[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 20442-20450]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              GET 'ER DONE

  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. I thank the Speaker for the recognition and thank the 
minority leader for this hour.
  I'm going to be joined by my good friend, Mr. Nunes, from California 
and Mr. McCotter, who is on his way.
  I want to talk tonight, Mr. Speaker--most folks in America recognize 
the picture to my left. It's Larry the Cable Guy. And if you watch 
Larry the Cable Guy, his line is get 'er done. And get 'er done is a 
good way to entertain somebody in a movie. I would suggest it's not 
such a good way to run the United States of America.
  Sadly, since the beginning of this year, we have had a majority in 
this House and in the other body and at the other end of Pennsylvania 
Avenue that has taken the attitude of just get 'er done. And that can 
lead sadly to some unfortunate consequences.
  The first get 'er done was we were told we had to have an economic 
stimulus package spending $789 billion of taxpayer money by President's 
Day. It was very important that the President of the United States have 
the opportunity to sign this bill by President's Day. So the White 
House's message to the Congress was get 'er done. And the leadership of 
this House got it done.
  Sadly, they were embarrassed because included--and we're going to 
talk a little bit later in the hour--in the bowels of that stimulus 
package, which, by the way, was 1,100 pages long and Members of the 
House got 90 minutes to read it so I doubt many people read it--so 
people were embarrassed because they didn't read the bill to find out 
that in the bill was an authorization to give the insurance company 
AIG, which has received more, billions and billions of dollars, from 
the taxpayer, bonuses totaling $173 million.
  Well, then the next get 'er done came along--and everybody knows we 
have a problem with the automobile industry in this country. And rather 
than wrapping up their affairs and going through a bankruptcy the old 
fashioned American way, the message from the White House was we gotta 
get 'er done in 40 days. Can you imagine a 40-day bankruptcy for 
Chrysler, the third largest automobile manufacturer in this country and 
for General Motors, the largest.
  And the get 'er done there has been a lot of collateral damage. We 
have seen plants all across the country closed; we have seen about 
50,000 auto workers about to be thrown out of their jobs. We have seen 
parts suppliers not get paid for manufacturing and making the parts 
that go into the cars. And we will talk a little bit later about the 
car dealers. Some brainiac decided that car dealers were a problem in 
this country and so therefore we have had to get 'er done; we had to 
close about 3,000 auto dealerships in this country, and we're going to 
talk about that, too.

                              {time}  1500

  But, again, just like the economic stimulus bill, get 'er done is not 
really a good way to run the country because the other collateral 
damage that has occurred here recently is there are about 50,000 people 
that didn't work for General Motors, worked for companies like Delphi, 
that had their health insurance through General Motors, and guess what? 
Nobody cared at all about what happens to their health care. So while 
some of the UAW members that work for General Motors and Chrysler are 
now secured by stock ownership in the new companies, these 50,000 
workers don't have any health care.
  Then we came along to what at least in my State is a pretty 
controversial issue, the cap-and-trade legislation. Some folks on my 
side called it the ``cap-and-tax'' legislation. And basically, when 
fully implemented, I believe it will drive any job that's left in the 
State of Ohio out of the State of Ohio.
  But, again, there's a way to do things here. I've been here for 15 
years, and the way legislation usually works is somebody has an idea. 
We talk about it. We have hearings. They bring it to the floor. Members 
who have other

[[Page 20443]]

