[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 14822]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         THE AMERICAN AWAKENING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Three years ago, after a decade of deregulation, the 
repeal of Glass-Steagall, which was the deregulation of derivatives, 
Wall Street--the ``job creators''--gambled our economy into oblivion, 
but they never paid the price.
  Remember George Bush and Hank Paulson, who was the Secretary of the 
Treasury? Well, he was kind of a stand-in, because, actually, he was 
the former chairman of Goldman Sachs, pretending to be Secretary of the 
Treasury. He took care of his buddies on Wall Street, but he was aided 
and abetted by none other than Tim Geithner, the chairman of the New 
York Fed. In fact, in one of the most outrageous moments of this whole 
scenario, Tim Geithner, now Secretary of the Treasury--although he 
wasn't chairman of Goldman Sachs, but it's probably in his future--
decided to pay off the gamblers 100 cents on the dollar when the 
government had to do the biggest bailout in history of AIG. Now, that 
was incredible--100 cents on the dollar.
  At the time, I proposed that, in fact, Wall Street should pay for its 
own bailout--that is, a tax on speculators and reinstituting a tax we 
had from 1916 to 1966 while we built the greatest industrial Nation on 
Earth. It didn't hurt investment in capitalism then. It wouldn't hurt 
it now. In fact, if we reined in some of the speculators, our real 
economy would be better off for it.
  But now there's sort of been this amazing political jujitsu where 
somehow the Republicans, aided by the Koch Brothers, who have also 
subsidized the Tea Party, have changed the narrative. It was the 
government. It was overregulation. Overregulation? Oh, come on, guys. 
There were no rules. They gambled our economy into oblivion. You cannot 
pretend that this wasn't wild and reckless, but you've changed the 
narrative. You took over the House.
  Now, this fall, something is happening. Something in this land is 
happening. I call it the American awakening--the occupation of Wall 
Street, which is now spreading to other cities across this country.

                              {time}  1020

  They make fun of these young people because they are not totally 
focused on what they want, but what's happened is their future has been 
stolen from them. I saw some Fox commentators yesterday morning making 
fun of them saying, Oh, do you think they got time off from work? Oh, 
well, they don't have jobs, do they?
  No, they don't have jobs. What are we doing to create jobs and give 
these kids a future in this country and rein in the gamblers on Wall 
Street and restore the real economy, the productive economy of this 
country? Nothing. In fact, you want to go back to 2008. That was your 
dream.
  It is time to begin to deal meaningfully with these problems in this 
country and that we have the greatest disparity of wealth in our 
history. Corporate profits are up; jobs are down. CEO pay up; jobs are 
down. Bonuses on Wall Street, whoa, six figures, up. Jobs, down.
  It's time to rectify this, and I think the young people and the 
others who are joining them on Wall Street get it. They may not be 
totally focused, but they know that this isn't a country that gives 
them a fair shot at the American Dream anymore. It's a stacked deck, 
and it's time for a new deck and a new order.
  Reregulate the reckless gamblers on Wall Street. Rein them in, take 
steps to rebuild our real economy, give people a future, invest in 
education, invest in the basics of this country, transportation, 
infrastructure; and we can be a great Nation again. But if we continue 
down this path, or even if they accelerate us down this path with 
helping the job creators destroy the economy again, there's no hope.

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