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. DURBIN. Mr. President, 13 days ago I sat in on a meeting just a few feet away from this Chamber. At this meeting was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and the Secretary of the Treasury. There were about 12 of us in the room: the leadership from the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans. I listened as they told us in very serious tones that unless we did something, there would be a meltdown of the American economy and the global economy. And unless we acted quickly, we could face a collapse of our economy, businesses would fail, people would lose their jobs, they would lose their savings if we did not act.

That was a story told to 12 of us at the table who had heard a lot of things as politicians, but we never heard anything like that before. Of course, it was not told to us in the context of something we had never heard or considered. With all of the problems of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns and AIG, we knew there was a problem with the economy. We didn't know it was that bad.

Obviously, the first question is, How did we reach this point, this terrible crisis? I think it is very clear how we reached it. We reached it with reckless deregulation of the credit industry. We stepped aside and allowed these institutions to operate without oversight, without transparency, without accountability, and greed took over. People were making millions of dollars overnight, and they pushed the Government aside and said: Don't get in our way. There is money to be made.

Of course, we have this because of the reckless behavior of those on Wall Street who took advantage of the situation and a lot of innocent people. I can recall offering amendments on this floor to stop predatory lending practices like the subprime mortgage market generated. I can recall debating the high priest of deregulation, Phil Gramm of Texas, who warned that if DURBIN's amendment would pass it would destroy the subprime mortgage market. The year was 2001.

Wouldn't it have been better for America had my amendment passed and that mortgage market come to an end? I lost that amendment on the floor of the Senate by a vote of 50 to 49. The subprime mortgage market went forward, bringing us to this crisis today.

The bill produced by this administration, by Treasury Secretary Paulson, a three-page bill, easily read, was a stunning grab at power. It said there would be no accountability, that the actions of the Treasury Secretary in allocating $700 billion of taxpayer money could not be held accountable in any court in this land or by any administrative agency, and that any rules that were drawn up for his conduct would not be subject to the normal public approval process. It was an incredible grab for power.

We knew there was a crisis, but this was not the answer. CHRIS DODD of Connecticut and JUDD GREGG of New Hampshire went to work with their counterparts in the House, Democrats and Republicans, and made significant changes in this bill, changes that protect taxpayers on the upside so when the companies get well, the money will come back to us as it should; to protect, as well, that taxpayers will not pay for the million-dollar bonuses and golden parachutes of the CEOs who created this mess.

If we have to buy their mistakes, for goodness' sake, do we have to buy them a gold watch when they leave? No. In this bill we will not. We provide the oversight to make sure that taxpayer dollars are watched closely. We don't want any single-bid, Halliburton operations. We want to make sure this money is well spent by professionals who are held accountable.

I wish I didn't have to vote for this proposal. I can think of where $700 billion could be better spent in America today for families across Illinois and across this Nation. I would certainly be coming to the aid of those who are facing foreclosure, 10,000 families a day who were lured into the tricks and traps of these rotten mortgages and now stand to lose their homes and everything they ever saved. There is not a penny in this bill for the kind of help they need.

We talked about it, but when it came to the bankruptcy provision that could have provided it, guess who overwhelmed us. The banks and the mortgage lenders. They had the last word and took out that bankruptcy provision.

I thank Chairman Dodd for his efforts in including it, and for a lot of others, as well, on the House side. We didn't include it.

I wish I didn't have to vote for this bill, but if we fail to act and this economy clearly does go into a meltdown, we cannot say that in Congress we have met our responsibility by going home empty-handed.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

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