good ideas have the opportunity to amend that legislation, and then we 
vote on it. Well, cap-and-trade, sadly, came to the floor, and at 3 
o'clock in the morning--I think we voted on the bill on a Friday, and 
at 3 o'clock Friday morning, in a 1,200-page bill--which, again, nobody 
had read. They put in 309 new pages at 3 o'clock in the morning, and 
then we voted on the bill later in the day. And, again, get 'er done.
  But we were told we had to get it done by July 4. So the White House 
called up the House, said get 'er done. Leadership said to their 
troops, get 'er done, and they got it done. But just like in the 
stimulus bill, people are embarrassed, because in those 309 pages, 
which nobody read, they have found out that this cap-and-trade 
legislation, aside from dealing with carbon emissions and setting up a 
whole new speculative system, derivative system to trade carbon 
credits, it regulates water coolers.
  If you have one of those water coolers in your house or at the office 
with the big jugs you've got to tip over, that's going to be subject to 
regulation. If you have a hot tub or spa outside your house, that's 
regulated under the cap-and-trade legislation. And people were really 
surprised that Christmas lights are regulated under the cap-and-trade 
legislation.
  Now, listen, all of us want to deal with climate change, but you're 
going to have to go a long way to convince me that Christmas lights are 
somehow leading to global warming. So that's in the cap-and-trade bill. 
So get 'er done isn't really a good way to run the country.
  And now this week, thankfully, they were not able to get 'er done on 
health care. The proposal going through the committees of this House--
again, the White House said we've got to get 'er done by August 1, 
which is tomorrow. Everybody began moving around. But a funny thing 
happened on the way to get 'er done. Some conservative Democrats, Blue 
Dog Democrats, said, We don't think the government should be in the 
business of running the health care system and we should have a United 
States health care policy in this country.
  And the previous speaker, Mr. Price, was talking. This bill, again, 
get 'er done won't take care of it because there are some scary things 
in this legislation. One piece of it is, for the first time in our 
Nation's history under the national policy, end-of-life counseling will 
be available. Well, that's good. I happen to be a big supporter of 
hospice and all the wonderful work they do at the end of a person's 
life.
  But the problem with end-of-life counseling in this bill is that to 
get the cost savings that they want to achieve, you have to control 
cost. And so many of the models are taken from Great Britain and 
Canada, and in those systems there is a board, as the President wants 
to set up, that determines what procedures are covered, what drugs are 
covered, and what are not. And just by way of example, the same board 
over in the United Kingdom, it's called NICE. So who could be against 
something nice?
  But NICE doesn't cover drugs for people with Alzheimer's, doesn't 
cover drugs for people with breast cancer, doesn't cover some drugs for 
people with prostate cancer. And the best one was macular degeneration, 
which is a degeneration of the eye and can lead to blindness. They 
won't approve the most effective drug. They approve the second-most 
effective drug, but this NICE board has determined that you can only 
get treatment in one eye. And so if you go to Great Britain in about 5 
years, you're going to see a bunch of folks running around that look 
like pirates with eye patches because the NICE board is only going to 
let them take care of one eye.
  I will yield to my friend from California.
  Mr. NUNES. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I know my friend has spent a lot of time on these issues. We were 
involved in the first bailout back in the day, and I remember when you 
and I were very concerned about the country, where we were heading with 
the debt piling up. And then we got into the new administration with 
the stimulus bill, and keeping with get 'er done, they actually got 
that done, borrowed almost $1 trillion, and now they have very little 
of that money spent, out the door.
  Unemployment was only supposed to go to 8 percent. Now unemployment 
is at 10 percent. In my home State of California, it is well over 10 
percent. In my district, it's almost 20 percent. So they got it done, 
but really nothing got done.
  And when you look at the cap-and-trade bill or the cap-and-tax bill, 
that was another example of getting it done and really getting nothing 
done, because ultimately, in their bill, if it becomes law, it won't 
take any CO2 out of the air because you're going to have 
China and India continuing to build coal-fired power plants. In fact, 
your home State of Ohio I know pays 3 cents a kilowatt for its 
electricity because you use one of the greatest resources in America, 
which is coal.
  And if you look at California today, in California we've passed, 
basically, cap-and-trade legislation through the State legislature. And 
I don't know if the gentleman knows this already, but in California 
we're paying 17 cents a kilowatt for electricity. So it's no wonder 
that California's unemployment rate continues to go up, costs to 
Americans continue to go up.
  And so the Democrat Congress definitely is trying to get something 
done, but in the process of getting legislation passed out of this 
House, it's legislation that, at the end of the day, is going to hurt 
America.
  And just to finish up on this health care debate, we were told 
numerous times by the Speaker that she had the votes. The majority 
leader said they had the votes. And now, here we are today. They don't 
even have the votes in the Energy and Commerce Committee, which is 
still meeting today in committee, and it seems like they're not getting 
it done--and thankfully. We don't want them to get this done because we 
don't want the government to take over our health care system, which 
the gentleman, I think, was pointing out.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank my friend very much. You make a great point, 
and I think I want to reinforce that point.
  There have been some speakers that have come to the floor during the 
last few days saying that somehow Republicans are the Party of No and 
we don't want to reform health care and we're blocking this great 
health care proposal that they have. Well, that's not true. There are 
178 Republican Members of the House of Representatives, 247 Democratic 
Members of the House of Representatives, and they can do whatever they 
want, whenever they want.
  Mr. NUNES. Just to correct the gentleman, 256 Democrats, I believe.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, they got more.
  Mr. NUNES. And how many votes does it take to pass a bill out of the 
House?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. That would be 218. So 47 people can leave the 
reservation and you still have a piece of legislation.
  So we're not preventing them from doing anything. As a matter of 
fact, we have four or five good pieces of legislation on health care 
that solve the problems of the doughnut hole and Medicare part D, take 
care of the uninsured in this country that don't have insurance.
  And not only that, it's a sad situation that leads to a lot of cost 
shifting for people who do have insurance, deals with making sure that 
you can't be excluded from health care if you have a preexisting 
condition. But nobody will talk to our side of the aisle. And the 
attitude since the beginning of this year has been, we've got 258 
votes, and we're going to do what we want when we want, and when we 
want your ideas, we'll ask you. And it's unfortunate that we haven't 
been asked.
  But we are certainly not blocking what it is they're attempting to 
do. They are, at the moment, having a fight amongst themselves. You 
have conservative Democrats versus liberal Democrats, and they can't 
figure it out. And once they're all on the same

[[Page 20444]]

