John Carter

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Let me make this very clear. The Rules Committee is the Speaker's committee. The Speaker decides who is on the Rules Committee. So this Rules Committee is an arm of the Speaker's committee. Like one of my Democratic colleagues who went before the Rules Committee said just the other day, he was sort of nervous until he went in and he counted one, two, three, four, five, six; one, two, three, four, oh, I think I'm going to win because there are six Democrats and four Republicans. But the Speaker chooses that committee. They answer to the Speaker. And the chairman is set by the Speaker.

Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend from Iowa. As I listened to that story about switchgrass and that we paid those people money, I don't have anything against them, but it sure sounds like the inmates are running the asylum around here. I mean, I think anybody that heard that story would think, Good Lord, those people are crazy. I really want to say again--and I've said this before--if you're trying to stop CO2, and I'm throwing off a bunch of CO2 in my company, and I can go out and buy some carbon credits from you who happens to be running a real good clean company, I still keep putting the stuff in the atmosphere, right? I haven't cleaned up my act. I mean, they put a cap on me. I'm not meeting the cap, and I just bought an excuse. Kind of like Al Gore with his 100,000-foot house--or whatever it is he's got, or two or three houses--he said, Oh, that's all right. I buy carbon credits. He's still putting the stuff up there in the air.

Mr. CARTER. One of the things that comes to mind is tariffs. Tariffs brought on the Great Depression. I don't know what you're fishing for.

Mr. CARTER. We should be very grateful that the Speaker promised us the most open, honest and ethical Congress in the history of the Republic because think how bad it would be if we didn't have that. We wouldn't even be here, would we? It is amazing what promises are made and what promises are broken in this House of Representatives. It is a shame. It is a shame that somebody besides us on the floor of the House, and hopefully some people are watching this, it is a shame, Mr. Speaker, that we are not getting that message out. This is wrong. It is not what the American people sent us here for. Getting back to our hoax and our indulgences that we are talking about here, I want everybody to know that when Martin Luther hammered that up on the door of the church, he was informing the church that this was wrong to have these indulgences. We need to be pounding one on the front door of this Capitol Building. This is wrong to put this burden on the American people, some of whom really can't afford it, and many of whom are losing their jobs. And to give us a target of 17\1/2\ percent unemployment that we can see could come in a much less industrialized nation than we are and what happened there, think what can happen in this Nation.

Mr. CARTER. What we learned from Spain is 17\1/2\ percent unemployment. My gosh, back during the Clinton administration they kept saying 6\1/2\ percent, 6 percent unemployment was full employment. Well, we have learned that is not true. But there is nobody going to argue 17\1/2\ percent unemployment is full employment. We are going to be hurting. We just spent, as my colleague says, our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren and maybe even for generations never even thought of, we just spent their inheritance just in the first 100 days of the Obama administration. We spent more money than all the history of the Republic put together. And we are wanting to put in a program that can put almost 20 percent of the American workforce out of work? Isn't this the inmates running the asylum?

Mr. CARTER. Well, you forgot that there is one other source of CO2 that we haven't figured out how to tax on it, but I'm sure they're working on it. We've created some today as we've been in here. I had a lady when I was doing a townhall meeting. We were talking about energy, and she said, You know, I'm concerned about these emissions because I want my children to be able to breathe clean air. And I said, Do you ever lean over and kiss your kid goodnight? She said, Yeah, I do. I said, Do you realize when you breathe out you're breathing CO2 into that child's face? She stopped. She said, You know? That is right. I said, You're going to have to stop breathing in the presence of your child. This gas we're talking about we are all breathing out every breath and all animals are doing the same thing and all plants are loving it because they take it in. And guess what they give back? Oxygen for us. It's crazy. It's really crazy what we're talking about. But that number needs to be added in there. Maybe we should limit ourselves to 30 breaths a minute.

Mr. CARTER. We know the corporate tax drives people offshore looking for a better tax structure. We know right now in just a competitive market we have the Chinese offer cheaper natural gas than the Americans. So if you're powering your plant by natural gas and you're paying that corporate tax structure, just in today's world, there is a lure to go overseas to China. Now, you come in and you're going to add 30 percent to the cost of everything. Why in the world would you not think it's the absolutely worst thing that could happen? We're probably going to get trampled if we don't get out of the way as they head for the west coast to get on a boat to go to China.

Mr. CARTER. Under this ingenious government program we have got now, all they're doing is just paying more taxes.

Mr. CARTER. It is a sin tax. That's exactly right. It's a sin tax. It is ludicrous to think it's going to reduce any carbon, CO2 that goes into the atmosphere. Because as long as a guy wants to pay the taxes, he's in business. Let's face it, if I'm the guy that's paying the sin credit, the indulgence, well, if I can pass it on down to the neighbors down the street in their bill, that's where it's going to go. So those poor slobs are paying the tax. Why should I worry about it? Why is that going to keep me from putting CO2 into the atmosphere? This is insanity, but that's where we are.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Ask our farmers if they like that idea.

Mr. CARTER. If the gentleman would yield for just a minute. On that food thing, you have forgotten the next tax they're coming up with is the flatulence tax on cows.

Mr. CARTER. Well, some of the things that our friend Congressman Shimkus said are pretty sobering.

Mr. CARTER. We're saying $5 a gallon for gasoline with that increase being caused by this tax-and-trade scheme that's being sold to the Congress as some kind of clean-up-the-world project. We think that at least ought to raise the issue and should slow down the process. Yet they say, No. Let's see what's going to happen when it gets to be $5 a gallon. Let's think in our recent past as to what happens when gasoline gets to $5 a gallon. Well, of course it's going to be the evil oil companies' fault that secretly have made deals with each other to fix prices and to make them go up. That's why, when they said the electricity bills are going to go up, we just said that we wanted them to say on the electricity bill what caused this to go up. Well, it happens to be our cap-and-tax program that caused it to go up. That's fair. The American people ought to know what caused the doubling of their electricity bills. Guess what they're going to say? Oh, the evil power companies have jacked the prices up to bilk the poor consumers. Truth and sunshine is what this government needs. Put the truth in the bill.

Mr. CARTER. First, if they're not doing their job, we ought to fire them. That's just really easy, okay?

