. And Members who arrived to work 
that Friday morning basically had 90 minutes to read a thousand pages.
  So I don't think, Madam Speaker, that everybody read that bill prior 
to casting their vote. I think some people were embarrassed when they 
found out they voted to give out $173 million in bonuses to AIG 
executives. I know that the President of the United States, President 
Obama, didn't like it, because he came on television and he said, I'm 
shocked. I can't believe that this has happened. Why is AIG giving out 
the bonuses?
  Well, he may have been shocked because he hadn't been informed 
either. I don't know. But there are some people that should not be 
shocked. They are the people who form the conference committee, where 
somebody took out the Snowe-Wyden language that would have put some 
restrictions on these bonuses and inserted this paragraph that 
protected those bonuses.
  And so the conference committee is a small group of representatives 
and senators and, using the Clue set of observations, we know that 
somebody that put this language in--the weapon, if you remember the 
Clue game--was a pen. That they used a pen to put in the language 
that's under discussion.
  Here, we have the Clue board slightly modified to reflect the United 
States Capitol. I think over the course of days we have--the times we 
have discussed this--we have been able to eliminate some people and we 
have been able to eliminate some rooms.
  And the people that we have been able to eliminate are down here. 
Charlie Rangel, who is the distinguished Chair of the Ways and Means 
Committee. He has been quoted in the press as saying when he came out 
of this conference committee, It's pretty tough to work with a 
government that's run by only three people. And so I don't think he had 
anything to do with it. But we're left with this sort of list of 
suspects.
  Suspect number one that the press is blaming is Senator Chris Dodd of 
the State of Connecticut. He is the chairman of the Senate Banking 
Committee. There was some discussion that he and/or his staff inserted 
that language.
  We know also that the Speaker of the House, Mrs. Pelosi, was present 
during that discussion. Senator Reid, as the leader of the Senate, was 
involved in those discussions. And over here we have Rahm Emanuel, who 
is the President's chief of staff, and the Secretary of the Treasury as 
well, Mr. Geithner.
  Well, somebody put this language in. All we are trying to find out is 
who put the language in, why they put it in, and why people were 
shocked and amazed that these bonuses went out when the legislation 
specifically permitted it.
  Now we have made great progress. And I have to give great credit to 
the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank of 
Massachusetts. We filed what is known as a Resolution of Inquiry 
because nobody would sort of own up to this. We filed a piece of 
legislation here that said, Hey, Treasury, how about handing over the 
documents and communications so we can get to the bottom of this, so we 
can figure out that it was one of these people with the pen in the 
Speaker's office or in the conference room.
  Chairman Frank moved it through his committee. Everybody that was 
present that day voted for it. But now, sadly, it's languishing at the 
desk and the majority leader of the House, Mr. Hoyer, has chosen not to 
call it up. But, again, to Chairman Frank's credit, he has indicated to 
the Treasury that he wants this thing resolved.
  There was a meeting this week with members of my staff and members of 
the Treasury, and they have promised to produce some documents that, 
maybe the next time, Madam Speaker, that we are able to talk about 
this, we can identify who it was that inserted the language, on who's 
instruction, and why. And I think, Madam Speaker, the American people 
are entitled to know.
  Now, as the Speaker knows, aside from the financial services bailout, 
the bailout of Wall Street, there's a lot going on with the American 
automotive industry as well. Chrysler was given 30 days to reach an 
agreement with the Italian automaker Fiat. And has recently gone into 
bankruptcy.
  Unfortunately, we have another clue--this time, Clue, The Travel 
Edition, because some of the facts that have been sort of laid out 
there are not, as we dig further, as they appear.
  And so to set the stage, Madam Speaker, as you know, the Union, the 
United Auto Workers of America, were asked to make significant 
concessions in order to keep Chrysler alive. As a matter of fact, on 
the 28th and 29th of April, every union hall, every UAW union hall that 
was involved in Chrysler operations, had an election. And the election 
was whether or not to ratify this new contract with the concessions.
  As a matter of fact, in my area in Ohio, we have a Chrysler stamping 
plant in a great city by the name of Twinsburg, Ohio. In Twinsburg, 
Ohio, the UAW local, Local 122, had done an outstanding job of 
negotiating language in this concession package that indicated that 
additional work was going to come to Twinsburg. I will show you that 
language in just a minute, Madam Speaker.
  So people voted. All the union members voted on the 28th and 29th. 
The contract with concessions was approved. As a matter of fact, in 
Twinsburg Local 122, 88 percent of the union members who cast ballots 
voted in favor of the new contract because they thought by making these 
sacrifices, it would make a stronger Chrysler and they would get to 
keep their jobs and they would get to continue making automobiles.
  Fast forward to the next day, April 30. The President of the United 
States, President Obama, announced this deal that Chrysler was going to 
go into bankruptcy and the contract had been approved and good things 
were going to happen. And on that date at his press conference this 
quote on the far board, Madam Speaker, the President of the United 
States said, ``No one should be confused about what a bankruptcy 
process means. It will not disrupt the lives of the people who work at 
Chrysler or live in communities that depend on it,'' meaning Chrysler.
  Now I have got to tell you, back in Cleveland there was news coverage 
of this series of events. And after the President made this 
announcement on April 30th, the champagne corks were popping. People 
were happy. They had approved a contract. They had taken a hit in their 
wages and their benefits. But they knew that no one should be confused 
that this decision wasn't going to disrupt the lives of the people who 
work at Chrysler or live in the communities that depend on them.
  As promised, Madam Speaker, the chart now on the easel, this 
paragraph is the specific language that was negotiated by the UAW in 
Twinsburg, Ohio, that indicates when they went to vote to approve this 
contract on April 28 and 29, they believed they were agreeing to a 
provision that was separately negotiated for their plant that said 
during these discussions, the company, Chrysler, agreed to--and 
basically find ways to bring more work to the stamping plant in 
Twinsburg, Ohio.
  Well, after the President made his announcement at noon, there was a 
conference call between the former CEO of Chrysler, Robert Nardelli, 
and interested parties--Members of Congress, governors, people who were 
interested. And the first question that was asked on that conference 
call--and I should say I have asked for the transcript of that 
conference call from

