Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008

Floor Speech

EMERGENCY ECONOMIC STABILIZATION ACT OF 2008 -- (House of Representatives - September 29, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MILLER of Florida. Madam Speaker, almost 2 weeks ago, Secretary Henry Paulson came to this Congress requesting $700 billion of taxpayer money for his friends and former colleagues on Wall Street. The former chairman of the investment bank of Goldman Sachs also asked this Congress to pass a law ensuring that his actions ``are nonreviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.''

The Founders of this great Nation set up an ingenious system of government to ensure that power was not disproportionately given to any one individual. The goal was to avoid tyranny, to avoid tyranny at all costs. But Secretary Paulson most likely skipped class that day and was hoping that we had as well. Many wonder how such a poorly constructed piece of legislation could even come to the Congress in the first place. And I wonder how our President approved this as well.

By demanding this bailout money, the administration attempted to circumvent the legislative process. Moreover, the administration continues to insist that their way is the only way to avoid an imminent crisis.

And perhaps most stunning is that the administration officials that are responsible for protecting American taxpayers and our free-market system were asleep at the switch. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Chris Cox recently admitted his culpability in this matter and amazingly, the Secretary of the Treasury recently admitted he had seen this crisis coming for almost a year and just now has come to our Congress.

Such large-scale government interference in our government ensures that the correction process will take much longer. And what would help toward long-term stability is an injection of private capital, private capital into our economy. We need to lower tax rates on capital gains and corporate income, allowing people to invest more of their money and relieving American companies from one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world.

The Democrats didn't care to address the capital gains tax issue. And in fact their response to the administration's bailout plan was just as bad.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MILLER of Florida. The plan was just as bad.

I can tell you that an overwhelming majority of my constituents have called, e-mailed and written to my office stating their outright opposition to any sort of bailout. The American taxpayer deserves better than what we are getting here today. And we must not sacrifice long-term freedom for short-term financial gain.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source