Floor Statements

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, we started here a week ago with the Paulson plan. It was simple: Give him the keys to the Treasury and suspend all the laws. What we are doing, or proposing here today, is infinitely better, and the Democrats have labored hard to put in taxpayer protections and provide consequences for Wall Street executives.

But what we consider today is still built on the Paulson-Bush premise; that is, President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, Mr. Paulson, say that dumping $700 billion of taxpayer-financed debt--we'll borrow the money--on top of Wall Street and buying up Wall Street's bad debts will solve the liquidity problem. It will trickle down through the economy to benefit small business. It will solve the underlying problem with the housing market, and it will stem job loss.

I don't buy it. There are less expensive, less risky, targeted regulatory reforms and programs that could work better.

But bottom line, President George Bush and his Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, insisted on a top-down Wall Street bailout solution. It's sort of like the financial surge strategy. And just like the surge in Iraq, as we go into it at the outset, we know it's not sustainable and we know it won't solve the underlying problems.

Even worse, President Bush and Secretary Paulson and the Republicans insisted upon watering down the most critical portions of the bill. There is no mandatory way to pay for this bailout, no fee, no tax, just a proposal from a future President to a Congress that a Congress might think about to help take taxpayers off the hook. That's not protection. The golden parachutes, yes, they were exchanged for camouflaged parachutes. The execs on Wall Street are still going to get millions. Look at the loopholes there. We have added back in, at the insistence of the Secretary, credit card debt, auto loans.

We can do better. We should start again on a new package, come back next week.

Madam Speaker, there are many of us from day one who questioned the Paulson premise that dumping $700 billion into bad debt on Wall Street would somehow help revive the American economy, help Main Street, help small businesses, help the people I'm here to represent. I believe today gives us an opportunity to step back and begin again to construct a package that does not put the taxpayers at risk for $700 billion.

William Isaac headed up the FDIC during the savings and loan crisis. He took a $100 billion problem and he solved it for $2 billion; he says we can do the same thing here, pennies on the dollar. And then, that would leave a lot of borrowing capacity to help begin to inject money into public works projects, infrastructure in this country, other things that benefit average Americans, put us back to work, and make us a more competitive economy.

We need to go back to the drawing board with a democratic proposal. Hank Paulson just got his rejection notice here from Congress.

Madam Speaker, just a week ago, Secretary Paulson sent an insult down to Congress, an insult to the American people, an insult to the Constitution, an insult ultimately to the economy of the United States. He sent down a bill that said, in 3 pages, give me $700 billion and suspend all the laws, and I will do with it as I see fit and I will fix this problem.

Now, one problem with that is, of course, Mr. Paulson reigned as the head of Goldman Sachs while these financial weapons of mass destruction were being created, and he amassed tremendous wealth, taking a bonus of $39 million in 1 year, accumulating $750 million when he left Wall Street to go into public service. So people would say, oh, that's just Hank, he's a tough negotiator. That was an absurdity. And it's based on a premise that if the American tax borrows money, $700 billion, and we take their junk--some pundits called it ``cash for trash''--that somehow this would create liquidity on Wall Street and then from there it would ultimately trickle down to Main

Street, to car loans to small businesses to student loans. I never believed that premise, and I think the House of Representatives rejected that premise today.

We have, I think, credible alternatives before us. Mr. William Isaac, appointed by Jimmy Carter but reappointed by Ronald Reagan as head of the FDIC during the previous worst financial crisis in the United States, the savings and loan crisis, Mr. Isaac addressed a number of us in the skeptics caucus and a number of Republicans yesterday and others and said there's a regulatory way to get at this. There's a problem right now. A lot of the banks are actually in pretty good shape. In fact, a lot of these subprime assets, 75 percent of them, are still paying their bills. But they are basically being required to value them at zero right now because of an accounting rule. Change the accounting rule, he said, and suddenly a lot of banks that look like they're insolvent would not be insolvent and they would have money to lend. That would take care of the so-called liquidity crisis, the credit crisis that's out there. Further, he goes on with another technique that was used by him when he was head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to basically help the banks get through this period with an exchange of documents and a subordinate position on their fair value, not their fair market value when a market doesn't exist, on all their assets after bank examiners looked at it. He used that technique, and he solved a $100 billion problem with the potential of 3,000 banks going into receivership with the Federal Government, ultimately only at a cost of about $2 billion. That's a lot better than the Paulson plan, the Paulson premise. We should listen to Mr. Isaac and look at that approach as we revisit this issue.

