David Dreier

Mr. DREIER

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, at this time, let me just inquire of the Chair how much time is remaining.

Mr. DREIER

Mr. DREIER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, at this time I am very happy to yield 4 minutes, which I hope he will fill, to the gentleman from Indianapolis, my good friend, Mr. Burton.

Mr. DREIER. Well, you concluded that, but I never actually said that.

Mr. DREIER. Would the gentleman yield for just a moment? I never advocated bankruptcy.

Mr. DREIER. Will the gentleman be willing to yield? I will be happy to yield an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. DREIER. I thank my friend for yielding. Mr. Speaker, let me just say that I believe this notion that you inferred I said do nothing is in fact discriminating against the domestic auto industry. It seems that people did, I am happy to say, listen to my statement. I advocate taking action that would provide a tax credit to get people to the showroom so they can in fact purchase automobiles.

Mr. DREIER. I thank my friend for yielding. I thank him for his very thoughtful statement. I would say that the distinguished Chair of the Committee on Rules just described that amendment as a Democratic amendment. She described it as the Sutton-LaTourette amendment, and so I suspect that----

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, let me begin by expressing my appreciation to my good friend from Rochester, the very distinguished and able Chair of the Committee on Rules, Ms. Slaughter, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and with that I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am in strong opposition to this rule and the underlying legislation. We have a very, very serious economic crisis in this country, as we all know. The crisis is demanding decisive action on the part of this Congress. The American people are expecting us to take action to try to mitigate the suffering that is there today. But we also have to be very smart about what it is that we do. Hundreds of thousands of workers have already lost their jobs or on the brink of losing their jobs. Hundreds of thousands of families have already lost their homes or are on the brink of losing their homes. We have a profound responsibility to make prudent decisions that will help to spur new economic growth, create new good jobs for American workers, and to strengthen the vitality of our economy. We need to restore that strengthened vitality that has been there and we know is going to come back, and it will come back quickly if we do the right thing. But rushing into an ill-conceived bailout of an industry that has not yet proven it has a viable plan to remain solvent and competitive with the help of the taxpayer dollars of hardworking Americans who are suffering today won't save a single job. It won't save a single job. And you can look across the spectrum of Democrats and Republicans alike who have made it very clear that they don't believe that there is a viable plan that has been put forward. I have to say, Mr. Speaker, that the proposed bailout that is before us has led many Americans to rightly question where will this end? How many bailouts are there going to be? We know that the American people are today suffering from what can only be described as bailout fatigue. How many billions of our taxpayer dollars will be spent? What guarantees do we have that the money will be spent wisely? Congress first took action to reverse the economic downturn in October. We considered a bill that was intended to thaw the frozen credit markets and to allow the wheels of our economy to begin turning again. I was deeply skeptical of that bill, Mr. Speaker, but I did support it reluctantly when key provisions that we fought for were added, provisions that banned golden parachutes and ensured scrutiny and accountability for the program. The reason for taking this action, as we all know, is very simple. Our economy cannot function if the credit markets don't function. This was not a matter of picking winners and losers. This was not a matter of caring more about workers in the financial services industry than workers in other industries. The fact of the matter was that our credit markets had frozen up, and this was paralyzing our economy across the board. Failing to deal with the financial industry would have left our entire economy crippled, including the very auto companies that are now asking for a bailout. A failed credit system means no one can get a car loan. The financial rescue that we did in October was, in fact, an auto industry rescue. What has been the impact of that bill? Mr. Speaker, we simply do not know yet. A $13 trillion economy doesn't exactly turn on a dime. And, as we all know, half of the money has been utilized so far. We also know, based on very important questions raised by the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, who is here, Mr. Frank, and Mr. Bachus and others, transparency in this whole process has been lacking. I am joined with several of my colleagues in the Republican leadership in demanding that the Treasury Department provide clear answers on how taxpayer dollars have been spent. We are fighting to ensure that there is accountability every step of the way. This will be an ongoing process well into next year, and we may not know the full impact of this bill for many months to come. It's quite possible that further responsible action to provide assistance will be necessary, but the bill before us today asks us to rush into a bailout for a single industry with billions more in taxpayer dollars on the line. It asks us to start picking and choosing winners in this very difficult economic time. Mr. Speaker, we all have car dealerships in our districts. We all have thousands of constituents whose jobs are directly or indirectly tied to the auto industry. We know the figure of one in 10 jobs is tied to the auto industry. But before we rush into a costly bailout, we have to consider a few things. First, we have to consider whether U.S. auto companies are prepared to transform themselves into an innovative and competitive industry. They made an attempt to answer this question in congressional testimony just last week, but they have a very long way to go. A nearly century-old industry doesn't transform itself overnight. We need a far more convincing plan from them on how they will do so in a matter of months. Second, we need to consider our economy at large. Playing favorites with one industry over another is a dangerous game that won't necessarily put us back on sound economic footing. None of us wants to see autoworkers losing their jobs, but neither do we want to see workers in other industries lose their jobs. Our first and only economic priority should be pursuing a pro-growth strategy that provides new opportunity throughout our entire economy. Finally, we have to consider the diverse and complicated landscape of the auto industry. The question of what is an American car used to be a very simple one. That's no longer the case. Mr. Speaker, which is more American? The Ford built in Mexico or the BMW built in South Carolina? What about the Chevy built with Japanese parts and assembled in Canada? How do we pick and choose winners in a diverse industry that involves foreign investment, American workers and a global supply chain? Is the Toyota plant worker in Kentucky less valuable to the U.S. economy than the Ford worker in Detroit? What about the auto parts supplier in Illinois that ships to Mitsubishi, Honda or Mazda, all of which create jobs right here in the United States of America? This is a very complicated matter, and we must very carefully consider the consequences of our picking and choosing the winners and the losers. We certainly can't resolve the issue effectively by simply throwing money at our problems. Instead, we should be considering better alternatives, like creating tax incentives for car purchases, by enabling Americans to give the auto industry a boost so we can relieve the tax burden on families and help all workers in the industry. Unfortunately, this rule, like so many of the rules that we have seen come forward in this Congress, completely shuts out the kind of real debate that we need. It's their way or the highway. Unfortunately, their way offers nothing but wasted billions and false promises. The American people want to know that we are working to restore our economy, but they demand that we act wisely, spend their tax dollars prudently and ensure accountability for every penny. This bill fails on all three of those counts. I urge my colleagues to reject this rule and the underlying legislation. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DREIER. Excuse me?

