H10946 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE December 10, 2008 

His funeral will be this Friday in 

Houston, Texas, and his fellow officers 

will wear their black cloth of sacrifice 

across their badges. Peace officers are 

the last strand of wire in the fence between the law and those that violate 

the law. 

Officer Timothy Abernethy lived and 

died serving the people of Texas and 

the City of Houston. 

And that’s the just way it is. 

f 

THE AUTO INDUSTRY FINANCING 

AND RESTRUCTURING ACT 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a 

previous order of the House, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. CUMMINGS) 

is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I rise 

tonight to commend Chairman BARNEY

FRANK, the House leadership, and the 

administration for working together to 

bring relief to the automobile industry 

and millions of workers. By passing the 

Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act, H.R. 7321, we took the monumental step of both saving jobs and 

setting the U.S. automotive industry 

on a path that will make it globally effective, efficient, and competitive. And 

equally important, we established a 

new standard of accountability that 

must be enforced for any institutions 

seeking government assistance. 

For months, the Federal Government 

has been blindly throwing money at 

nearly every financial institution that 

blinks with no written requirements on 

how that money is to be used and with 

no written standards of transparency 

or accountability. In response, these 

institutions have taken hundreds of 

billion of taxpayer dollars and continued to do business as usual: the business of partying at the spa, getting 

their facials and manicures, getting 

millions in retention payments and 

spending hundreds of millions of dollars on sports sponsorships. 

This type of mismanagement of taxpayer funds has left the American people suffering from bailout fatigue. I get 

that. I have been one of the most vocal 

critics of this distribution of top funds 

to date. 

However, today’s legislation is completely different. The automakers have 

been forced to leap over 5 million hurdles to even be considered to receive a 

loan. And with every demand we have 

made of them, these companies have 

willingly obliged. 

We cannot have one standard for 

white collar employees and a different 

standard for blue collar employees. We 

need to have strict standards for every 

one. 

The legislation passed today includes 

very important oversight provisions to 

protect taxpayer dollars, such as prohibiting golden parachutes and capping 

executive bonuses. It also establishes a 

‘‘car czar’’ position to hold these companies accountable for developing and 

implementing viable long-term restructuring plans and ensuring compliance on financing efforts. 

And yet despite these requirements, 

there are some who will still believe 

that assisting the Big Three is a continuation of throwing good money 

after bad. I strongly disagree. With one 

in ten American jobs tied to the auto 

industry, this should not be considered 

a waste of money. We’re talking about 

3 million jobs expecting to be lost within a year if the auto industry goes 

down. With men and women across 

America continuing to struggle to keep 

roofs over their heads, to make ends 

meet, we simply cannot afford to lose 

these jobs. 

Lastly, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report showing the loss 

of 533,000 jobs in November, the highest 

single month loss in 34 years, and one 

of the most dismal reports in the Bureau’s 124-year existence. 

These figures were simply staggering, 

and we can and we must do better. And 

by passing this legislation today, we 

are taking a first step in doing so. 

For this reason, I urge my colleagues 

in the Senate to quickly consider H.R. 

7321 and enact this much-needed legislation as soon as possible. I ask them, 

and I hope they will have more faith in 

our automobile industry, and I encourage all of my colleagues to continue 

the strict standards of accountability 

as we move forward. 

With that, I yield back. 

f 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a 

previous order of the House, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. PALLONE) 

is recognized for 5 minutes. 

(Mr. PALLONE addressed the House. 

His remarks will appear hereafter in 

the Extensions of Remarks.) 

f 

ECUADOR FACING HUMANITARIAN 

AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISES 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a 

previous order of the House, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 

MCGOVERN) is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. MCGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I have 

just returned from a remarkable trip to 

Ecuador. From November 8 through 13, 

I traveled through northern Ecuador 

looking at the refugee crisis on its border with Colombia and on the effects of 

oil contamination on the land and people of the Amazon basin. 

I saw firsthand the terrible human 

and environmental costs that have resulted from the decades-long failure to 

properly clean the contamination left 

by oil drilling and production. Specifically, the sites I visited were those 

that were under the control of Texaco, 

now Chevron. I visited oil pits that 

were poorly constructed, poorly remediated, or remediated not at all. This 

has left a toxic legacy for poor 

campesinos and indigenous peoples. 

I also saw the infrastructure that 

Chevron/Texaco created that allowed 

for the wholesale dumping of formation 

water and other highly toxic materials 

directly into the Amazon and its waters. 

As an American citizen, the degradation and contamination left behind in a 

poor part of the world by this U.S. 

company made me angry and ashamed. 

The drinking water for thousands of 

poor people is horribly unfit, even 

deadly. Children are drinking and bathing in water that reeks of oil. In one 

village, San Carlos, I couldn’t come 

across a family that hasn’t been 

touched by cancer. Mothers brought 

their children to show me the terrible 

rashes and sores that covered their 

bodies. 

A lawsuit has been filed against 

Chevron by 30,000 Amazon residents demanding that the company accept responsibility for substandard production 

practices and help with the clean-up efforts. Chevron, for its part, asserts it 

was released from responsibility in the 

1990s, and the release remains in legal 

dispute. 

Neither Congress nor the United 

States Government should get involved 

in a legal matter that will soon be decided in a court of law. But as the 

years pass and nothing is done, the situation on the ground has become more 

and more desperate for thousands of 

poor people, and the pollution spreads 

deeper into the soil, the water, and the 

Amazon basin. 

I firmly believe these people and 

their environment need help and they 

need help now. 

As I traveled further north towards 

the border frontier, I found a growing 

humanitarian and security crisis. 

Eight years ago, the United States 

started pouring military aid—$4.8 billion of it—into Colombia, much of it 

focused on military operations in the 

violent coca growing zones just across 

the border from Ecuador. 

The result has been an alarming 

spillover of violence into Ecuador’s 

peaceful but impoverished borderlands. 

Over 200,000 Colombians—a number rivaling many refugee crises in Africa— 

have fled to Ecuador to escape the violence and intense fighting between guerilla groups, the Colombian military, 

and Colombian paramilitary militias. 

As the GAO recently reported, harsh 

U.S. counter-drug strategies have 

failed to halt cocaine production in Colombia or ease the violence that comes 

with this illegal economy. Instead, organized crime has been pushed across 

the border into Ecuador. 

Mr. Speaker, I stood on the banks of 

the San Miguel River, which marks the 

border between Putumayo, Colombia, 

and Sucumbios, Ecuador. Only a few 

hundred yards of water separate the 

two. 

Mr. Speaker, Colombia’s war is literally bleeding, violently, into Ecuador, which has no history of illegal 

drug cultivation or insurgency from its 

own people. Tensions between the two 

nations are high and diplomatic relations remain cut off. 

The refugee communities that I 

spoke with in Lago Agrio, Barranca 

Bermeja, and Puerto Mestanza feel 

abandoned and discriminated against.