Further, if we were going to go down the Paulson path, and I don't want to, if we really felt we had to throw money at the top on Wall Street and buy their bad assets, then we shouldn't put the taxpayers on the hook. I proposed something this week and I was told the Street wouldn't like it. ``The Street wouldn't like it.'' The street is coming to us hat in hand. The Street moguls who hate government are on top of their mansion roofs crying for the government to come get them with a financial helicopter. ``The Street wouldn't like it.'' A \1/4\ of 1 percent fee on every security transaction, something that we levied from 1914 through the Great Depression. In fact, Congress, over the objections of ``the Street,'' doubled the security transfer fee during the Great Depression, and we kept it until 1966 when it just lapsed in the beginning of this deregulatory era. That would raise $150 billion a year, more than enough for our regulatory institutions to engage in a very active form of assuring the liquidity of Wall Street firms, more than enough to pay for Mr. Paulson's misbegotten plan.

And then there's another approach, a Democratic approach, used by another President, FDR, in the Great Depression. Instead of dumping money on the failures on Wall Street, FDR said, I'm going to rebuild the economy from the bottom up. He invested in roads and bridges. He invested in hydroelectric systems, jobs, the WPA program. He put America back to work. And as they began to consume and the banks and everyone and small businesses did better, guess what. The wealth percolated up to Wall Street. Trickle down isn't working real well for average Americans day in, day out when you see the disparities in this country that are growing and growing and growing, and Democrats should not engage in financial trickle down, which is what Mr. Paulson proposed.

So a simple regulatory approach paid for, if you are going to do the Paulson approach, by Wall Street itself; or, even better, something to solve the underlying parts of the problem with the economy, an FDR-type approach.

I fear tomorrow that the House of Representatives, the people's House, will be rushed into making a risky $700 billion taxpayer financed bet on Wall Street, a big bet built upon a very shaky foundation, on the premise that Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, who presided as the Chair of Goldman Sachs while these weapons of financial mass destruction were created, is the only one who has a plan to disarm them.

Despite the best efforts of the Democrats to change this plan, what we will vote on tomorrow at its core is still the Paulson-Bush plan that is still based on his idea that taxpayers should borrow $700 billion and buy all of Wall Street's bad bets and that all will be well. It's sort of a financial surge strategy. Like the surge in Iraq, it might look in the short term like it's working, but it won't be sustainable, and I fear it will not in any way resolve the underlying problems of a weak economy and of a deteriorating housing market. More likely, it will lower the value of the dollar and drive up interest rates and drive up the price of energy.

The problem with what Congress is trying to fix is that Paulson's premise is wrong, that if we take and dump $700 billion into Wall Street, buying up their bad assets, somehow the benefits will trickle down to Main Street and prop up our struggling housing market. As Mr. Isaac, the former head of the FDIC says, ``Having financial institutions sell the loans to the government at inflated prices so the government can turn around and sell the loans to well-healed investors at lower prices strikes me as a very good deal for everyone but U.S. taxpayers. Surely we can do better.'' He proposes a credible alternative, similar to something done during the savings and loan crisis.

There are many cheaper alternatives out there that don't put taxpayers on the hook. But if we are going to go ahead with the Paulson premise, then it should be paid for by Wall Street with a modest one- quarter of 1 percent transfer tax on securities, something we had from 1914 until 1966. The Brits apply a one-half of 1 percent tax, and they use that money just to fund their government. Here we would use it to help Wall Street heal itself.

Some are saying, well, the initial payment is only going to be $250 billion now. $250 billion would double our investment in infrastructure in the United States for 5 years.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 1224) commending the Tennessee Valley Authority on its 75th anniversary.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Res. 1224.

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

I will leave it to the gentleman from Tennessee to carry the major part of this legislation for which he is responsible, but I would just like to reflect on it for a moment.

