[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 14957-14965]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


                              AIG BONUSES

  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.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Madam Speaker, we have been coming to the floor for 
about 4 months now in an attempt to get to the bottom of one or two 
mysteries. I had hoped to be able to come to the floor today to 
indicate that one of those mysteries had been solved or that we were 
closer to its resolution.
  The Speaker will recall that earlier this year the United States 
Congress passed a stimulus bill that was requested by the new President 
of the United States, about $789 billion. And whether you agreed with 
that legislation or not, during its path through the legislative 
process there was great concern--and continues to be great concern; I 
heard one of my colleagues give a Special Order this afternoon about 
the bonuses, the millions of dollars of bonuses that are being paid to 
executives on Wall Street, executives who work for companies who, in 
some instances, have led to the mess we find ourselves in financially.
  When the stimulus bill was being crafted over in the other body, the 
United States Senate, two Senators--one Republican and one Democrat, 
the Republican is Olympia Snowe of Maine, the Democrat is Ron Wyden of 
Oregon--they crafted language that would have put strings on, would 
have said maybe when things aren't going so good and we're giving 
billions of dollars of taxpayer money to these Wall Street firms, maybe 
we should have some conditions under which the bonuses are paid and how 
they're paid and how much they can get. But then a funny thing 
happened. The House passed its version, the Senate passed its version. 
Madam Speaker, you know that when we have bills that pass each Chamber 
and there are some differences in them, we have to appoint a conference 
committee, and they meet and work out the differences and then send 
back to us a conference report.

                              {time}  1400

  Somehow, somewhere in that conference committee, the language that 
was put in by Senator Snowe and Senator Wyden was taken out of the bill 
and about 40 words that are located on the easel to my left were 
inserted into the bill. And, Madam Speaker, as you read that language, 
not only were there no longer any strings on those bonuses, but this 
paragraph specifically protected any bonus that was given to any 
official, including the ones that became controversial a little later, 
AIG, and said any bonus that was agreed to before February 11, and 
February 11 was the day that the stimulus bill was passed, so anything 
agreed to before that day was protected. Then about a week later, the 
news came out that AIG, the insurance company that's received billions 
of dollars of taxpayers' money, was going to pay its executives $173 
million in bonuses.
  And you should have heard the hue and cry around this place, Madam 
Speaker. Everybody was shocked. The President of the United States was 
shocked. Members of Congress were shocked. Members of the United States 
Senate were shocked. People at the Department of Treasury were shocked.
  Well, they shouldn't have been shocked because, after this language 
was inserted, the bill came back to both the House and the Senate. 
Every

[[Page 14958]]

Republican voted against it; every Democrat, save 11, voted for the 
stimulus bill that included this paragraph that protected the $173 
million in bonuses.
  We have been coming to the floor for the last several months to try 
to find out, because nobody's fessing up. Nobody has said, Hey, you 
know what? I took out the first language and I put in this language, 
and maybe you could tell us why. But nobody will do that. Everybody 
wants this issue to go away. And as a matter of fact, people were so 
shocked that their reaction, the majority's reaction, was to come up 
with really a stupid bill, and that was to tax these bonuses, rather 
than going back and doing the right thing and taking out their mistake, 
to tax these bonuses at 90 percent.
  And I will tell you why I call that a stupid bill, Madam Speaker. I 
call it a stupid bill because the person who got the biggest bonus at 
AIG got $6.4 million. I think it was a man. So if you're really mad at 
that guy, why just take away 90 percent of his bonus? Why don't you 
take away 100 percent of his bonus? So that stupid piece of 
legislation, and, thankfully, President Obama didn't think much of it 
and neither did the Senate, but the legislation over here still would 
have left that guy at AIG with $640,000. Well, Madam Speaker, in my 
district in northeastern Ohio, it would take 16 years for somebody 
making $40,000 a year to make $640,000. So again, rather than 
correcting the mistake, they came up with--it wasn't even a fig leaf, 
it was a fig tree to pretend that they were really mad about the 
bonuses that they authorized with their vote.
  So we, myself and other Members, Mr. McCotter from Michigan, have 
been coming to the floor. And I grew up playing a game called Clue, a 
very wonderful game to play around the kitchen table with your kids. 
Hasbro, I think, is the manufacturer of it. And so with apologies to 
Hasbro, we came up with ``Clue,'' because if you play Clue, and, Madam 
Speaker, I don't know if you're a Clue player or not, but the way Clue 
works is you start with a murder has been committed. In this case, it 
wasn't a murder. It was pretty bad, but it wasn't a murder. You start 
with what happened, and what happened is that somebody put in a bill in 
the middle of the night language that protected these bonuses that 
everybody became shocked about. So that's the crime in this particular 
instance. So you have to find out who did it. You have to find out 
where it happened in Clue, and you have to find out where the weapon 
is.
  Now, the great news is that we know what the weapon is. It wasn't a 
gun or the lead pipe or the rope or any of that stuff. It was a pen. 
Somebody took a pen, took out the language that would have prohibited 
the bonuses, and then took the pen and wrote this paragraph into the 
bill.
  So we got a third of the way there and I was feeling pretty good 
about it. And in our subsequent discussions here on the floor, we've 
pretty much narrowed it down. Here you have the Banking Committee, the 
Speaker's office, the conference room. And pretty clearly, it either 
happened in the Speaker's office or in the conference room. We get that 
from published reports, the shuttle diplomacy. I wish I could tell you 
that there was a Republican suspect in this, but there weren't any 
Republicans permitted into the conference room. So we believe, and I 
think for the purpose of this exercise we're going to say, that it 
happened in the conference room.
  The missing piece and where I really thought we were getting close 
was who did it. Let's finish Clue, that it was Colonel Mustard with a 
pen in the conference room. And around this board we have the people 
that we believe, we know, were in the room and were capable of making 
this insertion. Madam Speaker, I know you know who they are. But just 
sort of running around the board here, down here Charlie Rangel, the 
distinguished chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Here, a former 
colleague of ours, Rahm Emanuel, who is President Obama's Chief of 
Staff. Up here is Mr. Orszag, the OMB Director, the fellow that's the 
bean counter down at the White House. Over here is Senator Dodd from 
Connecticut, who is the chairman of the Banking Committee over in the 
Senate. In the upper corner is Ms. Pelosi, the distinguished Speaker of 
the House of Representatives, and Mr. Harry Reid, the distinguished 
majority leader over in the United States Senate. So we have narrowed 
it down to one of these folks.
  And the question mark down there, and this is really a disappointment 
to me, sadly, some are just saying that it was some staffer that put 
the thing in. So the question mark is this staffer who apparently has 
the power to change law and make law. And it may have been a staffer 
who was using the pen, but clearly a staffer had to be directed by 
somebody to do that.
  We thought originally that Senator Dodd, the chairman of the Banking 
Committee, might be the person we should focus in on. He's made some 
public statements, but the public statements now have gone back and 
forth. His office says that they put it into the bill at the request of 
the Treasury. The Treasury says that they put it in at the request of 
Senator Dodd.
  So here's what we did. Being the sleuths that we're attempting to be, 
we went out and filed a bill that basically would have required these 
folks to hand over some documents and fess up and tell us why they did 
it. It went to the Financial Services Committee here in the House. And 
to his credit, one of the heroes of this Clue game is Congressman 
Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who chairs the Financial Services 
Committee. He called up the resolution, and that committee voted for it 
64-0. So I'm feeling pretty good about it now. I think that we're 
actually going to get someplace. But, sadly, the way that this place 
works is that when legislation is reported out of the committee, it 
doesn't come here to the floor for discussion or debate unless it is 
scheduled by the distinguished majority leader of this body, Mr. Hoyer 
of Maryland. And even though that event occurred a couple of months 
ago, Mr. Hoyer has apparently determined that we are too busy here in 
the House of Representatives to deal with this issue. And we're going 
to talk a little bit about how busy we've been in a couple of minutes. 
But we've had a setback.
  So Chairman Frank, again, deserves credit because, even though the 
majority leader won't bring this bill to the floor so we can figure it 
out with documents, Chairman Frank said to the Treasury, Look, just sit 
down with the people that are interested in finding out the truth here 
and hand things over.
  So we had some conversations, and, sadly, I have to report to the 
House, Madam Speaker, that we've had a setback. And while I wanted very 
much to come and be able to solve this game so we could get on to 
something else, but there was a meeting, a conversation, on June 3 
between representatives of the Financial Services Committee and a 
fellow by the name of Damon Munchus, M-u-n-c-h-u-s, who is the Deputy 
Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs. He indicated at this 
meeting where we were talking about it, and I was promised a letter 
talking about who did this, he indicated in that conversation that the 
Treasury thought that that meeting was to talk about policy options and 
had nothing to do with this particular issue. And he then stated that 
if the true goal of the meeting was to reconstruct conversations 
between Treasury and Senator Dodd and his staff regarding this bonus 
provision and how they got into the stimulus bill--and I would say duh. 
I mean, what have we been trying to do here for the last 3 months?--
that on the advice of counsel, the Treasury Department would be unable 
to provide any documents about those conversations.
  So, again, it becomes kind of important that we have the majority 
leader schedule this resolution so we can get the documents so we can 
figure it out and we can move on to something else.
  And I see my friend from Michigan is here, and I yield to Mr. 
McCotter of Michigan.
  Mr. McCOTTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding through the Chair.
  Just two quick inquiries of the distinguished gentleman from Ohio. 
First,