[[Page 13265]]

Chrysler, and they are refusing to give it to me. We will try another 
way. There's always a couple different ways to skin a cat.
  But the first question came from Governor Granholm from the State of 
Michigan, and she said, basically, Congratulations. This is great news. 
As a matter of fact, Governor Granholm had a press conference and she 
said, Not only does this agreement preserve jobs, the opportunity for 
expanding growth in jobs in Michigan is very well. At the end of this 
path--which is the temporary idling while the company is in 
bankruptcy--we can see that the jobs are going to be there. It's a 
defining moment for Michigan, and certainly a defining moment for 
Chrysler.
  Well, her question to Mr. Nardelli was, We just heard the President's 
announcement. Great work. But he said that by this agreement, 30,000 
jobs at Chrysler had been saved. We know that there are 39,000 people 
who work for Chrysler in the United States. So was the President 
speaking in some kind of code that we saved 30,000, but we couldn't 
save all 39,000?
  The answer back from the officials at Chrysler who were on the 
telephone call: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. The President just had 
the number wrong. And there's going to be no plant closings. Nobody is 
going to lose their job.
  Well, during that same phone call, Representative Gwen Moore, who's a 
Democratic Member of Congress, does a great job on behalf of her 
constituents in Milwaukee, asked Mr. Nardelli directly about the future 
of the Kenosha, Wisconsin, engine plant, which employs 800 people. And 
he specifically indicated that they loved the Kenosha plant; it had a 
long history; it was productive; it made money; and the 800 people up 
there in Kenosha, Wisconsin, didn't have to worry about anything.
  Sadly, what happened after that conference call, after the 
President's announcement--I think we've all seen the pictures--this 
picture of the sort of nerdy-looking guy with all those bankers boxes 
taking the bankruptcy filings to the court in New York.
  They were filed that afternoon--the same afternoon; April 30. Buried 
in those documents was the fact that eight Chrysler facilities in the 
United States of America were going to be closed as a result of the 
bankruptcy and, among them, Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Twinsburg, Ohio.
  So, again, you had Mr. Nardelli saying Kenosha is great and you had 
the UAW in Twinsburg negotiating an agreement where they think work is 
going to come to them, but the news was, when the bankruptcy filings 
were read, that they're going to be closed and they're going to be out 
of jobs beginning next year.