I think it's very telling that we are here to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Tennessee Valley Authority, something that was created by Congress and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Great Depression. They had a little different philosophy back then.

It wasn't shower money on Wall Street and hope things get better for people on Main Street and around the country; it was invest in America, invest in our infrastructure, build dams, roads, bridges, WPA projects. My region is a tremendous beneficiary from something called the Bonneville Power Administration, a wonderful gift that is still paying dividends to the American people that was key in our World War II effort and was there for the aluminum plants and for our nuclear weapons development to end the war.

This is a different philosophy. Today, unfortunately, we seem to be going down the path that the way to fix the economic problems on Main Street in America is to shower money on Wall Street, buy up their bad investments and hope maybe someday taxpayers get their money back.

What if we took the $250 billion they are talking about as an initial down payment on this faulty plan and we doubled our investment in our roads, bridges, highways and transit in America? Would that put more people back to work? Would that instill more confidence in the American economy? Would that maybe even drive up the value of stocks on Wall Street? I think so.

I think it's incredibly appropriate that Mr. Cohen has brought this bill here to the floor today, and I thank him for doing that.

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

I thank the chairman, and I thank him for his earlier unanimous consent request.

After 2 days of regular order and much noise on that side of the aisle about wanting to waive the rules of the House and have the Rules Committee waive the rules of the House to consider county schools, the chairman of the committee gave everybody in the House, including the minority who has been so loud in the last few days, a chance to waive the rules of the House and accept 1 year's funding for county and school payments. The end of those payments means 8,000 teachers have been laid off in rural counties across America, and thousands of deputy sheriffs, police and public safety officers. People will die because these payments aren't being extended.

The authorization expired when the Republicans controlled the House, the White House and the Senate. And now, today, because Republicans have yet again chosen to stonewall county payments by objecting to a unanimous consent request by the chairman of the full committee to waive the rules of the House and insert those payments, I am shocked, I am saddened, and I am absolutely stunned.

Henry ``Hank'' Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, has a plan: Borrow $700 billion in the name of the American taxpayers, shovel it into the vaults at Goldman Sachs and other investment banks and places on Wall Street, and hopefully it will trickle down and somehow solve the underlying housing problem.

We spent all week trying to figure out a way to protect the American taxpayers with his faulty plan. There really is no way to do that, except for one: Make Wall Street pay to bail out itself.

From 1914 until 1966, there was a tiny fee assessed on every transaction on Wall Street. In fact, the Congress, over the objections of Wall Street, doubled it in 1935 at the height of the Great Depression. It had no impact on Wall Street. It could raise the money Wall Street needs to heal itself.

Let's remember all that rhetoric about bootstraps and all that. Let Wall Street pull itself up by its own bootstraps, and assess a minuscule fee on every stock transaction. It is done in London; it can be done in the U.S. Wall Street can pay for its own bailout. Call now.

No one's district, with perhaps the exception of the other gentleman from Oregon, is impacted more than mine by the issue of counties and schools. And no one has worked harder to try to get it included. And actually it was said yesterday that we didn't have a vote in the House on county schools. We did, actually, in May, and the Republicans chose to side with Big Oil instead of with counties and schools. I got 218 votes, but I needed a two-thirds majority to pass it.

And it was also included in an energy package last year, a major energy initiative sent by the House to the Senate which was filibustered by 41 Republican Senators, again, over the issue of protecting Big Oil.

So the record's pretty clear here. I appreciate the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee saying he's going to work with us and try to help us with this vehicle or other vehicles in the closing days of this Congress to get this critical funding, and I take heart with that because he's an honorable man.

We've got another problem, and it is downtown. It's called George Bush. Here is the President's statement on county schools: ``Finally, the administration opposes new, mandatory funding for payments in lieu of taxes, and believes that any extension of rural community payments should be phased out, as it has previously proposed. The administration urges Congress to eliminate all such provisions from the final bill.'' All such provisions. That's the President's position.

