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Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you, Mr. Farr.
Each piece of legislation that passes the House is really a reflection of our values. It speaks to our heart; it speaks to what we care about and what's important to us. This particular bill does that in a way that more than ever highlights values. Is it about children, about infants? Or is it about tax breaks for the very, very wealthy? Is it about safe food? Or tax breaks for oil companies and subsidies for oil companies? Is it about those people around the world that are hungry and the Food for Peace program that provides them with enough food to be able to survive and to live? Or is it about a continuation of very fat, unnecessary farm crop subsidies?
It's about our values. It's about what we care about and what we think is important. And if there's anything that's important in life, it's food. It's the ability for our youngest children--I was on this floor not more than 2 hours ago with my granddaughter, 11 months old. Out there in America there are hundreds of thousands of young children that will not have the food that they need to be able to be healthy, will not be able to have the care they need. This is about our values.
What does this bill say of our values? It says that those children are of little value. Is that what this is about? Is it about those people around the world that are starving that will not have the Food for Peace program? Is that the value of this Congress, that we cannot find the money, in this wealthiest of all nations, to provide the health care for our young children and the food for those around the world?
What is it that we care about then? The very wealthy? About Wall Street? About the Commodity Futures Trading Commission not having the money that they need to regulate the programs that brought this country to its knees? What is it that we value? Big question.
In this bill, obviously there's a great difference in what we value on our side and what this bill, brought to us by the Republican majority, values.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, I strongly object to this bill.
In his second inaugural address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt laid out, I think, a very good test for us. It was a test for this Nation at one of its most desperate periods. We, too, find ourselves in a difficult situation. We do have a big deficit, and we need to make some tough choices. And today as we debate this piece of legislation, we are indeed making choices and we are being tested. We're being tested about our values. We're being tested about what we think is important. Franklin Delano Roosevelt suggested this be the test:
``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.''
Ponder those words and apply those words to what we are debating and what we will soon vote for or against on this floor. The test of our progress, whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much. We've discussed many times here in the last couple of hours the options that are given to us on tax policy, continuing to provide subsidies to the wealthiest industry in the world, the oil industry, not to the tune of a couple of billion but, when you add it all up, some $40 billion a year. Whether we continue to provide a tax break to the wealthiest in this Nation, those whose annual incomes are in the millions and, indeed, some who are even in the billions. We're making choices and we're being tested. That's one option that our Republican colleagues seem to want to present to us.
The other option is what we on the Democratic side have been debating and asking for, and that is the second part of what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, and that is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
I was on this floor not more than 3 hours ago with my granddaughter, 11 months old. And in the arms of mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers and parents across this Nation are children of that age who depend upon the Women, Infants, and Children program, which this Republican appropriation brought to this floor reduces by 10 percent. 350,000 children will not be able to have the food that they need, the care that they need to be able to be healthy, to be able to grow, and indeed in the future, to be able to pay, as we will today, one way or another, for the deficit that we have.
A 10 percent reduction from last year, and is there anybody in this House that's prepared to argue somehow things are better out there and that a 10 percent reduction in the face of an increased number of women and children who need help, that that is a worthy choice for us to make? I think not.
I think that this bill miserably fails the test that Franklin Delano Roosevelt laid out during the Great Depression. This does not provide for those who have too little.
And it's not just in the Women, Infants, and Children program. Across the board, thousands, indeed, 48 million Americans become ill each year because of food-borne illnesses, and yet, in this budget, another 12 percent reduction from last year's funding for food safety programs at a time when we have a new food safety program to implement. 350,000 Americans wind up in the hospital as a result of food-borne illnesses, and the Republicans want to cut the money to provide the protection for Americans.
It's about choices. It's about values. What do you value in this system? Yes, we have a deficit. Yes, we must deal with it. And yes, according to our Republican friends, we must take that food out of the children's mouths; we must make sure that people will not be able to be healthy. I don't understand.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you.
If the gentlelady from Wyoming would recall the years past, she would recall what is known as the Senate filibuster. The graveyard of legislation that the Democrats put forth many, many times died in the Senate as a result of their filibuster.
With regard to the issues of entitlements and this particular bill, we're talking here about the issue of how we care for those who have little. I'd be happy to debate with you on this floor or any other place the import of the stimulus program, and, in fact, most every economist argues that without the stimulus program we would have fallen into a great depression, not just a very serious recession. I'm sure the gentlewoman recalls those words.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. I strongly oppose the underlying bill, and I support the proposed amendment.
Earlier today, we had a long discussion about one portion of the bill that dealt with Women, Infants and Children and the way in which the legislation inadequately funds the necessities for pregnant women, infants and children to lead healthy lives. We are now on to another issue that is extraordinarily important.
In the '90s, the idea of deregulation took hold and was expanded throughout the 2000 to 2008 period, so much so that we had the financial meltdown. We had Wall Street bankers and hedge funds running wild, gambling on the future, and America was the great loser in that gamble.
Over the last several years, we have seen the derivative market increase from a $30-$40 trillion notional value to an over $300 trillion notional value today. Every day across the Wall Street tickers--across the wires--and in the back rooms of the hedge funds and the big banks, $300 trillion of risk is traded back and forth, risk that is not backed up by assets but by bets that are made. It is the great crap shoot in the alley of Wall Street--$300 trillion.
Where is the money? Where is the enforcer to make sure that the bet against Greece and the bet against the price of oil is going to be backed up? It's not there. It is the shell game of all shell games. There are no assets. I was the insurance commissioner, and we understood a couple of things very clearly: If an insurance company were going to make a bet that something would go wrong, then they had to have the asset to pay if that bet ever came to pass.
That's not the case here. There is no regulation of this market.
Understanding the need for this back in the 1930s, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission was established to make sure that, if bets were made on the future price of grain, somebody would be able to pay if that bet had to be paid off. It worked okay until the great period of deregulation. Let's understand the definition of ``insanity.'' It's when you repeat what you did before and expect a different answer.
This bill is asking us to, once again, repeat the deregulation of the derivative market by defunding, not providing adequate funding, for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. We are betting that things are going to work out, that this $300 trillion of notional value out there in the derivative market is somehow going to
work out okay. We learned in 2007 and 2008 that it doesn't work out okay--literally collapsing the entire financial market of the world.
Okay. Speculation? Let it rip. We did that once before. It is insanity to assume that this time it's going to work out okay.
This amendment puts back in the necessary money for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to adequately regulate a huge market beyond the imagination of all of us. We need this money. We need the systems in place to make sure that this derivative market is adequately regulated so that we do not, once again, find this Nation bailing out or falling into a great recession and depression yet again.
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