Marcy Kaptur

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. There has not been a vote here in the Congress of the United States.

Ms. KAPTUR. The chairman of the Committee on Appropriations I spoke with the other day. There has been no bill referred to his committee. There is not a bill that has been brought up here to the Congress.

Ms. KAPTUR. The Speaker of the House has not had a chance to vote on this matter.

Ms. KAPTUR. On this bailout issue, we have not had a chance to vote on it.

Ms. KAPTUR. If I might yield time to the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders].

Ms. KAPTUR. If I might reclaim my time just for a second, does it not interest you that over the last year the Federal Reserve of our country raised interest rates six times, and during that period of time, of course, it became more lucrative for funds to be drawn into the United States and away from Mexico? This was all going on at the same time. We were asking ourselves why are interest rates going up in the United States when there is no inflation.

Ms. KAPTUR. That is correct. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown].

Mr. KAPTUR

Mr. KAPTUR. I am glad the gentleman put that on the Record. We asked over 12 questions, over a dozen questions; the first one: Who are the creditors that Mexico was paying off, seeing as how they were going to be borrowing the money from us to do it. We wanted to know specifically. We did not want to know some sort of general answer. We have received no reply from the Department of Treasury to our questions.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. There were 13.

Ms. KAPTUR. I figure, if the capital of Mexico can draw on the taxpayers of the United States, why should not the Capital of the United States be able to draw on the taxpayers of the United States? I agree with the gentleman, and, knowing that those pesobonos are paying anywhere between 20 and 40 percent interest rates, the Mayor of Washington would certainly be well advised to get in on that because he could probably get the money he needs in a flash.

Ms. KAPTUR. That is really what the vote tomorrow is about. We know that the constitutional authority of the House as the place within the Congress; that is, the first to authorize and appropriate dollars through the U.S. Treasury, was essentially shut off. Our Members were muzzled. We were not privy to information that should be ours in relation to the dollars of our taxpayers being put at risk either inside the United States or outside the United States, and we thought we were going to have full debate and disclosure on this matter when a decision was made without the involvement of the legislative branch of the United States of America. We now have to resort to special parliamentary tactics in order to bring this measure to a vote on the floor, and the gentleman is correct, that there are so many questions we want answers to that we are being asked, which are impossible for us to obtain, and we think that that is not what the Constitution intended, that in fact this is not a monarchy, this is not a parliamentary government. We are not an arm of the executive branch. We have our own status within the Constitution, and our constituents have an absolute right to know when their tax dollars are at risk, as they are, in this agreement, what the terms of that agreement are, what the terms of repayment are, what the nature of the collateral is. We need to know how fast money is being drawn down. Otherwise you cannot make a judgment as to what might happen in the future. What type of precedent does this set? It is our understanding that never has the authority of this particular set of institutions within the Government of the United States been used to such a degree, and, therefore, we think there are some very serious constitutional questions to be asked, as well as questions to be asked about the nature of the agreement itself. You know, I say with some humor this evening, ``I hope the Mayor of Washington DC, will take it in the humor that I offer it, but, you know that the District of Columbia here in our Nation's Capital has been having a lot of difficulty with its finances and is about to go bankrupt. It has been on all the pages here in the Nation's Capital and in other parts of the country, and we know that it's going to cost the District of Columbia real money to bail itself out, and it's money that we don't have in this Congress.'' So I had an idea over the weekend that what we ought to do for the Mayor of Washington and the citizens of the Nation's Capital is to get the executive branch involved because they obviously are very creative in figuring out how to make things happen and make it seem as though you are not spending any real money, and they ought to work up a Mexico-type deal for Washington.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, we are holding this special order this evening because our various offices here on Capitol Hill have been inundated with telephone calls and inquiries regarding the Mexican rescue package, and many questions are being asked by constituents and citizens of our country that we can not, in fact, answer. I was asked today how much money has already left our U.S. Treasury as part of the drawdown on the deal that was announced last week by the Secretary of the Treasury and the President. The facts are that we cannot tell you. Therefore tomorrow morning, likely after the morning business, there will be a special resolution brought up here in the House, and it will be a privileged resolution. In that resolution we will be asking for a vote of the House and a ruling of the Speaker so that we can obtain the information that we cannot give you this evening about the terms of the arrangement that was made by our Government with the nation of Mexico. Our resolution requires that the Comptroller General of the United States report back to us within a 7-day period. So, we would try to draw to the Members' attention that this vote will likely occur tomorrow morning after the regular morning business, the 1-minutes and, perhaps, a vote on the Journal, and we will look forward to that moment. It is likely that in the way that the resolution will be brought up there will be very little time for debate. There may actually be an effort by certain interests in this Chamber to table the resolution, and we would ask the Members to vote against tabling the resolution so that, in fact, we will have an opportunity to get the facts that we really want. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio].