[[Page 14959]]

I was wondering if you considered the response from Mr. Munchus to be 
indicative of the most transparent administration in history. And, 
secondly, I would like to commend you for putting the question mark 
signifying the poor staffer who will be blamed if we continue this, 
unless, of course, someone confesses or the media actually looks into 
the matter, because I remember growing up and I watched reruns of Star 
Trek. Whenever the captain and Bones or Spock would get on that 
transporter platform, there would always be somebody you didn't 
recognize, and you knew they weren't coming back. So when I see that 
question mark, I just think of the poor staffer that, at the direction 
of someone else, actually utilized the pen, because if this inquiry 
continues, as it will, you know that he may not be coming back.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman. And the answer to the first 
part of your question is clearly this is not indicative of 
transparency.
  Look, all we want to do is move on and find out why somebody felt it 
necessary in a dark room in the dark of night to put in language that 
protected these $173 million worth of bonuses and why they did it. They 
may have a great explanation. I doubt it, but they may have a great 
explanation. We just want them to come forward and tell us ``I did it'' 
and why they did it.
  So I can't report, Madam Speaker, that we have solved this particular 
episode of Clue. And, sadly, we have another mystery that has sort of 
reared its ugly head here on Capitol Hill.
  Mr. McCOTTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding through the Chair.
  Let's also put out that we have, in fact, understood from the White 
House, in fairness to them, that the President has taken responsibility 
for the AIG bonus. He said so, which I think is only appropriate since 
he signed the bill that executed it into law. But what we are really 
looking for is that shadowy figure between the President of the United 
States, who may or may not have known the bonus was in the bill, and 
the poor staffer that may have been directed to do this. So we want to 
point out that we are trying to be fair. We have not determined whether 
the President even knew the AIG bonus was in the stimulus bill, which 
was rushed in a crisis atmosphere upon a deadline that he set, and the 
staffer who may potentially receive all the culpability unfairly.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman for that.
  And I would go a step further. I am certain that President Obama did 
not know that this had been inserted into the stimulus bill because he 
appeared on television after the bonuses were given and said he was 
shocked that these bonuses have been given, and people in his 
administration said they were going to do everything within their power 
to get this money back. So I agree with you 100 percent. The President 
did not know, to the best of my knowledge, that this was occurring. And 
even our colleagues in the House, Mr. McCotter, the Democrats who voted 
for the stimulus bill, except for 11 of them, I don't think they knew 
it either.
  I'm not just trying to be a nitpicker. I will tell you that one of 
the problems is you may remember that stimulus bill that spent $789 
billion of our constituents' money. It was about a thousand pages long. 
So it was like the phone book of New York City. And as that bill was 
coming to the floor that week, one of our colleagues on the Republican 
side made a motion and came up with this novel idea about how about if 
we have 48 hours, 2 days, to read the thousand pages, and here's 
another novel idea, what if we put it on the Internet so that our 
constituents, who are paying $789 billion, they have 2 days to sort of 
digest it and call their Representatives and express their views? That 
was Tuesday. The problem is the bill was taking a little longer than 
people anticipated. The President had promised that he was going to 
sign it by President's Day, so the bill was filed Thursday at midnight.
  Now, I've apologized to my constituents for not being up Thursday at 
midnight to immediately begin reading the thousand pages. But when we 
arrived at work the next day, on Friday, we were told, You're not going 
to have 48 hours to read the bill; you're going to have 90 minutes to 
read the bill that spends $789 billion, and good luck to you. Now, I 
have been here 15 years, and I would suggest to you when you legislate 
that way, silly things happen. And I think a lot of our friends on the 
Democratic side of the aisle who voted for the stimulus bill that 
protected those bonuses didn't know it either, in fairness.