Mr. CARTER. That's fine. I don't have a problem with that at all, but let's get back to what we're doing. You know, there's an old saying: ``I won't tax you and I won't tax me. I'll tax that fellow behind the tree,'' okay? That's kind of what we heard from the Obama administration when we started off: Don't worry. Ninety-five percent of the people in America are not going to be taxed by this administration. Yet, as my colleague from Georgia said, there's not anything you can think of that doesn't have an energy cost in it. Nothing. I mean it's in everything. So I don't care how rich you are or how poor you are. You're going to be taxed by this. Now, don't give me the excuse of, well, we're just taxing the company, and they're taxing you. That doesn't work. Everybody knows where this tax is going. They know it in the administration, and we know it in Congress. It's going to us, to the individual Americans, and we're going to pay this tax. Look at that. Shoes. Plastic. Food. Electricity. Housing. All that.

Mr. CARTER. That's simple stuff. If they're not doing what we hired them to do, we've got to fire them.

Mr. CARTER. Yes.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. The gentleman raises an excellent point, and that's just what we've been talking about here. I thank the gentleman for reminding me of that fact. In reality, that testimony is treated under oath, and lying to Congress carries penalties. If the CIA is lying, as Ms. Pelosi seems to be alleging, then, quite frankly, we ought to look into it. I mean, the one thing this body should do is enforce the laws of this land. So I thank the gentleman for reminding me of that. As we've been talking here today about solutions, that would be one solution, to bring this to light. It's all about sunlight. You know, sunlight is purifying, and if you put the light of day on things, we generally get the answers to questions we have. All of the things I've talked about today, all of them, just need sunlight on them. Maybe they'll all clear up, but we've got to have somebody asking for it, and that's what I've been doing these last 6 or 8 weeks. I see my good friend from Texas, a fellow judge and fellow Congressman is here, Louie Gohmert. He is one of my very dearest friends. I yield such time as he would choose to consume.

