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Protecting our long-term economic health and well-being is one of Congressman Moran’s top priorities. Throughout his time in Congress he has served as a leader on economic and financial issues, including fiscal responsibility, the current housing crisis, and foreign investment in the United States.

The financial crisis that erupted on Wall Street two years ago has now infected the whole of the corporate world, including industries ranging from healthcare to heavy equipment manufacturers. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), our country’s current recession is likely to be the longest since World War II, and, by some measures, could be the worst since the Great Depression. Increasing job losses and home foreclosures, dwindling retirement savings, rising national and state budget deficits are devastating. Plunging home values and stock prices have shaved at least $7 trillion from personal wealth. The cumulative wipe-out of household retirement savings totals about $2 trillion.

How exactly did we get into such a financial morass? Largely, it is a result of the imbalance in the distribution of wealth over the last eight years and an absence of oversight and accountability. During the last 8 years, we have seen the highest corporate profits and the deepest tax cuts in American history. 96% of the income growth in America has gone to the top 10%. So the wealthiest Americans have benefited from the tax cuts and the corporate deregulation, but average Americans have lost jobs and their life savings, access to health care, and—in far too many cases, their homes. What originated in our overextended housing market quickly grew and infected the entire financial sector, which led to the tightening of lending restrictions and depressed real estate prices. This, in turn, resulted in numerous foreclosures and greater stress on financial institutions, which then began to infect other sectors of the economy.

What should we do now? Congressman Moran believes that we need policies that correct the imbalances in spending and saving and restore federal oversight, accountability, and transparency. We need to address the crisis in the credit markets, the housing sector, and inject an immediate stimulus into our economy. He supported the House-passed TARP Reform and Accountability Act, to amend the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to provide a roadmap for the second part of the $700 financial recovery package adopted last fall, especially to strengthen accountability, close loopholes, increase transparency, and require Treasury to take significant steps on foreclosure mitigation.  To stop the hemorrhaging of jobs and pull the economy back from the edge, the Congressman supports President Obama’s commitment for a significant fiscal stimulus specifically designed to boost employment and economic growth. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is of the scale and breadth important to begin tackling the mounting problems faced by our economy. The plan proposes important investments that can start to overcome the nation’s damaging loss of jobs by saving or creating millions of jobs and put the United States back onto a sustainable long-term growth path.

National Debt
Part of the problem is the credit crisis and explosion of U.S. debt over the last seven years. In 2001, President Clinton left President Bush with $128 billion budget surplus, but President Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility increased our national debt at a rate of approximately $16,000 per second. As a result, President Bush has now left President Obama with a $11 trillion deficit and a financial crisis, which is equal to more than $36,600 per citizen (or $146,400 for a household of four). That debt causes two deep concerns. First, it means that we must spend an ever increasing percentage of our taxes paying interest on our debt (we averaged 9% in 2007), and, secondly, foreign countries now hold 43 percent of our debt. That means we send over $60 million of our taxes to China every day just to pay interest on our debt-money. Congressman Moran is a strong supporter of pay-as-you-go budgeting, and believes that the American government needs to strive to build up a surplus when possible so that there are funds to support and sustain our country during tough financial times like those we are experiencing now. Congressman Moran believes that Congress must not pass the costs of our poor fiscal policy choices onto our children and grandchildren.

Sovereign Wealth Funds
Congressman Moran chairs the bipartisan working group on Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs). His efforts have led to a broader, bipartisan understanding of what these funds are and how vital a role they can perform in “recycling investment into the U.S. economy.
As the dollar has declined and our foreign debt holders have looked for other ways to invest their savings from the sale of oil or from the interest we pay on our debt, countries such as Norway, China, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and China have used their accumulating savings to create Sovereign Wealth Funds. Instead of buying U.S. Treasury notes, these countries have created investment funds, somewhat like pension funds, to make state-purchases or investments around the globe.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of Congress, sovereign wealth funds manage an estimated $2.2 trillion and will grow to more than $13.4 trillion over the next decade-or approximately the size of all the companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange. 
Congressman Moran believes that the importance of SWFs in the global economy warrants further discussion and attention by Congress, particularly regarding the transparency of SWF operations, and the potential for the funds to be used for geopolitical, rather than financial goals.

June 12, 2008
House Extends Unemployment Benefits

May 21, 2008
House Passes ‘Green’ Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act

May 8, 2008
Comprehensive Plan to Address Housing Crisis Passes House

March 5, 2008
Joint Statement of Task Force Founders Moran and Davis

January 29, 2008
Economic Stimulus Package Passes House

 

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