Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, today was 6 months overdue here in the House. Last fall, when President George Bush and Secretary Henry--``Hank,'' as people like to call him--Paulson--just a regular guy from Wall Street who earned $750 million in 1 year before he left Wall Street to come here and be Secretary of the Treasury, protecting Main Street interests under the Bush administration--panics the Congress, said the world was on the verge of collapse, and submitted, on a Friday [Page: H3688] evening, a three-page bill asking that we appropriate $700 billion and give it to Henry ``Hank'' Paulson and let him spend it however he deemed fit.
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Unfortunately, Congress didn't really improve too much on that original draft. Congress got stampeded. I didn't. I voted against it. And for one glorious moment, one night, one day, we stunned the world by stopping that bill here in the House and saying there are not enough protections for American taxpayers in this bill. There's no guarantee we'll get paid back. There's no real restraint on how Henry ``Hank'' Paulson of Wall Street is going to spend the money. We fear it will go to bonuses, it will go to waste, it will go to his buddies on Wall Street and he'll use it to penalize his enemies on Wall Street. And that's exactly what happened.
And here we are now, at least $350 billion later of that $700 billion. It's estimated, by one group that does weekly estimates, we've lost about a third of the money. The American taxpayers are being told they'll have to pay that back over the next 30 years.
In the meantime, many of these companies and these lords are rewarding themselves with bonuses. We're told, well, these are certifiably smart people. I mean, how can these firms continue to exist without them?
Well, the firms like AIG don't exist anymore except for the largesse from the American taxpayer. They bankrupted their companies. How could anybody think they deserve a performance bonus or a retention bonus of any sort? What they need is a bonus push out the door. And that should have happened a long time ago. And I've got to say the Obama administration is trying. A big hole was dug here. They are trying to make some sense out of what Bush and Paulson did.
But I am not impressed by our Treasury Secretary, Mr. Geithner, and I think that President Obama should rethink whether or not he is the man for the job at this time. When did Secretary Geithner know about these bonuses that were coming due at AIG? He was head of the New York Fed. He was very involved in bailing out AIG through the Federal Reserve last fall. Did he just find out or has he known? And did he neglect to tell the President, did he neglect to tell the Congress that these bonuses were pending? I don't know for sure. But we need to have that question answered.
Geithner was hired because he said, well, Wall Street's comfortable with him. I'll tell you what. I'd like a Secretary of the Treasury who Wall Street doesn't like because that person is protecting Main Street Americans and the taxpayers of this country instead of coddling these fat, overpaid people on Wall Street who have bankrupted their own companies and are trying to bankrupt America and have caused nationally and worldwide an economic collapse. These certifiably smart people.
So today we began to correct the mistakes that were made here last fall under pressure from Bush and Paulson. But people need to be brought to account. We need to hire the 1,100 agents that the FBI has been asking for for 4 years to fill out their financial fraud and crimes unit. We need to hire those 1,100 people and maybe give some of these people who today are getting bonuses Federal hospitality in the future, a little uniform and a nice warm place to sit behind bars.
We need those investigators. We need that budget. We need to thoroughly review everything that's gone on. And we really need to question the leadership of Secretary Geithner in these matters. END