Mr. CARTER. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If you read this statement right here, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on November 8, 2006 made this statement, which has been quoted quite a bit, ``The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history,'' November 8, 2006. That's a very, very noble goal, a noble goal that unfortunately doesn't seem to be being met by the majority. I've been here on the floor of the House talking about ethics now and talking about basically right and wrong, stuff that anybody can understand, I think; that there are just certain things that really just by their very nature just don't seem right. I credit the American people with an awful lot of common sense, and I think that common sense leads them to look at some of the things that go on in Washington and say, You know what, that doesn't make sense. That's just not right. Something's wrong here. Generally when the American people are saying to themselves, That doesn't sound right, something's wrong, that's just not the way it ought to be, generally they've got a pretty good judgment of what they're looking at and what they're hearing. It's been my--I wouldn't say duty--but the goal that I've taken on to try to point out some of these things. And I started off with a good friend, a gentleman named Charlie Rangel. Charlie is the chairman of one of the most important committees in the House of Representatives, the Ways and Means Committee, the taxation committee of the House of Representatives. I actually discovered when Mr. Rangel spoke on the floor of the House about the fact that he hadn't paid taxes on a piece of Caribbean real estate that he owned for a long period of time because he just misunderstood that that was income to him and that he had submitted the unpaid past-due taxes and would pay any penalties and interest that might be assessed. But none had been assessed. It just struck me, having been a small-town lawyer and a judge in a medium-sized suburban county, that that didn't sound like the IRS that most of my friends and neighbors were familiar with. Because most of my friends and neighbors were familiar with the IRS that when they just didn't pay on April 15 but paid on October 15 of the same year, they looked at their tax bill, and along with the taxes was interest and sometimes penalties. If they went longer than that, there was even more interest and even larger penalties. It seemed to me when you're talking about something like 10 years I believe, but don't hold me to that--it was in double figures anyway-- when you're talking about the years that Mr. Rangel didn't pay his taxes, and it was in the sum of, as I recall, it was about $10,000 or $12,000 that he had to pay. I don't remember the exact number on that either. But for there to be no penalties and interest, when somebody who pays their tax bill 6 months late, and they only owe maybe $400, $500, and they look down there and there's penalties and interest. I thought--and I think people listening to that would have thought the same thing--Well, that's not right. If everybody else is paying penalties and interest, why isn't the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee paying penalties and interest? Surely it's not because he's the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and is in charge of overseeing taxation for the House of Representatives. Surely that is not the case. But if it is the case, then the rest of the world is being treated differently than Mr. Rangel. So I introduced a bill to this august body to create the Rangel Rule. The Rangel Rule is very simple. If you fail to pay taxes for whatever reason, and you're willing to pay those past-due taxes, but you don't want to pay penalties and interest--even if it's been 10 or 20 years that you haven't paid the taxes--just like Mr. Rangel, you can claim the Rangel Rule, and you won't have to pay penalties and interest. All you basically do is write on your taxes when you pay your taxes, ``exercising the Rangel Rule,'' and then you will be treated the same as the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and your penalties and interest should be excused. Now, a lot of people thought that was funny. And a lot of people caught on to it and thought it was a good idea. And it is still here looking for signatures on a discharge petition which is growing which would allow us to bring this to the floor of the House. But its real purpose was to have people who use common sense apply common sense to this issue and say, That is not right. That is not fair. And it put a spotlight on one particular incident that is not fair. But I have got three pages here of various people that have issues. And then of course, in our current news, we have issues with the Speaker. So, we will get to all that as we go through this evening. But right now, I don't want everybody to think I'm just picking on Mr. Rangel because quite frankly, there is a lot of other issues here. And to start off with, we have the Secretary of the Treasury. Do you know that guy? That is the guy that has told us we need to spend these trillions of dollars to save the world. Well, the man who has spent us into the poorhouse almost didn't pay his taxes. Now, the difference between Mr. Geithner and Mr. Rangel, in Mr. Rangel's defense, is what we call the ``Geithner rule precedent.'' Even with solid evidence that a taxpayer was aware of their self-employment tax liability, was given funds specifically to pay their obligation and still consciously failed to pay, only interest should be assessed. Because Mr. Geithner failed to pay his self-employment tax, even though the people who paid him sent him the money in a check, $30,000 worth, and said, Here it is. This is to pay yourself employment tax. And he didn't pay it. Now, I assume he kept the money. But he didn't pay it. And when he then was at that time being offered up as the nominee for the job of the Treasurer of the United States, he did rush down and pay that amount of money. But he didn't have any penalties assessed against him, even though, arguably, it is an intentional act, because he was specifically told, Here is the check to pay your taxes, and he didn't pay them. And it took the fact that the President of the United States chose him to be Treasurer to get him to pay those taxes. We don't know if he ever would have paid them if he hadn't come under the spotlight of this government. But when he did, he paid them. And if anybody intentionally did something like that, you would think that there would be some kind of penalties about it. And yet all he had to do was, he did have to pay some interest, so that is why it is not exactly a Rangel Rule. But he didn't have to pay any penalties. And my gosh, if the ordinary citizen from Toledo, Ohio, just doesn't pay on the 15th of April and pays on the 15th of October, he will pay some penalties. It may not be a lot, but he will pay some penalties, and he'll pay some interest. The question you have to ask yourself is, what makes Mr. Geithner so special that he doesn't have to pay penalties for intentionally not paying his taxes? And I guess the answer is it is because he was the second highest man in the Treasury, and now he is the Treasurer of the United States, and he is the man who is advising us on this massive spending program that this House has set forward before it in the last 100 days. More money has been spent by this House in the last 100 days than all the Congresses and all the Presidencies that have ever gone before put together on the advice of the man who was aware that he had to pay his self-employment tax because he got a letter telling him that which he had in his possession and he didn't pay it. I think almost everybody thinks it is not right for somebody, because they have a government position, to be treated differently from somebody else. I think common sense in America tells us that is the right thing to do. The right thing to do is treat everybody the same. And just because you're a big shot doesn't mean that you don't have to pay your fair share and you shouldn't be treated exactly like anybody else in this country. And that is what we have been talking about. So that is just an extension of the Rangel Rule. We could stop there because I talked about this before. But there are others that need to be mentioned. This is an article from The Washington Post, Federal funding funneled to Representative Murtha's supporters. A Pennsylvania defense research center regularly consulted with two handlers close to Representative John Murtha, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, as it collected nearly $250 million in Federal funding through the lawmaker, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and sources familiar with the funding request. The center then channeled a significant portion of the funding to companies that were among Murtha's campaign supporters. This brought to attention another issue. This issue has to do with the fact that Representative Murtha has steered millions of dollars to a group of people, contracts, to a group headed by a man named Bill Kuchera, who is a government contractor. And these offices of this firm, PMA, were raided by Federal officers on January 3 of this year. It says, this contact has very close ties to John Murtha. The agents were from the FBI, IRS and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. They searched the offices of Kuchera Industries and Kuchera Defense Systems in three different locations in Pennsylvania. This is the same group that has contributed thousands of dollars to Mr. Murtha's campaign. Now, this is something that, at a very minimum, should be talked about by the Ethics Committee. I didn't mention that in the ethics report on Charlie Rangel we were promised by the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, back when this all broke last fall, that the Ethics Committee would have concluded the investigation and cleared up the Rangel situation by the beginning of this Congress. So we all waited in anticipation of finding out if there was a solution to this issue concerning Mr. Rangel. Nothing has come. And we have heard nothing, absolutely nothing, from the Ethics Committee. The same thing, Nancy Pelosi has actively blocked seven resolutions that would require the Ethics Committee to form an investigative subcommittee that would look into the relationship between PMA-awarded earmarks and campaign donations with Mr. Murtha. Why does she feel the need to protect PMA? Well, we have a body here called the Ethics Committee. And that Ethics Committee's job is to go look into these allegations against our Members and come up with solutions to that problem. Either they have violated the rules of this House or they haven't violated the rules of this House. Either they have violated, more importantly, rules of the laws of the land or they haven't violated the law of the land. And if that is the case, the Justice Department should, I assume by this search that they had, be looking into this issue. These issues need to be resolved. These issues prevent us from having the most open, ethical Congress in history and caused that rule to rest in peace. So that statement is now resting in peace in those two cases because nothing has been done. And there is more. An organization got earmarks from Representative Alan Mollohan that gave free rent to a family charity. Mollohan provided millions of dollars in earmarks to a group he helped to start, and that group gave the Mollohan Family Charitable Foundation $75,000 in free rent, according to Roll Call newspaper on the Hill. The West Virginia High Technology Consortium has provided more than $75,000 in free rent and administrative services to the Robert H. Mollohan Family Charitable Foundation according to the tax records while receiving millions of dollars' worth of earmarks from Alan Mollohan, Democrat from West Virginia, who serves as the family charitable foundation's secretary. Here is a copy of The Washington Post article, upon taking control of the Congress in November of midterm elections, Democrats vowed to require lawmakers to disclose their requests and to certify that money they are requesting does not benefit them. Another key Democratic reform requires House Members seeking earmarks to certify that neither they nor their spouses have any financial interest in the project. In the Democratic Congress, pork is still getting served. That is from The Washington Post, May 24, 2007. And then, West Virginia charity got rent deal, Roll Call, March 10, 2009. The West Virginia High Technology Consortium has provided more than $75,000 in free rent and administrative services to the Robert H. Mollohan Family Charitable Foundation while receiving millions of dollars of earmarks from Alan Mollohan. Now Mr. Mollohan says that this is perfectly legitimate. And do you know what? It might be. It might be. But that is not for us to judge. Once again, if you are trying to have the most open, ethical and honest Congress in the history of the Republic, then when you have questions raised like this, there should be a place you go to resolve those questions. To me, at least the starting place is the Ethics Commission and the Ethics Committee. And yet here we are. There has been no ethics investigations that we know of launched to look at these allegations. I think the American citizens ought to look at this and say, well, why not? If in reality this is innocent and there is nothing wrong with it, then why couldn't it be brought before the Ethics Committee and they can tell us this is perfectly all right, normal behavior to give large amounts of earmarks to a company and then get free rent for your charitable foundation. Maybe it is perfectly legitimate. I don't know. But if you listen to that, and you think of the most honest, open, ethical Congress in the history of the Republic, then you would say, something needs to be resolved about this issue. And really that is what we are about here. We are saying we want resolution. We want someone to look into these matters, and let's be what Nancy Pelosi has promised us we would be. I would