Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009

Mr. Speaker, for about the last 3 to 5 months I have been down here pretty regularly talking about maintaining and restoring the rule of law to certain areas of our activities as a government. And I think this is important. I've stated it over and over and over. We created a Republic by creating a Constitution that set up that form of government.

But our Founding Fathers knew that the moral underpinnings of a Republic were required for that Republic to succeed. And they knew that there had to be implanted and instilled in the hearts and minds of Americans who would be--would maintain this Republic, a certain inbred understanding that there were rules that governed our society and our behavior and that there were morals and ethics which should be applied to what we do as we operate this Republic.

You will recall that when Benjamin Franklin was asked, when he walked outside of the Constitutional Congress, and they said, ``Mr. Franklin, what kind of government have you given us?'' He said, ``We have given you a Republic.''

Now, God help us that we can keep it. And the whole purpose of that statement is to point out that he was fairly confident, as was every one of our Founding Fathers, that at that point in time in the United States of America there was a moral and ethical underpinning of society, and that if we would maintain that moral and ethical underpinning of society, we would be able to keep our Republic.

But I don't think any Founding Father envisioned a society in which individuals thought they would make the choices as to which rules applied to them and what rules did not apply to them, and they would not abide by the rules that society had set but rather the rules that they had chosen to govern their own lives. Because that's not a Republic; that's anarchy.

Now, we've been talking about some things that are going on in our society and in this Congress that have to concern everybody. And they have to concern them in a big way because they affect the attitudes of those who govern here in the Congress and those who are involved in this governmental process.

I've tried to raise and point out some things that I think are of dire concern, and I will continue to do this because I spent most of my entire adult life basically following as best I could and trying to enforce those rules that this society has established for itself to operate in.

And when I came to this Congress as a new Member of Congress almost 8 years ago now, I was told there were rules that govern this body--all of the people who serve in the United States Congress--and I very quickly tried to do my best--as I am sure every Member here has--to learn what those rules were. And they were not only just parliamentary rules, but they were fundraising rules, they were political rules, they were reporting rules, they were tax-paying rules. There's lots of rules that govern the activities in this body.

I had started talking about this because I see a trend, and I see things that are happening that make me concerned that there are those who don't think certain rules apply to them.

I am going to point out what the President of the United States said as he started out his term: ``I campaigned on changing Washington and bottom-up politics. I don't want to send a message to the American people that there are two sets of standards: one for the powerful people and one for the ordinary folks who are working every day and paying their taxes.'' This was stated by Barack Obama to CNN February 3, 2009. And it's a noble statement by the President.

That's sort of what I am trying to talk about right now.

And I've got a laundry list that I went over last week, and this list is pretty much the same list but with some exceptions. I've added some things and taken up another subject.

But I want to start with something that's made the headlines here very recently, and that's this organization known as ACORN, which we discovered by watching television and seeing events on television, that people who were established to do certain things under the rules in fact forgot those rules and did others. And this House voted 345-75 for an amendment to bar the Federal funding to ACORN after these undercover investigators uncovered four ACORN offices engaged in blatant mortgage loan fraud and aiding and abetting prostitution.

In my opinion, that was the right vote. I am proud of my colleagues who voted for it, and I think we need a stand-alone bill--not a bill that's an amendment to another bill--that would restate the very obvious: That no Federal moneys should be distributed to those who would blatantly commit mortgage fraud and aiding and abetting prostitution. And many of us saw that, saw it live and in color on television.

But in addition to those videos, we have had our bodies here in this Congress out doing some investigations of ACORN, and they have found a lot to be concerned about.

They found a nationwide history of crime--most of it relating to the last election, but not all of it; some of it relating to mortgages and other things that they were supposedly there to advise the uneducated and the uninformed as to what was available for them, especially the poor and the underprivileged, so that they might attempt to prosper in our society. They sounded like a good cause.

But if you will examine with me this list for just a moment, these are things that our Oversight Committee has found and brought forward. There are things that have been brought forward by the press, and there are things that have been brought forward by court records.

In Colorado we had allegations of voter fraud with multiple counts with convictions. So people were convicted of that crime. In Florida, voter fraud with cases pending in the courts; in Michigan, vote fraud with multiple counts with convictions in the State of Michigan; Minnesota, vote fraud with multiple counts with convictions in Minnesota; Missouri, mail fraud and identity theft, multiple counts with convictions in Missouri; Nevada, vote fraud, multiple counts pending; Ohio, vote fraud, multiple counts with convictions; Pennsylvania, vote fraud, multiple counts with convictions; Washington State, vote fraud, multiple counts with convictions.

Notice how many times the words ``with convictions''--which means--I think everybody knows what that means. It means a finder of fact and a ruler of law made a judgment that these people had violated the law, and they convicted them of breaking that law, and I assume they assessed some form of punishment against them.

So this is a case, I would argue, of just what I was talking about when I started talking today, that someone--and I would argue a whole group of someones--have made a decision that certain laws don't apply to them and therefore, they blatantly--across the United States in a very short period of time, basically the last election cycle--they went out and violated these laws and these rules because they made their personal judgment that the law that we as a society established didn't apply to them.

This is moral relativism run amok, and it's done with $55-plus million of

United States money because that's how much money we have heard that we have allocated and given to ACORN to do their business.

And by the way, we have bills that have passed this House that the Democrat majority have put in other funding mechanisms to the tune of $8 billion, and that's why when we address this very issue that we would no longer fund ACORN, we need to make sure that that includes those things already approved for sources of revenue for ACORN. Because if you're not going to follow the rules of law, there needs to be consequences in our society.

So we start off with this supposedly great helping organization called ACORN.

The next thing I want to address here tonight, and I see that I'm joined by one of my good colleagues, and if he would like to have some of the time, I would be sure glad to give him some, is the fact that Dr. Ron Paul has raised an issue before this body that I think we ought to be concerned about and that we ought to think about, and that issue that he has raised is that we have turned over an awful lot of money to the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Reserve has independently of this body issued an awful lot of additional indebtedness and printed an awful lot of additional money, and we would like an accounting of what is going on.

I think it's kind of important, and I would venture to say that if anybody walks up to anybody who serves in this House of Representatives and says, Where is the money we put in the TARP bill? Can you account to me where that TARP money is? Can you tell me where the stimulus money is and what has happened to it? I have been asked the question all the time. How much have we spent? Well, what we know is that the press says we've spent this or the press says we've spent that, but we should know that. I mean, we are the people that were sent here by the American folks to take care of their business.

The Federal Reserve has been designed because it has an effect on our economy. The theory is you've got to keep their activities sort of off in a dark mist so nobody really knows what is happening so you don't cause a run on one part or the other of the economy. And I don't have a problem with that.

But it comes down to the fact that this Congress has turned over $1 trillion worth of American indebtedness, basically money we don't have, money we are borrowing from other nations like China and others that are buying our paper so that we can issue these huge amounts of money. And if you take the TARP and the stimulus bill, it's $1 trillion, well, you've got to ask--and there's more than that, you've got more than that--but we ought to know.

So Congressman Paul has introduced H.R. 1207, and he is asking that we look into what's going on with our money. He says that we've given the Fed $700 billion in Bush TARP funds, and the Congress has given $787 billion in Obama stimulus funds, so that's $1.4 trillion and some change that we've given to the Fed, and yet the taxpayers and the Members of Congress have no way to independently verify what in the world the Fed has done with this money or where it is or who it went to or anything.

Now, we read about it in the newspapers. I used to tell juries when they would come before me, I would say, now we've got a case on trial here today that may be in the newspapers or on television or on radio, or there may be something out there in the news about this case. But I don't want you to listen to any radio broadcast, view any television programs or read anything in print about this case because, believe it or not, they don't always get it right. And we want you to only base your opinion on the evidence you hear in this courtroom under the rules of evidence. I'm sure my friend, Mr. Gohmert, Judge Gohmert, has done exactly the same instruction. And the reason is, you don't really know if the newspapers know what they're talking about. I like to hear what they have to say, but you don't know.

So why should the people that sit in these chairs around this whole big room, why should those people not have an answer to that question, Where is my money? Who is spending it? Where is it going to? How much is left? I think the guy that owns the garage on the corner down the street from me, he pays his taxes, he is entitled to know. His children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren are inheriting the debt we have created for them. They ought to be able to know what we are doing with it today.

And do you know what? That kind of number is a potential for disaster if somebody is crooked. Because it's such a big number, how are you going to know? There can be people stealing billions of dollars, and we don't know. So we ought to know.

I think Dr. Paul has a good bill here. Let me ask my friend, Louie Gohmert from east Texas and a fellow judge, I will yield such time as he may wish to spend on this subject of the Federal Reserve and the fact that we probably ought to have an audit that is reported back to this Congress.