page, they can pass it, and pass it in the Senate, and the President 
clearly wants to sign it.
  Mr. NUNES. And if the gentleman would yield again, we've heard 
several times from the White House and from the Democrat leadership and 
this Congress blaming the Republicans for not having a plan. And as the 
gentleman pointed out, first of all, they've never wanted to work with 
us. Second of all, they've never asked us for our plans. And third, the 
Republicans have very good plans, some plans that myself and Paul Ryan 
from Wisconsin have worked on and we're going to continue to work on 
over the break.
  The good thing, the best thing about the plan that we've put 
together, that the Republicans have put together, is that we deal with 
the Medicaid problems in this country. And one thing we have to look at 
over the long run is that debt continues to pile up. And we have three 
major problems in this country that no one wants to talk about, and 
that's the unfunded liabilities that this country has. We have the 
unfunded liabilities of Medicaid, unfunded liabilities of Medicare, 
unfunded liabilities of Social Security.
  The sad part about the Democrat plan is that they want to put more 
and more people on Medicaid. And now in my district, only 22 percent of 
the doctors will see Medicaid patients. And so the Republican plan that 
we've put forward actually deals with the Medicaid problem that we have 
in this country and actually gives people better health care. And that 
is, I think, something that needs to be done.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman.
  And the gentleman is hiding his light under a bushel basket because 
the other thing that his piece of legislation does that this piece of 
legislation that's being debated now does not do is that you bend the 
cost curve.
  Two of the reasons that we're having a health care debate in this 
Congress are, one, to get better quality health care and take better 
care of people in this country, but two is to rein in the cost.
  Now, one of the reasons that we don't have a bill this week and that 
they couldn't get 'er done was that the Congressional Budget Office 
came back and scored it, at one point, that this didn't save money. It 
was actually going to add $1.6 trillion to the debt. And to be 
completely bipartisan, because my friend brought up the Wall Street 
bailout, that was George W. Bush. That was Hank Paulson, his Treasury 
Secretary, that came to Capitol Hill with a three-page bill--can you 
imagine, a three-page bill--and said, you've got to give us $700 
billion to go to Wall Street or the world is going to come to an end. 
So you take that $700 billion, you take the $700 billion--
  Mr. NUNES. But I will add, if the gentleman will yield for a second, 
I will add that this was a bipartisan bailout that was passed.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Right.
  Mr. NUNES. So it was the White House working in conjunction with the 
Democrat-controlled House that passed the first bailout. And I think 
one of the things we're going to talk about later, as we transition 
into, I think, some of the things we want to talk about is AIG.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I do.
  Mr. NUNES. I think you really have to look at where that money that 
went first to AIG and then somehow got to, guess where? Goldman Sachs.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Right. The gentleman is absolutely right. But if you 
take the $700 billion from the Bush administration, $789 billion from 
the stimulus package, you take the auto bailout--which is tipping $60 
billion, $70 billion--you take the budget that the President sent up 
here that the majority passed of $3.5 trillion, you really are talking 
real money.
  And a lot of folks come to the floor and talk about, well, this is a 
debt that's going to be passed on to our children and our 
grandchildren. That's true. But even those of us in our middle age are 
going to have a problem with this because we have to borrow it, and you 
have to borrow it from places like China, and you borrow it at higher 
and higher interest rates. And so it's not only a debt that needs to be 
repaid some day, the interest on the debt is eventually going to 
strangle this budget.
  Mr. NUNES. And if the gentleman would yield again, I want to make one 
important point back to the point that you're making, and that is that 
the Congress, for many years, has spent too much money. There is no 
question about that, Republicans and Democrats have spent too much 
money. But if you look at the budgets that have been put forward with 
the stimulus bill and the bailouts and the government takeover of 
companies, you look at the unfunded liabilities, the Obama 
administration potentially could triple or quadruple the debt by the 
time President Obama is out of the Presidency. That doesn't include 
that the Obama administration could pile up more debt than all previous 
Presidents combined.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I would be happy to yield to my friend from Michigan.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. We're from Michigan. We think in smaller numbers. And I 
know that my colleague has been very interested in what's been 
happening with dealers, automobile dealers. But as we talk about a $787 
billion stimulus plan, as we talk about the bailout, as we talk about 
the cap-and-trade bill--I'm not sure exactly how big that is going to 
get in new taxes--and then you talk about there are folks here who want 
this government to take over health care, $1.6 trillion.
  Can I just share with you two examples of what happens when we try to 
do a $1 billion program? Will the gentleman continue to yield?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I'm happy to yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. This Cash for Clunkers program, I've talked with four 
of my dealers in the last couple of hours, they've sold a total of 
about 150 cars over the last 5 days. And all we're doing is processing 
a rebate, right? It's either a $3,500 check or a $4,500 check. Out of 
those 150 sales, zero, exactly zero rebates have been approved, 
although the paperwork has been filed. Some of the paperwork has been 
filed three times.
  The paperwork is 21 pages--this is from one of my dealers. They sent 
in 21 pages, and here's what the sales guys wrote: Each of these pages 
have to be scanned in and must be saved with the attached file names, 
and each page must be uploaded separately. You cannot save anything 
until the end. So if the Web site crashes, you get to start over.

                              {time}  1515

  If the Web site works, it takes approximately 1 hour per deal?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Wow.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. That's the paperwork.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Reclaiming my time, it's my understanding that the 
Web site has crashed at least twice.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Yes. And it crashed again this morning.
  Then they get the rejection notice. And to one of my dealers, I said, 
Well, you know, you file it the first time, you get a rejection, and it 
comes back, and you fill it out appropriately the second time like it's 
filling out taxes, these 21 pages.
  And he said, Pete, I've had a number of these things come back for a 
third time. He said, I've just had one come back.
  This is what happens from the people who want to run our health care 
system, The voucher you have submitted with invoice number da da da has 
been rejected for the following reason: No reason provided.
  The next line says, The voucher can be resubmitted if the reason for 
rejection can be corrected.
  Now, what is this dealer supposed to do? Go back and submit exactly 
the same 21 pages that he did before? Because the reply came back and 
said, The reason you've been rejected is ``no reason provided.'' Under 
this program before you file, you've already destroyed the car. You've 
had to ruin the engine, and the guys are now riding around in their new 
car. The dealer can't get their rebate check. So we can't even handle a 
billion-dollar program.

[[Page 20445]]

