America's Heritage is at Risk as Our Nation Loses its Way

Floor Speech

AMERICA'S HERITAGE IS AT RISK AS OUR NATION LOSES ITS WAY -- (House of Representatives - September 27, 2007)

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, when our Nation was founded, its spirit of independence and liberty permeated its creation. Freedom, independence, and liberty are the core of the American spirit. But I fear that our priceless heritage is at risk as our Nation loses its way. We are $10 trillion in debt, dependent more and more on foreign borrowing every day to conduct wars not being paid for. We are energy dependent, not independent. We are dependent on foreign petroleum, 75 percent of which we import from foreign countries across the rest of the world. Most of those places are undemocratic regimes. We are dependent on that petroleum. We are dependent on importing capital because we are $10 trillion in debt. Now we have the highest home foreclosure rate since the Great Depression.

The State that I represent, Ohio, which has lost so many jobs through outsourcing to foreign countries, is hard hit, as is our sister State north of us, the State of Michigan. Why? These are all the result of Wall Street draining people's accumulated equity from their largest form of savings, their home. When you have that amount of debt, you have to monetize it. You have to cover the gap. So what do you do? You send letters to the American people. The big banks are saying, ``Do you want to borrow against your home equity? Do you want to borrow $20,000 or $30,000 or $40,000?'' That happened across our country, and now many people are living in homes where they owe more on their mortgage than the basic value of the home itself.

We are losing our independence. Families are losing their independence. In turn, the Nation is losing its independence. At some point, you might say, the chickens of profligacy have come home to roost.

We witness parts of our Nation being pawned off every day. We see turnpikes that the States used to own and run being rented out to foreign countries for 99 years, and then the taxpayers of those States having to pay for them again with interest over 99 years. And the debt never ends.

The latest fire sale, as was reported in the New York Times yesterday, is NASDAQ, one of the pillars of our stock market. The New York Times reported that an undemocratic country, the United Arab Emirates, which is a Middle Eastern fiefdom, intends to buy one-third of the NASDAQ. That is incredible.

Let me ask, why would we sell any part of the heart of our economy to a foreign government or any undemocratic interest? Why we would do this, unless we were broke. And we are broke. We are only holding it together with borrowing. If our government tried to buy one-third of the NASDAQ, I could just hear the voices in here saying, ``socialism, socialism.'' It wouldn't be allowed. We would stop it. Why would we allow any foreign government or any foreign interest to purchase one-third of one of our pillars of capitalism in this country? The United Arab Emirates is notorious for human trafficking, for money laundering, including from terrorist networks. And we are going to allow them to buy one-third of the NASDAQ?

The United Arab Emirates is a hub in the Middle East for recirculating petrodollars that are taken out of our pockets because we are energy dependent here at home rather than energy independent. Those countries have amassed billions and billions and billions of dollars to fuel their undemocratic oil dictatorships. The UAE has no democratic government, no democratically elected government. Its citizens have no right to freely change their government. We have laws that tell us how often we have to change our Government. There is no freedom of representation in the United Arab Emirates. Why would we allow them to buy one-third of our stock market?

Mr. Speaker, I intend to introduce legislation to block this latest sellout of America.

END

Source