                              {time}  1415

  But that's why it's important, I think, to protect the integrity of 
the House and both Republicans, Democrats, the President of the United 
States--who did it and why did they do it. Just tell us and then we'll 
be done.
  But we've come to, sadly, a second mystery and this one is more 
catastrophic when it comes to the lives of people in this country. As 
you know, Mr. Speaker, the auto industry is in big trouble, and we are 
now faced with the bankruptcies of Chrysler and General Motors, 
Chrysler going first.
  In the days leading up to the filing of the bankruptcy for Chrysler, 
there were a number of events occurring that I want to describe. On 
April 30 at 11:30, the White House orchestrated a conference call with 
Members of Congress, Governors, Senators, anybody that was interested 
in what was going on with Chrysler, and in that conference call they 
indicated, This is a great day, we're saving 30,000 jobs and 
everything's going to be okay. I mean, there's going to be some pain 
but everything's going to be okay.
  At noon that day, the President of the United States took to the 
airwaves and made the announcement that the bankruptcy was the way we 
were going to go. Over here on the far easel are President Obama's 
exact words: 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 the communities that depend on it.
  And then at 1 o'clock, after the President had his press event, there 
was a second conference call with Robert Nardelli, who was the chief 
executive officer at Chrysler, with again the same group of Governors, 
Members, that were interested in it, and the first question on that 
conference call came from Governor Granholm, the Democratic Governor of 
the State of Michigan where my friend Mr. McCotter is from. She was 
concerned, because the President's announcement said 30,000 jobs had 
been saved. And while everybody was celebrating that fact, we all knew 
that there are more than 30,000 people that work for Chrysler in the 
United States of America.
  Governor Granholm said, Well, listen, we congratulate you, we 
congratulate the President, I think this is really good news, but I 
hope that the President wasn't speaking in code. The President said 
that 30,000 jobs had been saved and we know that the number is about 
39,000. So was he, you know, sort of just giving good news and we'll 
find out about the bad news later? Or have really all of the jobs been 
saved? And will there, in fact, be no plant closures?
  Well, in response to that, Mr. Nardelli indicated that, Oh, no, no, 
no, no, the President was just using a round number. We don't expect 
plant closures and we don't expect any difficulties.
  Now Governor Granholm did what I did. I don't know what my friend the 
gentleman from Michigan did but I issued a press release praising the 
administration, praising the auto task force and saying this is 
wonderful news, because I in fact had--I used to have--a Chrysler 
stamping plant in my district in a place called Twinsburg, Ohio. So I 
sent out a notice saying this is really good news. Well, sadly, that 
afternoon, and it's kind of a famous picture now, but this guy with a 
cart is taking all these banker boxes into the bankruptcy court up in 
New York. In that filing and clearly they weren't written between the 
President's announcement at noon and 3 o'clock when they were filed, 
located in there is an affidavit from a guy named Robert Manzo, who is 
one of Chrysler's consultants, and in there they identify eight plants 
that are going to be shuttered and 9,000 people, mostly United

[[Page 14960]]

Auto Worker members, that are going to be out of jobs.
  Now imagine, if you go with the scenario that I just indicated, that 
there were some people that were a little surprised. There are two more 
observations I want to make about that. We serve with a Member by the 
name of Gwen Moore who is a Democrat from Wisconsin--Milwaukee. During 
the course of that phone call, she specifically said, Hey, you know 
what, I have this auto plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a Chrysler plant in 
Kenosha, Wisconsin. I just want to ask you, under this plan, are we 
going to be okay?
  And Mr. Nardelli went on and waxed on about how important the Kenosha 
plant was and the 800 people that work there, and, yeah, you need to 
rest easy, it's going to be okay.
  Well, sadly, after the bankruptcy documents were filed, Kenosha, 
Wisconsin's engine plant was on the list of closures. Again, I think 
Representative Moore had some questions, as did the Governor of 
Wisconsin, saying, Well, what are you talking about? You told us you 
weren't going to close Kenosha.
  Not to be outdone, Mr. Nardelli sent a letter of apology. He said, I 
want to begin by expressing my apologies. He goes on to say that in 
response to Congresswoman Moore's question about Kenosha, I mistakenly 
conveyed the status of the Kenosha plant with Trenton, Michigan. 
Trenton, Michigan, doesn't sound like Kenosha, Wisconsin to me. It's 
not only not a sound-alike, they're in different States for crying out 
loud.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to put Mr. Nardelli's letter of May 7 into 
the Record.

