[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 4321]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        GOLDMAN SACHS SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR ITS ACTIONS

  (Mr. WELCH asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. WELCH. Mr. Speaker, earlier this week, the Justice Department 
reached a settlement with Goldman Sachs, where Goldman Sachs is paying 
$5 billion as a result of selling bad mortgages to good people.
  I want to ask the question a Vermont banker asked me: Why isn't 
anybody going to jail?
  What they did is put together mortgages that were designed to fail, 
and then they sold them to police officers, to teachers, to folks who 
have pension funds, with trust that Goldman Sachs was working for them.
  So the banker's question from Vermont--why didn't anyone go to 
jail?--that is the question.
  There is a second question: Why are the taxpayers paying over half of 
this settlement? It is tax deductible. The $5 billion settlement, $2.4 
billion civil penalty Goldman pays, but the rest of it, about $2.6 
billion, is deductible.
  And why should the taxpayers be on the hook for the misconduct, 
intentional misconduct, cruel misconduct, unnecessary misconduct?
  Taxpayers should not be paying a cent, and the people accountable 
should be going to jail.

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