I thank my colleague for his passion. You know, it is very simple: We expect the Fed to look at our banks back home and make sure that they are handling our money right. I don't think anybody I know has close to a billion dollars in the bank, and yet we expect the people that we put in charge of our money to have somebody looking over their shoulder to make sure that they are doing the right thing.

This is the largest chunk of money on the face of the Earth right here, and I don't think it is too much to ask somebody to look over their shoulder and decide what is going on.

That is very good.

I am going to change gears here because I have serious business on the floor of this House tomorrow. For every week of this year, just about, I have come before this body and I have discussed with them the fact that we have serious allegations that have been made against the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rangel. I have asked repeatedly that Mr. Rangel do the right thing and resign his position as the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee until such time as these allegations have been dealt with by the appropriate authorities. A lot of this is supposed to have been dealt with and we have been promised would be dealt with by Speaker Pelosi. She told us, by the end of 2008, the Ethics Committee would have resolved Mr. Rangel's issues.

So I am going to just go briefly over a few.

Mr. Rangel admits to underreporting income and assets for 2007 by more than half, including failure to report income from his Caribbean resort property again. By the way, I say ``again'' because that's the allegation that started all of this information about Mr. Rangel.

Mr. Rangel's aides have now also filed amended disclosure forms revealing similar underreporting by them.

The Committee on Standards is still investigating Mr. Rangel's lease of multi rent-controlled apartments in Harlem; his use of the House parking spot for long-term storage for his antique Mercedes; his failure to report and pay taxes on rental income on his resort villa in the Dominican Republic; an alleged quid pro quo trading legislative actions in exchange for donations to a center named for Mr. Rangel at City College of New York; a gift rule violation on trips to the Caribbean sponsored by the Carib News Foundation in 2007 and 2008; and now Mr. Rangel has the audacity to push through a bill in this body today increasing tax penalties on his fellow taxpayers on the heels of Secretary Geithner's crackdown on UBS depositors for failure to pay taxes.

So, you know, tomorrow I will be offering to this body a very important piece of legislation, a document called a privileged resolution, asking this body to consider what Mr. Rangel refuses to do, and that is the right thing.

We cannot have the chief taxing authority of this body with the allegations, and there are many more than these, these are just a few. There is another full page just like this of different allegations. We cannot have the

chief of values over the IRS, the man who writes the tax laws for this House of Representatives, as the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. It is a travesty of justice for him to serve as the chairman of that committee when the American citizens back home, they realize that he has been getting special treatment on his tax problems and those problems he has not faced, the onerous issues that they have to face when they have the IRS finding that they haven't paid their taxes, and he is doing, we are seeing just what President Obama said he didn't want to see, and that is people of power being treated differently than the ordinary American citizen. That is why I have raised this issue.

When I read what the President said, that gave me the incentive to do this. It does not please me at all to raise issues against any Member in this body, but I am telling you, this gives an appearance of wrongdoing and an appearance of impropriety at the least on behalf of Mr. Rangel, and good governance tell us he should not be in this position of power until the issues are resolved.

I will be the first to say if they are all resolved and concluded to be irrelevant and not any kind of wrongdoing or breaking of the rules, I will be the first to say Mr. Rangel ought to be the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. He ought to be put back in there. But it is not right for him to be there.

So tomorrow, I will ask this body to remove him from that position.

Does the gentleman wish to comment on the issues with Mr. Rangel?

I agree. There will be more about Mr. Rangel tomorrow.

I want to bring up something else. We have had a lot of issues to do with automobiles in this country, and now we have somebody at least that is trying to say, you know, the United States Constitution, section 10, says no State shall pass any ex post facto law or law impairing the obligation of contracts or grant any title of nobility.

This is the Auto Dealers Economic Rights Restoration Act, and this bill prohibits automakers in which the Federal Government has ownership interest or which receives loans from the Federal Government from depriving an auto dealer of its economic rights.

What they are talking about is it seems that these automobile dealerships when they were in the bailout position with the Federal Government--and, quite frankly, General Motors stands for ``Government Motors,'' as far as I am concerned, and Chrysler is sort of in the same boat. I understand Fiat was buying some of that. I am not sure that they made the purchase.

These people went out and made choices to break contracts with one auto dealer and award his customers to another auto dealer. There have been allegations made that these were political decisions. I have no evidence of that. But it is, you know, a right of contract, and they had a contract with these dealers, and because they were pressured, I would argue that they breached contracts with one group of dealers to put their sales into the hands of another dealer. For what reason is beyond my understanding.

But I think this is a good law because it says, this is a violation of the Constitution. This is not the way we do business in the United States. And you know what? We did the Cash For Clunkers, and oh, boy, the government was involved and the money was flowing and all's right with the world, although the government hasn't even started to pay for the clunkers yet. They're still out there processing the deals. And, you know, I think that's a great example, Cash For Clunkers is the perfect example. Do you really want the government running your health care if they can't even pay for junk cars on time? My Lord. I mean, but anyway, that's all part of another tangent.

I will yield to my friend.

Reclaiming my time for just a moment. I will also point out that, to date, according to my auto dealers, they still haven't paid all the dealers for all the clunkers that they bought. So you know, that program has closed out, finished out, done, and there are some dealers with millions of dollars owed to them and the government hasn't processed those dollars in that thing. The important part of this bill is----

And you know, reclaiming my time, the reports this week have been that the sales from our two bailed-out automobile firms that are now part of Government Motors, are tragically low, and there's a lot of talk that they don't know if General Motors can even pull this out. So it's important. Mr. Gohmert has hit upon something that's very important. It's important that we follow procedures and follow the rules. That's what we're talking about, the rule of law, follow the rules. We need to follow the rules of this House so we give a proper examination of every bill and every idea that passes through these halls.

And that's why we've got a bill by Greg Walden and John Culberson and Brian Baird that says how about us following the rules that are written into our book that was written by the Honorable Thomas Jefferson in the rules of this very House of Representatives, that says we're supposed to get three days to read a bill? And as Mr. Gohmert pointed out, just the Cash For Clunkers bill didn't go through any committees, rushed in here. We saw it when we were voting on it and, bam, it was out there. And has it done any good for the automobile industry?

Maybe there was an idea sitting in one of these chairs that would have been a little bit better than the idea that came from who knows where, because it didn't go through a committee system to get through floor, and none of us had time to read it or come up with an idea or amend it, because the rules didn't allow us to amend it.

And that's what's happened on every bill that's been offered this year of any importance. It is brought to us, crammed down our throat, and we're not given the chance to even read it. The American people have made an outcry, and they're making an outcry about bills that are hard to read. I'll admit they're hard to read. But they're saying, why don't you read the bill that's going to change health care in America permanently? And so many of us struggled through it and did. But we're not enforcing a rule that says we should have 3 days to read this bill. We should.

If Americans send us to Washington to be their voice and cast their vote in Washington, D.C., and we are handed a document that may be 2,000 pages long and spend $700 billion, and it gets to us at midnight and we're expected to vote on it at 10:00 the next morning and they drop in amendments after that, how in the world can we do the job the American people sent us to do here?

So this bill right here, the 3-day reading rule, is just ordinary good courtesy and common sense in a place where we spent, in the last year, in the last 6 months we've spent more than we spent in the history of the Republic. So maybe we should slow down. Maybe we should follow the rules and give us 3 days to read these bills. Sorry, but that's kind of a passion, I think, Mr. Gohmert. I'll yield.

Reclaiming my time, I call that the Chicken Little syndrome. The sky is falling. We've had the sky falling in this Chamber on more than one piece of legislation. Oh, my God, the sky is falling; the banks are dropping off a cliff, the economy's going to hell in a handbasket, and you've got to vote now. Don't bother to read it. Don't ask any questions. Give us the money. Trust us. Sign the check.

Well, and I'm telling you this, the same thing happened in the last waning months of the Bush administration, and I didn't support that then, and I won't support it now, because the sky's not falling. We're sent here to do a job, and we ought to be given the chance to read these bills. And I think this is a good bill. And I hope our leadership will let us bring this up. I'm coming down to the last thing I want to talk about tonight, and that is, we are setting history, because we now have more czars by twofold than the Romanovs in all the history of Russia, Imperial Russia.

And so we have a couple of bills, both of them dealing with czars, which say that they want to--Mrs. Blackburn wants to deal with the czars. And we'll start with Mr. Scalise. Mr. Scalise defines czars. We have now, and I may be corrected by my friend, Judge Gohmert, but I believe we're at 34 czars, or maybe 36 czars have been created by this administration, which is like head and shoulders above any bunch of czars we've ever had. We've got czars for everything in the world.

