Ethical Issues That Need To Be Resolved
Floor Speech
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Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to thank my friend from Texas for yielding.
Judge, I think what we have to look at is connecting the dots. We see in a lot of these children's puzzle books and stuff, you connect the dots to see the big picture. I think if we could see the picture of all of these dots connected, it would be hypocrisy that has come down from the Democratic leadership and we could go back to even when they first became the majority in January of 2007, because prior to that they talked about they had a way of lowering gas prices. Judge, you will remember gas prices went to over $4 a gallon in some areas. They never told us how they were going to get that down. The only way that came down was what we did in August of that year, and really exposed the energy situation for what it was. And I think the speculators finally realized that we were serious about doing something for our own energy policy.
Then if you look at the problems that Mr. Rangel has had. Just to list a few, the loan-subsidized apartments that he had, the fact that he was using letterhead to solicit some of these campaign contributions, the fact that he received the money from AIG and the other people who received some of this bailout, the fact that he didn't pay his taxes, if you look at that, that is not anything in itself, but if you connect the dots with all of the other things that are going on, I think that shows a picture that they did what it took to get elected.
We can look at that with what President Obama's campaign promise was, that he would drive the lobbyists out of the White House. And now he is writing waivers. It seems like every time he does an appointment, he has to write a waiver because they are a lobbyist. We have Mr. Geithner who was approved by the Senate as the Treasury Secretary who has similar tax problems. So you connect all of the dots, and what seems to be happening is we see a chain of events that may seem separate, but they are really kind of all tied together.
And then if you look at what President Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said, and I can't remember the exact words, but he said never let a crisis pass without taking advantage of it.
And so if you look at this financial crisis and what has happened and what has taken place, look at how they are taking advantage of it with this $3.6 trillion budget that they are proposing, with a cap-and-trade, which is another tax that is going to be on the 95 percent that he promised would never have a tax.
If you look at the bonuses for AIG, well, the reason that they are getting the bonuses is because the government intervened into that business. If the government had not intervened and saved AIG, I don't know what kind of financial calamity would have been out there, but I promise you these guys wouldn't have gotten a bonus. So we enabled them to do that. So now what's the government going to do? Everybody is in an uproar over these bonuses being paid to these executives, as well they should. But now is the government going to say we have a crisis, we need to step in and intervene in contracts between employers and employees? And so this is another one of these crises, for the government to take one more step into our lives and into our businesses.
So this is a connect-the-dot picture that we have got to keep in mind. This is a lot bigger than what we ever anticipated or that the American people would think that they were getting.
Mr. Daschle was another one. Ron Kirk. We could go on. Ms. Waters, and others.
Judge, has the Ethics Committee met, because if I remember correctly back in November, Speaker Pelosi said that she was going to have this Rangel problem resolved by the end of December of 2008. I guess she did that for the elections, but it is not resolved yet, and I have not even heard of them having a hearing.
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