If this President would lift one pinky, we would have county school funding. He muscled $465 million in foreign aid into the continuing resolution that passed the House yesterday because he wanted $365 million for Georgia, but he didn't ask for a penny for county schools here in the United States of America. And by the way, that wasn't Georgia the State, that's Georgia the country overseas; one of his favorite places, I guess.

If we just had a little bit of help downtown, we could get this done. And we're not done here yet. We're going to fight like heck in the next 2 days to get it.

Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

The parliamentary inquiry would be if the previous question, as the gentleman suggests, were defeated, under the rules of the House and the germaneness, are all rules at that point waived and this could be added to the bill, or would the germaneness rule apply and would a point of order stand against it?

I guess that means it would not be in order; is that correct?

Mr. Speaker, the American taxpayers should not be asked to bail out the barons of Wall Street, Henry Paulson's best friends.

Plain and simple, Wall Street should pay for itself. There is ample precedent. This country assessed a securities transfer fee in the Civil War, Spanish-American War, and from 1914 until 1966. A modest fee, one- quarter of one percent, the same fee assessed on the London Exchange, would raise $150 billion a year from stock trades and commodity trades on Wall Street, which could more than pay for the bailout. That is, Wall Street can pay for its own excess and can pay to bail itself out.

Main Street should not get stuck with the bill for the huge party that was thrown on Wall Street.

Mr. Speaker, 2007 was a great year on Wall Street, 2007, bonuses of $38 billion to themselves. Secretary Paulson came to us just having received a $39 million bonus from Goldman Sachs, came here to the applause of the Wall Street elites and others.

His first crisis was Bear Stearns. He bailed out Bear Stearns, or he had them acquired with Federal guarantees. But he said, don't worry, the fundamentals of our economy are sound. Then along came Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He wanted Congress to give them an unlimited line of credit, but don't worry, it's only a crisis of confidence. Their fundamentals are sound. They probably won't even need the line of credit. Congress went along with that. I voted ``no.'' The fundamentals of America are sound, he said.

A month later he had to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, unprecedented, accumulating maybe $5 trillion of debt onto the books of the Federal Government all at once. But not to worry. We'll work our way through it. The fundamentals are sound.

Then came Lehman Brothers. It's just one firm, he says. Let 'em go, let the market work. Our fundamentals are sound. Two days later AIG, a big company, a lot of money in insurance, annuities, other things, too big to fail, broke a 50-year precedent, put Federal money into an insurance company. But not to worry, this is just a little blip. Our fundamentals are sound.

Then Thursday night he has a closed-door meeting with congressional leadership, and he says, if we don't do a bailout plan tomorrow, the economy is going to collapse.

Now, wait a minute. This guy has been consistently wrong and out of touch or he has been lying to Congress and the American people about how sound our fundamentals are. Now he wants us to trust him with the keys of the treasury and no restrictions on how he would spend the money in his next bailout. He is compromised, in my opinion, because of his relationship with Goldman Sachs and Wall Street, not with Main Street America. My small banks are not clamoring for this. My credit unions aren't clamoring for this. They are still making loans. They're saying there's a credit crunch. Guess what, if you've got good credit in Oregon, you can go to the credit union, you can go to a small bank, and then the small bank can sell the loan to the Federal Government, that is, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, thanks to Mr. Paulson.

But he's saying to us here I've got a deal for you. Let's think of Henry Hank Paulson as a realtor. Here's the deal: He's got a great house he wants to sell you. Now, the thing about that is he can't give you an appraisal on the house. There are no market comparables. And he can't tell you what it's going to cost. But it is a great deal for you.

That is the bailout he is proposing, to take this junk from Wall Street that no one understands and put it on the Federal books. What if we spend, borrow $700 billion and the market continues to go down? That's what the Asian market said yesterday. They said, wait a minute, it sounded good at first, but where is the U.S. going to get the $700 billion? Who's going to lend it to them? Or are they just going to print it and cause inflation? And what if it doesn't work? What will they do then? We aren't dealing with some of the fundamental underlying problems that we have now.

And now I find out by reading the Washington Times that very quietly they have folded in all student loan debt, all automobile debt, and all credit card debt. So the Federal Government is now not only going to be in the housing business, it's not only going to be in the insurance business, suddenly we are going to be in the repo business, out there collecting cars around America so we can sell them to try to get back some of the taxpayers' money.