In fact, the compensation czar today announced some compensation rules which were kind of interesting, and I think there's going to be some contract law matters that will probably come up on that. But we have a compensation czar. We have a czar probably, you know, furniture polish czar, for all I know. But sunset the czars. In other words, let's look at them, see what they're doing. If they're not doing anything worth having or they're duplicating efforts that are done by the people who've gone through the Senate appointment process and been vetted by the Senate, the secretaries of the various departments of this government, maybe we ought to just eliminates the czars.

Then our friend, Marsha Blackburn, has a bill that the President is to report the responsibilities and qualifications that authorizes the special assistance of czars. The President will certify that the czars will not assert powers beyond those granted by the law to a commissioned officer on the President's staff, and Congress will hold hearings on the President's report and certification within 30 days.

In other words, Mr. President, tell us what those folks are going to do, how qualified they are to do the job. We're going to pay them somewhere between $175,000 and $200,000 a year to do the job. And the Congress ought to be able to see that report and have the ability to deal with it. Both of these are good laws, and both of these have to do with czars. My friend, Louie Gohmert, has been here with me for almost the full hour. We're about 5 minutes from conclusion, so I'll yield a couple of minutes to my friend, Louie Gohmert.

Reclaiming my time, I agree with my friend and fellow judge from Texas. We don't need czars that don't answer to the people. We intentionally designed the executive department to stand with checks and balances over it, just like the legislative department is designed that way. We intended it. This is not the way our Founding Fathers intended this country to be run.

We've been talking tonight about the rule of law. It's about the rule of law. It's about following the rules. You know, if we don't hold each other to the standards that are required by this body, if we don't hold our colleagues to the standards that are required by this body, then why would we expect the American people to trust us? I will tell you, all of us need to be worried about the issue of trust. So I will continue to raise these issues, and I will be glad to be joined by anyone in this discussion to discuss following the rules and obeying the law.

I appreciate my friend yielding.

This is a very important issue, and actually if you go back to the original bailout bill a year ago, as I read through it, and I did, I didn't read the extra pages that were added for pork at the end, but one of the things that caught my eye was here was a bill for $700 billion for bailout, basically a slush fund for the Treasury Secretary; but in the bill it raised the debt ceiling $1.3 trillion. Now that caught my eyes, because I know $700 billion is less than $1.3 trillion. So I went back through reading again for any loopholes that might allow for the expenditure of more than $700 billion.

Well, we know that before the bill finally passed, there was about $100 billion in pork added in order to get enough votes so that it would pass. That still leaves half a trillion dollars between what the debt ceiling was raised and how much was appropriated in that bill. So I went back through, and one of the things that intrigued me was a provision that allowed the Secretary of the Treasury to hire, utilize whatever personnel was necessary in order to carry out the intentions of the bill.

Well, I was impressed and went to one of the Treasury people privately and asked, what does that mean? Are we going to have a new department of asset management? Are we going to set up a whole new bureaucracy here in Washington? Is there going to be $500 billion spent setting up this kind of extra bureaucracy? And the answer I got was basically, and it was unofficial and informal, but was basically, look, we will hire some people, but ultimately this is going to be so much work we'll have to outsource it.

Well, I don't know if my friend from Texas noticed, but it turns out that the favorite firm of the former Secretary Paulson and the current Secretary Geithner had its biggest profit in the history of Goldman Sachs in the second quarter of this year.

So when my friend talks about transparency, wouldn't it be nice to know how much of that $3.44 billion in clear profit that Goldman Sachs made came from taxpayers, came from the United States Government? But do you know what? There is only one way we really get to know exactly where all that money came from and how much went from the Federal Government. Sure, Goldman Sachs will have to file reports and whatnot, but it would really be nice to see from the government's own reports just how much Federal money is going Goldman Sachs' way, and how much money is being funneled from here in Washington to Wall Street. That would be important to know.

I think one of the things that we have seen, especially in the last several months, is that just because it's good for a Wall Street firm doesn't mean it's good for the stock market and it doesn't mean it's good for rank-and-file Americans who are paying their taxes to keep this government running who also were called upon as they saved and scrimped and tried to meet the demands of the day to be called on to bail out the Wall Street firms. And so it would be nice if maybe they would share a little more than what we are able to see.

I also want to point out the subject of transparency is so important. There is not much that is more cleansing than sunshine. Sunshine, you get enough of it, the mold and mildew just dries up and dies. You get enough sunshine, and things clean up, you get rid

of all the mold and nastiness. And yet what we get around here is people are left in the dark and fed lots of manure. Well, that will grow plenty of mushrooms, but that is not what we are supposed to be about here in Congress.

So the rules of the House, the rules of the Federal Reserve it seems like right now, they are just being played fast and loose, which parenthetically that gives rise to a situation we have right here tonight this week where we played fast and loose with the rules so you have a Defense appropriation, a defense authorization bill where you bring in a hate crimes bill, and I know there's a lot of agreement over what its effect will be; but clearly, one of the effects will be that it will make homosexuality and transgender a protected class.

The elderly were rejected. We weren't going to give them any added protection. Of course, some of us fought for the elderly. If you're going to give anybody protection, how about the elderly? They are commonly sought out. But, no, they weren't protected. And they certainly hadn't been protected in this administration's proposals for Medicare cuts, half a billion--I'm sorry--half a trillion basically in Medicare cuts. So I guess the thinking is we're not going to protect the elderly as much as homosexuals, transgender or even pedophiles. We tried to have an amendment that would exclude pedophiles from a protected class under the hate crimes bill, and that was rejected along party lines basically. So anyway we are not going to protect elderly as much as these sexuality lifestyle groups.

And then we turn around and we tack that hate crimes bill on to the military or Defense appropriation or Defense authorization. We've got soldiers out in the field needing this bill, and we're going to play fast and loose with the rules. We will not be allowed to amend this on the floor; we will not be allowed to change anything about this. It's take it or leave it. And I just think it is so outrageous while we have soldiers in the field to use this Defense authorization bill that's going to help our soldiers protect us, it's going to protect them while they protect us, and you tack on a hate crimes bill to the Defense authorization? Just how much disrespect can somebody have for the rules of this body and for procedure to do that kind of thing? It is just outrageous.

But then as you see these kinds of things coming into play, you see the lack of what really is strong morality in our financial laws, in our transparency. And it was Chuck I heard earlier this year was pointing out that when you lose morality, you're going to have economic chaos; you're going to have economic instability. And when you lose economic stability, people--and this is so tragic--but people throughout history, when they have economic chaos are always willing to give up liberties to gain economic stability. You lose morality in the Federal Reserve, in the Treasury of the United States, and in ACORN and all the voting laws and the procedure of this body. You lose what is just right. You lose that, and it contributes to economic instability, and then that gives rise to economic chaos. And people always give up their liberties trying to get economic stability.

So I think we get back to that sense of morality when you start having transparency, when you're able to see what's going on, when it's not behind closed doors, when it's not some private group with an agenda out there drafting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act who has their own lifestyle agenda, when it's not some group behind closed doors saying let's push through this stimulus bill, it may not stimulate America, it won't spend money, most of it for 2 years, it really won't do what we are saying is stimulus, but, boy, will it enrich our friends.

We have to get away from that or we are going to lose this country. We cannot continue down this road with a lack of candor, with a lack of openness and honesty. We have got to return to transparency. That will help address the issues of this country. Sunlight always has a way of doing that.

If my friend would yield, this is such an important point.

Through the economic downturn over the last year or so, a lot of people across America have confused community banks and investment banks. They have just lumped them all in together, and there is a major difference. You have community banks who have to have complete transparency. They have Federal regulators who come in and check every dot and tittle. They have to make sure that everything is just the way the Federal regulators want it. Some of us have been concerned that over-aggressiveness by Federal regulators in the most stable of our financial institutions, the community banks, has helped dry up a great deal of the credit.

So imagine the hypocrisy to have Federal regulators just swarm in like locusts to community banks which are the most stable and have been the most careful in Federal banking, and they are being regulated by people who will not open their books to this Congress. That in itself is such an outrage that it alone ought to be a basis for getting Ron Paul's bill here to the floor, get it passed, and let's open them up. I love what Newt Gingrich said: If transparency is good enough for the CIA, it really ought to be good enough for the Federal Reserve.

It goes back to the issue of transparency. Everybody needs to be accountable under the same rules no matter who it is. And actually, this weekend, I had a number of people commenting on how unfair it was of Congress to be judged by one standard, and specifically mentioning the chairman of the Ways and Means, and the rest of America to be judged by another standard. It is difficult for the American people to understand.

If that were me, I couldn't do this. I would have had to pay the penalty and interest. I mentioned to my friend previously about my constituent, Mr. de le Torre, and he was very proud of his Hispanic descent. He said de le Torre meant ``of the tower.'' Apparently he had some royalty back in Spain some centuries ago.