like to say that was all. But there was also this issue recently. Representative Maxine Waters pushed for a $12 million TARP giveaway to One United Bank. Waters' husband is a stockholder and member of the board of directors of that bank. Daughter Karen Waters and her firm have made over $450,000 charging candidates and ballot measures sponsors for endorsements for Ms. Waters. And L.A. County supervisor, Yvonne Burke, supported a measure to lease the Chester Washington Golf Course to American Golf, owned partly by Representative Waters' husband and son after Waters supported Burke in her campaign. All these allegations came out in the Los Angeles newspapers. Now, there may be absolutely nothing to this. We don't know. But you ask yourself, does it sound like there is nothing to it? Because what I failed to say was part of that article was that it is a clear indication that Ms. Waters used influence to get them to look at giving TARP money to One United Bank. And doesn't that talk about benefits to House Members or their spouses, any financial interest in the project? I would argue if that is the rule passed by the Democratic Congress, the ethics rule for this Congress, imposed upon themselves and others, shouldn't we follow that rule? Doesn't it make sense? Doesn't it make sense to say let's get answers to that question? I don't understand why that also is not something for the Ethics Committee to report on. Rahm Emanuel, a former Member of this body, now the, some would argue, the number two man in the White House, the man who has President Obama's ear, he got free rent from Rosa DeLauro, who is also a Member of this body, by living in her basement in an apartment. I mean, you know, I am sure it was a nice place, for 5 years. Rent free. Now, you say to yourself, Well, isn't it all right for one Member of this Congress to allow another Member of this Congress to stay in their place if they want to and not charge them any rent? I would say, yeah, I don't really see anything wrong with that. But then, if you knew that Ms. DeLauro's husband was a lobbyist who regularly lobbied this Congress, then all of a sudden you have got to say, wait a minute. Now we're talking about this rule right here, these requests, and spouses and Members and financial interests and interest in lobby events in this Congress. And, you know, the lobby right now, they are the enemy of the state as far as we hear around this place all the time. These are the most horrible people on Earth we hear from people around here. I don't agree with that. They're human beings just like anybody else and they're doing a job, but those who aren't doing it properly are an issue for this Congress. And I would argue that that ought to at least be looked into. No action has been taken by the Ethics Committee, and when Rahm Emanuel was put on as Chief of Staff to the President, the Ethics Committee said it now has no jurisdiction over him. So I guess if there is an issue there, it's gone away by moving from the legislative branch to the executive branch. But just because you move doesn't make it right. It's an issue that ought to be answered to. And it may be absolutely positively nothing there, but what do you think? What do the Members of this body think? Does it sound like it ought to be looked into? Does it sound like it ought to be questioned? Does it sound like something you would like to know the answer to? Because, let me tell you, I can almost take judicial notice of the fact that rent in Washington, D.C., it's not cheap. And so if he's getting rent every month for 5 years, I would say, I don't know what the place looks like, but I've shopped around for those basement apartments. I rented a room with a microwave for a thousand dollars a month. Others rent those apartments down in the basement of people's townhouses around here for anywhere from $1,500 to $1,800 a month, times 5 years. That's a pretty decent gift. That's a pretty decent reward. And it wouldn't be bad if it was just a Member of this Congress, but it is the lobbyist spouse who also is giving that gift, and it ought to be talked about. It ought to be looked into. We say that we don't want to have conflicts of interest in this House. We want to disclose those conflicts of interest. Anyway, you are supposed to disclose what you're doing. Here. Disclose the requests and the money being certified and what you do. Now, Hilda Solis served, who has now been appointed to the Labor Department, Secretary of Labor. She was the treasurer with fiduciary duties for a labor organization, in direct violation of House Ethics Rules. Her group lobbied Congress and took direct action in elections under all her fiscal approval while serving in Congress. Her husband failed to pay taxes, even after the IRS liens, for 16 years. And I guess the shift to the executive branch is the solution to that problem, but it really ought to be the Ethics Committee's job. But once again, now that she's Secretary of Labor, the Ethics Committee has no jurisdiction over here. But does that make it right? Does that make it not--does that make it okay to do that? Is that the kind of government that our President promised us he wanted to have? He was going to have the kind of a government that we could be proud of; and yet this lady, in violation of House rules, represented a labor group that lobbied this Congress, and she was part of their executive committee and didn't report it, and now she's Secretary of Labor and all is forgiven. And yet she's right where the conflict was, if there was a conflict. I mean, doesn't that make sense to anybody that that ought to be looked into by somebody? We had an ethics issue down in Florida, and it caused one of the Members of this House, rightfully, for other reasons also, to lose the election. Tim Mahoney, the Democrat, we learned through the press and from his own lips, paid off a mistress that he had with Federal funds so that she'd keep quiet. He is accused of using these taxpayer Federal funds to pay a former staffer and his mistress. The Speaker of the House refused to take action. Florida voters told her she was wrong and kicked him out. Compare that to the pledge. The Ethics Committee took no action. He was voted out of office after one term. The people took some action. So maybe that's where we are today. Maybe that's the only place we get recourse is from the people of the United States. They have to step up. You know, we took a big battering as a party. I was very offended, as were many Members, when we were accused of all being part of a culture of corruption. You don't hear me accusing every Democrat in this House, because of these people on this list, being part of a culture of corruption. There are good-hearted people on that side of the aisle who are doing the right thing, and I don't think it's fair for anybody to step up and classify a whole party because of the issues of some. But I do think that when those issues come up, it's the duty and responsibility of that party to make sure those issues are resolved. We resolved ours. Many people resigned. Many people didn't run for reelection because of issues that came up, and here we are with these issues. And then finally, once again, resting in peace is the most open, ethical, honest Congress in history, and that very noble phrase basically died between January 4, 2007, and February 10, 2009. And it died because of all these issues not resolved by this House, not resolved by its Ethics Committee, not resolved by the Justice Department if it is applicable. And when you come out of a world of right and wrong and you try, to the best you can--and people make mistakes. You know, some of these things could be mistakes. I want to make that very clear. But these are the kinds of things that others have been accused of being part of a culture of corruption, and those issues were resolved. These issues go unresolved, and the leader who set the standard, who has told us that these things would be resolved, has not only not resolved them, she has been a stumbling block for resolving these issues. And now, that brings us to an issue that we have with the Speaker. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is having an ongoing war with the CIA. I think most of the country is aware of that, and it has to do with accusations and allegations concerning what some call torture and others call interrogation practices with those people who are, have been held in Guantanamo or other places as potential terrorist enemies of our state. And the issue, of course, that makes the front page is waterboarding. Whether it's good or evil, whether it's torture or not torture is not what we are talking about today. That's for--I think each of us has our own opinion about that. I think the real issue here, the issue we have to resolve, is that the Speaker of the House has attacked unmercifully this entire operation and all of these things to do with the--who got told what about this interrogation practice. And she denied vehemently that she had ever gotten any knowledge of these extensive interrogation tactics. And she's just really stood up and in no uncertain words said, I never knew about it. Well, the current CIA director, the current Democrat CIA director who was appointed by President Obama, has released information to the fact that Ms. Pelosi was, when she was the minority leader and in the minority, she was in the room when these interrogation methods were discussed and that there are notes to show she was there. And she has said--she's basically taking the position that the CIA is not telling the truth. Some say either Ms. Pelosi's not telling the truth or the CIA is not telling the truth. That's kind of where we are. But truthfulness, public statement truthfulness is what we would expect from a Speaker who tells us this is going to be the most open, ethical, and honest Congress in history. I don't know. I think most everybody comes from a part of the world sort of like mine, honesty means telling the truth. And I think at your parents' or your grandparents' knee, they would tell you, You be honest. You tell the truth. I have told my children, when something was broken or something happened, Now, you be honest and you tell me the truth, because if you don't, it will be worse on you than if you did tell the truth. And I believe they will testify to that fact. Because the truth is just, that's something we instill in our children. We hopefully all do that because, quite frankly, truth and honesty is a goal we set for ourselves as Americans. We set the goal for ourselves as a Nation to be an open, honest Nation. And we do that by raising the next generation, hopefully, to understand the difference between telling the truth and not telling the truth. I don't like the word ``lie'' or ``liar,'' and I'm not going to use it. Others might, but I'm not. I will tell you that you are not honest if you are not telling the truth. It comes down to: Is this CIA telling the truth or is the Speaker of the House telling the truth? Now, why would somebody go off on this in such a big way? Well, I don't think I'm going off on it in nearly as big a way as are some of the people in the press right now. Let's wake up, folks. The reality is we're talking about a person who, through a series of horrible disasters, might end up being the President of the United States, an unelected President of the United States, because if something should happen to the President or to the Vice President, God forbid, the Speaker of the House stands in line to be the President of these United States. The Speaker of the House of Representatives is an important, important position. This issue of truth plays on how we want this place to operate and who we want to be. Do we want to talk to each other straight, tell each other the truth, look each other in the eye, give our word, and keep it? When something happens, do we want to tell them, yes, it happened or, no, it didn't happen, and it's the truth? How do 400-plus people get together and try to work things out and keep saying, let's all work together, if we don't talk honestly to each other? So it's either the CIA--the agency that is in charge of intelligence for this Nation--or it's the Speaker of the House. They're both important. I would allege the Speaker is more important even though the duty of protecting this Nation by National Intelligence is really what has kept us safe for these last 8 years since the attack on 9/11. Even so, as for the Speaker of the House, who is standing in line to be President should a disaster strike this Nation, I think the truth should be part of what comes from her lips. So this needs to be resolved. The American people have a right to know. This Congress has a right to know. We have a right to know all that we can about those meetings where enhanced interrogation was discussed, whether it was at one or whether it was at 50. I don't know how many it was discussed at, but I know it has been clearly stated by the head of the CIA that at one Ms. Pelosi was present, and it was clearly stated that enhanced interrogation was being used. So I guess the best, real title to this discussion we are having these days is: Let's get to the bottom of it. Let's get to the bottom of this stuff. Let's get through it and find out what the truth is. Let's lay it out before the American people, and let's let the cards fall where they may. That's what I think ought to happen. As a solution finder for 20 years, everybody who comes into the courthouse is looking for a solution to their problems. You hope most of the time you're right, and sometimes you might not be right, but your job that day is to try to solve that problem to the best of your ability under the law. We owe a duty to this wonderful body, to the greatest legislative body ever created on the face of the Earth. We owe a duty to this great bunch of folks out there--we call them Americans of all sorts--that this government speaks the truth. I am really pleased to see my friend Mark Kirk join me. I am going to yield such time as he would like to use. He is a very intelligent man about the military in general, so I would like to hear his comments.