                                                 Chrysler LLC,

                                    Auburn Hills, MI, May 7, 2009.
     Hon. Governor Jim Doyle,
     East State Capitol,
     Madison, WI.
       Dear Governor Doyle: I want to start by expressing my 
     sincere apologies about the confusion surrounding comments I 
     made on a conference call with you and other elected 
     officials about the Kenosha Engine Plant on April 30, 2009.
       In response to a question from Congresswoman Moore 
     regarding the future of the Kenosha Plant, I mistakenly 
     conveyed the status of the Phoenix investment in Trenton, MI. 
     The facts I described were accurate for Trenton and not 
     Kenosha, WI. I recognize this has added further confusion to 
     an already difficult situation.
       I would like to take this opportunity to clarify the 
     Phoenix Engine Program production status.
       In 2006, DaimlerChrysler started a program for a new V6 
     engine family. Based on industry volumes and forecasted 
     demand, the initial planning volumes were 1.76 million units. 
     In order to achieve this level of production, a site 
     selection process was initiated that included four new 
     locations in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Mexico.
       Before site selection was finalized, the engine volume 
     planned for the combined company was reduced when the common 
     engine program with Daimler was redefined as a Chrysler only 
     engine. This reduced the number of production sites to three.
       These three sites would have the capability of producing 
     1.3 million V6 engines. Early in 2007, for a variety of 
     reasons, the Corporation was required to reduce its capital 
     investments in all programs which required a new production 
     strategy for the Phoenix engine. Therefore, Chrysler decided 
     to reduce the number of greenfield plant locations to two. In 
     May and June of 2007 the Company chose those two sites and 
     announced the greenfield investments of $730 million in 
     Trenton and $570 million in Saltillo and broke ground on the 
     construction of the facilities. The greenfield decisions were 
     based on the adjacency of the proposed plants to the point-
     of-use assembly locations.
       In February of 2007, Chrysler notified the State of 
     Wisconsin and Kenosha officials that a greenfield site was no 
     longer viable, but rather that a retool of the existing 
     Kenosha Engine Plant was under consideration. The Kenosha 
     retooling plan resulted in necessary capital savings; 
     however, it required the Kenosha site to continue to produce 
     its current engines through 2013.
       In late 2007 and 2008, deterioration in industry volume 
     resulted in a drop of the 1.3 million unit demand to 880,000. 
     This reduction in volume and the need for Kenosha to produce 
     its current engines resulted in the company deciding to defer 
     the retooling strategy.
       Chrysler kept Kenosha Area Business Alliance updated on the 
     status of the retool through 2008. As the market began to 
     collapse through late 2008 and 2009, a decision was made to 
     idle the Kenosha Engine Plant in December of 2010. This and 
     other restructuring actions were included in the Chrysler LLC 
     February 17, 2009 Viability Plan submission to the United 
     States Treasury and the President's Auto Task Force. The 
     specific plant actions, including Kenosha Engine Plant, were 
     not made public because it would have been presumptuous to 
     assume that the plan was going to be approved and 
     inappropriate to communicate prior to thorough discussion 
     with the United Auto Workers union.
       On April 3, 2009, Chrysler officials met with the Kenosha 
     Task Force and reiterated the need to defer the Phoenix 
     Program. Upon emergence from Chapter 11, plans are to 
     continue to produce the current engine families through 
     December of 2010 at the Kenosha Engine Plant in order to 
     support our current products. The Trenton Engine site has 
     been completely facilitized and will launch when we exit from 
     Chapter 11. The Saltillo Engine site has also been 
     facilitized and is scheduled to launch mid-to-late 2010.
       We would have hoped to have been able to convey this 
     information to you and the community in a more timely 
     fashion, but circumstances simply did not afford us an 
     opportunity to do so. It is expected that virtually all 
     employees associated with Kenosha and the other closures 
     announced in our Chapter 11 filings will be offered 
     employment with the new company.
       While the company continues to address difficult market 
     conditions, we expect that the Chrysler Fiat alliance will 
     ultimately provide customers and dealers a broader 
     competitive line of fuel-efficient vehicles and technology, 
     and will result in the preservation of more than 30,000 jobs 
     in the United States along with thousands of employees at 
     dealers and suppliers.
       Again, please accept my sincere apologies for the 
     confusion. We will continue to work with the people of 
     Kenosha to ensure an orderly transition.
           Sincerely,
                                                      Bob Nardell,
                                                 Chairman and CEO.

  Then the other thing that occurred is, you may remember, Mr. Speaker, 
that the UAW, the United Auto Workers, were asked by Chrysler to enter 
into a new contract--a contract that gave up benefits, gave up wages, 
gave up off days. But they were told that if they supported this new 
contract, that was going to lead to a new, vibrant Chrysler where their 
jobs would be secure. And so they voted on April 28. All the Chrysler 
workers went to the polls on April 28 to say whether or not they 
approved or disapproved this new contract. I don't know all of the 
election results, but I do know in my little community of Twinsburg, 
Ohio that has 1,200, or did have 1,200 UAW members, 88 percent of their 
members voted for it, voted to give up benefits, give up wages, as long 
as it helped the company that they worked for survive.
  So they voted for it, the thing passed, and then the next day they 
find out that they're out of a job. Mr. Doug Rice, who's the president 
of UAW Local 122 which covers Twinsburg, indicated that, his quote was, 
``I don't know if I was told the whole truth on everything. I don't 
feel like I was. It would be a shame if this was something that was 
known for some time. If they kept this back from people, that's wrong. 
That's wrong.''
  He was then asked, What do you think would have happened if you had 
known that you were going to be out of a job by approving this 
contract? He said, ``Needless to say, people ain't going to vote to 
eliminate their jobs.''
  And I think that's right. I don't think any of these 9,000 people who 
worked at the eight plants would have said, hey, let's approve this new 
contract and vote ourselves out of a job.
  I would like to put Mr. Rice's quotes from the Cleveland Plain Dealer 
on May 1 into the Record, Mr. Speaker.

       ``I don't know if I was told the whole truth on 
     everything,'' said Doug Rice, president of United Auto 
     Workers Local 122. ``I don't feel like I was. It would be a 
     shame if this was something that was known for some time. If 
     they kept this back from people, that's wrong. That's 
     wrong.''--PD May 1
       Host: Would that vote have been the same had you had the 
     information you have now?
       ``No. Needless to say, people ain't going to vote to 
     eliminate their jobs,'' said Doug Rice, President of UAW 
     Local 122 in Twinsburg--WCPN (Public Radio, Sound of Ideas), 
     May 5, 2009

  And then the mayor of Twinsburg, Ohio, and, Mr. Speaker, if you 
haven't been to Twinsburg, I will tell you, you may want to come this 
summer, or any summer. Twinsburg is famous for its Twins Festival and 
twins from cradle to very elderly twins show up. Last year I think we 
had 4,000 sets of twins. If you think you're seeing double, you will 
see double in Twinsburg during their Twins Festival.
  Their mayor wrote to Mr. Bloom, Ron Bloom, who is on the President's 
automobile task force and basically

[[Page 14961]]

said, What happened? She was on the call, she heard that everything was 
going to be okay and now all of a sudden she finds that a Chrysler 
plant that provides 13 percent of her city's tax base is going to be 
closed and 1,200 people are going to be out of work.
  Basically she said, Look, I watched the President. I was on these 
telephone calls. What happened?
  Mr. Bloom, in a letter dated May 6, writes back that what the 
President's comments were meant to convey, they meant to convey the 
message that the bankruptcy of Chrysler had in no way changed these 
plans.
  I would like to put this into the Record as well.
                                                      May 6, 2009.
       Dear Mayor Procop: Thank you for the note. Hopefully I can 
     clarify the situation at hand regarding the Twinsburg Plant. 
     On February 17th, Chrysler developed a viability plan which 
     proposed several plant closures, including a closure of the 
     Twinsburg Stamping Plant. The decision to close the Twinsburg 
     Plant was not in any way driven or influenced by the U.S. 
     Government. It was identified based on an assessment by 
     Chrysler's management of what was necessary to reduce 
     Chrysler's manufacturing capacity in the face of extremely 
     poor market conditions.
       While the original 2/17 plan submitted by Chrysler was not 
     deemed viable by the Task Force, the more recently proposed 
     Fiat/Chrysler alliance plan has been approved. 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.
       We realize how unfortunate this situation is, especially 
     for the citizens of Twinsburg whose livelihoods are tied so 
     directly to the Chrysler plant. The current economic 
     environment has forced many communities to make sacrifices 
     that seem unequal and unfair, and the Task Force is working 
     actively to mitigate the impacts of these sacrifices. During 
     his viability determination on March 30, the President 
     announced Dr. Ed Montgomery, former Deputy Labor Secretary as 
     Director of Recovery for Auto Communities. Since his 
     announcement Ed has been going into communities and hearing 
     people's concerns and he has been assembling an interagency 
     effort to support communities and workers and promote new 
     job-creating initiatives.
       Ed's role is to work with the communities that have been 
     negatively affected, my role is to work with Chrysler and GM 
     in their efforts to restructure, so that we can once again 
     see a strong and competitive domestic auto industry.
           Sincerely,
                                                        Ron Bloom.

