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From: Brian Redman (bigxc@prairienet.org)
Date: Sun Feb 19 1995 - 15:01:08 PST
Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4 Num. 05
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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THE MEXICAN RESCUE PACKAGE
[From The Congressional Record -- House, H1271-H1278, Feb. 6, 1995]
[...continued...]
MS. KAPTUR:
If the gentleman will yield, what has been very interesting is if
you look back over the decade of the 1980s, this fund was used
every once in a while, especially around the 1982 Presidential
elections in Mexico, to prop up that Government. There were loans
made from this fund, $500 million, $1 billion. Then you went up
to 1988 when there was another Presidential election in Mexico,
and they used $1.1 or $1.2 billion out of the funds to prop up
the existing Government there.
Now the Presidential elections of this past August 1994: The fund
was used again over these numbers of years. Mexico has never
really paid back its money. It has refinanced its debt, which is
getting larger and larger and larger.
That is like if you had a credit card and you never paid the
principal and you just kept adding more and more debt and then
you were charged a higher interest rate.
MR. TAYLOR of Mississippi:
So if you would explain to the Members who might still be
watching, what is it that you are trying to accomplish tomorrow?
MS. KAPTUR:
What we are trying to accomplish tomorrow is to give the 435
Members of this House a chance to vote against the Mexican rescue
package. We have essentially been muzzled. The executive branch,
in conjunction with the leadership of this institution, went
around the other 434 Members of the Congress of the United
States.
We want our chance to vote.
MR. DeFAZIO:
Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman will continue to yield, I would
like to clarify, I think that we do not even have to characterize
it in exactly that fashion. We are asking the basic questions
regarding the extension of these credits to Mexico. How much
money is involved? What risks are there for the U.S. taxpayer?
And the series of interrogatories, someone could vote in support
of our resolution tomorrow, not having made up their mind but
saying as a representative of the people they need more
information.
So I would say that the Members who would support our resolution
would be both Members who already feel that they have enough
information to say no to the bailout for Mexico, but I would say
for the other Members of this body, I cannot imagine that any
single person in this body who has not had those questions
answered could vote in support of it.
I can see where you could still have an open mind and say, I
would like to know what risks we have, how much it is costing,
what the terms are, what our exposure is. But we do not have
that. So I would characterize the vote tomorrow a little
differently.
MS. KAPTUR:
The gentleman is correct. If one reads the resolution, it asks
for us to have the constitutional authority retained here as we
would hope we could tomorrow, and then it asks the Comptroller
General to report back on the specifics of the package that was
negotiated by the administration. I think the gentleman from
Mississippi would like to comment.
MR. TAYLOR of Mississippi:
I wanted to get back to something the gentleman from Vermont
mentioned, when he said that Wall Street was all in favor of
NAFTA and Wall Street was all in favor of the bailout.
In fact, former U.S. Trade Representative, Ms. Carla Hills, who
used to come regularly up to Congress and tell us what a great
deal NAFTA was, has written an article for the Washington Post
saying we have to bail out these poor people.
It was funny that just 1.5 years ago, when Ms. Hills came before
the Merchant Marine Committee and I brought to her attention that
a lot of shrimpers in the gulf coast, a lot of people in the
garment plants would probably lose their jobs as a result of
NAFTA, she said, "that is economic Darwinism. You just have to
have some people who are going to suffer when things like this
happen, but it is for the benefit of everybody that this
happens."
Would someone explain the wisdom to me why it is O.K. to let
somebody who makes $5.50 an hour working at a sewing machine all
day lose their job, but when some Wall Street investor loses a
couple of bucks on his investments down in Mexico, or maybe a lot
more than a couple bucks, that it suddenly becomes the
responsibility of the working people of this country, the very
same working people that you may have put out of work to bail
them out, to go on the line and cosign that loan? And above all,
why is it right that this huge expenditure, the equivalent of the
Veterans Administration budget, is being made available for the
President alone to spend and the Congress of the United States,
which is given the constitutional duty, not privilege but the
constitutional duty to see how our money is spent, what kind of
debts we incur, where is the Speaker? Where is the minority
leader? Is this not crazy that neither party's head is demanding
a vote on this and that 6, 7, 12 Members have to be the ones to
come forward and, by using the rules of the House, demand a vote
on this? It is just not right.