                              {time}  1900

  Now, to be fair, Mr. Nardelli--you know, obviously there were some 
questions asked about it. So they asked, What happened? He said Kenosha 
was okay. He wrote to Representative Gwen Moore of Milwaukee that he 
mistakenly conveyed the status of the Phoenix investment.
  He confused Kenosha, Wisconsin, with a plant in Trenton, Michigan. So 
not only isn't it the same State, Wisconsin. You have sound-alikes. We 
have a lot of Madison, Ohios, and all this other business. He 
apologized to Representative Moore because he said that he confused 
Trenton, Michigan, with Kenosha, Wisconsin and that Trenton, Michigan, 
is going to be okay. Don't worry about it.
  The mayor of Twinsburg also was obviously confused because people 
were celebrating. If you think about it, Madam Speaker, 88 percent of 
the union in Twinsburg voted to approve this contract. Well, you'd have 
to be pretty dumb to vote for a contract that was going to end your 
job. In conversations with the union leaders and membership, they 
didn't know. They didn't know that by the company going into 
bankruptcy, that they were going to be out of a job. Clearly I don't 
think 88 percent of them would have voted in favor of a contract that 
meant that they had no job. They were heartened by the President's 
comments the day before that no one should be confused about what a 
bankruptcy means. It will not disrupt the lives of the people who work 
for Chrysler or live in communities that depend on it. Now maybe this 
is like a Major League Baseball statistic. He needed to have an 
asterisk next to it and in small print say, oh, except for those eight 
plants, those eight cities and those 9,000 people that work there. But 
that isn't what the President said, and I think the President meant 
this. Again, it's my view that the President may have been ill-served 
by those who report to him about what was going on at this moment in 
time.
  Also, the mayor of Twinsburg, Katherine Procop, who is a great mayor, 
expressed some concern. She wrote a note to Ron Bloom, who was part of 
the President's automobile task force about, Hey, wait a minute. We 
were watching TV. They said no plants were going to be closed. Nobody 
was going to lose their job. Now in Twinsburg, it's 1,200 jobs. We find 
out our plant's closing. It's 13 percent of our tax base, and 1,200 
people are going to be out of work. What's the deal?
  So Mr. Bloom wrote back to Mayor Procop on May 6; and he indicated 
the pertinent paragraph, While the original February 17 plan submitted 
by Chrysler was not deemed viable by the task force, the more recently 
proposed Fiat/Chrysler alliance plan has been approved, which is true. 
This plan included the same plant closure schedule as the one 
originally proposed by Chrysler, and the President's comments were 
meant to convey the message that the bankruptcy of Chrysler had in no 
way changed these plans. Now that's a fine observation, except that 
nobody ever identified any plant closings in the February 17 filing or 
in the subsequent filing because they said they couldn't. I think what 
Mr. Bloom's letter is saying, that no lives are going to be 
interrupted, and no communities are going to suffer, except for those 
eight plants, 9,000 people, and eight communities that nobody knew 
about, which is a stretch. I mean, I have to tell you, it's a stretch, 
and people have questions.
  So the question now is--and we have, again, filed a resolution of 
inquiry asking the administration to have the automobile task force get 
with us and talk about how this happened. This time we have the Clue 
travel edition. We have the Clue travel edition. This time it's not a 
pen, but we know that the weapon was an ax. Nine thousand people with 
an ax are going to lose their job. Their jobs have been axed in eight 
communities across America at Chrysler.
  So this time on the board we have the President of the United States. 
I do not think President Obama knew all of the details when he made 
this announcement. I have sent him a letter saying that I give him 
great credit for the leadership he has shown. But again, my observation 
is that he has not been well served. On that conference call and part 
of the team, Larry Summers who is an economic adviser to the President; 
Robert Nardelli, who I have talked about, the former chief executive 
officer of Chrysler; Mr. Bloom; Mr. Geithner, the Treasury Secretary; 
and former President George W. Bush. The last time we talked about 
this, somebody said, Why do you have President Bush up there? This all 
happened this year. But I just wanted to be fair because I know that 
there are some people in this country that blame President Bush for 
anything that happens that is bad. So I wanted to have his picture up 
there as well.
  So somebody in this group--and I think I can safely exclude the two, 
the former President of the United States and the current President of 
the United States from this list--but when the President went to the 
microphone on April 30, 2009, and said no communities were going to 
suffer, somebody in this Clue game knew that when the bankruptcy--think 
about these banker boxes. If you've seen that picture with the guy with 
the cart and the bankers boxes. He filed them at like 3 o'clock in the 
afternoon the same day. I know that the lawyers are quick, and we've 
got all kinds of computers and stuff. But those documents didn't get 
written between noon and 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Somebody on the 
President's task force or somebody at Chrysler or somebody someplace 
knew

