E2278 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Remarks November 19, 2008 

Madam Speaker, I rise today to commend 

and congratulate Harris Farms upon being 

honored with the 2008 Baker, Peterson and 

Franklin Ag Business Award. I invite my colleagues to join me in wishing Harris Farms 

many years of continued success. 

f 

A TRIBUTE TO KEN BURNS 

HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS OF NEW YORK

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 

Mr. TOWNS. Madam Speaker, I rise today 

to pay tribute and to honor Mr. Ken Burns, 

one of the most celebrated documentary producers of our day. His films have captured the 

American experience and have forever elevated and enriched our understanding of 

American history. 

Ken Burns, born in Brooklyn, earned his 

Bachelor of Arts degree from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1975, and 

went on to become one of the co-founders of 

Florentine Films. His first Academy Award-winning documentary was Brooklyn Bridge, in 

1981. Since then, he has produced nineteen 

more documentaries, two earning Academy 

Award nominations and seven winning Emmy 

Awards. 

Ken Burns was the director, producer, cowriter, chief cinematographer, music director 

and executive producer of the landmark television series The Civil War, considered by 

many to be his magnum opus. This film was 

the highest rated series in the history of American Public Television and attracted an audience of 40 million during its premiere in September 1990. The series has been honored 

with more than forty major film and television 

awards, including two Emmy Awards, two 

Grammy Awards, the Producer of the Year 

Award from the Producer’s Guild, the People’s 

Choice Award, the Peabody Award, the DuPont-Columbia Award, the D.W. Griffiths 

Award, and the $50,000 Lincoln Prize, among 

dozens of others. 

Ken Burns most recent documentary, The 

War, tells the story of the Second World War 

from the personal perspectives of men and 

women from Waterbury, CT, Mobile, AL, Sacramento, CA, and Luverne, MN. Airing in the 

fall of 2007, it was the most watched series in 

the last ten years on PBS. One hundred and 

seventeen PBS stations across the nation participated in some form of community outreach 

and nearly 30,000 educator guides went to 

every high school in the country. As was 

hoped, ‘‘The War’’ started a massive national 

dialog about this most cataclysmic event in the 

history of the United States. 

Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize 

Mr. Ken Burns for igniting a passion for American history in millions of Americans throughout his prodigious filmmaking career. 

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to 

join me in paying tribute to Mr. Ken Burns. 

f 

WHEN WILL BAILOUTS STOP 

HON. VIRGINIA FOXX OF NORTH CAROLINA

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 

Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, last December, I joined 99 of my House colleagues in opposing H.R. 6, the Energy Independence and 

Security Act of 2008 which authorized a $25 

billion bailout for the automobile industry. Nine 

months later, I voted against H.R. 2638 which 

designated $7.5 billion in emergency funding 

for the bailout. Now Detroit is asking for an 

additional $25 billion as Democrat leaders line 

up to deem this industry ‘‘too big to fail.’’ 

When will it stop? What means of production 

are next in line for seizure by our centralized 

government? 

Detroit automakers’ management and labor 

unions have created a toxic combination of 

poor decision-making that has led to this 

mess. I understand that prepaid pensions decreased by $16.6 billion or 82.1 percent to 

$3.6 billion on September 30, 2008 from $20.2 

billion on December 31, 2007 and by $15.3 

billion or 80.9 percent from $18.9 billion on 

September 30, 2007. These decreases are 

due to: (1) losses of $6.3 billion on the hourly 

and salaried pension plan asset portfolio; (2) 

recording a $2.7 billion liability related to the 

Settlement Agreement; (3) recording a $2.7 

billion liability due to the increase in the 

monthly pension benefit paid to salaried OPEB 

plan participants as compensation for the 

elimination of post-65 healthcare benefits; (4) 

the transfer of $2.1 billion of Delphi pension liabilities to GM; and (5) recording a $2.0 billion 

increase due to the 2008 UAW and IUE–CWA 

Special Attrition programs. There are some 

who believe that this means that after combining General Motor’s cash losses, and with 

the losses disclosed in GM’s most recently 

filed SEC 10Q form, it totals about $23 billion. 

Therefore a $25 billion bailout is little more 

than a three month band-aid. 

The accompanying Wall Street Journal editorial outlines the perils of pursuing this latest 

bailout. It is my hope that Congressional leaders will reject this latest misguided effort to 

bailout industries that have made poor decisions at the expense of those who have not. 

NOVEMBER 10, 2008. 