  The consumers love this program.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. It's a great program.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Consumers love it. It's a program that has been well 
intentioned. It's driving car volume. But it's driving our dealers 
absolutely nuts, and they are already under a tremendous amount of 
stress and strain. And, remember, these folks can't implement a $1 
billion program that all it does is provide a rebate. That's all it 
does, is it provide a rebate. And they want to run our health care 
system.
  And I asked him how hard is it to do a rebate through Ford or GM or 
Chrysler? He said, That's not a problem at all. They handle it just 
like that. They send it in, and we get it done just like that.
  These guys can't process a voucher, and then we're asking them to 
plan wages, plan salaries, and all these other kinds of things.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman. Reclaiming my time, the 
gentleman has just indicated why they can't ``get 'er done.'' They want 
to get all these things done, but the fact of the matter is they're not 
getting them done. And the figures that I saw, there are 16,000 dealers 
across the country that have entered into this program; so you're not 
talking about millions of applications that need to be processed. 
You're talking about 16,000 dealers, and even if the entire billion was 
exhausted, that's 200,000 cars, and they can't get it done.
  So if this health care thing gets out of here where the government 
runs health care, I really don't want to have any heart problems, 
because you might wind up with a '57 Chevy engine in your chest.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The reason for your denial of care is ``no reason 
provided,'' but you're not getting it.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. That will be comforting.
  I want to get back to AIG for just a second because that was the 
first ``get 'er done,'' the stimulus package. Folks were embarrassed 
that they actually found out that they had authorized, by voting for 
the stimulus bill, these exorbitant bonuses going to AIG executives. 
And just a week ago Saturday, it's been like 3 weeks now, this was the 
headline in the Washington Post: ``AIG Plans Millions More in Bonuses. 
Troubled Insurer is in Talks With U.S. Over Another $250 Million in 
Bonuses to Their Executives.''
  And why it's important that we follow things like regular order, and 
people say nobody pays attention to process here, but why you can't 
have an 1,100-page bill filed at midnight and expect people to know 
what's going on and why goofy things happen is because that's not the 
way we are supposed to govern. ``Get 'er done'' is not a way to govern.
  So in the stimulus bill, this chart shows the paragraph that was 
included in the stimulus bill that specifically, these 40 or so words, 
specifically said that any bonus that was agreed to before February 11 
of this year, which was the day the stimulus bill passed, was 
protected. And then the $173 million in bonuses were paid to AIG, and I 
saw the President on television. He said, I'm shocked. We had people on 
the floor on this side of the aisle, I'm shocked.
  Well, you shouldn't be shocked. If you had done the bill in the way 
that the Founding Fathers intended it to be done and if you gave people 
more than 90 minutes to read 1,100 pages, they wouldn't have been 
shocked. They would have known and they would have had a choice: Do you 
want to authorize $173 million for bonuses? If you do, vote ``yes.'' If 
you don't, why don't you fix the thing?
  Mr. NUNES. Will the gentleman yield for just a point of 
clarification?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Sure.
  Mr. NUNES. For the folks who don't quite understand this, this clause 
that you have in front of you was in the stimulus bill, and this 
basically approved the bonuses to AIG.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Yes.
  Mr. NUNES. I just have a question for the gentleman. Do you know how 
many Republicans voted for the stimulus bill?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. No Republicans voted for the stimulus bill, and 11 
Democrats also did not vote for the stimulus package.
  But it's worse than that because when the bill left the House, it 
didn't have this paragraph in it. When it left the Senate, it didn't 
have this paragraph in it. As a matter of fact, the Senate bill on the 
stimulus package had an amendment that was adopted the old-fashioned 
way, in a bipartisan fashion, with a Democratic Senator from Oregon, 
Mr. Wyden, and a Republican Senator from Maine, Ms. Snowe. And they 
drafted legislation because nobody liked this, handing out billions of 
dollars to AIG and Wall Street and seeing these executives who have 
failed. I never understood a bonus. A bonus is supposed to be because 
you did a good job. I have yet to meet anybody in any of the jobs that 
I had that said, Steve, you did a really crappy job; here's a bonus.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. NUNES. Another clarification. During the bailout and before the 
bailout, how much money had AIG already received from the Federal 
Government?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I stopped counting it at about $125 billion. It may 
be more.
  Mr. NUNES. A hundred and----
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. A hundred and twenty-five billion dollars.
  Mr. NUNES. So then we went on to award bonuses.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. We went on to award bonuses, and here's how it 
happened: The Snowe-Wyden language was in the Senate bill that said no 
bonuses. You know this and the Speaker knows this, that we pass the 
bill, they pass the bill; when it doesn't match up, we have to have a 
conference to try to work things out. So they appointed conferees. The 
Senate sent some guys and gals over; we sent some people over. No 
Republicans were included, by the way. And they said, Let's resolve 
these two bills. Well, by resolving the two bills, the Snowe-Wyden 
language was taken out, I mean physically taken out, and this new 
paragraph protecting the bonuses was put in by somebody.
  We are talking a little bit about Larry the Cable Guy and ``get 'er 
done.'' This was one of my favorite games when I was growing up, the 
game of Clue, and with apologies to Hasbro, the problem is we have 
asked, since that news came out, who put that paragraph in? It 
shouldn't be that hard. Who put that paragraph in? Nobody will own up 
to it. But it didn't, you know, come from the heavens. Obviously 
somebody took a pencil or an eraser and took out the Senate language 
and put in that offending paragraph, but nobody will tell us who did 
it. And we've asked and asked and asked.
  So here's Clue, and basically we think that we have it narrowed down 
to these folks. If you played Clue, you know you have to figure out 
what room it takes place in, what the weapon is, and who's the 
perpetrator. We know that the weapon was a pen. It might have been a 
computer, but I'm going to say it was a pen. And these are the rooms 
here in the United States Capitol, the Banking Committee, the Speaker's 
office, the Senate Leader's office, the conference room where these 
folks met, the lobby--I don't think it happened in the lobby--the Ways 
and Means Committee, the lounge, library, and the Appropriations 
Committee.
  Now, we've been asking this since March of this year, and since March 
of this year, we have excluded the gentleman down here in the lower 
corner. That's Charles Rangel, Democrat of New York, who's the 
distinguished chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. He actually 
emerged from this conference and sort of threw up his hands, according 
to press reports, and said, The government's being run by three people, 
and I'm frustrated. And he left. So we don't think Charlie Rangel did 
it.
  Mr. NUNES. But that could be an important clue. I'm on the Ways and 
Means Committee, and we did not put that language in there. So Mr. 
Rangel claimed that there were three people that were writing the bill.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Basically. That was his quoted statement in the 
press.
  So the other folks, and we know this individual was in the room. This 
is Rahm Emanuel, our former colleague

[[Page 20446]]