  What these plans are that they're talking about is, both car 
companies, Chrysler and GM, filed viability plans with the task force 
in February. February 17, I believe. They were both rejected. But 
somewhere in conversations between the auto task force and Chrysler, it 
was indicated that there were going to have to be some plant closures. 
But nobody told anybody. There was no public document, no public 
discussion, no notification to the United Auto Workers--at least at the 
local level--that plants were going to be closed. That was the response 
from Mr. Bloom.
  I yield to the gentleman for his thoughts.
  Mr. McCOTTER. I appreciate that recap of exactly what happened. And 
now subsequent to these events which have had such a devastating effect 
upon my community, Michigan, the entire Midwest and America's 
manufacturing base, we hear the administration and the task force 
saying that they did not determine which plants would be closed. They 
did not determine which dealerships would be closed. That is a 
factually true statement. But by omission they do not add that they 
determined how many plants would be closed and how many jobs would be 
lost and how many dealerships would be closed. Because when they 
rejected those viability reports, they said they did not go deeply 
enough quickly enough to provide viability to Chrysler or a path 
forward for General Motors.
  Put in terms of the human cost, that means more people had to lose 
their jobs, more plants had to close, more dealers had to be culled 
from the franchise ranks.
  So I would hope that in the future with the task force, again that 
the most transparent administration in United States history by its own 
profession would be honest with the American people as to where the 
decision for these lost jobs came from, not merely which ones faced the 
ax.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman.
  That leads to the next point. Because Mr. Bloom from the President's 
task force testified yesterday, or the day before, in the United States 
Senate. But first let me finish this point.
  Going back to the plant closures, what is now on that far easel, 
that's a paragraph that was in the UAW contract that people were asked 
to approve, and it specifically was bargained for by the people in my 
district in Twinsburg. This paragraph certainly doesn't tell them that 
their plant's going to close the next day, but it indicates that 
Chrysler's going to bring more work to the stamping plant.
  So when my folks went to vote, they voted not thinking they were 
going to be out of work, they thought that more work was going to be 
coming via the agreement with Chrysler.
  What the gentleman is now referring to is in addition to the 9,000 
people put out of work and the eight Chrysler plants and, on top of 
that, I think it's 14 General Motors plants, we have now been told. For 
some reason in this bankruptcy, somebody has come up with a brainy idea 
that you can have better car companies if you don't have any auto 
dealers. And so the initial request in the bankruptcy was that Chrysler 
close 789 car dealerships in its network. We now know that General 
Motors is going to close about 2,600 of theirs. According to the 
National Automobile Dealers Association, about 60 people work at every 
car dealership. If you take the combined closings of car dealerships at 
Chrysler and General Motors, it's north of 200,000 people are going to 
be thrown out of work that work at these dealerships.
  What my friend Mr. McCotter was referring to is that when you 
question the administration, and again not the President. I want to be 
crystal clear about this. When President Obama said on April 30, this 
statement, that nobody's going to be negatively impacted, no 
communities are going to be negatively impacted, I believe he meant it 
and I believe he believed it to be so.
  I don't think, however, that his automobile task force has served him 
well. By that I mean, Mr. Bloom testified yesterday, or the day before, 
in the United States Senate and Senator Hutchison of the State of Texas 
said, Hey, I don't understand a couple of things. First of all, it's a 
strange business model that you can sell more stuff with less stores. I 
never learned that in Econ 101 or anywhere else while I was in school.

                              {time}  1430

  But we don't think that car dealers cost the car companies any money.
  But this issue has come up. Who said that all these car dealers 
costing 200,000 people to lose their jobs needed to be closed? And the 
gentleman's point is this: When Chrysler and GM submitted their studies 
about how they wanted to proceed, they had a plan, an orderly closeout 
of dealerships and consolidations, and they were told they weren't 
aggressive enough.
  Specifically, Mr. Bloom testified over in the Senate that when they 
rejected the plans, he said, I think we said that General Motors is 
burdened by excess capacity. We said that their plant footprint, the 
manufacturing plants, has excess capacity, their dealer network has 
excess capacity, and the white and blue collar people that work there 
need to be downsized, and we told General Motors and Chrysler when we 
rejected their February 17 plan, you need to go back and you need to 
take a more aggressive approach. And, yes, that included dealers, but 
it included plants and a white collar head count.
  So, it is parsing of words to say, and I have never said and I don't 
think my friend from Michigan has ever said, that Mr. Bloom said you 
have to close the dealership in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They didn't do 
that. But they did determine the parameters and they did indicate that 
you had to get down to a certain size, which then led to and will lead 
to 200,000 people being out of work.
  I yield to my friend.

[[Page 14962]]