Mr. CARTER. Thank you. I thank my friend from Texas, a wise counsel, to look at that and decide maybe it's not that we're not having any untruths here; maybe we're just having a gigantic lapse of memory by the leadership of this House, the Democratic leadership of this House and possibly some of its participants. But I don't think all of the participants. There are open, honest, ethical men and women in this House. I think their voices all should be heard on both sides of the aisle. Resolve these issues, Madam Speaker. Make the Ethics Committee work. Make your office work. Follow the rules and procedures. As Mr. Kirk says, if we have the top leader of the House of Representatives saying a Federal agency has lied to Members of Congress and to its leadership, then file charges and let's go take them to task on this and find out if they did lie, and then let's open the pages of the books and let's look at the events and let's decide. The burden of proof will be on the state. That is fair. Our Founding Fathers created that. They don't have to defend themselves other than sit there if they want to. But the state has to prove that they are lying. But if someone is accusing them of untruth--because I just used a word I swore I wouldn't use--then the law says telling a falsehood to Congress is an actionable offense, as Mr. Kirk pointed out. Let's take that action. If the CIA has been lying to this body, let's take them to court. Let's find out. Let's have a hearing before this body. Let's find out and let the sunlight, the purifying sunlight of day shine upon this issue between the Speaker of the House and the CIA. And by the way, the CIA director appointed by President Obama confirms what other CIA directors and other Members of this Congress who were present said, that there was a briefing. Maybe it's part of Mr. Gohmert's famous memory lapse or just forgotten. Maybe that is the defense to all of this we've talked about. Maybe all of these issues we raised, the solution is, I forgot. Maybe with all of the ethics issues that have been raised before this Congress, someone would think could be resolved by, I forgot that was a rule. It's not the way it works, and that's not the way it should work. We've got issues before this Congress that are issues that divide this Nation. We are about putting back this Nation together, not dividing it. That is what our President has told us. We, in this body, are about putting this body back together in a healthy way. The noble statements made by the Speaker are only noble if they're carried out. But if they're only words--we hear lots of words around this place. There is more than just words involved in everything we do. There is action. Let's resolve these issues. That is all I ask. That is all the Members of Congress ask. And I think that is all that the American people ask. Let's resolve these issues. I guess the ultimate resolution will be at the polling place, but that is not really the solution we should have. There should be more pride in this institution than having to settle it at the ballot box. That is kind of like settle it out in the street in Gunsmoke. That is not the law we want to have in this country. Let's settle these issues. I thank the Speaker for his patience, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time. I'm reminded of when I was in law school. It's a beautiful spring day and the baseball team was playing off in the distance. And the professor called on every member in the back row to respond to a case, and every one of them stood up and said, I'm unprepared, Mr. Fritz. And when he finally went all the way across the back row of the auditorium, he said, Everyone stand and look around. You're seeing the greatest concentration of ignorance in the history of man. Maybe we're witnessing the greatest lapse of memory in the history of this Congress, because if you give them credit for forgetting, they sure have forgotten a lot. And I thank the gentleman for pointing that out. There are those that say that the way politics should work is you tell people what you're going to do in the campaign, and then you do it, and then you tell them what you did to get elected the next time. Of course, the new modern world is you tell them over and over and over what you're going to do, you don't do it, and you tell them over and over and over that you didn't. Maybe that is where we are. All of these things are curious, but the reality is, we raised enough issues here tonight that we don't meet anywhere close to this standard. I want to ask the Speaker how much time we have left.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I yield.

Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman. I want to point out a couple of things so we don't get off into this magic world that has been created by our Democrat friends and the media, that stockholders are some sort of exotic, wealthy billionaires that own all of these companies. The teachers retirement system of Texas probably owns General Motors stock. I don't know, I haven't looked into it. But back when General Motors was $60 or $70 a share and everybody was proud to be an American, I am sure that pension funds for our teachers around this country invested. So those people would be looking at a 2-cent value or a 3-cent value or a nickel value for stock that they paid $60 or $70 a share for. So don't get into this magic myth that is created by those who would like to socialize this country that we are talking about fat cats. We are not talking about fat cats. We are talking about the ladies down at the Catholic church that got together and decided they would have an investment club. And they all put a little bit of their egg and butter money, as my grandmother used to say, in a little pot and said, now let's sit around and study the stock page in the newspaper and let's buy ourselves some stock. A lot of them made a whole lot of money and lost a whole lot of money during the dot-com boom of the 1990s. But those were not fat cat investors. Those were little old ladies at the Catholic church, okay, or at the Methodist church or at the Baptist church or the bridge club or whatever. They are your neighbors. They are the people who live next door to you. They are the people your children go to school with, their parents; and even the kids' college funds are invested in things like General Motors and Chrysler. So when we nationalize these industries, when we take it out of the hands of the people who own it, which is the stockholders, and we don't give them, defend their rights as stockholders, we make a deal through the pressure of the White House. You know, interesting statement, this is one of the lawyers talking about what happened to the bondholders in the Chrysler deals. He said, ``One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw his opposition to the deal under threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy his reputation if he continued to fight. That was Perella Weinberg,'' Tom Lauria, the head of the bankruptcy department for the top New York City law firm of White & Case, told a WJR 760 radio host. He goes on to say down here, ``Some of the critics charged that the administration used leverage to provide TARP funds to force banks to comply with this deal. In other words, investors like JPMorgan Chase, who also were bondholders in this Chrysler deal--the old TARP fund deal that we've been talking about now for months--was all of a sudden the twist to make them get in line. And what happened was this group that Mr. Perella Weinberg was involved in, they didn't take any TARP funds, so they didn't have the twist. And they stood up. And what did they do? They threatened them with the White House press corps. I'm sorry, when I was a kid, this doesn't sound like the America that we grew up with. This sounds like the people we used to fight. This sounds like Joe Stalin and some of those people that threatened their way to power. I am telling you, we ought to be worried about this. And I am deeply worried--although I am happy to see that this New York law firm is involved. I would hope that good litigants--because I believe in the justice system--would use the justice system to protect the rights of these creditors. I would hope they would do that. I would hope that we would realize that neither this Congress nor the Constitution of the United States has given the White House or the President of the United States the kind of power and authority that he is executing and utilizing on these two car companies. And then we find out that we've got some folks that--they have already said that they would take common stock in the banks, so they want to be stockholders when it comes to the banks. They want to vote that stock and control those banks. They want to take majority interest in our large banks. That is another nationalization of an industry. And so some of the banks said, you know what? We see the handwriting on the wall. We see that freight train coming down the track right at us. Here's your money back. We don't want your TARP money, take it back. And they are refusing to take the money back and threatening to charge massive penalties if the banks return the money that the American taxpayers provided to bail out banks in this TARP program. If they don't need the money and they want to give it back, what in the world is wrong with that? Except you no longer control the bank when they give the money back. You no longer can control the deals that are made with Chrysler by twisting the arms of the banks. You no longer can control American industry. And that is the kind of thing that these trillions of dollars that we're spending, we, as Americans, should be deathly afraid of, that there are people who would control our Nation with the money that we give them out of our pocket and we permit them to borrow in our name that we are going to have to pay back. I remember what I told my children as soon as they could understand English: the United States Government, nor any other government, never made a dime; they took it from you.