This is nuts. Congress should not do this this week. We need to understand what's going on. They can't be slipping in little things like this and trying to jam this bill through. This is way too much like the rush to war when Congress was under pressure to go home for elections. Forget about the elections. This is about the future of the United States of America and our financial system. And if we have to stay here every day in October to understand this and get it right, we should.

Well, Secretary Paulson has submitted a simple proposal to Congress. This is it, three pages. It is about $1 billion a word, and it is quite simple: Secretary Paulson gets the key to the Treasury, can start off by borrowing $700 billion in the name of the American people, maybe more later, and it waives all laws. All laws. No oversight, no one looking over his shoulder, no conflict of interest rules. Not even court review. A pretty simple proposal.

He insists this has to be done, without meaningful discussion or debate or any change by the Congress, sort of an immediate authorization for use of financial force. Does this remind anybody of anything, like the rush into Iraq on election eve a number of years ago? It is all too familiar.

He wants to take care of Wall Street's illiquid assets, as what he nicely labels them. Nice charitable pundits have said Cash For Trash. Wall Street could then return to business as usual. That is Mr. Paulson's plan. He is of, by, for, and about Wall Street, former head of Goldman Sachs. He wants to go back to the way things were.

They should never go back to the way things were. There need to be consequences, and there needs to be major change in the financial structures and the financial instruments and the regulation of Wall Street, something this administration still continues to deny, or says, oh, we'll do it later after we give them everything they want up front, after we bail them out.

Now, many want a condition on what will happen here. They want to have oversight. That is good. They want to limit executive compensation for any firm that takes a bailout. That is good. They want a linkage to a Main Street stimulus package and jobs. That is good. Those are all good. But we have got to question and take our time here to question the basic premise: Should we just take all their junk that people like Hank Paulson created, exotic instruments, the big party they have been throwing? Should we just take that and give it to the taxpayers and borrow the money from who knows where? Or, should we take an equity stake in these firms? That is what the government did when it bailed out Chrysler. It said, okay, we'll bail you out, but we own you; and when you come back, we're going to make money for the taxpayers.

Secretary Paulson wants to set it up so that the taxpayers at best, and in an all likelihood this wouldn't happen, might break even some day. No. We need to take an equity assurance in these firms, or we need to extend them loans, have them marked down as junk to market. There's a market for it. It's about 22 cents on the dollar. Make them mark it down. And then if they're threatened and they're liquid, they can come to us and ask for a loan, and the terms are going to be stiff. And we aren't going to give it to just any one of these firms. No. We need to do this. We need to do it with oversight, and executive compensation is key no matter which way we go.

Oh, let the boards of directors control. Come on, boards of directors are all like first cousins and closer. These people are all feathering each other's nest. Hank Paulson himself got a $50 million bonus for 1 year, the same year Wall Street rewarded itself with $60 billion in bonuses. That is not a mistake. Billion dollars in bonuses in 2006.

These people are out of control. They don't understand the real world. And for them to talk about Main Street and pretend they're populist and they care about Main Street and student loans and homeowners' equity is a bunch of BS.

We need major structural reform, and we are the last bulwark here, the House of Representatives, the United States Senate. Because if we pass this bill as they propose it, we will be doing an incredible disservice to the American people, to the world economy. And what if his bet doesn't work? Yeah, the execs come out whole and they scoot that money offshore into hidey-holes or into gold or something else. But what if it doesn't work? And we have extended our credit about as far as it will go. Where are we going to borrow $700 billion? What is the next step?

We need a much more targeted, deliberative approach. Congress can't come up with it in 3 days or 4 days. We shouldn't be rushed into this. If it takes a week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, a month, the world will wait. They will wait for a thoughtful plan that cures the disease in addition to getting us beyond this initial problem. That is the

job of this Congress. We should not be rolled by our Wall Street exec who is masquerading as Secretary of the Treasury.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6370) to transfer excess Federal property administered by the Coast Guard to the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members

may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 6370.