from Illinois who now serves as the President's Chief of Staff. This is 
Mr. Orszag, who is the OMB Director. Mr. Dodd, Senator from Connecticut 
who is the chairman of the Banking Committee. At the top the honorable 
Speaker of the House, Ms. Pelosi of California; and Senator Harry Reid 
of Nevada, who is the leader over on the other side.
  And I put the question mark down there, and this really angers me, 
because somebody had to authorize it, but some of the statements have 
been that staff did it. Listen, there's something seriously wrong if a 
nonelected official or appointed official in the case of the OMB 
Director can change legislation. So they clearly had to have 
authorization. A lot of eyes were on Senator Dodd and the Department of 
the Treasury.
  But here's what's frustrating. We're asking that question, and it's a 
pretty simple question: Who did it? And maybe you had a great reason 
for it. Just tell us why you did it. But they won't. So we have had to 
go to not only come talk about it on the floor, but we have had to take 
other action here since March to try to figure it out. So I filed 
something known as a resolution of inquiry, which asked the Department 
of the Treasury, Hey, who said take out the one and put in the other? 
Just tell us who it is. That's a pretty simple question.
  And I'm going to say something about the chairman of Financial 
Services, Barney Frank of Massachusetts. He took the resolution of 
inquiry. They got more votes than we do. He could have killed it. He 
did not. He voted it out of his committee 63 or 64-0, and it's been 
sitting at the Speaker's desk since the end of April, the beginning of 
May.
  Now, again, the Speaker knows this, but the way the legislation gets 
to the floor is that the majority has to schedule it. And for whatever 
reason, the distinguished majority leader, Mr. Hoyer of Maryland, has 
chosen not to schedule this piece of legislation for floor activity. So 
even all of the Democrats on Financial Services that want to know the 
answer to the question will not get the answer to the question because 
we can't get the bill to the floor. So we've gone a step further.
  There is a provision in the House rules that if they won't act, you 
can file something called a discharge petition. We filed the discharge 
petition. It's right over there by the attractive lady in the tan suit. 
And we have asked Members to sign it so we can bring it to the floor 
and talk about it. To date, every Republican has signed it, and we 
don't have yet a Democratic Member who has signed it, but that's the 
only way we're going to get to it.
  But Chairman Frank did something else commendable. He called up the 
Treasury and he said, Quit horsing around. Just tell us who did it. And 
he set up a number of meetings with the Treasury Department. My staff 
went to the meetings. I went to the meetings. The last contact that we 
have had from the Department of Treasury, and I just want to get it 
because it really is remarkable, we got a call, the banking staff got a 
call from a fellow who's in Government Relations at the Treasury 
Department and said that, Well, you know, we really didn't like that 
meeting because it was too political and we think our lawyer has said 
we can't answer your question.
  Now, what the heck? It's not like we are dealing with somebody from 
the mob and the lawyer says take the fifth. We are talking about the 
United States Department of the Treasury, which is responsible for 
administering these billions and billions of dollars, and they're 
telling the United States Congress that a lawyer has said they can't 
tell us who authorized $173 million in bonuses for people who work at 
AIG?
  And then they tried to compound the crime because, as I said, a lot 
of people were embarrassed. They went home to their districts. Even 
Senator Dodd, there was a news article about people screaming at him at 
a town meeting, How could you do that? How could you do that?
  Mr. NUNES. If you would yield just for clarification, because I know 
that there are folks just now coming in. They are here on their 
vacations and they may have missed the beginning of this. But what we 
are talking about here is that well over $100 billion has been given to 
AIG. We had the House bill that every Member of Congress admitted that 
they didn't read. As a matter of fact, Mr. Boehner sat right there 
where you are, Mr. LaTourette, and asked if anyone had read it, and no 
one said they had read it. He dropped the bill right there on the 
floor. And the language that you talked about that awarded the bonuses 
was not in the bill at that time.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Right.
  Mr. NUNES. So the Senate bill and the House bill come together, and 
suddenly that's put in its place, and now we are sitting here with 
legislation. After giving well over $100 billion to AIG, now we are 
going to give these folks bonuses, millions of dollars in bonuses, and 
no one knows who's done it.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Right. That's a fair summation of where we are. And 
that's troubling to me.
  Mr. NUNES. Just for clarification again, Larry the Cable Guy didn't 
do it, right?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Larry the Cable Guy didn't do it. He's not on the 
chart.
  But, again, this goes back to Larry the Cable Guy, however. That's 
why ``get 'er done'' cannot be the way to run the United States of 
America, because people get embarrassed. People will not have the 
opportunity to read things. You and I each represent about 700,000 
people, you in California and I in Ohio. I had no input in this bill, 
not because I didn't want to. I'll bet you had no input in this bill. 
It's just not the way to run the thing.

                              {time}  1530

  And when you run it this way, you get embarrassed, and when you get 
embarrassed, you should own up to it.
  That is where I was going next. Rather than owning up to it and 
saying take the language out, let's not permit this to happen, it was a 
mistake, the majority, rather than bringing the resolution of inquiry 
to the floor, brought a bill to the floor to tax these bonuses which 
they authorized at 90 percent.
  I have to tell you, I don't think these people should have gotten 
these bonuses. But when you begin to use the Tax Code to punish people 
that you don't like and say, you know, today it is the AIG guys, we are 
going to tax you at 90 percent; tomorrow it could be truck drivers, we 
are going to tax you at 90 percent; we don't like the guys that do talk 
radio, we are going to tax you at 90 percent, it is a very dangerous 
precedent; and it is not only dangerous, it is stupid. And it is stupid 
because the head guy, the biggest bonus-getter, the biggest bonus-
getter at AIG got $6.4 million.
  Now, if you don't think you should get a bonus, why do you let him 
keep 10 percent? And 10 percent is $640,000. It takes 16 years for 
somebody in Ohio making $40,000 a year to make $640,000. So, again, it 
is not only a misuse of the Tax Code; it is stupid. It was a fig leaf, 
because people were embarrassed, and, sadly, sometimes when people get 
embarrassed around here, rather than doing the right thing, they do the 
politically expedient thing.
  So they all went home. And, thank god, the Senate didn't pass that 
bill, and thank goodness President Obama said--he didn't say it was 
stupid, but he pretty much said it was stupid.
  Mr. NUNES. If the gentleman will yield, he has done that recently.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Yes, well, he has done that.
  Mr. NUNES. If the gentleman will yield again, you have a long history 
before you came to Congress. You worked for the people of Ohio. You 
were involved as a district attorney, and I know that you had 
prosecuted many people and upheld the law. And so as we are beginning 
to go through this and beginning to look at who is out there, who 
possibly did it, we still, here we are, what, almost 6 months after we 
passed the stimulus bill, and no one knows where this language has come 
from.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. We can't get an answer, which is really shocking, 
that the United States Congress can't get an answer to a pretty simple 
question, Who did it?