Mr. DREIER. Okay. I don't know how much of my 30 seconds has expired, Mr. Speaker, but let me just say in response that we all recognize the gravity of this situation. We know how very important it is for us to deal with this, and I believe we would in fact be taking governmental action if we were to incentivize our fellow Americans to get into showrooms today so they would have the kind of incentive that is necessary to purchase automobiles. So we are advocating taking action. With that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield 2 minutes to my very good friend from Harrison Township, Michigan (Mrs. Miller).

Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, for his first floor speech since being elected our new Republican whip, I am happy to yield 2 minutes to my very good friend from Richmond, Mr. Cantor.

Mr. DREIER

Mr. DREIER. Thank you very much.

Mr. DREIER. Madam Speaker, at this time I am happy to yield 1 minute to our very good friend from Grandfather Community, North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).

Mr. DREIER. Madam Speaker, I am happy to yield my friend an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. DREIER. I anxiously look forward to those words of wisdom, and, pending that, I am going to yield myself the balance of the time.

Mr. DREIER. Madam Speaker, I would like to inquire of the distinguished Chair of the Committee on Rules if she might consider yielding, she has 29 minutes remaining, maybe 5 or 10 minutes of her time to us. We have a number of speakers on our side.

Mr. DREIER. Madam Speaker, may I inquire of my very good friend from Rochester one more time if she might consider yielding maybe an additional 5 minutes.

Mr. DREIER. Maybe 10 minutes of time. We have a number of speakers who have come, and you know how it goes on the management of debate here.

Mr. DREIER. I understand you want to move this forward as expeditiously as possible. We have a lot of Members who are hoping very much to have the chance to speak on this. We can see Members coming in. I just, as a courtesy, would like to inquire of the Chair if she would yield us maybe 10 minutes of her time. If she had speakers, I would completely understand why that wouldn't be the case, but I just don't see any speakers on the other side, and if that would be possible, I would very much appreciate it.