[[Page 13266]]

that when those documents, those bankers boxes were opened, we were 
going to find eight plant closings and 9,000 people losing their jobs. 
I think the thing that bothers me more than anything, even though 
people being thrown out of work is horrible enough, it is that these 
9,000 workers at these eight plants went to vote on a contract where 
they were giving up big time wages and benefits; and they voted, not 
knowing that by casting that vote, they were going to lose their job. 
Again, I don't think any reasonable person would make that vote in the 
days before the President's announcement, knowing that it meant that 
their job was gone.
  So we are going to attempt to determine now, and we've asked the 
President if he would direct his automobile task force to share with us 
who knew prior to April 30, who knew at the time the President was 
saying that nobody was going to suffer that, in fact, 9,000 people were 
going to suffer. Because I have to tell you that again, I think the 
President's achievement here is significant. It would have been real 
easy for his advisers to say, You know what, we saved 30,000 jobs, we 
couldn't save them all, and so there's going to be some suffering in 
eight cities and in 9,000 homes; but overall, we saved three-quarters 
of the jobs at Chrysler.
  Nobody said that. What they said was, nobody was going to be without 
a job, and nobody was going to suffer.
  So, Madam Speaker, we're going to work diligently over the next 
little while and see if we can identify who in this particular game of 
Clue took the job, took the ax and basically axed 9,000 people out of a 
job. In addition, the news this week in the bankruptcy court and 
something that we need to find out about is who's responsible. It's not 
just 9,000 jobs anymore. It's not just eight Chrysler plants. The news 
today, or this week, was that they are directing 789 Chrysler 
dealerships to close, that they're going to take their franchises away. 
According to the National Automobile Dealers Association, about 60 
people on average work at each Chrysler dealership in the United States 
of America. So these 789 dealerships times 60, another 47,340 people 
across America, in Ohio, everywhere else, are soon to lose their jobs. 
That is going to be on the back of this next week, it's anticipated 
that General Motors, which is also having difficulty, that they are 
going to attempt to get rid of 2,600 franchise dealers. Again, using 
the math of an average of 60 people at each dealership, that's another 
156,000 people that will lose their jobs at General Motors dealerships.
  So altogether, you now have, in addition to the 9,000 people at 
Chrysler, 203,340 additional people that are going to be out of work as 
a result of these bankruptcies. Again, I don't think that the President 
of the United States has been well served by his advisers or else I 
don't think he would have uttered the statement that no one should be 
confused about what a bankruptcy means, that it will not disrupt the 
lives of the people who work at Chrysler or live in the communities 
that depend on them.
  We're now up to, Madam Speaker, over 210,000 people that are going to 
be out of work as a result of this decision. And because I know that 
the President of the United States is a man of character, I know that 
the President of the United States didn't have in his mind when he made 
that observation that 210,000 people would be out of work because 
clearly that number, by any calculus, means that a lot of communities 
are going to suffer, and a lot of families are going to suffer, and a 
lot of people across this country are going to suffer.
  Some of us can't figure out how the car company, Chrysler or GM, 
saves money by closing car dealerships. I mean, they don't cost the car 
companies any money. It's kind of a strange marketing proposal that you 
can sell more stuff by having less stores. So let's have less stores, 
maybe we'll sell more cars. That logic is lost on me. But maybe 
somebody on the Clue travel edition can explain it to me.
  Also, in the April 17 edition of Time magazine, there is something 
here that in response to pressure from the Obama administration, 
Chrysler has proposed more plant shutdowns. Again, that is April 17, 
almost 2 weeks before the President says that nobody's going to suffer, 
no plants are going to be closed, and we're not going to have a 
problem.
  On top of that--and this one kind of puzzles me too. The first thing 
that puzzles me is how you sell more cars with less stores. The second 
one is--and this is from the Detroit newspaper on May 11 that says that 
Chrysler wanted to spend $134 million in advertising over the 9 weeks 
that it is expected to be in bankruptcy; but the auto industry task 
force originally told them, we don't want you spending any money on 
advertising and then begrudgingly said, Okay, you can spend half of it. 
That comes as a result of Robert Manzo, who is the executive director 
of Capstone Advisory Group, who is a consultant to Chrysler. He 
testified in bankruptcy court that the task force--again, the 
administration's auto task force--believed that it was not feasible to 
spend anything on marketing and advertising over this period of time.
  So just as it confuses some of us that you can sell more cars with 
less stores, stores that don't cost the car companies any money, how 
you don't damage your sales by not having any advertising. But that is 
where we find ourselves.
  So, Madam Speaker, we're going to do Clue the travel edition. And I 
hope, unlike the AIG Clue edition, we have people that are willing to 
come forward and say, Yeah, I didn't think Chrysler needed to 
advertise, or, Yeah, I knew that those eight plants and those 9,000 
people were going to be out of a job, but here's why we kept it from 
them when they were asked to approve the contract with concessions.
  Now, Madam Speaker, we hear a lot that we don't have the time here in 
the United States Congress to deal with some of these issues. I just 
want to do a quick review of the last couple of years when that 
argument has been made and share with you the things that the United 
States Congress has been dealing with, rather than dealing with a 
variety of subjects, such as gasoline prices last year when gasoline 
went to over $4 a gallon and now these many, many people who work at 
Chrysler who are losing their jobs.
  Madam Speaker, I apologize for taking a long time. I don't have 
assistance. You will be pleased to know I have also dog-eared the 
corners because the last time I did this, my fingernails couldn't reach 
under the sticky notes and take them off in a timely fashion.
  Last year gasoline prices went through the roof, and there were a lot 
of reasons for that. There was a feeling when Congress went on its 
district work period a year ago August that perhaps we should have a 
debate on a national energy policy. I can remember calls of ``drill, 
baby, drill.'' There are people who want nuclear power. There are 
people that want green renewable energy, hydropower, geothermal power, 
solar, wind.