[[Page 20447]]

  I want to move on, with my friend's permission, to the get 'er done 
and the car companies. We were told we had to have an expedited 
bankruptcy proceeding, first with Chrysler and then with General Motors 
because that was going to save the car industry in this country and we 
have to move forward.
  As a matter of fact, on April 30, the President gave a press 
conference when Chrysler went into bankruptcy, and this is his exact 
quote, that nobody 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.
  Now, I was pretty heartened by that, and I was heartened because in 
Twinsburg, Ohio, we have for the moment, won't have soon, a stamping 
plant for Chrysler. About 1,200 people work there.
  In the days leading up to the bankruptcy announcement, the company 
went to the Chrysler employees, the UAW employees, and said, In order 
to make this work, you have to enter into a new contract and you have 
to give up some stuff. You have to give up wages, benefits, some health 
care, some vacation.
  The day before the bankruptcy announcement, the auto workers in 
Twinsburg, Ohio, went to their union hall and cast their ballots on 
giving up stuff, and 80 percent of them, over 80 percent of them, said, 
We are going to do it so we can keep our jobs, and we are going to do 
it so we can make sure that the company we work for continues to 
survive.
  That took place all across the country. And the contract, not 
surprisingly, was approved.
  Well, then a funny thing happened, and the funny thing that happened 
was that afternoon, when all the documents were filed in the bankruptcy 
case, there is an affidavit from a guy, his name escapes me, Robert, I 
will think of it in a minute, but that basically indicates that no, no, 
no, there are going to be disruptions. We are closing plants. We are 
throwing people out of work.
  Specifically, eight plants, eight plants in cities all across America 
were told, Hey, auto worker, even though you voted to give up some 
stuff to stay employed, we are shutting you down. Nationwide, it was 
close to 10,000 people were told they weren't going to have jobs 
anymore.
  The interesting thing is before the President went to the 
microphones, he went to talk and give this press conference at noon on 
April 30. At 11 o'clock that morning the White House was very helpful 
in setting up a conference call with Members of Congress, Governors, 
other people that were interested in this issue, and with his task 
force, his unelected auto task force.
  The task force members got on and said, This is a great day. This is 
a great day. We have saved Chrysler, or will through this bankruptcy. 
Jobs won't be lost. As a matter of fact, because Chrysler is going to 
enter into a deal with Fiat, the Italian car manufacturer, we have 
great news: we think Fiat is going to bring 5,000 more jobs to the 
United States.
  So, silly me, I got off the call and watched the President of the 
United States. And then there is another call. When the President was 
done, we had another conference call with the guy that was the head of 
Chrysler then, Robert Nardelli.
  Mr. Nardelli was basically reiterating the things that occurred 
during the course of the President's announcement, and then he took 
questions, which was nice. And the very first telephone call that he 
took was from Governor Granholm of Michigan, the Democratic Governor of 
Michigan. Obviously in Michigan they have got a lot of concern about 
auto manufacturing.
  And she said, you know, Great job. Way to go. But I just have to ask 
you a question. The President in his announcement said this deal will 
save 30,000 jobs. I just want to make sure that that wasn't code for 
something else, because there are 39,000 people in the country that 
work for Chrysler.
  Mr. Nardelli said no, no, no, no, he was just rounding down and there 
aren't going to be any difficulties, which, of course, wasn't true.
  Later in the call, one of our colleagues from Wisconsin, Gwen Moore, 
Democrat from Milwaukee, she had, used to have, an engine plant in a 
town called Kenosha, Wisconsin. And she specifically asked, she said, 
800 people work there. Where in your restructuring do you envision the 
Kenosha plant being?
  She was told, We love Kenosha. Kenosha is safe. Kenosha is going to 
be fine. Those 800 people don't have to worry.
  So, silly me and silly Representative Moore and silly Governor 
Granholm, we all sent out press releases praising the President, 
praising the task force and the work that they were doing, only to find 
out that my plant was closed and Ms. Moore's plant in Kenosha, 
Wisconsin, was closed.
  Now, obviously that caused some concern with the folks in Wisconsin 
and the folks in Ohio, so the Governor of Wisconsin, Ms. Moore also and 
the mayor of Kenosha, sent a letter to Mr. Nardelli and said, Why did 
you do that?
  Madam Speaker, I include the letter for 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.

[[Page 20448]]

       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 Nardelli,
                                                 Chairman and CEO.