Mr. DREIER. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. DREIER. Madam Speaker, we are dealing with what is arguably one of the most difficult and challenging economic times in modern American history. We have seen the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs over the past several months. President-elect Obama has predicted that we are going to see more difficult days ahead than we have already faced, and the American people want us to act and they want us to do the right thing. We all know that the automobile industry is a very, very important sector of the U.S. economy. It is one of the most important. We know that the housing industry is a very important sector of the U.S. economy. Just today, I have introduced legislation which is designed to encourage people to purchase homes by developing an incentive for them to have equity in those homes, because we have a huge backlog of homes that need to be sold all across this country. The measure calls for a tax credit, in fact a refundable credit, for people who make a 10 to 15 percent down payment on their home. Now, why is that the case that we are offering this legislation? It is the fact that, unfortunately, because of bad government policy, and I underscore that again, bad government policy, we have encouraged people through subprime mortgages, the CRA, through abuse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as we saw in yesterday's hearing, we have encouraged people who could not afford it to get into homes way, way beyond their means, by putting nothing down, and at the same time paying subprime interest rates which were clearly going to be going up at a day in the future. So bad government policy created that, in large part because people didn't have equity in their homes. That is why, to deal with this very important housing challenge, I have today introduced this legislation that provides a credit for people who will put a down payment and have a vested interest in their home and keep that home for at least 3 years. I'm talking about that, Madam Speaker, because we need to use creative measures to deal with the challenges that we face today. I also believe that, as we look at this challenge of the automobile industry, we need to do the exact same thing. This morning I met with a man named John Symes, who, in the next couple of weeks, will see his automobile dealership mark its 60th anniversary. They're located in Pasadena, California. Mr. Symes and I talked about the need for us to, again, look at creative ways in which we can encourage, through tax incentives, possibly a credit similar to the one that I just introduced today in the housing industry to deal with the backlog of automobiles that need to be purchased; so, rather than focusing on bailing out the industry, the idea of incentivizing our fellow Americans to get into the showrooms to have an opportunity to have some kind of credit, whether it's, once again, providing an interest deduction on the deduction for the interest on auto loans or the sales tax deduction, those kind of incentives, or some kind of credit. We're in the process of fashioning legislation that I will be introducing soon to deal with that. I know that there are other measures that have been proposed. We need, Madam Speaker, to have a creative way to empower our fellow Americans, rather than all of a sudden taxing our fellow Americans and going through and expanding what is already existing today, and that is what I will describe as ``bailout fatigue'' among our fellow Americans. And it's very, very understandable. And the notion of having the Federal Government continue to expand more and more and more is just plain wrong. I believe that we dealt with this issue, in part, with the measure that we passed in October. It was designed to thaw the frozen credit markets. And so a big part of that was for us to do everything that we could to unleash that. And I believe that if we had not passed that measure that we would be in more dire straits than we face today. So we've already taken a step in trying to ensure that people can get into those showrooms. I do believe that more needs to be done, but I don't believe this is it. And as I said in my remarks earlier, Madam Speaker, I also think that the indication that we had on April 10 of this year that we were going to have an opportunity, in a lame duck session, which is where we are today, to pry open the very, very important market of our strongest, closest ally on the South American continent, that being Colombia, 40 million consumers there, so that we can sell Caterpillar tractors manufactured by U.S. workers, hardworking Americans, in the State of Illinois and in other States, or Whirlpool refrigerators and washing machines and dryers that could be sold into Colombia creating jobs in Ohio; and we regularly hear our colleagues from Ohio and other parts of the country talk about the fact that so many of our fellow Americans have lost jobs. This agreement would do just that. Colombian goods can be sold tariff-free in the United States today, Madam Speaker, coffee, cut flowers, other things that come in from Colombia tariff-free, so they've already got access to the American consumer. All we're saying is that when last spring we, for the first time ever, subverted the 1974 Trade Act, we have a chance to rectify that today. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this martial-law rule and, when we get to it ultimately, since I suspect it will pass, I urge a ``no'' vote on the next rule and the underlying legislation. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DREIER. Madam Speaker, at this juncture, I would like to yield 2 minutes to our colleague from Gold River, California (Mr. Lungren).

Mr. DREIER. Madam Speaker, at this time I am very happy to yield 3 minutes to our hardworking former Rules Committee colleague, the gentleman from Marietta, Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).

Mr. DREIER. Madam Speaker, may I inquire of the Chair how much time is remaining on each side.