Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, in the fall of 2008, I reluctantly voted for a bill that sent taxpayer money to Wall Street banks that should have paid for their own mistakes. We were told it was needed in order to avert a global calamity. So I did it. Then I went back to my constituents and vowed: Never again. Never again should taxpayers be on the hook for recklessness on Wall Street, and no financial institution should be considered too big to fail.

So when the financial regulatory bill the majority was about to bring to the floor last week still contained a number of loopholes allowing future bailouts, I raised the alarm. I wasn't about to take Democratic assurances that this bill protected taxpayers. I wanted them to prove it. That is what this debate is all about. It is about proving to my constituents and to the rest of the country that we actually do what we say we are going to do around here because if you haven't noticed, there is a serious trust deficit out there. Public confidence in government is at one of the lowest points in half a century. Nearly 8 in 10 Americans now say they do not trust the government and have little faith it can solve America's ills. And it is no wonder.

Over the past year, the American people have been told again and again that government was doing one thing when it was doing another. Just think about some of the things Americans have been told.

As a Senator, the current President rallied against deficits and debt. He said America has a debt problem and that it was a failure of leadership not to address it. Yet last year, his administration released a budget that doubles the debt in 5 years and triples it in 10. The debt has increased over $2 trillion since he took office. In February, the Federal Government ran the largest monthly deficit in the history of the United States.

How about the bailouts? The President said he didn't come into office so he could take over companies. But whether or not that is the case, Americans can't help but notice that some people did better than others. When it came to bailing out the car companies, the unions fared a lot better than anyone else.

What about jobs? Last year, the White House rushed a stimulus bill through Congress because it said we needed to create jobs. They said we needed to borrow the $1 trillion it cost the taxpayers to keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent. Well, more than a year later, unemployment is hovering around 10 percent. All told, we have lost nearly 4 million jobs since the President was sworn in.

Then there was health care. I will leave aside the substance for a moment and just talk about the process. Americans were told the process would be completely transparent, that all the negotiations would be broadcast live on C-SPAN. Instead, they got a partisan back-room deal that was rammed through Congress during a blizzard on Christmas Eve.

This is the context for the debate we are currently in. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that when we are talking about a giant regulatory reform bill, the American people aren't all that inclined to take our word for it when we say it doesn't allow for bailouts or that it will not kill jobs or that it won't enable the administration to pick winners or losers. They have heard all that before, and they have been burned. This time, they want us to prove it.

The first thing they want us to prove is that this bill ends bailouts. That was the one thing this bill was supposed to do, and if this bill didn't do anything else but that, a lot of people would be satisfied. The administration has said it wants to end bailouts. I say to them: Prove it.

Some of us have pointed out concerns that this bill would give the administration the authority to use taxpayer funds to support financial institutions at a time of crisis. Yes, the bill says taxpayers get the money back later, but that sounds awfully familiar. Isn't that exactly what we did with the first bailout fund--a bailout fund Americans were promised would be repaid but which Democrats are now trying to raid in order to pay for everything else under the Sun?

If a future administration thinks there is a crisis that requires using taxpayer funds, then they should have to get permission from the taxpayers first. It is not enough for someone in the administration to say it is so; they need to come to Congress before they write the check. If this bill isn't like the first bailout, prove it.

As I said, we have seen in other bailouts that some are treated better than others. This bill appears to enable the same thing by allowing the FDIC to treat creditors with equal claims differently. If the proponents of this bill think this bill does not allow the administration to pick winners and losers, they need to prove it.

This bill also contains a number of provisions that threaten the ability of small businesses to hire new workers. Other provisions would send jobs overseas. And just this morning, the Wall Street Journal pointed out a provision that would put new regulatory burdens on startup businesses that would make it harder for them to get off the ground. If this bill doesn't create new burdensome regulations that will make it harder for Americans to dig themselves out of this recession, then prove it. Prove it.

Every indication is that the chairman and the ranking member are making progress in their discussions and that this bill will have needed improvements. That is good. Some of the concerns I have just raised are among the topics being discussed. But in the end, Americans are not rooting for some deal. They have asked us for clarity. They are asking us, not for verbal assurances but for concrete proof, because at the end of the day I need to be able to look my constituents in the eye and prove to them that this bill does not allow for any bailouts. I need to prove to them that this bill doesn't treat some favored groups better than others. I need to prove to them that this strengthens the economy, that it doesn't make it worse.

People need to be convinced that we are doing what we are saying we are doing. This time they want proof and, frankly, I don't blame them.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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