                              {time}  1915

  The request was made that we should really have a discussion, and 
let's talk about all the alternatives, and again, the ideas that get 
the most votes from the most Members will succeed. But we have to do 
something about gasoline prices in this country because our 
constituents are suffering.
  Well, January 29 was when the Republicans did such a bang-up job of 
being in charge of the Congress that the voters threw us out in 2006 
and replaced us with a Democratic majority, and that Democratic 
majority started on January 2007. At the time, gasoline was $2.22 a 
gallon. And people said, okay, that is getting up there, but it is not 
horrible. And so on that day, January 29, the most important thing that 
the leadership of the House could decide to put on the floor was a 
resolution congratulating the University of California Santa Barbara 
soccer team. Now, I assume that every member of that team, their 
families and their fans are proud of their accomplishment. They 
certainly deserve to be complimented. But I don't know, when people at 
home are suffering with increasingly high gas prices, if that is the 
most important thing we can do.
  Well, it creeps up. We get out here to September 5 of the same year. 
Gas has

[[Page 13267]]

now moved up. The national average is $2.84 a gallon. And on that day, 
the most important thing we could do here on the House of 
Representatives was recognize National Passport Month. And I guess 
September is National Passport Month. You might want to go home and jot 
it down on the calendar, Madam Speaker, because I actually forgot that 
was right.
  Gas continues to go up. Here we are out here, February 6 of the next 
year, gas $3.03 a gallon, and the most important thing that we can do 
on the House floor on that day is commend the Houston Dynamo soccer 
team. When you are in elected office, you know this, Madam Speaker, we 
are told that if we want to be elected, we have to go out and get the 
soccer moms. And so by having two of the most important things, while 
gas is going up to over $3 a gallon, commending soccer teams, I think 
we have the soccer mom vote taken care of, and maybe we could have gone 
on to talk about energy.
  Well, we get into May of 2008. Gas is $3.77 a gallon. You would think 
we would be talking about a national energy policy. But on that day, 
the most important thing we could come up with was to celebrate 
National Train Day. And I used to be the chairman of the Railroad 
Subcommittee. I like trains. But for crying out loud, my constituents 
were paying $3.77, and they were calling the office in droves saying, 
when are you going to do something about gasoline prices?
  Well, we get out here, it continues to go up to $3.84 on May 20, and 
the most important thing we can do, rather than talking about gasoline 
prices, is to pass a resolution honoring or protecting great cats and 
rare canids. And I can tell you, Madam Speaker, I voted for that 
legislation because I know what great cats are, lions and tigers and 
things like that. I didn't know what a canid was. I had to go back to 
my office and look it up. It is a dog. So on the day that gas was $3.84 
a gallon, we were celebrating and recognizing lions, tigers, and dogs 
here on the House floor.
  We are up to June of that year. Gas goes up to $4.09. I'm sure we are 
going to talk about energy because people can't even afford to fill up 
their car and go to work. But on that day, June 10, rather than talking 
about gasoline prices, the most important thing we could do here in the 
United States Congress was to recognize 2008 as the International Year 
of Sanitation. And a lot of people back home in Ohio, when they were 
filling up their cars, didn't know that 2008 was the International Year 
of Sanitation. And I don't know that their lives were greatly improved 
because of that.
  Then it finally peaked out on June 17, 2008, when gasoline hits $4.17 
a gallon. Gasoline was over $4 for the first time in my lifetime, and 
I'm 54. And I'm sure that we were talking about energy on this occasion 
in June. But we weren't. The most important thing we could do was pass 
the Monkey Safety Act. And I don't know any Member of the House, 
Republican or Democrat, that wants unsafe monkeys. But clearly, when 
gas prices were going through the roof, the most important thing that 
the greatest legislative body in the world could be working on, I would 
hope, wouldn't be the Monkey Safety Act.
  So they said, okay, we get it. Now we are going to be serious. We 
start this new Congress. And in the new Congress, we have this horrible 
problem at Chrysler, which is the subject of the Clue travel edition. 
And it began in January when 4,000 people at Chrysler lost their jobs. 
And rather than talking about that, we honored the life of Claiborne 