Mr. CARTER. I think most people know I spent a little time in the courts of this country. I am going to start off this conversation by saying that I'm not a bankruptcy judge, nor a bankruptcy litigant. And, in fact, I do not claim any expertise whatsoever in the area of bankruptcy. But I have some serious concerns that bother me about some things that are going on, and I would hope at least that the American people have these same concerns, because I really believe that the third branch of our government, the Judiciary, is there for recourse for all citizens, big and small. I think they are the fallback position, where politics should not interfere, but due process should prevail. I believe that the protection of the minority interests of whatever we may be doing, it is best protected in the courts of our country. I look at what is going on tonight and have been trying to figure out--and, I'm going to tell you, you're going to hear me ask a lot of questions tonight that I would like someone to give answers to, because I don't understand where things are going. But I'm looking at what is going on with the automobile industry in this country. You know, the big three automakers in this country have been symbols of corporate greatness for my entire lifetime. We all can have a debate about who made the best car, what is the best car ever made, but most Americans would argue for some form of a GM car or Ford or a Chrysler as the best car they ever drove. Our grandfathers and our fathers have owned these vehicles and they have worked with these companies, and they have been respected and honored across this Nation. Now, these companies are in trouble. At least two of them seem to be in a lot of trouble--Chrysler and General Motors. At least it has been indicated through the media that Chrysler is going to be seeking recourse in the bankruptcy courts. The reason I say it has been indicated is because, in the normal course of things, what you normally see is that the board of directors, through its chief executive officer, will have a vote or will discuss the economic situation of the company and will come up with the fact that it's just not going to be viable. That at least they need the reorganization and the cancellation of some of their debts to be able to maintain order within the company and be a viable company. But, in the case of Chrysler, the announcement was made by President Barack Obama to the media in a speech that he made announcing Chrysler would go into bankruptcy--at least it's my personal opinion that I don't believe at that time Mr. Obama held any position in the corporate structure of Chrysler to speak on their behalf, other than he is the President of the United States and he may have more knowledge than some of the rest of us, but it would be normal for Chrysler to make that announcement. But then it would be normal for the board of directors of Chrysler to fire the executives of their company if they are not doing a good job, and it would be normal for the board of directors of General Motors to do the hiring and firing of executives that they have hired to manage their company. March 29 of this year, President Obama forced the CEO of General Motors, Rick Wagoner, to resign from his post. As far as anyone can tell, this marks the first time in American history that a United States President has directly intervened in the daily running of an American business. So we start with that announcement. The CEO, Mr. Wagoner, is fired by the President. Then, the President announces--not the CEO of Chrysler, but the President--announces the bankruptcy of Chrysler. This bankruptcy, under normal circumstances, would go before a bankruptcy judge. And we have a set of laws that are established in this country--they are called creditors' rights. And we have creditors that stand in different positions when it comes to being repaid on debts, depending on whether they are secured or unsecured creditors, and we have a battery of laws that make that determination, and the bankruptcy court, doing a way more complicated analysis than I just did, comes up with who gets paid what and when and where and how and what happens; what assets are sold, all or part, and these are laws that are on the books that pretty well anybody can go see, and they are from time-to-time changed by the legislative body. But we understand now from what the newspapers tell us that the Obama administration has announced the deal they expect to be rubber-stamped by the bankruptcy court. That deal is, according to the papers, a 55 percent ownership of Chrysler will be owned by the UAW, United Auto Workers. So the laborers of that company will be owning 55 percent of Chrysler. Then, 35 percent of Chrysler will be owned by Fiat, a foreign company out of Italy, and other places, I am sure. Then, 8 percent of Chrysler will be owned by the United States Government, and 2 percent of Chrysler will be owned by the Canadian Government. I suppose, if we look at who is normally involved in corporate structure, you would have stockholders and preferred stockholders that are probably in there someplace; and, it looks like, to me, that they are divested of any interest in this trade. Now, let me say that this should be something that the court makes a decision based upon creditors law, but it seems to be this is being shoved into the hands of the court, with an announcement by the White House saying: This is a settlement these people have agreed to, and you will do it this way. I wonder, who is looking out for the stockholder? I don't own any Chrysler stock, but if I owned a share of Chrysler stock I would think that at one point in time I owned a portion of the Chrysler Corporation, that I was one of the owners of the business. Because we can cut through all the mystique of a corporate structure, the mystique that many call the bad guys, the big corporations. But big corporations are nothing more than a gathering of people who are called shareholders who invest their hard-earned money into a company, expecting that company to make profits and, in turn, return that value to them by an increase in stock price and possibly a dividend. It is Americans and others investing in America. That is what a corporation is all about. Now, whether it is a small corporation that is in Round Rock, Texas, where I come from, that maybe has 20 shareholders, or whether it is a giant corporation like the Chrysler Corporation that probably has, who knows, a million shareholders, those people have invested their money and they have some interest in that business, and through their representatives that they elect to the board, they supposedly have a voice in what is going on. Yet, if this deal is the deal we are talking about, I don't see where these shareholders, whether they be preferred or whether they be ordinary stock shareholders, I don't see where they are accommodated at all. You can hear some criticize and say that the Federal Government is taking over the automobile industry. Of course, I am sure that they would argue: Well, certainly not in the case of Chrysler, because we are not going to own but 8 percent of Chrysler. But their agent, the group that donates 99 percent, by the last report, of their political donations to the Democratic Party, the UAW, owns a controlling interest, 55 percent. There seems to be an assumption that when this is announced by the White House that this is the deal, even though it seems that some of these preferred creditors have actually stood up a little bit and said, wait a minute, we didn't make this deal. But it seems that these people are then, by the White House, called not cooperative or other things. In fact, it was reported in the newspapers that they twisted the arms of these preferred creditors to a point where they felt like they were being threatened and not being able to look out for the interest of their people. And, of course, the finger was pointed to them as the big rich preferred creditors, the big rich bondholders, when, in reality, these companies were stepping up and saying: We are not going to be threatened by the administration. We are going to stand firm. Because it is not just the couple of great big rich folks. They have got lots of people, including other people's pension funds, that are invested in their hedge funds and their groups that own this interest. According to Thomas Lauria, Global Practice Head of the Financial Restructuring & Insolvency Group at White & Case, said that Perella Weinberg Partners was directly threatened by the White House and, in essence, compelled to withdraw its opposition to the Obama Chrysler restructuring deal under the threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight. That statement should concern us all. The White House press corps is supposed to be a press corps that is gathering news and making inquiries, not becoming an arm of the White House or the White House's restructuring force that they are putting together to restructure this deal for Chrysler. It should concern every American that the White House is threatening the use of those people who sit in those press conferences supposedly asking the tough questions of the President, they are threatening that they can use them to harm these individual bondholders, these bondholder companies. I think there is something tragically wrong with that. One of the questions I ask is where are our courts in this situation. I mean, the stockholders are being left with their interests basically dissolved in the Chrysler Corporation. The bondholders are being threatened by the press corps of the White House to the detriment of their shareholders to take possibly 25 cents or less on the dollar as part of the deal, when there are creditors' rights laws that should be looked to by the bankruptcy court. And if you are not getting good recourse from the bankruptcy courts, there are other courts you can go to. I am very disappointed that there seems to be some weakness that the courts are not standing up for what could be, and in my estimation would be, a large body of people whose defined rights are being forced away from them by the heavy hand of the White House. And the White House heavy hand is a dangerous place to be. I will remind you that President Harry Truman seized the Nation's steel mills during the Korean war in