But here he had four permanent employees, four part-time employees, and he had a sheet metal business, and he had no problem with me mentioning his name and his own situation. And with the downturn in the economy, he wanted to protect his employees. He did not want to let them go. He knew they were struggling, and he certainly was struggling. And, of course, he is the last one to get paid. He didn't have any money. And yet the quarterly payment had to be made for the portions of Social Security and the Federal tax on that payroll, and he did not have the money. And because of the additional pressures being brought to bear by the Federal Reserve, who will not be transparent against community banks, which are doing everything they can and have been transparent, he wasn't able to get a loan. He could not get a loan or a line of credit to make his payment, his quarterly payment to the government.

So he notified them, filed how much he owed, but said, I don't have any cash. I don't want to fire any of my employees, and I can't get a loan or a line of credit to make my quarterly payment.

They let him know you owe penalty and interest. We are coming after you. He was telling me that he has since been notified that they are going to start seizing his accounts and his assets, sell them off if necessary, but seize his assets if he does not make his penalty and interest payment.

So it is kind of hard for a guy like that who is being loyal to these people, the eight people who work with him and for him, how a guy that is chairman of the committee that writes the tax laws can do far worse and not be open, not just be completely transparent in what has happened.

The chairman of the committee doesn't have to pay penalty or interest, and yet this poor man does. It is hard for him to understand, and it is hard for rank-and-file Americans to understand. It is not the standard that this Congress should be establishing. I so hope that we can get back to being a Congress that leads by example.

You know, I think about the words of George Washington. He was a man who had incredible bravery. We would not have the Nation as we know it if it were not for his humility, his willingness to resign and go home after winning a revolution. His words, his exact words were, ``A people unused to restraint must be led; they will not be drove.'' And that was okay English back in those days.

I look at what we are doing now. We are dealing with a country that is not used to restraint, and yet the financial taxation laws are restraining Americans like never before, not so much because of the percentage but because of the actual effect on Americans. And we are not leading as Washington implored. We are trying to drive Americans to do what this Congress has not done and should be doing, and that is lead by example.

And we were promised by the Speaker that this would be the most transparent and open and accountable Congress. That simply has not happened. In fact, to the contrary. I don't know that there has ever been one that has been more closed and protective of its own, and that really has to change.

I yield back to my friend.

If the gentleman might yield on that point.

On the Cash For Clunkers program we know that there are many foreign vehicles that are manufactured here in the United States, and the American workers do a fantastic job. But it is worth noting that in this program that was rushed through so quickly without going through the proper order, without getting the proper scrutiny through committees and through proper chance for amendment here on the floor, where you can take a law that may have some problems and make it better, we're not allowed any of that opportunity.

And so what we got was a Cash For Clunkers program in which four of the five top vehicles that were purchased were foreign vehicles. Now, some of those were made in America, but most of them were made in foreign countries. In other words, the Cash For Clunkers vehicles helped foreign governments and foreign companies more than it helped American companies. And they want to run my health care. My goodness. Is that sad? If it weren't so tragic, how much we help foreign companies over our own U.S. companies, it would be a comedy. It's just outrageous.

If I might, on one other point. Unforeseen consequences too. Because we didn't have a chance to go through the proper channels and really look at this legislation, the Cash For Clunkers bill, one of the effects has been that the working poor in America have been the hardest-hit, because they were not able to come in and buy a brand new car with this attractive program because they didn't have the money to make the payments after that.

So it really didn't help the working poor in the United States. And, in fact, it hurt them because what happened under this Cash For Clunkers program is thousands of vehicles, used vehicles that would be sold cheaply to the working poor in America, cars they could afford, were just fixed to where they could not be run, could not be operated, could not be sold. That drives up the price of the used vehicles that the working poor in America really need to get to and from their jobs. So it hurt those who needed help in America the most and helped foreign companies over domestic companies. Now that's a government program that we're going to use, I'm sure, to model health care after.

Thank you. And the point about having time to read the bill could not be illustrated more clearly than on the stimulus bill that was basically crammed down this body's throat. We were promised by the President back when he was running for office that he was going to have, what is it, 4 or 5 days it would be up on the Internet, where all America could read these bills for days before we voted on them. But it gets a little hard to take the administration, the President, leaders of this body seriously when they all parroted that stuff and how they were going to do that.

And then on the stimulus bill we were told over and over, we didn't have time to read the bill. We just didn't. It was filed, I think, after midnight. We're voting on it, over 1,000 pages. There was no time for anybody to read it. We were told that there were thousands of people losing their jobs every day. It had to become law immediately. There's no time to read it; just do it. Just do it. Just vote on it. Well, some of us still wanted to see what was in it. We voted against it, and yet it passed on that Friday, and so because it was such an emergency, they said, and we didn't have time to read the bill, we passed it on Friday, and then Saturday came and went, and Sunday came and went, and Monday came and went, and Tuesday, when the photo op was set up in Colorado for the President to sign the bill, he finally got around to signing the bill.

Why couldn't we have had those 3 days and voted on it on Monday if it was such an important bill and if the President had been serious and the leadership of this House had been serious about the importance of reading bills? Why couldn't we have had Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then debated on Monday? But we were denied that, even though the President never had any intention of signing that bill for 4 days after it was signed. So it gets a little hard to take some of the acrimony on the floor seriously, as in that case, when we were just ridiculed for not being willing to sign it immediately and for wanting to read it when there just was no time to waste. Four days later, the President signed it.

With regard to the czars, we've seen over and over examples of people who have been placed in these positions, and it doesn't do me any good or anybody in America any good to say, well, you know, prior presidents have used czars. Not to this extent. Not ever, and I never really cared for them, no matter who the President was. I didn't like the bailout last year. I thought, until this administration, it was possibly the worst domestic action that's been taken in the last 50 or 60 years. That is, until this administration just left $700 billion in the sand as it blew through more and more money. But then, to have this massive spending spree that's, while we've got people appointed by the White House, not properly vetted, and the more we find out about these people, the more we're concerned they should never have been in those positions in the first place.

And as we know, we've already had one recently step down, he should have never been there in the first place, whereas, if you went through regular order there and had advice and consent of the Senate, it doesn't mean they're going to be perfect. Nobody is. No process is. But there was real ingenuity in the process that was set up by the Founders, and the advice and consent is an important issue. But the whole reason our Founders set up a President outside the main stream of Congress, unlike the parliament that elects a prime minister from this body, it was going to be from outside this body so that there would be more checks and balances, and the czars have done nothing but create Scars upon Thars--with all deference to Dr. Seuss--scars across America, as they have been unaccountable to the Congress, to the courts, to America. And that really has to be changed.

We need the sunlight. We need transparency. We don't need czars.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 1 of rule XXII and by direction of the Committee on Financial Services, I move to take from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 4173) to provide for financial regulatory reform, to protect consumers and investors, to enhance Federal understanding of insurance issues, to regulate the over-the-counter derivatives markets, and for other purposes, with the Senate amendments thereto, disagree to the Senate amendments, and agree to the conference asked by the Senate.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we have just seen an elephant stick wielded on the floor of the House. The elephant stick refers to the man who's walking around the Mall here in Washington carrying a big stick, and people say, Why do you have that big stick. He said, Well, I've got to keep away all the elephants, and the people say to him, Well, there aren't any elephants here, and he said, Right, my stick works.

My friend from Alabama is determined to prevent from happening what's not going to happen, what's not authorized in the bill. It is true that we had bailouts, and of course, what we also have here is the latest in a series of stunning repudiations of the Bush administration by its former loyal followers. All the bailouts the gentleman mentioned, of course, happened under the administration of President Bush, and I believe President Bush's administration did the best they could with weak tools at the time to deal with the problem.

What we have are ways to avoid that from happening. There is reference to too big to fail. No institution will be too big to fail under this bill. They will fail. The question is, will their failure lead to consequences that you should have some ability to deal with.

We do model some of this after the FDIC. The FDIC, run by a very able appointee, Sheila Bair, a former aid to Senator Dole and a Republican appointed to the job by President Bush, had a major role in helping us decide how to do this, and it is to say, first of all, the institutions that get too far into debt will die.

My Republican colleagues were actually right in the wrong place earlier this year, which is better than their usual average, when they talked about death panels. We are legislating death panels this year but for financial institutions, not elderly women. We don't have them in the health care bill. We have them in the financial bill. There is no too big to fail institution.

I will say in the instruction motion some things that were done were not done as well as they should have been--that's why we go to a final conference--and to the extent that there are suggestions that some of these institutions might survive, we will clean them out. The Senate bill has some provisions I don't like, and section 202 of the Senate bill I hope to change.

On the other hand, the notion that in this very complex system that we have, with the debts that are out there, to only do bankruptcy is simplistic. By the way, if my Republican colleagues really believe that bankruptcy was the only way to deal with these institutions, they would have an amendment or would have had an amendment to do away with the dissolution authority in the FDIC. The major exception of bankruptcy right now is in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. We don't have simple bankruptcy for banks. We have a method given that particular relevance in the society on how you wind them down.