  Mr. McCOTTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Again, it cannot be emphasized enough that while we talk about jobs 
and numbers, and we have talked about the jobs that the United Auto 
Workers will lose, I can attest to you that throughout this bankruptcy 
process the people of my community, the people of Michigan, the people 
at Chrysler and the people at GM thought that we had a chance to avoid 
a bankruptcy, that that was the hope we were given.
  We were given it by the first Bush administration, which initially 
granted the bridge loan to the autos. Early on in the process, we were 
told that the auto industry would not be walked away from. Early on in 
the process we started to get signals, however, that the bankruptcy 
might become a more and more likely option.
  Yet we were never told, as reports are starting to come out, that 
early on the administration's Auto Task Force had made the decision 
that bankruptcy would be the best option. And as we watched Chrysler 
and as we now watch GM, two of the big three domestic auto makers in 
bankruptcy, we see that clearly that best option was pursued and 
promoted.
  But, again, as the gentleman from Ohio points out, these are figures. 
These are facts. Throughout this process there was a cruel uncertainty 
that affected the people of my district, that affected the people of 
Michigan and throughout the manufacturing sector. No one knew when the 
bell would toll for them.
  So as the process continued, especially if you talk about the United 
Auto Workers who ratified the agreement, as you got closer to the point 
of Chrysler going into bankruptcy, when you signed that agreement 
without any indication that you were going to lose your job and that 
you might actually be a part of Fiat and Chrysler going forward, to 
learn in the blink of an eye that all that hope was gone, after you had 
done everything you could, after your union president and their team 
had done everything they could to save as many jobs as they possibly 
could, to lose it all at that point is exceedingly cruel.
  I have talked to them. They feel this in my district. I have talked 
to auto dealers who, after a lifetime of work in the industry, of being 
pillars of their community, in the blink of an eye have lost everything 
that they have worked for, who have talked on the phone in tears or in 
person been on the verge of tears about what happened to them and why 
they cannot get an answer.
  So through the Chair to the gentleman from Ohio, we see a pattern 
emerging. Again, I absolutely agree with the gentleman from Ohio. I 
believe that the President had no idea his administration had put the 
AIG bonuses in the stimulus bill. I truly believe the President of the 
United States had absolutely no idea about what would follow the 
consequences of the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies in terms of the human 
cost to the working people of America.
  But what I cannot figure out is that if that is the case, if we are 
correct in our assessment, why the President of the United States, A, 
does not want to find out who in his administration put him in that 
position, and more importantly who put the people of the auto companies 
and the workers in that position, or the taxpayers of America in that 
position, and then as the most transparent administration in American 
history does not want to tell the American people who those actors 
were. It would seem to me that would serve the country well and it 
would serve our President well.
  I yield back.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman. And just to continue talking 
about the dealers and the 200,000 people, and you know what? It is more 
than 200,000 people, because I assume most of them have families, 
husbands, wives, children, grandchildren, whatever the case may be.
  The other interesting thing about car dealers, at least in my part of 
the world in Ohio, if you go to one of your children's Little League 
games or soccer games, you always see that it is a car dealer that has 
sponsored the team. The car dealer sponsors the chamber of commerce. 
The car dealer gives to charity. The car dealer does the food drive. So 
you are talking about not only displacing 200,000 people; you are 
talking about ripping the heart out of a number of communities.
  You could understand it if these dealerships were somehow a drain on 
Chrysler and GM. But on June 3, Amy Brown, who is a lawyer for the 
affected Chrysler dealers, had the opportunity to cross-examine the 
aforementioned Mr. Nardelli, who was the chief executive officer of 
Chrysler, and was asked why it was necessary to eliminate the 
franchises when neither the government nor Fiat, the group that is 
buying Chrysler out of bankruptcy, asked for it to happen.
  Mr. Nardelli said the 789 dealers represent a host of expenses. But 
then he was asked to quantify how much those things cost the automaker, 
and Mr. Nardelli said he couldn't, and he wasn't sure if his company 
had ever determined those exact costs.
  At a hearing last week up in bankruptcy court they had a number of 
dealers in, and there are a number of dealers here on Capitol Hill 
testifying in front of the Energy and Commerce Committee. But just 
three quotes from car dealers who testified up in New York in the 
bankruptcy court.
  Leo Jerome, who owns a car dealership in Lansing: ``I just want my 
day in court and give me a fair hearing. After I had a 10-month supply 
of cars, they gave me three weeks to sell them all. I think the White 
House Mafia is trying to run this thing through.''
  Tony Manicotti, who has a car dealership in Sterling Heights, 
Michigan, said, ``They've ripped our heart and soul out. It's been part 
of me since I was a child. It's hard to believe what the government has 
done. They are supposed to save employment--not create unemployment.''
  And an Orleans Dodge Chrysler Jeep dealer, Mike Comiskey, who was 
responding to a question by the bankruptcy judge, Judge Gonzalez, his 
dealership had been ruined by Hurricane Katrina but he reopened it 5 
months later. During the course of Hurricane Katrina, he provided fleet 
vehicles to police departments and fire stations in every parish of 
Louisiana that was affected by the hurricane, and also provided 
vehicles for the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans.
  Mr. Comiskey says, ``I will probably end up living out of my car as a 
result of this set of decisions.''
  Now, it brings me to I think where the gentleman was going, and that 
is the Clue travel edition: Who is this task force and who made the 
decision to close eight Chrysler plants without telling the workers 
that it was going to happen, throwing 9,000 people out of work? Who 
made the decision to be more aggressive and throw 200,000 people out of 
work that work for auto dealers?
  Now, before I talk about the Auto Task Force qualifications and where 
we are going to go with the game of Clue, I have to tell you I have 
mentioned Mr. Manzo, who is the Chrysler restructuring expert, and you 
may recall, Mr. Speaker, there was some discussion about bondholders. 
God forbid someone could take some of their money and invest it in a 
company in this country and be told that they were secured creditors.
  The secured creditors at Chrysler had invested money. And you know 
what? They have since been characterized as ``unpatriotic'' or ``not 
wanting to go with the flow.''
  But the one group that was most prominent in this is the Indiana 
State Teachers Pension Fund. So the Indiana State Teachers Pension Fund 
thought that buying Chrysler stock was a good investment and they 
couldn't lose, because as bondholders they were first in line should 
something like a bad bankruptcy happen. Well, we have rewritten the 200 
years of bankruptcy law, and it doesn't matter if you are a secured 
creditor or not.
  But Mr. Manzo called Matthew Feldman, who is an attorney for the 
President's Auto Task Force, on the day before this announcement was 
made, and he basically said, Hey, I think I have a way that we can 
avoid the bankruptcy of Chrysler and restructure some of