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Consult with the cosponsors, the original cosponsors of the resolution?

Ms. KAPTUR. Two legislative days. So that would mean that we would have some opinion from the Speaker by late on Tuesday at the very latest?

Ms. KAPTUR. What would be the maximum amount of time that the Speaker might allow before making that ruling?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, as an original cosponsor of this privileged resolution, I would like to inquire of the Chair at what point we might have that Speaker's ruling? At what point might this matter be scheduled for debate for the Record, please?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I have a further parliamentary inquiry.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, a further parliamentary inquiry: In what form will the Speaker so inform the Members?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Chair.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, in past such rulings, how has the Speaker notified the Members?

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. And Members awaiting their turn to speak should be seated until they are recognized by the Speaker?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, my inquiry has to do with the courtesy extended to Members who are attempting to deliver their 1-minute messages this morning. I notice that Members on the other side are moving around the podium and placing their papers there, distracting from the individual who is speaking. Now this side has not chosen to use those tactics. My inquiry is as to appropriate behavior when another Member of the House is addressing the public.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment the previous speaker, the gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter], who has been so much a part of our efforts to really open up international trade and explain the consequences to people in this country and abroad. I rise tonight with a rather heavy heart because of the action of the Clinton administration. Our Government is not a monarchy. We are a nation of laws and of balance of powers between this legislative branch, which is the first branch that the Constitution mentions, and the action, in my opinion, by the Clinton administration in extending over $47 billion worth of credit from the taxpayers of this country is outside the constitutional boundaries of the executive branch. Now, Wall Street today and their irresponsible money men are cheering, because they essentially have been bailed out along with their 24 billionaire friends in Mexico with this gift package from the taxpayers of the United States of America with no vote by Members of this Congress. Wall Street investors have every reason to be happy. They got their money back from you, the taxpayers, but the American people should know that they are at risk, because this deal is backed up by worthless paper certificates of oil serving as collateral. Now, why do I say this? Does not oil have value? Under normal circumstances, it would. But the Mexican Government has long used its oil over and over, the same oil again, as collateral for debts they already owe. Did you know that Mexico has already pledged its oil in the European bond market, the Euro-bond market, for upwards of $10 billion? The fact is Mexican oil no longer has any value for use as collateral on new debt, because it is pledged to old debt, and Mexico owes anywhere between, on the public debt it owes, between $160 billion and $200 billion. It would be almost better for Mexico to pledge jumping beans rather than to repledge their oil again. In the Record tonight I have taken out of Moody's Manual a list of where Mexico's monopoly-owned, state-owned oil company, Pemex, has already pledged the assets of their oil company. Suffice it to say, all the administration accomplished by conditioning new loans, these $47 billion worth of loans from our taxpayers, on Mexican oil was to put our taxpayers at the end of a very long line of creditors to that oil. Even adding up all the assets and production of Pemex, Mexico does not have enough oil revenue to cover the $47.5 billion worth of new loans. In fact, the Houston Chronicle reports that Mexico will become a net oil importer by the turn of the century, because it is essentially producing half of the oil it produced a decade ago because of problems inside that oil company. Now, add to that what Mexico's own officials have said. The Mexican Secretary of the Treasury said, ``Our oil resources are not going to be used for guarantees.'' Well, if they are not, what is backing up the risk to the taxpayers of this country? And Mexico's Energy Minister was quoted recently, and a direct quote again, ``Our oil will not be mortgaged nor will it form any part of any loan guarantee.'' Now, maybe the United States Ambassador to Mexico cannot read Spanish, but it is all there in the Mexican newspapers to be read by anyone. Basically, my friends, by dodging Congress, our people have been sold a bill of goods that have no value by the administration in collaboration with the Government of Mexico. Now our administration is scrambling to make this back-door deal look as legitimate as possible, but the fact remains the so-called collateral that Mexico is putting up for the $47.5 billion in loans is worthless and, in fact, experts have estimated the entire worth of Pemex at somewhere perhaps, if we are lucky, about $24 billion. So ask yourself when you read the fine print and they say they are going to book sales of oil on the Federal Reserve of New York's books, who is cooking the books? We are not getting barrels of oil. We are getting pledges of collateral that has already been overpledged. And if you really want to get cynical, and I will end with this statement, is it not interesting that this is not the first time this has happened? But in fact it happened right after the Presidential election of 1988, during that period when they were trying to prop up the value of the Mexican peso. It happened in 1982, and now they devalued the peso right after the Mexican election in 1994. Let the record speak for itself.