MS. KAPTUR:
It is interesting, because I come from the Midwest, midwestern
part of our country, as did the gentleman from Ohio, Congressman
Brown, who has joined us, the gentleman from Vermont, Congressman
Sanders, comes from the northeast, the gentleman comes from the
Deep South in Mississippi, the gentleman from Oregon, Mr.
DeFazio, it has been very interesting to me to see the breadth of
support inside this institution on this issue.
MR. TAYLOR of Mississippi:
If I may interrupt, on both sides of the aisle.
MS. KAPTUR:
On both sides of the aisle.
MR. TAYLOR of Mississippi:
There are, I believe as many Republican sponsors of this
resolution as Democrats. I think that is very important, because
I think a number of the Republicans are at odds with what their
leadership has done, which is, again, to deprive the majority of
the Members of this body just expressing this sentiment, yes or
no, this is a tremendous obligation.
I know it is more than three times the State budget for a whole
year of my home State.
MR. DeFAZIO:
If the gentlewoman would yield further, I was talking to a
freshman Republican Member today, and that freshman stated
unequivocally that they had done a whip of their own group and
there were 3 Members of the 73-Member Republican freshman class
who were prepared or leaning toward voting for the bailout of
Mexico.
So I think what has happened here is the leaders on both sides
can count, and they did count. When they counted, they found
probably out of this entire institution, the representatives of
the people of the United States of America, duly elected and all
equal under the Constitution, that probably less than 100 were
willing to vote for this bailout.
Now I guess what we are being told is we just do not know, we
just do not know the facts. Well, then, give us the facts. That
is what we are asking here. If there are facts that would change
my mind, bring them forward. But there is an absence of fact and
we are being treated as though we, as elected representatives of
the people, well, we just do not know better. This is something
that the big folks on Wall Street, the Federal Reserve decided in
secret, Robin Rubin, managing director of Goldman, Sachs and the
President behind closed doors, and public discussion is
foreclosed and votes of the people are prohibited.
MR. SANDERS:
My friend from Oregon is exactly right, as is my friend from
Mississippi.
My friend from Mississippi makes an interesting point, if he will
allow me to amplify his statement a little bit, that all over
this country there are people who work for $5 an hour and $6 an
hour and $8 an hour. And they go to work every day and many of
them do not have any health insurance, and we are told that the
Government does not have the money to provide health insurance.
Their jobs are uprooted and taken to Mexico or to China and we
are told, "Hey, that is the way life goes, that is what the
market system is about, no security, you are out on the street."
They pay unfairly too much in taxes, that is the way the system
goes.
And nobody is hearing their pain. And then suddenly our friends
from Wall Street, who by the way, let us be honest about this, in
the last few years have made out like bandits in their
investments in Mexico. In the city of Burlington, Vermont, people
put their money in the savings bank to make 3 percent, 4 percent,
5 percent, safe investment; in Mexico people were making 50
percent, people were making 100 percent of their investments. And
then suddenly, for reasons that we do not fully know, we know
some of them, the economy of Mexico took a tumble and their
investments went sour.
And how amazing it is, and I remember this when I was mayor of
the city of Burlington, it was not the poor people and the
working people who came into my office to ask for help. It was
always the powerful and the wealthy who tell us, "What can you do
for us?" and they are back again. These people who have the
money, who have made out like bandits, have suddenly taken a
loss.
Well, when you invest in a risky proposition, that is the nature
of the game, is it not? You stand to win a lot if things go well,
you stand to lose if things go badly.
I absolutely agree with my friend from Mississippi that it is an
outrage to go back to the working people in this country, some of
them who have lost their jobs from these very same folks who have
taken their plants to Mexico, and then to ask working people of
America to bail them out.
To pick up on the point from my friend from Oregon, what makes me
really sad is not only the horror of this whole agreement, but in
fact as a result of it there will be even more people giving up
on the democratic process. We just had an election recently and
62 percent of the people did not come out to vote. They no longer
believe that the Government of the United States represents their
interests. What do you think this action on the part of the
President is going to do to the political process?
[...to be continued...]
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
[Copies of The Congressional Record are normally available for
viewing at your local library.]
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et
pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9
Brian Francis Redman bigxc@prairienet.org "The Big C"
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Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"
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