Pell, a former United States Senator. And he certainly was deserving of 
recognition. But 4,000 people are out of work.
  We get over here to right before March, and now we are up to 9,500 
Chrysler people are out of work, and we passed a resolution supporting 
the goals and ideals of National Teen Dating. Now, as a father, I want 
teens to be safe, and I want them to be dating. But again, 9,500 people 
are out of work, and we are recognizing the goals and ideals of 
National Teen Dating.
  Still before we get to the middle of March, before we get to a little 
bigger jump up to almost 11,000 people out of work, the most important 
thing we could do, and here is a repeat, Madam Speaker, apparently, we 
don't have time to talk about gas prices. We don't have time to deal 
with people being thrown out of work. But apparently the United States 
Senate didn't act last year on the Monkey Safety Act, so we debated the 
Monkey Safety Act again and passed the Monkey Safety Act.
  Now you get out here to mid-April, and you are now up to 13,000 
people at Chrysler who are out of work. And you would think maybe we 
are going to be talking about that. But instead, son of a gun, I guess 
the Senate didn't honor cats and dogs last year either, and so we had 
to bring back on the floor the Great Cats and Rare Canids Act.
  You get out to May, and now there are 16,000, a little over 16,000 
people at Chrysler out of work. And the most important thing we can do 
on that day is to award a Gold Medal to Arnold Palmer for his 
sportsmanship in golf. Now I happen to be an admirer of Arnold Palmer 
of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. I think he is deserving of whatever 
recognition comes his way. But when 16,000 people have lost their jobs 
and we have these issues with how we are going to help the car 
companies, how we are going to help the people that work there, I think 
even Arnold Palmer would have said, honor me next week.
  And now we get out to last week we are now up to 18,365 people out of 
work at Chrysler, only Chrysler, and again, we are about to have 
another 200,000 at automobile dealerships all across the country. I'm 
sure that obviously we should have been talking about Chrysler and the 
auto industry on that day, but, son of a gun, they say that history 
repeats itself. We again had to recognize National Train Day here in 
the United States Congress.
  So I would suggest, a little bit more than tongue in cheek, that we 
had time. We had time to deal with this, Madam Speaker. And for 
whatever reason, those who are charged with scheduling legislation in 
this floor felt that our time was most well spent honoring soccer 
teams, recognizing cats and dogs, making sure that monkeys are safe in 
the United States, not once but twice, and some of the other things.
  But that isn't all, Madam Speaker. You're aware that on the day we 
come back, we do suspensions. Suspensions are bills that are brought to 
the floor. They are debated for 40 minutes. Republicans get 20 minutes. 
The Democrats get 20 minutes. And then we have a 15-minute vote. So if 
we put the vote together with the suspension, it is 55 minutes. Just 
since the beginning of this year, this list of bills here on the left 
and their dates of passage, we had time to name--these are post 
offices. This list of legislation are post offices. So everybody across 
America should be happy that when they go into a post office it 
probably has a name on it. And these are the post offices that we have 
taken 1 hour a piece to name since the beginning of the year. And 1, 2, 
4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 14 hours of putting a name on a post office when 
we could have been talking about gas prices. We could have been talking 
about Chrysler. We could have been talking about the billions of 
dollars that we are bleeding on these bailouts for everybody. But 
again, when you walk in, if anybody, Madam Speaker, lives in any of 
these communities, they can rest assured that in Rye, New York, for 
instance, if you go to buy stamps in Rye, New York, your post office 
now has a name, named after somebody, thanks to the United States 
Congress.
  Now the difficulty with that is that the people at Chrysler, the 
18,000 people at Chrysler who have lost their jobs, and the 203,000 
people who are about to lose their jobs at the car dealerships across 
this country, they can afford to go in and buy the 44-cent stamps in 
the post office. But clearly, they have names.
  Madam Speaker, this is problematic. And I think that the people who 
work at Chrysler, the 9,000 people in those eight communities and the 
citizens of those eight communities who popped champagne corks when 
they heard the President of the United States, and reaffirmed by Mr. 
Nardelli, the CEO of

