From bigxc@prairienet.orgMon Feb 20 02:29:15 1995
Date: Sun, 19 Feb 95 23:23:21 CST
From: Brian Redman <bigxc@prairienet.org>
To: Multiple recipients of list <conspire@prairienet.org>
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4 Num. 05


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 4  Num. 05
             ======================================
                    ("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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