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

Mr. Speaker, the Oregon Surplus Federal Land Act requires the Commandant of the Coast Guard to transfer the Cape Arago Light Station and the surrounding area in Coos County, Oregon, in my congressional district, to the Secretary of the Interior to hold in trust for the benefit of the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians.

Under this bill, the Confederated Tribes will assume responsibility for maintenance of the light station and must provide reasonable public access.

I would also like to point out that H.R. 6370 leaves it to the Secretary of the Interior and the Commandant of the Coast Guard to determine the exact amount of land that will be transferred and to develop the appropriate maps. This body has passed similar bills in the past.

H.R. 6370 clearly leaves all authority of the transfer and trust with the relevant agencies. The Coast Guard and the Coos County Commissioners support the transfer. And this bill will put an historic piece of land to good use while protecting and preserving its cultural significance.

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

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

I thought that we could have this issue resolved before we came to the floor. Unfortunately, the Coast Guard has to actually contract for a survey, which, through the Federal procurement process, takes a while. But I can assure the gentleman that there are a number of other bills I'm familiar with, mostly under the jurisdiction of the Resources Committee, that have had similar problems, and these issues were resolved before the interagency transfer was finalized and took place. That just is sort of logical; they need to know what they're transferring, and they need to have a legal description and map. So I assure the gentleman, to the best of my ability as a member of the legislative branch, that the administrative branch will fulfill their duties in this matter.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6524) to authorize the Administrator of General Services to take certain actions with respect to parcels of real property located in Eastlake, Ohio, and Koochiching County, Minnesota, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 6524.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6524, a bill to authorize the administrator of General Services to transfer a parcel of real property in Eastlake, Ohio, to the city of Eastlake. Further, the bill authorizes the transfer of real property in the Koochiching Army Reserve Training Center in Koochiching County, Minnesota, to the County of Koochiching.

The city of Eastlake will compensate the General Services $30,000 for the real property transfer and the County of Koochiching also will compensate the General Services $30,000 for the real property transfer. The General Services Administration will forward to the Secretary of the Army the net proceeds for the transfer.

The parcel of real property in Eastlake is an approximate 10-acre site, which includes the John F. Kennedy Senior Citizen Center. In 1964, the city of Eastlake purchased the property and, consistent with the deed restriction, used the site for recreational uses for over 40 years. The bill will lift the deed restrictions and thus allow the city to use the property for economic development purposes. The senior center has been moved to a better location. Further, the city has purchased over 17 acres for parks and recreational uses, increasing the overall acreage devoted to open space and parkland.

The first parcel in Minnesota is 5\1/2\ acres, which includes the U.S. Army Armory Building, which will pay to have the roof replaced, install a new boiler and heating system, and make extensive repairs to the ceiling. The Army reported the property excess in January 2006 and GSA accepted the report of excess in February 2006. GSA screened the property with other Federal agencies, but there were no expressions of interest. Likewise, no expressions of interest from homeless shelter providers were received by GSA.

Mr. Speaker, I commend both Chairman Oberstar and my colleague, Congressman LaTourette, for working on these essential pieces of legislation and for ensuring compensation will be made to the General Services, and the Federal taxpayers will be fully protected.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Well, we are going to give the Republicans another chance today. They have been standing up for Big Oil this week and their obscene profits, but we are going to give them a chance one more time. Twice they have killed legislation on the floor of the House to rein in energy speculators. Now they are creating this fantasy that George Bush lifting the moratorium on offshore oil drilling drove down the price of oil.

Well, no. Actually, the price of oil started to drop when we first debated reining in energy speculation on the floor of the House. It had already dropped considerably before Bush lifted the moratorium.

Oil 10 years out is doing nothing for this year's speculation. Going after the speculators by releasing oil from the SPR and breaking their backs, or just reining them in with regulation, which this administration hates, which has brought about the crash on Wall Street, will bring much more immediate relief to the American consumers.

If we rein in speculation, then we won't see these obscene run-ups again next year around Memorial Day. $600 billion of speculative money flooded into that market. When it started flowing out, the price of oil dropped.

Rein in the speculators. Come on, GOP; stand up with us and take on Wall Street.