So, there are many things in here that I agree with. As to the conference report being open, again here I welcome my Republican colleagues as converts to the cause of openness and interbranch negotiations. When the Republicans controlled this institution for 12 years and had the Senate for most of that time, conferences were so rare that I've had to explain to Members who came during the years of Republicans how a conference works. Now they have become great advocates of an openness they never implemented themselves.

We will have a conference, which I announced was my intention last year, last fall. It will be open. Things will be presented. They will be debated. They will be subject to amendment. They will be voted on. I was asked if they were going to be televised. Now, I am not the editorial director of C-SPAN. I hope it will be covered. I hope TV will be there. I hope it will be widely covered, and I think it probably will be given the interest.

So, when they talk about a 72-hour requirement, I expect that we will beat that. The timetable I am hoping for will have this bill done in a couple of weeks, and it should be reported out, if we can work this out by a Thursday, and not come to the House until Tuesday which is more than 72 hours. One never knows whether there is going to be some emergency, what might happen. This will be a fully debated bill.

So there are aspects of the instruction report that I agree with. There are aspects with which I disagree. Of course, we have to go to the Senate. That's why instruction motions are not binding. But I do disagree with two points.

First of all, the entirely enacted allegation that this perpetuates bailouts, they have us confused with the situation that occurred in 2008. I don't blame the Bush administration for these bailouts in part because I think some of them could have been conducted more sensibly and better and with more concern for the impact on the average citizen, but they didn't have the tools. This gives them tools that first the Bush administration and now the Obama administration has asked for, not to keep institutions alive but to put them to death in a way that does not cause great perturbation in the rest of the economy. There will be no taxpayer money expended under here. That's already done. I do not doubt that years from now they will take credit for what we had already decided to do.

The instruction motion, in other words, is a mixed bag. Some parts of it I hope we will act on. The ex-ante fund we talk about of $150 billion, recommended to us again by Chairwoman Bair of the FDIC, many of us thought that made sense. The Senate and the administration were opposed to it. It will not survive the conference. People know that. So, to that extent, that's going to disappear anyway.

But saying that you only have bankruptcy and nothing else that helps you buffer the consequences of the failure of these institutions--and failures they will be, they will be hard to fail and will be dissolved--I think is reckless.

So I plan to vote against the motion to instruct, and given that it is such a mixed bag of things and given that it's not binding, I will predict that the outcome is likely to be very similar no matter how this goes. That is, there are some things we are going to do, some things we have to negotiate with the Senate. We haven't got the power to order. So I think this will be a useful discussion, but I will go back to just the last central point.

There will be no taxpayer funds, and there will be no institutions that are not allowed to fail. There will be an effort--and this has to be negotiated--to work with the Senate so that we do not simply say that the consequences are of no interest, and I would repeat again. Those who genuinely believe that only bankruptcy should be used have made a major concession by not applying those rules to the banking system. If only bankruptcy should be used, then where was the amendment during the process to convert the FDIC dissolution process on which this is modelled to a bankruptcy model?

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I would like to yield to any of my Republican colleagues who will tell me why during this process they never moved to require bankruptcy as the way of dealing with failing banks. If bankruptcy is the only way to do it, why have the Republicans never proposed that we substitute for the current FDIC proposal bankruptcy? Well, I'm used to being unanswered when I ask hard questions. I think that proves the point.

I will yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Well, the gentleman is wrong about that because, yes, depositors are different than investors and depositors are insured, but we have deposit insurance. If you on the other side generally believe this, Mr. Speaker, they would provide deposit insurance and then bankruptcy. The gentleman's incorrectly answered the question. Deposit insurance takes care of the depositors, but there are other things that are done to try and reduce the cost to the government. So bankruptcy and deposit insurance has not been the method.

Yes.

I would take back my time to say that's even by the standards of this debate wholly illogical. No, I'm not remotely suggesting that. What I'm suggesting is the glaring inconsistency between saying bankruptcy is the only way you put an institution out of business and the failure to apply that to the banking business.

By the way, I don't mean to be rude but the gentleman mentioned Citicorp. There's a bank there that has deposit insurance. So maybe the gentleman wasn't aware that the bank there has deposit insurance.

Mr. Speaker, there is another error in the comments. This is that the bill designates institutions too big to fail as systemically important. That is misleading as stated.

In fact, the bill in the House does not designate any institution as being systemically important. The only way an institution would be designated as systemically important is if it was found to be troubled. So there would be no situation in which an institution would have that label and go out and be able to do things with it.

Under the bill that we have, only a finding that the institution is in difficulty triggers a systemic importance designation, and it is accompanied with restrictions on that institution. It is exactly the opposite of this being a badge to get more loans. It is publicly identified as a troubled institution.

The last point I would make is this. Yes, there was flood insurance, Medicare, a number of things. None of them have the language we have in this bill. This bill has very specific language banning those things because we have learned from experience.

We have learned from the experience of 2008, with all those bailouts. And, again, remember, every single bailout activity was initiated by the Bush administration. And I say that not for political purposes but to indicate the inherent difficulties here.

And it was the people in the Bush administration who first said to us, ``Give us different tools. We have to be able to deal with putting these institutions out of business, but not ignore the consequences.''

So, with that, Mr. Speaker, I reiterate: This bill very explicitly prevents bailouts. It designates no institution as systemically important. It says that regulators may step in when they find an institution to be troubled. And if they think that that troubled institution could cause damage, they don't just designate it, they put severe restrictions on it.

So it is exactly the opposite suggestion that some will be too big to fail. They will be on notice that they have to increase their capital, decrease their activity. And people will be told that if that institution does fail under this bill, those who have invested, et cetera, will be wiped out.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

If the gentleman would yield, as you know, I was for some form of that. And I guarantee, because the Senate has acted, we will have tough auditing provisions of the Federal Reserve in the final bill.

And I do want to note to my friend from Texas that, when the Republicans offered a motion to recommit to the bill, they would have wiped out a number of things, including his audit provision. So despite the fact that my friend

from Texas temporarily abandoned his audit provision to the perils of a recommittal provision, I will join with him in reviving it.

And, as he knows, we have in our bill a severe limitation on this power under section 13(3) for making these loans. What they did with AIG will no longer be possible. There will be no more loans to individual institutions.

But he has been the leader on the audit situation, and I intend to continue to work with him to make sure it is well done.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kanjorski), who had a major and constructive role in this bill and was pushing for things like reform of the Volcker rule before it was popular in other quarters.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to say that I'm intrigued. We were talking about bankruptcy, now we have a new concept--enhanced bankruptcy. We were told earlier that it should just be plain bankruptcy like everybody else. Now, apparently, there is something special so we get enhanced bankruptcy. Maybe we will have enhanced bankruptcy explained to us. And if bankruptcy is good for everybody, why does enhanced bankruptcy need to be done here, and what is it? Is it another name for doing more than bankruptcy?

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield 3 minutes to the chairman of the Oversight Committee of the Financial Services Committee who has been a major force for stability in this system, the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore).

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I remember when the gentleman from Texas was a little less harsh on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when an important amendment that he offered was adopted over the objection of the Secretary of the Treasury, but we've all tended to evolve some on some of these issues.

I want to repeat the central theme here: History is one of bailouts initiated by the prior administration. Some have been supported by this Congress. Some have died by the administration on its own. This bill prevents that legally.

The gentleman from Texas who just spoke referred to the AIG bailout by the Federal Reserve or the Federal Reserve's picking one company or another. The power that the Federal Reserve has had for over 75 years to do that is repealed in this bill. The Federal Reserve is allowed, if there are solvent institutions that are liquid and have a 99 percent chance of repayment at least, to advance money based on their paper, but there can be no more AIGs under the Federal Reserve's authority.

The gentleman said, Well, they can get on the list of too big to fail. There is no such list. There is literally no such list. This is a hard-held myth by the Republicans. What there is is this: If the regulators have been given more power to watch you and if you say the regulators have failed, well, they were a different set of regulators. The SEC today is not the SEC under the prior administration, which looked the other way at Madoff. This is a different and tougher SEC. What they do is say to an institution that's now being much more carefully monitored, You need to be reformed. You need to be restrained. You must have higher capital requirements. You must reduce the amount you are doing.

So there is a tight limitation on what these entities can do. So the privilege of being named important is--and it's not called ``important.'' It says you're going to be subject to stricter standards. People are on notice that the authorities are worried about you, and then it says explicitly in the bill there can be no bailouts. There have been prior cases of bailouts on all sides--the Congress, the President, both parties--but they never had this language. There is no example of this explicit antibailout language being flouted, because it never existed before, so there are no too-big-to-fail institutions.

