The Economy and Other Current Issues

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Mr. SCALISE. I'd like to thank my friend from Missouri for leading tonight's discussion about the economic problems that we're facing today in our country. And of course, as you showed those comments from Henry Morgenthau, who was the Treasury Secretary under FDR, who in fact not only pointed out the problems of the massive spending back then, but really was kind of prescient because some of the things he talked about back then are still as relevant, if not more, today because he predicted the problems, he discussed the problems of government spending and spending and borrowing and borrowing with no results, and in fact with detrimental results because of the damage it's done. And of course here we are today seeing the results of that same failed policy of history, unfortunately, repeating itself.

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Mr. SCALISE. And of course those who are running things right now--the liberals who are not only in the White House, but here in Congress--have not learned the lesson of history. And there is that saying that if you don't learn from history, then you're doomed to repeat it. Unfortunately, we've been trying to prevent history from repeating itself, and yet we're seeing that happen right now.

I represent southeast Louisiana, and of course we are battling this devastating oil disaster----

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Mr. SCALISE. I thank the gentleman for his kind comments. All I've been trying to do is not only represent the people of my district and my State, but also to make sure that the President is meeting his responsibility under the law. And of course under the law in this case, with the Oil Pollution Act, the President himself is responsible for directing the recovery, and the responsible party, BP, is responsible for paying.

BP ought to be paying. The problem is the President is allowing BP to still run the show on the ground in too many different areas, which is not his job. And now something that has really added insult to injury is that the President came out a few weeks ago with this ban, this moratorium on offshore drilling across the board, not focusing on finding out what went wrong on that rig, why the Horizon exploded--and we still continue to battle this oil today. In many cases our local leaders tell me, including just yesterday, our local leaders are spending more time fighting the Federal Government than fighting the oil, which is inexcusable, and it's still going on to this day.

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