[[Page 13268]]

Chrysler, indicate that their jobs were going to be okay and their 
plants were going to be open, and that they cast ballots in large 
numbers signifying that they were willing to give up how much they made 
an hour, how much they had to contribute in health care, what their 
pension looked like, because they believed that they were going to be 
able to keep their job.
  And that wasn't true.
  So again, Madam Speaker, we will come back again until somebody, 
somebody helps us solve the game of Clue. Who took an ax in the Senate 
leader's office, the Speaker's office, the conference room, who took 
the ax to 9,000 hard-working Americans in this country, their plants 
and the communities that depend upon those tax revenues for police 
protection, fire protection, and schools? Who took the ax and ended 
those jobs?
  And again, President Bush was meant in jest. I don't think President 
Obama did this. But others on this board, I would posit, had to know, 
had to know prior to the President's announcement that this was going 
to happen. And I just don't think that that is right in the United 
States of America.
  Likewise, the 203,000 people that are about to be out of work at the 
dealerships across this country, again, some of these dealers, these 
automobile dealers, some of them paid upwards of $2 million to have a 
Chrysler franchise or a General Motors franchise. And it really boggles 
my mind that in the United States of America if you are a car company 
you can come in and say, I don't want to honor these franchise 
agreements.
  And the news just last week was the lawyers for Chrysler are arguing 
that this Federal bankruptcy should supersede State franchise law. And 
even though State franchise law says, if you sold this guy a franchise 
for $2 million, he is entitled to keep it, they want to terminate him 
and just say, you got no business.
  Again, Madam Speaker, I don't know how it goes in your hometown, but 
in my hometown, the car dealers have been there, in some instances, for 
generations. They support the little league teams, the bowling teams, 
and the Chamber of Commerce. A lot of the lifeblood of our community is 
supported by auto dealers. So I know that the President didn't mean 
that this set of conditions, this set of circumstances, wasn't going to 
disrupt people's lives and wasn't going to impact negatively on 
communities all across this country. And I am baffled that in the 
United States of America, if you, Madam Speaker, took $2 million, and I 
wish I had $2 million, but if you took $2 million and bought something, 
that the government could come in and just say, guess what? You don't 
own it anymore. And do you know those 60 people that work for you, who 
in some instances have worked for you 20, 30 years? They are out of 
work. They are out of work.
  So Madam Speaker, we will attempt to unravel this mystery. I 
appreciate very much the time. And I look forward to working with my 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle to determine how this could 
happen in the United States of America.
  I thank you, Madam Speaker.

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