The question between us is this: When an institution that has gotten overly indebted is put out of business, as this bill requires it to be, do you simply do that and ignore the consequences or should there be some capacity in the Federal Government to look at the consequences?

Now, again, my colleagues have not applied their own logic to the FDIC, and I hope that the final speaker will explain what ``enhanced bankruptcy'' is. Remember, we started out being told that bankruptcy was the answer. Bankruptcy got enhanced somewhere, and we still haven't heard what that ``enhanced bankruptcy'' is. We insure the depositors, but that's not all. The depositors are taken care of, but then there are costs outside of the deposit, and the FDIC is told to follow the least cost method, and that will sometimes mean spending some money to wind it down in a way that diminishes the impact.

So, apparently, even my colleagues on the other side aren't quite as devoted to bankruptcy as they think. They are not prepared to put it into the FDIC proposal. It's a form of enhanced bankruptcy, and I hope, in their remaining time, they will explain it. When they offered a recommittal motion on this bill, Mr. Speaker, they didn't say, Let's fix bankruptcy or let's do this. They said, Let's kill every single form of consumer and financial reform.

The gentleman from Texas was alluding to the consumer agency. They wanted to kill an independent consumer agency. They wanted to kill a fiduciary responsibility for broker-dealers. They wanted to kill a requirement that leverage can never go more than 15-1. This is a little piece of what they are trying to do. They remain opposed. Their view is that the regulators in prior years didn't do a good job--regulators, yes, who followed the nonregulatory philosophy of the prior administration--and they have been opposed to any single form of reform. They are cloaking that in an argument that they are stopping bailouts which are already made illegal by this bill.

Now, the instruction motion has some things in it that Members should support, and it has some things that Members should not support. It is obviously done in a way that, I think, will have an ambiguous impact, and it isn't binding in any case. So what the vote is is less important than what the message is, and let's be very clear about the message: There are no bailouts allowed under this bill.

I thank the gentleman from Texas and the general from Georgia for their leadership on these issues. And once a week, at least, we see the judge from Texas down here laying out the conscience of the Congress. And this ACORN issue is something that has burned within me for several years.

I looked back through some of the Records, and I introduced an amendment to unfund ACORN in 2007. Back then, we couldn't get any traction. And as much as has been filled out on the case of ACORN, as much as we learned about ACORN during the last Presidential election-- and I think it was very useful because that was a time that America started to pay attention, Mr. Speaker. And we remember that ACORN announced that they had filed 1.3 million new voter registrations during the Presidential election cycle in 2008. And now they're advertising that people should send them a check and help fund their operation to go down there and demonstrate against Sheriff Judge Arpaio, the tent city, pink underwear Sheriff Arpaio. I think that that is a persecution that's going on. But they're trying to raise money to do that.

And the mailing that they have--and it's an Internet document. They still claim that they registered 1.3 million new voters. Well, the numbers are closer to 450,000 legitimate voter registrations. And ACORN has admitted to over 400,000 false or fraudulent voter registrations. Now, one is too many for me. And we've seen the hue and cry of somebody who was in 2000 driving to vote in Florida, and perhaps they were going to vote for Al Gore, and a mile and a half away they went through a checkpoint to see if they were sober and had a driver's license, and they claimed that to be voter intimidation.

If one person lost their nerve and didn't want to go through the police checkpoint because they were drunk or didn't have a license, that was a voter intimidation on the part of the folks that were on Al Gore's side back in the year 2000.

ACORN can produce over 400,000 false or fraudulent voter registrations, and America can't get up in arms until we see child prostitution promoted in five ACORN offices across this city, in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., in Brooklyn, in San Bernardino, and in San Diego, California, and more to come.

And now they're under a lawsuit. ACORN decides they're going to go out and punish people that have brought out the truth if they can and use the court to intimidate.

Now, when ACORN makes a statement that, well, we only produced over 400,000 false or fraudulent voter registration forms, never fear, it was all in the exercise of trying to get somebody's good vote in there, but no bad votes came out of that, no fraud came from that. Oh, really.

They're being investigated. You say 12 States, then 14 States. Today it came out 20 States.

Today the trial of ACORN started in the State of Nevada. ACORN, as an entity, has been indicted by the prosecution in Nevada, and they have their chief organizer in Nevada is testifying against ACORN saying, Here's our pamphlet, our policy. We were paying commissions and paying a bounty for voter registrations. And, additionally, it came out in the news that in Troy, New York, they have dozens of fraudulent votes that were cast on absentee ballot that were promoted by ACORN.

Now, if there's anything that chisels away and cuts off the underpinnings of our Constitution it is fraudulent election process. And when the American people lose their faith that we have a legitimate process, the result of that will be, then, nothing holds together. You can't expect the President, the United States Senate, the United States House, or any system of government to be consented to by the people if the people don't believe they've consented in a national, legitimate ballot. That is the Banana Republic measure. And there is no entity in America that has been more active or aggressive in the history of this country and undermining the underpinnings of our Constitution than ACORN, a criminal enterprise and an entity in and of itself in many other enterprises than the fraudulent votes.

But I think at that component of this, I would yield back to the gentleman from Texas. I have a little bit more to say about ACORN hopefully a little bit later.

I thank the gentleman from Texas.

I was thinking about the description of what is big money and what is $1 trillion and how do you put that into a concept now. Some of us from the part of the country I come from, we think in terms of corn. So to put that into perspective, the State of Iowa, the lead State in corn production, is going to have a good crop this year. It's going to have the best average yields that we have ever had, probably a few less bushels than we have produced though in the past, and we are going to raise about $10 billion worth of corn, maybe a little less than that, but about $10 billion.

Now all the corn that Iowa raises, just the value of that $10 billion, if we do that for 10 years, that's $100 billion. We do that for an entire century, that's $1,000 billion, $1 trillion. So 100 years of all the corn we can raise in Iowa is $1 trillion. A full century of all the corn that we can raise in what it's worth today, or what it was worth when I figured this, the markets have gone down a little bit, that is $1 trillion.

Now to take care of Obama's deficit created by his budget this year, that is $9.7 trillion. You can just think, 970 years of all the corn that Iowa could raise committed just to taking care of the deficit created by his budget would be just about right. And if you want to look at the deficit that exists today, and you add that to Obama's budget, that's over $20 trillion between the existing national debt and the debt created by President Obama's budget. So that would be all the corn that Iowa could raise at today's production in market values from the birth of Christ until today, and you would fall a little bit short. That's how much money the United States Government owes as a result of this profligate spending that is going on.

And the Federal Reserve component of this, I am very happy to see there are 290 cosponsors of Ron Paul's bill, H.R. 1207. I am among them, and I'm confident that my colleagues on the floor are as well. There is a hearing coming up on Friday to dig into this. That is a step along the way. From my standpoint, I would be very happy to sign a discharge petition. I don't think that things move very quickly through this Congress. When you have the most ethical Congress in history, I don't know how that could be defined that way, but there's a lot that doesn't happen around here. There's a lot of deliberation that doesn't take place around here, a lot of debate that doesn't take place.

The rules are written in the Rules Committee up there in that tiny little old room that doesn't leave room even for our staff to come in. We have to go up there and genuflect before the Chair of the Rules Committee and ask if we can bring an amendment down here to debate it on the floor of the House. They will say ``yes'' if they think it embarrasses Republicans. That's the only way they will say ``yes.''

The deliberate destruction of the greatest debating body in the history of the world here in the United States Congress has taken place because of the rules that have been ripped asunder by the Speaker of the House after 221 years. And the gentleman from Georgia has a sign: ``This leadership team will create the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history, Nancy Pelosi, November 16, 2006.'' I don't know how you say that in Georgia, say what? This is the least deliberative body it has ever been.

An open rules process that we had for 221 years that allowed every Members of Congress to force a debate and a vote on a subject matter of their choice within the appropriations process has been utterly suspended since 2007.

The American people deserve better. We deserve, yes, a hearing on H.R. 1207, on the Federal Reserve. But we deserve also to have open debate and force votes so Members have to go on record, because the wisdom of America is processed through 435 congressional districts. And we all have our networks out there. If that debate is stifled here, if amendments are shut off by order of the Speaker, then the wisdom of America is shut off by order of the Speaker.

This country cannot reach the next level of its destiny if it denies the wisdom of its people, and that is the wisdom of its people as processed through this Congress is how it was envisioned by the Founding Fathers. I yield back to gentleman from Texas.

I thank the gentleman from Texas.

I would submit this idea, I would rather call it the Geithner corollary than the Rangel rule because it gets deeper, and when you think about how much deeper it gets, it doesn't quite show on this poster. And I'm reaching back and dusting off my memory

But it strikes me that the employment that Tim Geithner was involved in reimbursed him for the taxes that he was going to have to pay from income tax liability, for the payroll tax, the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid taxes, for the several years that are listed there. The reports that I have read--I believe it will also include The Wall Street Journal report--that Tim Geithner was written a check by his employer to be reimbursed in advance for the tax liability he would incur and signed an agreement multiple years in a row that he understood that he had this tax liability.