  The response they got back, Madam Speaker, on May 7 he wrote to 
Governor Jim Doyle and he said, I know I said Kenosha was safe, but I 
just need to tell you I was confused. I thought Kenosha, Wisconsin, was 
Trenton, Michigan.
  Now, if I had a nickel for every time I got in the car and tried to 
go to Kenosha, Wisconsin, and ended up in Trenton, Michigan, that would 
be something.
  Mr. NUNES. If I remember my geography correctly, there is a lake that 
separates Wisconsin and Michigan, correct?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Now the gentleman is nitpicking.
  Mr. NUNES. Maybe they were going to take a boat.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Even the day before, and now I remember the guy's 
name, His name is Robert Manzo, Robert Manzo is the consultant that 
Chrysler hired to help sort of take them through this thing. The day 
before the filing, he sent this email exchange, which has been in all 
the newspapers, to the President's task force saying, Maybe we don't 
have to go this way. Maybe there is another way. Basically he said, I 
hope you think it is worth giving this one more shot, that is, to not 
have all these horrible things happen through the bankruptcy.
  And here is the response from Mr. Feldman, the attorney on the 
unelected task force, who basically said, We are done, and indicated 
that he wasn't going to be treated to another terrorist like Lauria.
  Now, I should explain. Lauria is the lawyer who represented the 
bondholders. These are people that invested in Chrysler, and they were 
told that they had secure creditor status, and it was $27 billion.
  Mr. Lauria represented some of them, and the some of them that he 
represented was the Teachers Retirement System of Indiana. So people 
who had taught the children of Indiana for years and had retired, in 
order to maximize their retirement fund they had invested in Chrysler, 
which was once a pretty safe investment, and they were told that they 
were secure, which means they get paid before anybody else gets paid.
  Mr. Lauria was advocating on behalf of the teachers of Indiana and 
saying, You cannot just get rid of us. You have to compensate these 
people who have invested $27 billion in Chrysler. But the response from 
the task force is that these people were acting like terrorists.
  Mr. NUNES. If the gentleman will yield for another point of 
clarification, you referred several times to this unelected task force, 
auto dealer or auto company task force. And we have seen these czars 
that have been appointed by the President. We have 30-some or 40-some 
czars, I don't know. Every day we add a new czar.
  Is there a difference between the czars and the automotive task 
force? Was there a czar of the auto task force?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. There was a czar. The President of the United States 
appointed the auto czar, the head of the task force. He has recently 
gone back into private business. It is now headed by a fellow by the 
name of Ron Bloom, whom we will get to in just a second.
  But, you know, a funny thing happened on the way to the task force 
too, because when they began making these decisions, people began to 
say, Well, who are these folks and what is their background? Were they 
in the manufacturing business? Did they make cars? Did they sell cars? 
Did they manufacture parts for cars? And The Wall Street Journal 
actually did a study of the members of the task force and found that 
most of them don't even own cars, and those that do own cars own 
foreign cars, the majority of them.
  Mr. NUNES. How many people were on the task force?
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I think it was 12 or 16. And then we also had one of 
our colleagues from Ohio, Mr. Jordan, who serves on the Judiciary 
Committee, and the Judiciary Committee had a hearing with a panel that 
asked that question, How many people on the task force have any 
experience at all in the car industry? And the answer was none. Nobody. 
But despite that fact, they have made decisions.
  Now, the second decision I want to talk about is the decision that 
they made that somehow we needed to close car dealerships all across 
America, and in Chrysler's case it was 789 and General Motors it is 
about 2,600.
  According to the National Association of Automobile Dealers, about 60 
people work at each dealership. So if you multiply that by the number 
of dealerships that were instructed to close, you are north of 200,000 
people; 200,000 people. And let's get this straight about car dealers. 
Most of them own their own buildings, they do their own finance plan, 
floor plan, they do their own advertising.
  The cost to the automobile company is pretty minimal. But, again, 
this nonelected task force that doesn't know anything about the car 
industry said, You know what? Toyota sells an awful lot of cars in this 
country and they don't have as many car dealers as Chrysler or General 
Motors, so therefore the car dealers must be the problem. They are the 
ones that are creating this problem.
  So they basically gave--we had a car dealer from Michigan, I think it 
was, just at Chrysler's direction, was told to put $7 million into his 
building to make it attractive and all this other stuff. He didn't get 
paid for that. He got a letter saying, You are no longer a Chrysler 
dealer.
  The car dealers basically came to town, and there were pretty amazing 
stories about some of these car dealers and the way they were treated.

                              {time}  1545

  But, you know, it's not just the 3,000 men and women that own these 
auto dealerships, it's the 200,000 people, the mechanics, the 
salespeople, the clerks, they're out of a job. So I don't know how you 
recover the economy by having less stores.
  Mr. NUNES. If the gentleman would yield, one of the important points 
here that you've made is that this task force, this unelected task 
force that has no experience in running anything to do with cars--in 
fact, some of them don't even own cars--have now made this unilateral 
decision to close these dealerships, and the way that they were able to 
do that is because the government has now taken over ownership of the 
car companies.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. The gentleman is absolutely right.
  I will tell you that initially the auto task force ran from this 
dealer issue like a scalded cat, and they were really quick to put out 
a press release saying, We're not micromanaging the car companies. We 
don't know enough to run Chrysler and General Motors. This was the car 
companies. This was General Motors, and this was Chrysler. They made 
the decision. They are the bad ones who decided they were going to 
throw all of these people out of work.
  A couple of things run counter to that. The first was, just like I 
think it's an interesting business model that you are going to sell 
more cars with less dealers, the auto task force in the Chrysler 
bankruptcy, according to an article in the Automotive News, didn't want 
Chrysler to advertise their cars during the pendency of the bankruptcy. 
When somebody, apparently, told them how stupid that was, they said, 
Okay, you can spend half of it. It was $134 million. So, again, this 
unelected task force apparently thinks that you can sell more cars if 
you don't advertise

[[Page 20449]]

and if you have 3,000 less stores across the country.
  The other thing that sort of gets in their way is Fritz Henderson, 
who is the president and the CEO of General Motors, old and new, gave 
an affidavit to the bankruptcy court in New York.
  I would like to insert that into the Record as well.

  United States Bankruptcy Court Southern District of New York, In re 
                 General Motors Corp., et al., Debtors


AFFIDAVIT OF FREDERICK A. HENDERSON, PURSUANT TO LOCAL BANKRUPTCY RULE 
                                 1007-2

                 State of New York, County of New York

       Frederick A. Henderson, being duly sworn, hereby deposes 
     and says:
       1. I am the President, Chief Executive Officer, and a 
     Director of General Motors Corporation, a Delaware 
     corporation (``GM''), which together with its wholly-owned 
     direct subsidiaries, Chevrolet-Saturn of Harlem, Inc. 
     (``Chevrolet-Saturn'') and Saturn, LLC (``Saturn''), and GM's 
     wholly-owned indirect subsidiary Saturn Distribution 
     Corporation (``Saturn Distribution''), are the debtors in the 
     above-captioned chapter 11 cases (collectively, the 
     ``Debtors''). I submit this affidavit (the ``Affidavit'') 
     pursuant to Rule 1007-2 of the Local Bankruptcy Rules for the 
     Southern District of New York (the ``Local Rules'') to assist 
     the Court and other parties in interest in understanding the 
     circumstances that compelled the commencement of these 
     chapter 11 cases and in support of (i) the Debtors' petitions 
     for relief under chapter 11 of title 11, United States Code 
     (the ``Bankruptcy Code''); filed on the date hereof (the 
     ``Commencement Date''), (ii) the relief requested in the 
     motions and applications that the Debtors have filed with the 
     Court, including, but not limited to, the ``first day 
     motions,'' and

