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Mr. ELLISON. If the gentleman will yield, I do just want to take up this issue of the spill. It is an important issue. And you just mentioned the very frank and I believe honest comments of Representative Barton, the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, in which he apologized to BP.

Some people might be thinking, you know, well, he apologized for his apology, so, you know, why don't we just drop it. But it doesn't start with Mr. Barton, it doesn't end with Mr. Barton. It actually started with the Republican Study Committee, which creates policy, agenda, and talking points for the Republican leadership. And that's headed by a gentleman who is a Member of this body named Congressman Price, Tom Price. He is the one, with the help of the committee itself, not just by himself, who released a statement calling the compensation fund that you referred to to help compensate small business people put out of business by this spill, and people who live on the gulf, people who suffered, a shakedown. So this term political shakedown emerges from the very leadership of the Republican caucus.

They say that President Obama is shaking down the British Petroleum, BP. And from that point, Price makes the statement, this is before Barton ever does, but Price says, ``BP's reported willingness to go along with the White House's new fund suggests that the Obama administration is hard at work exerting its brand of Chicago-style shakedown politics. These actions are emblematic of a politicization of our economy that has been borne out of this administration's drive for greater and greater power. It is the same mentality that believes an economic crisis or an environmental disaster is the best opportunity to pursue a failed liberal agenda.'' So this is where the whole shakedown conversation comes.

Then after that, Mr. Barton, following the party line, doing what the Republican Study Committee has said to do, says, quote, ``I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it's a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case a $20 billion shakedown.'' Now, it goes on, but in this statement of apology from Barton I never heard--and maybe I will leave it to the gentleman--any sort of apology or sympathy for the people who live on the gulf, who make a living there, who send their kids to school there, and who now see their economic life ruined.

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Mr. ELLISON. It didn't stop after Mr. Barton made his apology, which seemed sincere. After that, Michelle Bachmann, our colleague, says to the BP president about the $20 billion escrow fund, she says, ``If I was the head of BP, I would let the signal get out there, `We're not going to be chumps, and we're not going to be fleeced.' And they shouldn't be. They shouldn't have to be fleeced and made chumps to have to pay for the perpetual unemployment and all the rest.''

So I mean if you just contemplate that statement for a moment, here our friends on the other side of the aisle just got through talking about how it's BP's fault. That's what they say now. Right after the fund was developed by the President to make sure that victims of this, both economic and physical and others, had a basis of compensation, the Republican caucus's initial gut reaction, which is I think their most sincere reaction, is to say that it's a shakedown, it's to say we're not going to be chumps, it's to say that BP shouldn't have to pay unemployment.

I mean it didn't stop there. Let me add one more before I hand it back to you. Our good friend Steve King, Congressman King from Iowa: ``I think Joe Barton was spot on when he called it a shakedown.'' So then, no repentance, no remorse. Let me yield to the gentleman.

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Mr. ELLISON. Well, if the gentleman would yield back, they do have a plan.

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Mr. ELLISON. Their plan is the taxpayers can pay for it.

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Mr. ELLISON. Right. The GOP-BP bailout is that the American taxpayers should pay for the expenses associated with BP's failure to observe its own regulations and the catastrophic consequences that it caused. So that their plan is the taxpayers can pay because heaven forbid we ask a privately held corporation to pay for its own damages.

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Mr. ELLISON. If the gentleman would yield, yeah, BP is well heeled and doing fine based on the profits they have made. So I would yield back.

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Mr. ELLISON. If the gentleman would yield; if you observed the safety rules and regulations that are designed to save lives and save our natural environment, it may take you a little more time, and yeah, it may cost you a little money. Maybe you won't have that enormous, exorbitant profit, but you will make good money, and people will be alive so that they can go home at the end of the day, and we will be able to have a Gulf of Mexico that bears some resemblance to the way the good Lord intended it to be.

Right behind you are graphic photographs. I mean, look at that bird right down at the bottom.

I yield back to the gentleman.

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Mr. ELLISON. We would be a lot healthier. We wouldn't be burning hydrocarbons and spewing them into the air. Our planet would be healthier. We would see ourselves, our technology, and our creativity would blossom as we subsidize these renewable sources of energy. It would be a good thing.

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Mr. ELLISON. Let's not forget about the efficiency. The fact is there are a lot of jobs to be had by retrofitting buildings and conserving the energy that we already have. A lot of jobs, a lot of putting a lot of people back to work in making homes and buildings energy efficient. And you put that together with renewable energy, that is an employment driver. That is an economic driver. That is an environment driver.

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Mr. ELLISON. Well, I don't remember any ringing endorsement from the party opposite.

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Mr. ELLISON. Well, they stand with BP against the residents of the gulf and the businesspeople there. They stand with the oil and gas companies, with their subsidies, as opposed to standing with the people who want a clean, green future. They consistently stand against progress. I mean the thing that I find so astounding is that they will come down to the House floor and continue to repeat these things.

Quite frankly, I am quite proud of President Obama for demanding that BP start an escrow fund so that we can have some relief for the people suffering such horrendous hardships on the gulf coast. I think it was an act of responsibility. It was what he should have done. The administration was responsive to this spill, and the administration did get engaged right away. The Congress is holding hearings right now to get to the bottom of what happened, to prevent it and to put policies in place to do something about it. Yet, all along the way, what we are getting are apologies to BP and, really, no help at all.