So not only did he not pay the taxes until the pressure was on--and they waived the penalty which, apparently, they pre-applied the Rangel rule with Tim Geithner, but he had actually profited by not paying his taxes because he had been reimbursed by his employer in advance for the liabilities that you see on the poster that Judge Carter has put up.

So this is a bridge too far from my standpoint. If you have a tax liability and your employer's writing you a check to pay those taxes, you cash the check, put it in your kids' retirement fund--I'm going to presume that's what happened. That's any equity that we don't spend when we die goes into our kids' retirement fund. And so you profit from this and avoid the taxes; that's a double operation there.

So I will label that Geithner corollary to the Rangel rule, and that would be if you're nominated for a high position of, let me say, confirmation position before the United States Senate, and you find yourself, you have a tax problem, if you are able to settle this issue out of court and do so without interest or penalty--he owed $17,230 in taxes but they waived the penalty, so apparently he paid the interest, not the penalty, from that language. I want to make sure that is clear.

If you get that all done, and if America's patience and appetite will believe the idea that Tim Geithner is so smart that we can't get along without him regardless of whether he could remember to pay his taxes and regardless of whether it was an ethical decision or not, if we remember America's appetite for that was completely satiated by the time Tom Daschle was appointed and his tax problem emerged, then America said, Enough, I can't tolerate anymore of these appointments by the President that will be confirmed by the Senate that have people that have been avoiding taxes.

So now we have the lead tax writer in the United States Congress, Chairman Rangel, that has stimulated a bill that's been introduced by Congressman Carter, the Rangel rule, precedent that if any taxpayer admits their mistake and pays their back taxes, no penalty or interest should be assessed, especially if you're up for an appointed position to be confirmed by the United States Senate, especially if America can be convinced that your skills are so valuable that out of 306 million people there isn't a single soul that can match up to the job that you might do, regardless of the problem you might have of being paid in advance to pay your taxes, cashing the check, putting into the equity account for your kids' inheritance, and then along comes the old ``uh- oh'' from Georgia, that is, the ``I guess I better pay my taxes'' Geithner corollary.

I thank the gentleman from Texas.

If this is going to be the most open and ethical Congress in history, this Congress has got to have an opportunity to read the bills. This leadership team will create the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history: Nancy Pelosi, November 16, 2006.

I will say this: Yes, there were bills that were hustled through this Chamber when Republicans were in the majority, but I have never seen anything quite as egregious as the cap-and-trade bill that came through this House of Representatives. That bill was presented to the floor of the House, scheduled for debate the following day, and at 3:09 a.m., a 316-page amendment--

Did I say a.m.?

I'm sorry, I meant to say 3:09 a.m. I appreciate that correction. I must have had some kind of chronological dyslexia in order to come up with such a thing.

However, 3:09 a.m., 316-page amendment, and I can say with great confidence that no one read the bill. I don't have to ask anybody in this Chamber if they read the bill. I know no one read the bill. I was here on the floor engaging in the debate when Congressman Gohmert from Texas asked a parliamentary inquiry and he said, Madam Speaker, is there a copy of the enrolled bill in the Well? The answer was kind of, maybe, sort of. And we looked at the kind of, maybe, sort of stack of paper that was there, and there was a basic bill of around 1,100 pages, but the kind of, maybe, sort of didn't include the 316-page amendment.

And so after a few more inquiries, they pointed to another stack of paperwork, and Congressman Gohmert went down to look at that paperwork, and he came back and said, Madam Speaker, parliamentary inquiry, that is not even the amendment. It was a different stack of paper.

And so after 35 minutes of turning this thing around, the most significant question was again asked by Louie Gohmert of Texas, and there was a lot of dialogue going on. Joe Barton of Texas was engaged in this thing; I give him that. And anyway Louie Gohmert asked the question, after about 35 minutes of suspension of the debate on the cap-and-trade bill, he said, Madam Speaker, parliamentary inquiry: If the House of Representatives passes a bill that doesn't exist, is it possible to message a bill that doesn't exist to the United States Senate?

Well, today we know it must be possible because we passed cap-and- trade, a bill that didn't exist, and it got messaged to the Senate, and I think it probably began to exist sometime after it was messaged to the Senate. It was an appalling thing that the American people would have to watch, and Thomas Jefferson has to be rolling over two or three times. He spoke about a lot of things, 72 hours, 3 days to read the bill.

I also put out a great big pat on the back for Congressman Brian Baird for leading on this, as well as Greg Walden and John Culberson, and I have signed the discharge petition and the bill, and I'm looking for the rest of the signatures on the discharge petition so it can come to this floor. That is a piece of bipartisanship that this Congress can pass that will leave a legacy for a long time to come.

And if we're so afraid of the legislation that might get passed that we can't give anybody an opportunity to read it and we wonder why people go to TEA parties in America, that's why. They're really uneasy about what they've seen: $700 billion in TARP; eight large private- sector corporations nationalized; along with then a $787 billion stimulus package rushed through Congress--it had to happen right now-- and sat on the President's desk for 5 days before he signed it, and still most of it is not spent.

And with that, they watched cap-and-trade move through here in a hurry-up, rush job, when not one soul in this Congress or across this country read the bill before it passed. And then they see a hurry-up rush for a national health care act that takes away our freedom.

No wonder we have TEA parties. No wonder the American people come out. It's just a wonder that they could be so peaceful, and we've ended up with almost no, let me say, almost no violence of any kind in all the TEA parties that we had. Respectful people that exercised their right to freedom of speech and assembly and a right for redress of their grievances, and they did so in the traditional fashion envisioned by Thomas Jefferson himself.

So many generations have taken place since Thomas Jefferson, but his wisdom remains, and I certainly support H. Res. 554. Encourage everyone, including the Speaker, to sign that discharge petition. Let's get that thing out here on the floor, do the right thing for Democrats and Republicans.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I do appreciate the time.

There's so much going on and we've heard so much about community organizations, actually in the last year as we heard then-candidate and Senator Obama talking about community organizations being the way to go. I think it's wonderful--community organizations. I'm a member of a number of community organizations. None of them pay me, though. We do the things we do in the community organizations I've ever been a part of because we care about the community. We have jobs, we work, and then on our own time, without being compensated, we try to help others. We do it through church. We do it through all kinds of civic organizations.

So this whole thing of community organizations has been a bit of an anathema to me, an enigma, a riddle within a riddle; a community organization of volunteers who get paid to do some kind of organization. It's a strange thing.

As we've heard more and more about this group ACORN and the vast amount of money that it has been receiving from taxpayers, it becomes even more of an interesting enigma. Getting taxpayer dollars from the government, over 50 million, from people who are working and also being part of community organizations and churches and charitable institutions and helping their communities, they're working and they're paying taxes and they're also organizing and doing charitable work, and then come to find out their tax dollars are paying a group which has many, many other aspects to it to go around and basically try to undo the type of things they've been doing. It's really a strange phenomenon, ACORN. And from one acorn, we know that many nuts can grow.

As we think about and anticipate the work being done by ACORN, we find out, well, they go out and help people to know what their rights are and sign up for different benefits. I have seen my good friend from Iowa (Mr. King) show the photograph he took down in New Orleans that had a big 2008 Obama sign in there. Well, wait. Charitable organizations, they're not supposed to be involved in politics. In fact, any other group seems to have the Federal Government come down rather strongly against them if they start engaging in politics. But apparently that applies to others and not ACORN.

I've also been amazed, Madam Speaker, the responses of some within ACORN saying, You set us up. You came in.

Yeah, they came in with a camera and began to ask could they get help to set up a prostitution ring of underage children with illegal immigrants coming in. At some point you would think people of morality, people of ethics who were organizing communities for the good and the uprightness, the righteousness, the goodness, the morality, the really growth within the community would have immediately said, Do you not understand what prostitution does to children? Do you not understand that it robs them of their childhood? Do you not understand how abusive that is to female children and how that destroys their adulthood as women? Do you not understand that you're a parasite if you're living off of young children in a prostitution ring? Or women for that matter. You're a pimp; you ought to be disgusted with yourself, because we certainly are.

We saw none of that in any of the videos. The reaction seemed to be the same: Well, how can we help you to get over and to make money as a parasite? It's like this was a parasitic organization trying to help someone else also be a parasite.

The outrage should not have been to anyone who exposed that kind of mentality within all these different organizations that are a part of ACORN but the outrage should have been, How could this be? How could a group like this be getting hard-earned tax dollars?

