Madam Speaker, I reluctantly supported this economic rescue plan on Monday, and I will do so again today. Not because I like it. I don’t. Not because it is popular. It isn’t. And certainly not because I think responsible taxpayers have any obligation to bail out Wall Street. They don’t. Instead, I will support this plan because I believe that acting decisively now will almost certainly mean less cost to taxpayers and less pain on Main Street than allowing this credit crisis to get worse.
In what history will record as the final verdict on eight years of the Bush Administration’s failed economic policies, allowing this credit crisis to spread to Main Street would dry up existing lines of credit, cause more small businesses to fail, put more people out of work, place more retirees’ pensions at risk and accelerate the current downturn in our fragile economy. We simply cannot allow that to happen.
Let’s be clear: this legislation is a far cry from the original, three-page, blank check proposal Secretary Paulson submitted to Congress. Whereas the Paulson proposal had no oversight, no limits on executive compensation or golden parachutes, no help for homeowners, no upside for taxpayers and no requirement that the President submit a plan to Congress to recoup the full amount of the taxpayers’ money from participating institutions should any amount of the initial outlay not be recovered after five years’ time, this legislation contains all of those protections.
Additionally, as a result of the Senate’s action last night, the bill we are considering today also includes a one-year patch for the AMT to ensure twenty-five million additional Americans are not snared by this tax; $18 billion in renewable energy incentives - paid for by eliminating subsidies to the oil and gas industries - to accelerate our transition to a 21st century green economy; and mental health parity legislation that will end the shameful history of insurance discrimination suffered by those whose conditions affect the brain, rather than the rest of the body. This revised package also contains bipartisan legislation I introduced to end the ISO AMT crisis affecting tens of thousands of law-abiding Americans by providing permanent relief from that universally condemned corner of our code. And it further protects our citizens’ savings by temporarily increasing the cap on FDIC-insured accounts to $250,000.
Like any legislation of this magnitude, there are provisions I do not support, other provisions I thought should be included, and still others I would have changed. For example, the renewable energy title includes several incentives that in my view fall outside the definition of “renewable”, and the tax title contains a number of narrowly drawn provisions that detract from the larger purpose of this legislation. Additionally, the final bill failed to include a measure I support to allow bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages on primary residences the same way they are currently able to modify mortgages on second homes and investment properties. Furthermore, the Senate package was not fully paid for and for that reason will unnecessarily add to our national debt. And finally, I personally would have preferred that that this rescue plan include some immediate regulatory reforms, recognizing that more comprehensive reform will follow congressional hearings that begin next week. Nevertheless, our citizens can be assured that Congress is determined to get to the bottom of what caused this mess and act promptly to make sure this kind of crisis never happens again.
I yield back the balance of my time.