We are not discouraged, though. Congressman Garamendi, you know very well that we are stout of heart. Every time we get a chance to do something for this economy, for consumers, for the environment, the Democratic Caucus is counted on to do it.

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Mr. ELLISON. If the gentleman will yield, that is so right. When you look at this whole financial crash, it is a chain of events, and it starts out in the neighborhood.

There is something that we need to talk about, something called a ``yield spread premium.'' What that is is the amount of money that somebody selling a loan can get if somebody steers you from a loan you may qualify for to a high-cost loan. So there are a lot of people who might have qualified for prime loans but who were literally steered.

Then you had another development, something called a NINJA loan--no job, no assets. Yet you could get money to buy a house. Then there is something called a ``liar loan''--now, that is a curious thing to call a loan--because it was stated income. You could just write down whatever you said your income was, and there was no verification of that income. Then, after you got into these loans, they had terms and conditions, like prepayment penalties, so that, if you wanted to get out of this loan and get a fairer loan, you really couldn't do it unless you paid somebody off down the line.

So people got into these loans. They were being sold. The people who made those loans really didn't need to make sure they were well underwritten. It didn't matter if any of these folks could pay the money back, because they would simply sell that paper on the secondary market.

Now, what was the effect in the neighborhood? The effect in the neighborhood was, once the housing values began to flatten and decline, people couldn't pay them. Once they couldn't refinance because they had negative equity in their homes, they couldn't make the payments, and they ended up getting foreclosed upon. It happened in neighborhoods all across this country. California, your State, was hit hard as well as Florida and Arizona. Yet, even in my State of Minnesota, we were hit very hard. People started being foreclosed on, and short sales began to happen. Property values began to decline, and neighborhoods began to go in the wrong direction.

And so there was a lot of difficulty right there on the front line. The front line was foreclosure of homes, abandoned properties, high grass, dead dogs. Expenses to the local government. Because if you have a house where people are paying property taxes, that's coming into this local government. But if you have an abandoned property, that's an expense to the local government. More pressure on local government budgets, intense difficulty, tough times on Main Street.

I yield back to the gentleman.

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Mr. ELLISON. If the gentleman will yield while you're getting the chart. You know, Mr. Speaker, Congressman, you would have thought that America didn't lose 2.8 million homes to foreclosure last year, listening to the Republicans. You have would have thought that Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns and Freddie and Fannie and all these huge Wall Street titans didn't go down the tubes and cause a depressed market and hurt the economy. You would have thought that we didn't have 10 percent unemployment. You would have thought that there was nothing but responsible behavior, and all of a sudden the Democratic Caucus is just trying to take over the banking system. We were really in a magical world here on the House floor. But, thank goodness the House Democrats, led by BARNEY FRANK and many others, were putting the things in place to preserve our economy.

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Mr. ELLISON. I think you would have a lot of injured players. You'd have a really funny outcome. People wouldn't trust the outcome. Maybe teams would stop playing because they would believe that the rules didn't matter any more. And certainly you would give an incentive to the biggest cheap shot artists on the field, the people who are willing to do the dirtiest things--the clipping, all of those things--they would prevail.

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Mr. ELLISON. I was just going to say, as an old football player yourself, didn't good refereeing make for a more competitive game? Didn't that allow competition to really flourish? You could find out who the better team was if you had a well-regulated football game. Is that right?

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Mr. ELLISON. Well, as a woman, you certainly would pay a lot more than a man would of comparable age and condition. The fact is that there's a string between all of the things that we've talked to tonight. We started out talking about the oil spill. We moved on to talk about financial reform. Now we're delving into health care, but there's a string connecting them all. One is that the Democratic Caucus is consistently on the side of the consumer, of the investor, of the small business person. And the party opposite, the other caucus, is consistently on the side of the corporate giant, the huge well-moneyed lobbyist, and the people who stand to gain from the status quo. This is a consistent stream.

And so you continually ask the question, Congressman Garamendi, Whose side are you on? This is a fair question. The question must be answered that the Democratic Caucus is on the side of the people. The party opposite is on the side of the powerful, the well-to-do, the large giant corporate entities. And this is something that I think Americans have got to try to put their hands around, that there is a party who is going to be the one to say, We're going to restrain Wall Street; we're going to make them play by the rules; we're going to enhance the functioning of the marketplace by making sure that there are referees on the field and not in the locker room.

And this string is a consistency. It ties us together as a consistent, coherent theme and a message,

that the Democratic Caucus is on the side of the American people.

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Mr. ELLISON. Well, if the gentleman will yield, I want to say that, in my opinion, Social Security is one of the greatest pieces of legislation this country has ever seen, and so is Medicare. These programs are very important because they signal that we really are in this thing together and that we're not going to let our seniors descend to the level where they're eating dog food or making choices between medication and a meal. But it's going to require an aware population to get it, that, you know, there are real things at stake here, big things at stake here.

And the question keeps being asked: Who's side are you on?

Why don't you go through some of those critical things?

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Mr. ELLISON. Look, the Republicans had their chance, and we are still reaping the bitter fruit of what their leadership has brought this country. They had 12 years between 1994 and 2006 in the Congress, and then they had 6 years with a Republican President. In that time, they did nothing about reforming Wall Street, though they had two Houses and the Presidency. They didn't do anything about reining in these banks. They didn't do anything about reforming regulation. They did nothing on health care.

And now they have the audacity to want to say, We want the wheel back. Yeah, we drove the car into a ditch, but we want the wheel back. We want to drive again. And you know what? It just can't happen.

I yield back to the gentleman.

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