order to avoid a shutdown during a strike. He could have sought an injunction barring the strike under the Taft-Hartley law, but instead he chose to seize based on his powers as Commander in Chief. He specifically notified Congress of the right to reverse or endorse his action, but Congress chose not to act. The Supreme Court overturned Truman's Executive order. The legal questions were: Has the Congress granted the President the power to take possession of the property? The answer was ``no.'' Does the Constitution grant the President the power to take possession of the property? The answer was ``no.'' Is Truman's Executive order in compliance with the Constitution? And the answer was ``no.'' The opinion written by Justice Black said: All powers of the Presidency are contained in the Constitution or in subsequent acts of Congress granting specific powers to the Executive. The contention that the aggregate power of the Constitution and acts of Congress create new, more far-reaching powers was rejected by the Court. Under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, Congress has addressed the precise issue of labor strikes and national security, and has chosen not to grant the President the right to break a strike. Likewise, nowhere in the Constitution is the Executive granted the right to seize power. An evaluation says Youngstown was instrumental in reaffirming that the President cannot legislate, only execute legislation passed by the Congress. Black wrote: The Constitution limits his function in the lawmaking process to recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad. The ruling limits the nature of the Executive order to carrying out the limitation of laws already established by Congress. Now, I guess the question that we would have in what is going on in the Chrysler case, and to some extent the General Motors case, which we will get to in a little while: Has Congress granted the President the power to take control of the negotiations of a private corporation and attempt to make a settlement to go before the bankruptcy court? I would certainly argue that the Congress has not given the President that power, nor do I think that the Constitution grants President Obama the power to take control of the negotiations to be submitted to a bankruptcy court and to threaten those who choose not to enter into these negotiations with abuse by the White House press corps that would harm their business. I don't think the Constitution in any way, form, or fashion grants that power to the President of the United States. And I think what is going on with the White House and its heavy-handed manipulation of the duties and responsibilities of the bankruptcy court is nowhere granted by Congress or by the Constitution of the United States. I think Americans ought to be looking at this, and Americans ought to be concerned about this. These are private businesses owned by private people who borrowed money from other groups of people who either are shareholders or lenders in some form or fashion whose rights are defined by law. And for the President of the United States and the White House to intervene to force a settlement to be submitted to the court and then ask the court to basically rubber-stamp that settlement without looking to the protection of these other rights of the other individuals that are involved, to me, these raise questions that we need to be asking; because if the government can do this to the Chrysler Corporation and the millions of stockholders that own Chrysler Corporation, who else could they do it to that stood in the way of their negotiations? And where does the Constitution or the Congress authorize the President of the United States to heavy-handedly negotiate in this private situation? And where does it authorize the turning over of 55 percent of the business to the laborers who work there in the form of the ownership by their union? And why isn't it quid pro quo, when you look at what that union had done? In 2008, according to reporting that has been done, according to Open Secrets, the UAW gave 99 percent of its political contributions to the Democrats in the 2008 cycle. If you give 99 percent, then you own 55 percent of the company. Is that the way it is supposed to work? Shouldn't some court somewhere ask that question? Shouldn't some courageous litigant somewhere stand up for the rights of the stockholder, stand up for the rights of the bondholders, speak out for those preferred creditors? Shouldn't someone be going to court and speaking out on these people's behalf? I have real concerns because I start from the premise that I believe that that third branch of government that I served in for 20 years is there for the protection of all Americans. That is what our court system is about. And if we are going to politicize--and as we look now to an appointment of a new Supreme Court Justice--if we are going to so politicize our court system as to take away the ability for the weaker party to have a voice through politics, then there is something wrong. We, as Americans, need to be asking that question, and I would challenge my colleagues to start thinking about this: At what point in time does the President have to follow the Constitution, or at least does the Congress have to grant him powers before he can do these things? That is just Chrysler. Now, the GM deal, President Obama hasn't announced yet that they are going to the bankruptcy court. But they are trying to work out a settlement. Oh, going back to the Chrysler deal, doesn't it bother anyone that the deal we are making is taking control away from the American stockholders and from the board of directors of Chrysler and giving ownership to the labor union? I don't see any indication that the labor union is making the assumption of any of these debts or contributing any money to this project. They are just being rewarded for being a labor union. Now where is the logic in that? And then what are they going to do? Thirty-five percent of that is going to be Fiat. I have nothing against Fiat. I actually owned one at one time. So let me lay my cards on the table. It was a neat little yellow convertible, and my wife told me I couldn't keep it, but I owned one for a while, and it was fun and a good car. But now we are basically turning Chrysler over to a foreign company. I don't have anything against foreign companies. We are in an international world. But let's get a reality check here. The President of the United States is putting together a deal to turn Chrysler over to a foreign company in a foreign country. And you can bet your boots that one of these days the word ``Chrysler'' won't be in our vocabulary anymore. I hope and I wish Fiat all the best, but realize that it will be the ``Fiat Company of North America,'' or at least logic would seem to make one think so. All of this is to make sure that we meet a pledge that the President of the United States made to the UAW that he would protect their benefits and pensions. The government didn't protect the benefits and pensions of the Delta pilots when Delta went bankrupt. So why, all of a sudden, is the government going into ownership of this company and taking direct direction of this company to make sure that it benefits this labor union rather than another labor union? It is a question that we ought to be asking. It is a question some court ought to be looking into. This concerns me. Before I go any further, I do want to go ahead and lay the supposed GM deal that the White House is telling us looks like this is what they are recommending, and I read this one on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. Fifty percent of General Motors will be owned by the United States Government; 39 percent of General Motors will be owned, again, by the UAW; 10 percent of the company would be owned by the bondholders, so at least the bondholders of General Motors are going to end up with 10 percent ownership. And the stockholders are going to do all right, too. They are going to go from at least more than 1 percent, they are going to go from some percentage of GM down to 1 percent. So if you're the proud owner of GM stock, then all of the stock that is out there is going to be worth 1 percent of General Motors. One of our Members was telling me that he owned, I forgot what he said, 1,000 shares of General Motors or something like that. The diluted price is estimated to be somewhere between two cents and a nickel a share for General Motors stock--General Motors, that great icon of American industrial might. Many pension funds, teachers' retirement funds and other people invested in them because they were like the American flag. They were American industry at its best. And now all those people and all those funds that invested in stock are going to own 1 percent of a company where they used to own most of the company. They are going to take the burden, the great burden, of the mistakes made by General Motors and, I would argue, that overwhelming pressure put on by the United Auto Workers to maintain, at all costs, their right of contract. There are written and unwritten contracts, but the contract is sacred in America, and the unions certainly stand up for the rights under their contract. But under creditors' rights, there are rights, too, that are created by law. And a person who does something and buys stock or invests in a bond, those people have the right to rely upon the law to protect them, just like a contract. But it seems that every day as we go forward in the Obama administration, the sanctity of contracts seems to be of less and less importance, and, truthfully, that will be terrible for this Nation. I am very pleased and blessed to have my friend, a good friend from Iowa, Steve King, to be here with me tonight. I will yield to him such time as he may wish to consume.

Mr. CARTER. Something that we have fought against a lot of time. I think we are about to wrap this up. I want to thank my friend for coming in here tonight. I want to thank the Speaker for her patience. We are raising questions that we think everybody and Members of this House should be asking each other and should be asking on the floor of this House and in committee and around this town. We didn't sign on to get on the slippery slope to socialism, and it is time for us all to stand up and say so.