                           *   *   *   *   *

       93. The Company, however, is not assuming and assigning to 
     New GM all of its existing dealer franchise agreements. The 
     Company's vast dealer network, consisting of approximately 
     6,000 dealerships, developed over an extended time period in 
     which the Company's market share was growing and was far 
     greater than it is now, and when there was far less, or even 
     no meaningful foreign competition. Consequently, and 
     precisely because there are now far more dealerships than the 
     Company's market share can support, including, in some cases, 
     multiple dealers in a single contracting community and 
     dealerships that have become poorly situated as a result of 
     changing demographics, the Purchaser is not willing to 
     continue all dealerships. Among the dealerships the Purchaser 
     is not willing to continue, for example, are those 
     approximately 400 dealers who sell fewer than fifty cars per 
     year, and those approximately 250 dealers who sell fewer than 
     100 cars per year. Approximately 630 other dealerships are 
     not being continued because they are dealers who, in whole or 
     substantial part, sell brands that are being discontinued.
       94. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the 363 Transaction does 
     not contemplate an abrupt cutoff of nonretained dealerships. 
     In pursuit of the maximization of New GM's ability to, among 
     other things, maintain consumer confidence and goodwill, 
     provide ongoing warranty and other services, and preserve 
     resale and trade-in values, the Company not only is giving 
     approximately 17 months notice, but also will offer to enter 
     into, and New GM will assume ``deferred termination 
     agreements'' with most of the dealers whose franchise 
     agreements are not being assumed, which should have the 
     additional benefit of easing the hardships attendant to the 
     dealership closings.

  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Madam Speaker, could you tell us how much time we 
have left?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Edwards of Maryland). The gentleman from 
Ohio has 11 minutes remaining.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the Chair very much.
  In this affidavit, Mr. Henderson indicates that the idea of shutting 
all these dealerships--in their case, 2,600--wasn't his idea. The 
purchaser rejected their plan. Does the gentleman know who the 
purchaser of General Motors is? It's the United States Government.
  Mr. NUNES. It's us. It's the people.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. It's the task force. So they rejected Chrysler's 
plan. They rejected General Motors' plan. They said, Go back to the 
drawing board. Mr. Rattner, who was the head of the task force, said, 
You have got to come up with a new plan; and Mr. Bloom testified in 
front of the Senate that they rejected the plans because they didn't 
find the car companies' plans to be aggressive enough when it came to 
shutting down plants, throwing people out of work, and closing car 
dealerships. So again, just like when people were shocked about the AIG 
bonuses, people running around town here saying, I'm shocked. Well, you 
shouldn't be shocked. You told them what to do. You didn't say that you 
have to close 10. You didn't say that you have to close one in 
Cleveland and one in California; but you did say you have to close a 
bunch; and you can't walk away from that responsibility.
  And now there's legislation. I thought that the gentleman from New 
York was still in the Chair. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Maffei) 
is the lead Democratic sponsor of a piece of legislation that says, 
You've got to deal with these people fairly, these 200,000 people that 
you've tossed out of work. So he has proposed legislation. I have 
proposed legislation. But Mr. Rattner, before he left, in response to 
the legislation, the administration opposes the legislation to force 
the reopening of Chrysler dealers and prevent General Motors from 
closing dealers. So I don't know how much more they could be involved.
  That brings us to Clue, the Travel Edition. The task force has said 
that they're not responsible for 20 auto plants closing and about 
50,000 auto workers being thrown out of work. They're not responsible 
for the 50,000 Delphi workers who don't have health insurance today. 
They're not responsible for the 200,000 people that work at the 
dealerships across the country that are now going to be out of 
business. So who is? Around this chart we have Mr. Bloom. This is the 
Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Geithner; former President George W. 
Bush; the President of the United States; Larry Summers, the 
President's economic adviser; and down there is Robert Nardelli, the 
former head of Chrysler I was talking about.
  Again, the same scenario. This is a pretty simple question: who 
decided to take the ax to those 20 plants, those almost 300,000 people 
and shut 'er down? I mean it's no longer get 'er done. It's shut 'er 
down. I think we should find out, but nobody will fess up. Nobody will 
say who did it.
  Mr. NUNES. So nobody knows who did the AIG bonuses; no one knows who 
put that legislation in; and now no one knows who shut down the 
automotive plants, the auto dealers. We're sitting here with 300,000 
people out of work in the largest democracy in the world, which is 
supposed to be a deliberative body where the Congress is supposed to 
make the decisions, and we have no answers.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. The gentleman is correct. I just want to conclude, 
unless the gentleman has another thought.
  Mr. NUNES. I just want to thank the gentleman for bringing this to 
the people's attention. This is really the only avenue that you now 
have is to come before the people, to come before the whole world, and 
you have laid out a very compelling case that, quite frankly, we're not 
getting anything done. In fact, we don't know who's doing what around 
here. I am troubled by this, what you've brought to the floor of the 
House; and I hope that you will continue your effort to figure out and 
get to the bottom of who did this.
  Mr. LaTOURETTE. Well, I will. And I thank the gentleman for 
participating in this. I want to thank Larry the Cable Guy for making a 
cameo appearance during the course of this. We want to be bipartisan. 
We want to get things here. But get 'er done by a date certain, no 
matter what the details are, when you drop 300 pages at 3 o'clock in 
the morning, when you drop 1,100 pages at midnight, when you work in 
private and in secret to draft legislation to do things like cap-and-
trade and health care legislation, it really is not the way that the 
government is supposed to work.
  We know, on our side of the aisle, as Republicans, that we did such a 
lousy job that the voters replaced us in 2006. We understand that. But 
by the same token, there are a lot of bright people on our side, a lot 
of bright people on that side; and I would believe that we could come 
together on all of these important issues and give the American people 
some legislation that they can have confidence in because Members of 
both parties participated. People are very suspicious of Washington. 
They say, It's so partisan. They're always fighting with each other. A 
giant step toward solving that would be to work these things out in a 
bipartisan way.

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  I thank the gentleman, I thank the Chair, and I yield back the 
balance of my time.

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