NATIONALIZING DETROIT

In the Washington mind, there are two 

kinds of private companies. There are successful if ‘‘greedy’’ corporations, which can 

always afford to pay more taxes and tolerate 

more regulation. And then there are the corporate supplicants that need a handout. As 

the Detroit auto makers are proving, you 

can go from being the first to the second in 

the blink of an election. 

For decades, Congress has never had a second thought as it imposed tighter emissions 

standards on GM, Ford and Chrysler, denouncing them for making evil SUVs. Yet 

now that the companies are bleeding cash, 

and may be heading for bankruptcy, suddenly the shrinking Big Three are the latest 

candidates for a taxpayer bailout. One $25 

billion loan facility has already been signed 

into law, and Senator Debbie Stabenow (D., 

Mich.) wants another $25 billion, this time 

with no strings attached. 

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority 

Leader Harry Reid met last week with company and union officials, and they later sent 

a letter urging Treasury Secretary Henry 

Paulson to bestow cash from the Troubled 

Asset Relief Program (Tarp) on the companies. Barack Obama implied at his Friday 

press conference that he too favors some 

kind of taxpayer rescue of Detroit, though 

no doubt he’d like to have President Bush’s 

signature on the check so he won’t have to 

take full political responsibility. 

We hope Messrs. Bush and Paulson just say 

no. The Tarp was intended to save the financial system from collapse, not to be a honey 

pot for any industry running short of cash. 

The financial panic has hit Detroit hard, but 

its problems go back decades and are far 

deeper than reduced access to credit among 

car buyers. As a political matter, the Bush 

Administration is also long past the point 

where it might get any credit for helping Detroit. But it will earn the scorn of taxpayers 

if it refuses to set some limits on access to 

the Tarp. If Democrats want to change the 

rules next year, let them do it on their own 

political dime. 

A bailout might avoid any near-term bankruptcy filing, but it won’t address Detroit’s 

fundamental problems of making cars that 

Americans won’t buy and labor contracts 

that are too rich and inflexible to make 

them competitive. As Paul Ingrassia notes 

nearby, Detroit’s costs are far too high for 

their market share. While GM has spent billions of dollars on labor buyouts in recent 

years, they are still forced by federal mileage standards to churn out small cars that 

make little or no profit at plants organized 

by the United Auto Workers. 

Rest assured that the politicians don’t 

want to do a thing about those labor contracts or mileage standards. In their letter, 

Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid recommend such 

‘‘taxpayer protections’’ as ‘‘limits on executive compensation and equity stakes’’ that 

would dilute shareholders. But they never 

mention the UAW contracts that have done 

so much to put Detroit on the road to ruin. 

In fact, the main point of any taxpayer rescue seems to be to postpone a day of reckoning on those contracts. That includes even 

the notorious UAW Jobs Bank that continues to pay workers not to work. 

A Detroit bailout would also be unfair to 

other companies that make cars in the U.S. 

Yes, those are ‘‘foreign’’ companies in the 

narrow sense that they are headquartered 

overseas. But then so was Chrysler before 

Daimler sold most of the car maker to Cerberus, the private equity fund. Honda, Toyota and the rest employ about 113,000 American auto workers who make nearly four million cars a year in states like Alabama and 

Tennessee. Unlike Michigan, these states 

didn’t vote for Mr. Obama. 

But the very success of this U.S. auto industry indicates that highly skilled American workers can profitably churn out cars 

without being organized by the UAW. A bailout for Chrysler would in essence be assisting rich Cerberus investors at the expense of 

middle-class nonunion auto workers. Is this 

the new ‘‘progressive’’ era we keep reading 

so much about? 

The car makers say that bankruptcy is unthinkable and ‘‘not an option.’’ And bankruptcy would certainly be expensive, not 

least for Washington itself, which could be 

responsible for 600,000 or so retiree pensions 

through the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. 

In that sense, the bailout is intended to rescue the politicians from having to honor 

that earlier irresponsible guarantee. But at 

least that guarantee would be finite. If Uncle 

Sam buys into Detroit, $50 billion would only 

be the start of the outlays as taxpayers were 

obliged to protect their earlier investment in 

uncompetitive companies. 

If our politicians can’t avoid throwing taxpayer cash at Detroit, then they should at 

least do so in a way that really protects taxpayers. That means handing a receiver the 

power to replace current management, zero 

out current shareholders, and especially to rewrite labor and other contracts. Anything less 

is merely a payoff to Michigan politicians and 

their union allies. 


wwoods2 on PRODPC68 with REMARKS