[[Page 14963]]

this debt and work with the bondholders.
  Sadly, this is from an email submitted in the bankruptcy court up in 
New York. Mr. Feldman's first response by email, not real grownup, it 
says: ``I'm not now talking to you. You went where you shouldn't.''
  Well, Mr. Manzo apologizes in a subsequent email, and it comes back, 
``It's over. The President doesn't negotiate second rounds. We have 
given and lent billions of dollars so your team could manage this 
properly. And now you're telling me to bend over to a terrorist like 
Lauria?'' Mr. Lauria is the lawyer that represents the Indiana 
teachers' pension fund. ``That's BS.''
  Of course, the next day we have the bankruptcy.
  But you say, you know, maybe this task force of the President's, 
which I believe is not serving the President well, is made up of people 
who are really knowledgeable in business, in the car industry, in the 
car dealership industry, and so we should probably defer, because I 
don't happen to be any of those things. So maybe we should defer to 
their judgment in this matter.
  The gentleman has a thought he would like to share?
  Mr. McCOTTER. Yes. Through the Speaker to the gentleman from Ohio, 
first I caution you that if you continue to quote Mr. Feldman, you may 
get a PG-13 rating for your Special Order.
  But I would also like to point out that many of us in Detroit had 
grave concerns when the membership of the Auto Task Force was announced 
because of the absence of an understanding of the auto industry and 
manufacturing, and, to be quite honest with you, the absence of some of 
the Members owning cars.
  I yield back.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman, and that is where we were 
going to go next. There was a hearing here on Capitol Hill about 3 
weeks ago in the Judiciary Committee and the witnesses were asked by a 
colleague of ours who joined us the last time we did this, Mr. Jordan 
of Ohio, Do any of these individuals on the Auto Task Force have any 
expertise in how car manufacturing or car dealership businesses 
operate? The witness indicated the answer is none; they have no 
experience. He went on to say that The Wall Street Journal actually did 
a survey of the members of the Auto Task Force and discovered that a 
substantial portion of them don't even own cars.
  Now, I want to be fair, because I think that witness was talking 
without all of the facts. But there is an article that appeared in the 
Detroit News, close to the gentleman's home, on February 23, and that 
is not quite right. Of the 10 senior policy aides who work on the 
President's task force, two own American cars and the rest either own 
no cars or they own cars manufactured in other countries, foreign cars.
  Does the gentleman have a thought on that?
  Mr. McCOTTER. Yes. I would just like to go back to the quotes from 
the emails, because it is very important that we catch one of the 
underlying sub-texts to this entire situation.
  We were told that it was the investors that forced Chrysler into 
bankruptcy due to their obstinacy and greed. And yet from the emails we 
see here, this is precisely one of those investors who is seeking to 
come to an agreement with the Auto Task Force to preclude that 
bankruptcy.
  I relate this back to what the gentleman showed us from the UAW, who 
had gone through a very grueling, excruciating process to find an 
agreement with the Auto Task Force. And yet when Chrysler went into 
bankruptcy, which was clearly the intent not to do everything possible 
to avoid, people started to pit the investors and the auto workers 
against each other.
  I would submit to all that it was the process of the Auto Task Force, 
its arbitrary nature and its lack of accountability that pitted workers 
and investors against each other in a race to beat the inevitable 
bankruptcy which would occur.
  I think that is one of the crucial things that needs to be pointed 
out, and I think it also bears repeating, why the individual, the 
distinguished gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Kucinich, as well as yourself 
and other Members of this body, sent a letter to the administration 
saying we wanted the Auto Task Force to revert back to an advisory 
capacity. Because many of us remember the 1970s when a congressionally 
led assistance of the Chrysler Motor Corporation brought the 
stakeholders together in an equitable process and resulted not only in 
the survival of the company, but Lee Iacocca presenting a check with 
interest for those loans to President Ronald Reagan.

                              {time}  1445

  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman very much. Mr. Speaker, could I 
inquire as to how much time is left?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 14 minutes.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I want to finish Clue the travel edition and get to 
something I talked about at the beginning of the hour. But just to 
finish it, again, the game of Clue, manufactured by Hasbro, we know 
that the weapon, in this case, not the pen, but the ax, an ax has been 
used to get about 210,000 people, make them unemployed in this country. 
And again, we have the same rooms. It happened in one of these rooms. 
And around the board, down there is Mr. Nardelli, the former chief 
executive officer of Chrysler, Larry Summers, senior adviser on the 
economy to the President, President Obama, of course. Over here is Ron 
Bloom, who I've talked about. Here is Mr. Geithner, who is the 
Secretary of the Treasury, and here is former President Bush. So this 
group forms our new Clue travel edition. And as we move forward, I 
think, again, it is important that the American public know who made 
the call to force these car companies into bankruptcy; who made the 
call to lie to 9,000 auto workers at 8 plants across the country, and 
who made the call that, even though they don't cost anybody any money, 
that we have to close all these dealerships and put people out of work.
  And I keep hearing, and the gentleman has heard it too, that this 
task force doesn't want to run the day-to-day operations of Chrysler 
and GM. But sadly, for them, there is an article that appeared on May 
11 out of Detroit that indicated that Chrysler wanted to spend $134 
million in advertising during the period of its bankruptcy, and this 
unelected task force told them they couldn't spend any money on 
advertising. Now, they finally relented and said okay, you can spend 
half of it. But for a bunch of folks that are claiming they don't want 
to run the car company, they've now set up the situation where they 
didn't want them to advertise and they didn't want them to have as many 
stores as they used to have to sell their cars. Again, that's a 
strange, strange business model.
  So we will be back, Mr. Speaker, as we move forward during the course 
of these discussions, to try and figure out who did it and what room it 
happened in and why they did it.
  I want to move now to the observation that I made at the beginning of 
the hour. At the beginning of the hour I talked about the AIG bonuses 
and the fact that legislation that was approved in a bipartisan 
fashion, 64-0, has not been brought to the House floor by the 
distinguished majority leader for discussion and debate. And we keep 
hearing how busy we are here, and we heard that last year. And my 
colleagues will remember last year, when gasoline was going through the 
roof and our phones were ringing off the hook and people said, Hey, can 
you give us a national energy policy, for crying out loud? We're dying. 
We can't afford to put gas in our car and drive to work. We were told 
as well that we were too busy. And I get that. This is the most 
deliberative body in the world. We have a lot of important work to do. 
And if the majority truly feels we were too busy to deal with the 
national energy policy, I would have taken them at their word. But 
sadly, here is a chart, and then we'll go to the second chart.
  When the new majority became the majority, we Republicans did such a 
bang-up job that the voters threw us out and they installed the 
Democrats as the majority party beginning on January 29 of 2007. At the 
time the retail price of gas in the country was

[[Page 14964]]

