Two Fig Leaves of a Bad $700 Billion Bill

Floor Speech

TWO FIG LEAVES OF A BAD $700 BILLION BILL -- (House of Representatives - September 28, 2008)

(Mr. SHERMAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. SHERMAN. The New York Times reports that the administration has finally agreed to two of the tiniest fig leaves designed to help Members vote for this bad bill. The first is that the bill will include a provision to require some future President to propose a revenue bill to pay for the hundreds of billions of dollars we're going to lose.

Now, how meaningless is this?

If a President likes and wants to give us a revenue bill, he'll do it without a statutory directive. If he sends us a tax-raising bill with a note saying that he hates it but that he's submitting it only to comply with the statutory provision, certainly, such a proposal is dead on arrival.

If this is what it means to say you've paid for a bill, then will this same ``pay-for'' definition apply when we are discussing bills not giving money to Wall Street, but future bills that would provide for transportation, health care and tax cuts for the middle class?

The second fig leaf is the insurance provision. It simply authorizes the Treasury to set up such an insurance plan without directing that they actually use it. They [Treasury] hate it. They won't use it. If they did use it, it would send, perhaps, even more money to Wall Street.

This bill involves hundreds of billions of dollars that are going to bail out foreign investors, and million-dollar-a-month salaries will continue to go to Wall Street executives.

That's why 400 eminent economics professors, including three Nobel Laureates, have written to us to say, ``We ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings and to carefully consider the right course of action.'' These are 400 professors of economics. Three Nobel Laureates say, ``Do not panic. Hold hearings. Let's write this bill well.''

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