Waiving Requirement Of Clause 6(a) Of Rule Xiii With Respect To Consideration Of Certain Resolutions
Floor Speech
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Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), my friend, for the time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
``Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this martial law rule and in opposition to the outrageous process that continues to plague this House. We have before us a martial law rule that allows the leadership to once again ignore the rules of the House and the precedents and traditions of this House. Martial law is no way to run a democracy, no matter what your ideology, no matter what your party affiliation.''
Mr. Speaker, I strongly agree with these words, but I cannot, in good faith, take credit for them, because I did not write them. My staff did not write them nor did the Republican staff of the Rules Committee. In fact, so far as I know, not one Republican had any hand in the composition of this eloquent defense of democracy in this House of Representatives, because their author is actually the gentleman from Massachusetts and a senior member of the Democrat-run Rules Committee, Mr. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts.
He spoke these exact words on the floor over 2 years ago regarding what he eloquently and accurately called a ``martial law rule,'' which is what we're being asked to consider here today. We're being asked to consider this outrageous process on the House floor today, yet the Democratic Party knows it's not the right thing to do. It was not right then and it's not right now. My friends on the other side of the aisle know it's not right, and that's why they spoke up at the time, and I agree with them.
Last month, the Democrat majority barreled a 2,037-page health care bill through Congress forcing government-run health care on every single American. Today, in similar form, they are considering a 1,300-page Federal takeover of the financial services industry, 1,300 pages. This is simply another example of the government overstepping its boundary into the private market courtesy of the Democratic Party.
This monstrous financial reform package includes provisions to extend TARP, make Federal bailout authority permanent, and allow bureaucrats to determine the types of financial products that will be made available to consumers and set the salaries of private sector employees.
This bill does nothing to help create private sector jobs or to provide financial relief to Americans in these tough times, which should be Congress's number one priority. But not this majority.
Over the past 3 years, America has witnessed a reckless multitrillion dollar spending binge by this Democrat-controlled Congress with more borrowing, more taxing, and more spending. The Treasury Department has reported the total deficit for fiscal year 2009 reached a record $1.4 trillion. This is nine times the size of the deficit when the Democrats first took control of Congress.
Despite the Obama administration and congressional Democrats' promise that their trillion dollar ``stimulus'' plan would create jobs and unemployment would not rise above 8 percent, the Department of Labor once again reported an unemployment level of 10 percent. Since the Democrats took control of Congress, the number of unemployed persons has doubled to 15.4 million people, and this is only what is being reported.
It's time to stop the bailouts. It's time to get the government out of business industry takeovers, and it's time to stop killing jobs. Unfortunately, this bill we are considering today puts the American people on the hook once again for one of the greatest expansions of Federal Government in the history of United States while doing nothing to create jobs.
The first major provision of this bill was best summarized by a Democratic Congressman, Brad Sherman from California, as ``TARP on steroids.'' It creates a permanent bailout authority for the Federal Government by assessing $150 billion in new taxes on American businesses that will ultimately result in higher interest rates and higher fees for consumers.
Most disastrous, however, is that this tax, according to the minority on the Financial Services Committee will shrink available credit by as much as $55 billion and result in the loss of as many as 450,000 more American jobs in the financial services area.
Congress should be focusing on doing things to create jobs, not to tax investors, the financial services, and destroy jobs. This is the core difference between my Republican colleagues and our friends the Democrats in Congress.
Republicans believe it's time to allow business to pay back TARP funds, knock down TARP authority, and pay down the debt with returning the money to the taxpayer. Our friends the Democrats want to create a perpetual TARP-like fund, a bottomless treasure chest to continue their happy spending ways.
In an effort to thwart this trend and to protect American workers from job-killing provisions in this bill, I introduced an amendment in the Rules Committee last night which would eliminate this legislation if the Government Accounting Office finds that the provisions of this bill would kill 1 million or more jobs. If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, my friends that are Democrats, were really serious about this, they would have made this amendment in order. Mr. Speaker, on a party-line basis, even when the facts of the case said if this bill is going to destroy a million or more jobs, every single Democrat said don't include that as a provision in this bill because politics are more important than policy in this House.
I think we can all agree that protecting consumers is an essential role for Congress. Ensuring consumer safety is absolutely necessary for a successful, prosperous economy. Yet one of the most far-reaching provisions of this bill is the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. This CFPA is a classic example of the government's overstepping its authority into the free enterprise system simply to make government bigger and to further control the free enterprise system and free market.
This massive new agency will be led by a credit czar, yet another czar, who will have unprecedented, unchecked authority to restrict product choices for consumers, impose fees on consumer products, and rule over financial transactions. The new bureaucracy would raise costs for consumers, reduce the number and type of products available to them, increase the micromanagement of financial services firms, greatly increase the confusion caused by conflicting consumer laws, and ensure the demise of American competitiveness around the world.
In addition to the CFPA, this bill provides for the greatest Federal expansion of the Federal Reserve since the central bank's creation almost a hundred years ago.
Mr. Speaker, Americans pride themselves on the free enterprise system, the free market, and choices. Yet Congress once again today will pass legislation that increases government control and interference in the financial markets, rations resources, limits consumer choice, and dictates wages and projects as well as prices involved.
In a time of economic recession, with record unemployment and record deficits, I think--and the Republican Party thinks--Congress should be enacting legislation to grow our economy and to help with the creation of jobs, not to destroy jobs.
Mr. Speaker, the motives are clear; our Democrat colleagues are using policy and regulation to force a government takeover of the free enterprise system once again.
I encourage my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question, ``no'' on the rule, and ``no'' on the underlying legislation because Republicans K-N-O-W what our Democrat colleagues are trying to do.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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