I'm pretty sure that most people around the country who have jobs and are struggling would like to have their own money back. I imagine they would like to have that $53 million back if they had known that it was going to be for folks who helped other groups and other individuals conduct illegal activity.

But there was no remorse. You see the video and you wonder, Where is the outrage? You're community organizers and you've got no outrage? Do you have no soul? Well, of course they do, but they don't show it. Is there no still small voice that speaks and says, This is wrong? They're talking about prostitution among children. They're talking about things that are completely against what we believe in in America; everyone fulfilling their great potential and becoming all that they possibly could be. Very tragic. Very tragic.

But then again, we've seen lots of slings and arrows hurled at one Member who was sitting right back here in the House who yelled, You lie. That was inappropriate. That violates the rule. But when you take it in context, the individual that came into this House, as an invited guest into the people's House, had just said that critics of the President's plan were not engaged in, quote, honest debate; that we were using, quote, scare tactics. He said that many of those who were hosting him here were making, quote, bogus claims; that we were making wild claims; that we were engaged in, quote, demagoguery; engaged in distortion, acrimony.

The President said we were cynical and irresponsible in the manner in which we were criticizing his plan. He said that facts and reason were thrown overboard. He said we were robbing the country of opportunity; we were killing the President's good bill. And he actually used the L word right here on the floor just a couple of sentences before the L word was used by our friend Joe Wilson. The President said, It's a lie plain and simple.

When you set that tone, you come into somebody else's house as an invited guest and you set that tone, what does that tell the people around you? You think it's okay to talk like that, to accuse your critics of being like that. You set the groundwork of making it okay to say those kind of things about people who happen to disagree with you.

We've seen the footage of the President telling members of ACORN, You're going to have a place in my administration; you're going to have a stake; you're going to get to participate. There has been plenty of involvement with ACORN. It was not like it was a new entity to the President as it was to many of us.

And so you have to wonder a bit about judgment. If that's the judgment of whom you want to be the stakeholder, of whom you want to give you advice and help you in the administration, then you have to wonder, Well, is that the same kind of judgment being used to pick people who are czars, who have no accountability to anyone but you? Because that seems to be kind of where ACORN was.

So we've got over 30 czars, and they fall into the same category as this lack of accountability. I don't care what group you are, Madam Speaker. I don't care where it is or what's involved when there is no accountability. We know from the Old Testament that the only man in the entire Bible to have been said to have had a heart after God's own was King David and that, when he had no accountability, the man who had the heart after God's own could commit horrible offenses.

Well, you have an organization like ACORN, and there is just complete unaccountability. There's not only unaccountability. We're going to give you all kinds of power. We're going to make you the stakeholder in this administration. We're going to let you organize America to fit your own image. Well, that's a little scary, but when there's no accountability, that's where all of this goes.

So I am pleased to see friends who are also wishing to address this topic. I'll recognize them in a moment.

I see a sign: ``ACORN Goes Nuts.'' As I just pointed out, from one acorn, we know many nuts can grow.

With that, I would like to yield to my friend from Texas (Mr. Carter), Judge Carter.

If my friend would yield for just a moment.

With regard to the $8 billion that is discussed for which ACORN may be eligible, actually, if you look at H.R. 3200, which is the health care bill that is out here in the House, there is a provision that requires that the Secretary provides information about the Federal plan and also signs people up for the Federal health care plan. That provision is in there, and I haven't been able to find any kind of limit on how much may be available. It's typical ACORN-type language because it says basically that the Secretary may hire other entities to assist in providing information and in signing people up.

Of course, in the House version, we know there was no enforcement mechanism. If it's ACORN that's paid, it could be $100 billion. We don't know how much would be allocated under that provision to hire people to go out, to spread information and to sign people up. We know there was no provision for them to check on whether the people they were signing up were actually lawfully here. Yet, for what amounts could be spent under H.R. 3200 for ACORN to get them to go out, to provide information and to sign people up without checking their legal statuses, it could make $8 billion pale with that amount.

I yield back.

It would be typical here in Washington also to have public outcry and say we just fixed the problem. We are not going to let ACORN be funded with your hard-earned tax dollars anymore where they go spend it as we have been finding out how it's been spent, when, apparently, there may be a couple hundred related agencies or groups to

If the gentleman will yield.

The question, Where is our money, is extremely important. And another question is, What have you committed us to? We ought to able to know that. You know, the Constitution says that the Congress will be the one who holds the purse strings. They felt like with two Houses that was a good check and balance to holding the purse strings. This many people would be that envious and that careful. That was what they thought.

But I love what our friend Newt Gingrich has said: if transparency is good enough for the CIA, it ought to be good enough for Federal Reserve. Even more so, of course. But the Federal Reserve is committing money, and we don't even know the full extent that they're committing it to. And this isn't like in the earliest days with Alexander Hamilton--and I just recently finished a biography on Hamilton. When they were trying to get the banks going in America in the earliest days, guys like Hamilton were broke, yet you see nowadays we've got Goldman Sachs had their biggest profit in history in the second quarter.

We don't know all the ties there. We know that, apparently, our Treasury Secretary has said it's okay to have someone overseeing the spending of the TARP money as applied to Goldman Sachs, who happens to own Goldman Sachs stock, and he will waive the conflict there. But it's like ACORN: there's so many little fingers going in all these different directions.

We need full transparency. And, goodness sakes, if this government, if this Congress cannot force the Federal Reserve to come clean and be fully accountable, then we're in a lot bigger trouble than most anybody suspects right now.

But I believe my colleagues are cosponsors. I will let them speak for themselves, and yield such time as they may need.

I appreciate the point, because you would think it's such a matter of common sense but, as people know, sense is not so common around this place.

It was in fact in a hearing months ago that the Federal Reserve, in an effort to get the economy going, may have pledged as much as $9 trillion to get us going. That's what motivated me to inquire how much money will be paid in for the whole year of 2008 in individual income tax. And I found out the projection was around $1.21 trillion.

When we heard it was trillions that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury was committing us to to get things going in the economy, and we're going to receive $1.21 trillion in income tax, individual income tax for the year, I thought, Wow.

Instead of having two guys over Treasury and the Federal Reserve just obligating, signing this country's life away through all this money here and there, what if they just said, You know what? If you earned this money, instead of paying tax, you're going to get it all back? You talk about making the economy explode.

You don't need a guy over a Federal agency trying to figure out what to do with trillions of dollars we don't have. If you gave the American public their own money back, you would see the economy explode.

Moody's did an independent study that indicated that would increase the GDP more than anything else in one year. Yet we're still playing games months later trying to find out what the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Secretary have committed us to in the way of debt, just to try to, on their whims, get us going.

Now, we know it's made some people rich, like Goldman Sachs, since this big devastation of the economy occurred. But rank-and-file Americans have not found that to be such.

I yield back to my friend from Texas.

If I might, before you go to that poster, reclaiming my time just momentarily, because we've talked about it, I know what you're about to bring up.

On Friday, I met with a gentleman in my district named Mr.--and he said I could use his name--Mr. de la Torre. He said de la Torre is Spanish for ``of the tower.'' And he's proud of his name; he's proud of his heritage.

He has a sheet metal fabrication business and employs four full-time employees and four part-time employees. And when the economy hit so hard and devastated everybody, he did not want to let his employees go because they were good, hard workers. But he could get no loan. He had no money in his account, and nobody would loan him money.

And so being as honest and forthright as he was, he notified the Treasury that, I don't have any money. Nobody will loan me money. I don't want to drop these employees. I want to keep them employed, but I'm going to be late making my quarterly payment.

What the Treasury, the IRS, let him know is, That's too bad. We're coming after you. We want penalty and we want interest. And this man, who was able to keep his employees, his four full-time, his four part- time employees, still employed, but he was just late on his payment. The credit froze up. He couldn't get a loan. He couldn't get a line of credit. He didn't have the money. But he was honest and forthright. And what happened in return? They're after him. They have come after him, and they're threatening to seize anything he's got. That will put him out of business and put his employees out of business.

With that set-up, I would yield to my friend to talk about special treatment for special people that apparently did not include Mr. de la Torre.

Well, he didn't. But he had been the former Chair of the Federal Reserve, which is an elected position by the bankers of that area.

Well, in conclusion, I think there's nothing that says it better than President Obama did back on February 3, 2009: ``I don't want to send a message to the American people that there are two sets of standards--one for powerful people, and one for ordinary folks who are working every day and paying their taxes.''

Well, unfortunately that is exactly the message that's being sent as the Federal Government and the cronies that have surrounded this administration--they're getting away with all kinds of stuff, getting away with not paying taxes, not paying penalties. They're not producing jobs. They're killing jobs. Mr. de la Torre has a regal heritage. He was proud of that. He is a man of integrity. He wants to do what's right. Those are the kinds of people that make America great, and that is who deserves special treatment, not those who are parasites on the system.