Ed Perlmutter

Mr. PERLMUTTER

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, for purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions). General Leave

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 962 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time both sides have remaining?

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I would just remind my friend from Minnesota that he has an amendment that was made in order, and he and I cosponsored an amendment in the Financial Services Committee, an amendment which has become part of the manager's amendment. I would also remind him that we create in this a fund assessed against the banking institutions to deal with their liquidation. There is no bailout. As much as my friends on the other side of the aisle would like to be on message and continue to repeat that, there is no bailout. I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Driehaus).

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I yield the gentleman another 30 seconds.

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman).

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I would ask my friend from Texas how many more speakers he might have, because we have no other speakers, and I will close.

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I would just say to my friend from the Financial Services Committee two things as to his amendments. It was in January of 2009, the last month that George Bush was in office, that we had the highest job loss throughout this whole period. Since that time, it has been shrinking. So under the Bush administration, tremendous job loss in 2008, up to 4 million jobs. And those job losses have been shrinking ever since. I would also say to my friend from the Financial Services Committee, we had this debate in the committee on the language issue. As he knows, my grandparents are from Ukraine. My grandfather came over here, was a successful businessman, but even over a 40- or 50-year period, he had difficulty with the written language. And where we have seen so much fraud and so much con artistry is with people who have difficulty with the language being taken advantage of. And part of this bill, the consumer protection bill, is so that we avoid that kind of fraud and scheming because of people who can't speak the language. With that, I would yield 1\1/2\ minutes to my friend from Illinois (Mr. Quigley).

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Maine (Ms. Pingree).

Mr. PERLMUTTER

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members be given 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on House Resolution 956.

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, for purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier). General Leave

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 956 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I yield myself so much time as I may consume. I just want to respond to my two colleagues from the Financial Services Committee. After all the hearings we had, after all the witnesses that we heard from, it's almost as if they forgot everything they heard. The Wild West mentality that permeated Wall Street permeated the investment community and the banking system and brought this country to its knees last fall. And as a consequence, trillions of dollars of wealth were lost, and millions of jobs have been lost, and it was based on a belief within the Bush administration and the Republican Congress that participated with it that you don't need regulation, these markets will take care of themselves. Well, what they ended up doing is, we had three of the biggest Ponzi schemes ever, Madoff, Petters and Stanford, under that regime, under that administration. And that's just wrong. Our bill has nine sections to it, Mr. Speaker. The first is on consumer protection. The second is on investor protection. The third is on hedge funds. The fourth is on credit rating agencies, the fifth on derivatives, the sixth on life insurance companies, and the seventh on dealing with banks that are so big or financial institutions that have so many components to them that they are a threat to the system. And we force those institutions to either raise all their reserves and their capital or sell different parts of their company if they are a threat to the system, and if they finally fail, we put them out of their misery. We don't let them linger like the Republicans would have us do, and bail them out some more. We are done with those bailouts. The last sections of the bill, one is ``say on pay.'' Executive salary got completely out of control and was part of the gambling that was going on. And so now we allow the shareholders to have some opportunity to say what their executives should be paid. And the final piece deals with subprime mortgages where people were allowed to just get into mortgages that had teaser rates and were impossible to repay. And we now require that financial institutions have skin in the game. These are nine sections of reasonable regulation to restore confidence in the system and stop the kind of failures that we saw in this last administration that cost this country trillions of dollars, trillions of dollars and millions of jobs. And we're not going to let that happen again. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I have one.

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I yield the gentlewoman an additional 15 seconds.

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, my friend from California wanted to compare the 170-page proposal that they have versus the 1,300 pages of the bill that we have. I would just say to him, in his proposal, he doesn't deal with hedge funds, he doesn't deal with credit rating agencies, he doesn't deal with derivatives, he doesn't deal with excessive compensation to executives, he doesn't deal with life insurance. He doesn't deal with a whole range of things. He just deals with one thing: Let's put them in bankruptcy. Let's do a chapter 11. Let's let these things go on forever in a chapter 11. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we can't afford this anymore. The status quo, which is more or less what the Republicans are proposing--they should call their bill ``Let's Protect Wall Street'' because that's all it does. It doesn't change anything. When we lose trillions of dollars and people's livelihoods, and retirement funds, and pension plans, and jobs are lost, and they come in here and say, Oh, theirs is 1,300 pages, that's got to be bad because ours is 170 pages, when people's lives have changed, the debate on this floor and the debate about American futures is more than that. This is about restoring confidence in a financial system that was allowed to be the Wild West under George Bush and under the Republicans. This is no longer going to be the case. We are going to have reasonable regulation that people can rely on; certainty will be restored and confidence in the system regained. There are nine sections: Consumer protection; investor protection; dealing with derivatives; dealing with credit rating agencies; dealing with executive compensation; dealing with hedge funds; and specifically, and most importantly, dealing with those financial institutions that have become so risky that they are going to cause a collapse of our entire banking system, which we cannot allow. So we require those institutions to post themselves $150 billion so they can be liquidated without any cost to the taxpayer. Their proposal is nothing but bailouts. Their proposal is nothing but protecting Wall Street. We've got to change that. This bill changes the future of our financial system in a way that we haven't seen since the New Deal. We need to restore confidence. That's what we do. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question and on the rule. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution. The previous question was ordered.

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I would yield 5 minutes to the chairman of the committee, Mr. Frank.

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I yield the gentleman 1 more minute.

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I just want to respond to my friend from Indiana, who continues to call this a bailout. All it does is put big institutions that fail out of their misery, just like we liquidate banks who have failed. Big financial institutions on Wall Street, whether they are insurance companies or credit companies or banks or stockbrokers, are placed into liquidation and finished. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I would like to ask again how much time each side has.

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, I say to my good friend from West Virginia she continues to use the word ``bailout,'' but as it's clear in the bill, this is not any taxpayer-funded money. The continued use by my Republican colleagues of the word ``bailout'' is simply wrong and misleading because what is stated in the bill is the creation of a fund based on assessments paid by the biggest financial institutions in the world, $50 billion and bigger in terms of assets, so that those institutions, if they fail, will have a liquidation fund to put themselves out of their misery. That's what this is all about, to just be finished with it. Now, one thing I would like to say about my Republican colleagues. They've forgotten. They've talked about two sections of the bill: consumer protection, which is absolutely essential in this bill, as well as dealing with huge financial institutions that are risky to our financial system and could create a domino effect like we had last fall. The seven other sections of the bill--hedge funds, credit rating agencies, derivatives, life insurance, executive pay, and subprime-- those were bipartisan sections of the bill. So this bill covers a lot of topics to rein in our financial system and restore it and strengthen it as we go forward. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.