Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2008

Floor Speech

PAUL WELLSTONE MENTAL HEALTH AND ADDICTION EQUITY ACT OF 2008 -- (Senate - October 01, 2008)

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Mr. BUNNING. Mr. President, I rise to say a few words in response to what I have heard on the floor of the Senate today. Many Senators have stood up and spoken in favor of the Wall Street bailout bill we will be voting on later tonight. That is their right, but they are only telling one side of the story.

I have heard a lot about changes made to this bill in the last few days, but make no mistake about it, this is the same bailout that the House of Representatives rejected Monday afternoon. The only thing that is different is the packaging. The failed House bill has been attached to a tax bill which the Senate has already passed overwhelmingly, a mental health parity bill which is broadly supported in the Senate, and an increase in FDIC insurance limits. In other words, a few sweeteners have been added to buy off a few more votes. But the bailout remains the same.

Now, let me say a few words about some of that lipstick. Though the tax extenders bill does not have everything I hoped for in it, I strongly support it and voted for it just a few weeks ago. I also have cosponsored the Senate version of the mental health parity bill. I still support both and want to see them become law. I am disappointed that I am being put in a position of having to vote against those bills.

I have been clear since Secretary Paulson proposed his plan that I thought it was a bad idea and would not work. I still think so, and apparently so does a majority of the House of Representatives. The House rightly rejected the bailout we will be voting on tonight because it is a bailout of Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. The American people are outraged by this proposal, and all any Senator needs to do is stand around their front office and listen to the phone calls to understand that.

Now, about the proposal itself, I have no confidence it will work, and the only people I have heard that have confidence that it will work are the Treasury Secretary and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the people who proposed it in the first place. Even Senators supporting this bill say things like ``I hope this will work'' or ``we have to do this because nothing is not an option.'' I say that $700 billion is a lot of money to gamble on hope, especially when there are other options.

Sadly, no other options have been considered. Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke both admitted they did not consider other proposals. Congress certainly has not considered any other option. Why not? Because we are told there is not time and we have to do something now. Well, here we are, 2 weeks after the initial proposal, and the sky has not fallen.

Now, I recognize there are real problems in our financial markets and those problems could hurt the overall economy and average Americans. As I have said on this floor as recently as last week, we have both policy and structural problems in our financial system that need to be addressed. Those problems are largely a result of bad monetary policy, bad governmental policies, and bad oversight by regulators. But these problems cannot be fixed by just throwing money at Wall Street as we run out the door to go home and campaign. They require serious thought and serious work.

While the problems in our financial markets have been a long time in the making and cannot be solved overnight, the freeze in the credit markets and the panic that we are seeing now came about rather quickly. That is because Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke set expectations for Government intervention when they bailed out Bear Stearns in March. The markets operated all summer with the belief that the Government would step in and rescue failing firms. Then they let Lehman Brothers fail, and the markets had to adjust to the idea that Wall Street would have to take the losses for Wall Street's bad decisions, not the taxpayers. That new uncertainty could be the most significant contributing factor to why the markets have lost confidence. Even worse, to sell the public and Congress on this Wall Street bailout, the President, Secretary Paulson, and Chairman Bernanke have pushed the media and public to the edge of panic by telling everyone we are staring at the second coming of the Great Depression.

But this bill is not going to solve those problems. I am not alone in my concerns about this bill. Last week, I entered into the Record two letters from nearly 300 economists who said it will not work. I have also heard from many market participants that this program will not work. In fact, the only way anyone has any confidence that this plan will work is if the Government overpays and gives a windfall to the banks and others selling their bad investments. But that is not just dishonest, it is also not even the most efficient way of getting funds into the institutions.

This bill also has no requirements that the institutions take their newfound cash and use it to lend to Main Street or anyone else. They are going to put that money to the use they think is in their best interest, not in the best interest of the average American.

Now, I do support taking action to address the mess Government created. To restore confidence, instead of giving the Secretary $700 billion, we should send a signal that we are serious about this and stay in Washington until we have a real solution. One way we could do that is to give the Secretary a far smaller amount of funds to use to unfreeze the markets and take a few weeks to hold some hearings, meet with experts who might have different ideas, and find a way to fix what is broken. We certainly should not just rely on the opinions of the people who created this mess and stand to benefit the most from this proposal.

There are plenty of other ideas that are worth exploring but, unfortunately, have been ignored. We could allow companies with earnings overseas to bring that money back to the United States tax free if they invested it in the same troubled assets the Secretary wants to buy. Rather than buying toxic paper, we could create a system to support the top-quality, AAA-rated, debt market, which must begin functioning for the credit crunch to end. We should also immediately put in place policies that will encourage economic growth, such as energy exploration and development and tax policies to encourage job creation. We also need to address the regulatory and structural problems I mentioned earlier. I am sure there are plenty of other ideas that could help as well. My intent here is not to list everything that needs to be done but to point out that there is a lot that should be considered and is not even being discussed.

Finally, I want to say that I hope for the best with this bill. I am going to vote against it, and I hope that I am wrong. Even if this bill passes and becomes law, I am not going to give up on looking for the right long-term solutions to our problems.

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