$2.22. And on that day the most important thing that they could come up 
with to debate on the floor was to commend the University of California 
Santa Barbara soccer team. I like soccer. I congratulate them. And gas 
isn't so bad--$2.22.
  It goes up to $2.84, and the most important thing that the majority 
can schedule to be on the floor is to declare October National Passport 
Month. A lot of my constituents didn't know what National Passport 
Month, what month it occurred in. Now they know.
  Gas goes up to $3.03 a gallon. We're not debating the price of gas or 
a national energy policy. We're commending the Houston Dynamo soccer 
team.
  Now, those of us in public life are told that you don't get elected 
unless you get the soccer moms. So I guess, you know, while gas is 
going up to $3.03, we've got the soccer moms; we're all squared away.
  Gas goes up to $3.77. The most important thing the majority can put 
on the floor is declaring National Train Day.
  It's getting serious--$3.84. A lot of people are calling me saying, 
Hey, what are you doing? We passed Great Cats and Rare Canids Day. And 
I have to tell you, I didn't even know what a rare canid was, but I 
Googled it, and it's a dog. So when my constituents were paying $3.84 
cents a gallon, we were doing cats and dogs here in the United States 
Congress.
  It goes over $4, and you think, man, we're going to get to the bottom 
of it now. But the majority determined that the most important thing we 
could do on that day was declare the International 2008--a lot of my 
constituents didn't know this either--2008 was the International Year 
of Sanitation.
  Gas crested at $4.14 a gallon in my part of the world on June 17 of 
2008. Surely we're going to talk about energy; surely we're going to 
talk about gas. No, we were too busy. We had to pass the Monkey Safety 
Act on that particular day.
  So we thought maybe folks had learned as a result of that because, 
clearly, when gas has gone up to that price, the Monkey Safety Act 
isn't the foremost thing on my constituents' minds.
  So we come to this year. And this year, as we've talked about during 
this hour, there are a lot of people at Chrysler losing their jobs. So 
at the beginning of this Congress, January, 4,000 people at Chrysler 
are losing their jobs. And you'd think that we'd have a discussion 
here. I would think. But we're too busy because on that day we needed 
to honor the life of Claiborne Pell, who was a former Senator. He 
deserves to be honored. But why are we taking floor time to do that 
when 4,000 people are out of work just at Chrysler.
  It goes up to 9,500. The most important thing that we can do on that 
day is to support the goals and ideals of national teen dating, an 
issue that we're all concerned about certainly, but now we have 9,500 
Chrysler workers out of work.
  It goes up to just shy of 10,000 and, son of a gun, we have to, we've 
got time to come back, this year, and pass the Monkey Safety Act again. 
And I want to be clear. I don't want anyone to read my words in the 
Congressional Record and think that I want monkeys who aren't safe. I 
want safe monkeys. But when you've got 10,000 people out of work at 
Chrysler, maybe we could do something other than save monkeys.
  And son of a gun, and now you're up to 13,000 people, and I guess the 
Senate didn't pass the cat and dog legislation, so we have to consider 
that again.
  Sixteen thousand people are out of work; the most important thing 
they can schedule on the floor is honoring Arnold Palmer. I like Arnold 
Palmer, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, great golfer, deserves to be honored. 
But how about dealing with the people that are losing their jobs and 
their livelihoods at Chrysler, General Motors, and the people at the 
auto dealers?
  And then it sort of peaks with the announcement, 18,365 people, just 
at Chrysler, out of work. And again, all we can do is National Train 
Day.
  Now, I want to be fair to the majority because we do do other stuff 
here. And I don't want anybody to believe that all we do is monkeys and 
cats and dogs. Just since the beginning of this year, when Chrysler and 
General Motors are going belly up and bankrupt, we have also named, and 
I have to add to this list because we did a couple this week, we've 
named post offices. And so these 16 post offices, we took an hour of 
debate here in the House of Representatives, 16 hours, to make sure 
that--and if anybody, Mr. Speaker, who happens to see this list, they 
live in these towns, they should feel assured that they can now go in 
and buy those 44 cent stamps because the United States Congress has 
named their post office.
  And again, it's an important part of what we do here, honoring people 
who deserve to be honored. But 16 hours, when we could have been 
talking about Chrysler, when we could have been talking about General 
Motors, when we could have been talking about the dealers, instead we 
were naming post offices. And I don't think that the country is better 
off for that enterprise.
  But then again, to be fair, let's say that you're in the majority and 
that you didn't see this coming and that perhaps, you know, you didn't 
recognize it was going to be as serious as it was.
  We came back last week and went back into session last week. Surely, 
over the Memorial Day recess, people got an earful from their 
constituents, saying, What are you going to do about these car 
companies? What are you going to do about the dealerships? Yet, when we 
came back last week, you know, maybe we weren't quite ready. Maybe we 
hadn't formalized how to get at the problem. We passed bills directing 
fish stocking in the lakes of Washington; we recognized the 75th 
anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountains; and we shifted from soccer to 
basketball, and we honored the University of Tennessee Women's 
Basketball Team.
  Then you say, okay, that was the first week back. Everybody is a 
little sleepy. We haven't quite gotten up to speed with our legislative 
agenda. This week, rather than dealing with Chrysler, rather than 
asking some questions of the unelected task force appointed by the 
President and that doesn't own cars, we recognized that this was 
National Physical Education and Sport Week.
  Also, I didn't know this, but maybe my colleagues know this--and I 
apologize for being ignorant. June 10 is National Pipeline Safety Day, 
and we spent an hour of time here on the floor making sure that 
everybody understood that June 10 is National Pipeline Safety Day.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a big problem. I mean we have a double 
delegation here. The Congress has punted to the President. The 
President has punted to this task force of people who don't own 
American cars, the majority of them, or they don't own any cars, and 
they have no experience in the car business. They are making decisions 
that affect hundreds of thousands of Americans.
  Mr. McCotter talked about the letter that we sent to the President. 
Thirty-six of us sent a letter to the President, saying, Mr. President, 
please pull these people back. Let's have a dialogue. Let's bring the 
best and the brightest.
  You know, Mr. McCotter talked about Chrysler. We made $35 million on 
the Chrysler deal in 1979. The only problem was nobody expected it, and 
Congress didn't know how to spend the money. Now, people need to rest 
easy. We figured it out, but nobody knew how to spend that money. Let's 
talk about it, and let's do this the right way. Let's not have this 
unelected group of people who have no experience run roughshod over the 
American worker.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. McCOTTER. May I inquire as to how much time is available?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Massa). There are 30 seconds remaining.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I give you 30 seconds.
  Mr. McCOTTER. Thank you for the 30 seconds.
  I just want to point out that, while all of this has been 
lighthearted, this is very important. We have twice seen the President 
unaware of what his own administration has done. We hear calls

[[Page 14965]]

for alacritous action. We hear people saying that we must rush to do 
health care, that we must rush to do climate change legislation. Let us 
never forget that government haste makes taxpayer waste. Due 
deliberateness and prudence are always the best course of action in 
legislative affairs. We should do a lot more of it here.
  I yield back.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman. I thank the Chair.
  I yield back.

                          ____________________