January 14, 2009 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE H303 

be a state-of-the-art facility, and the 

foundation of this ballpark area will 

develop into an entertainment district 

over the next few years. The new stadium will feature a 15,000 square foot 

kids’ zone, full-scale restaurant, 16 luxury suites, and numerous additional 

components that will make it a showcase for the city. The ballpark is the 

result of a public-private partnership 

in not only the town of Winston-Salem 

but also in Forsyth County. 

Now, the people who own the baseball 

team thought that it might be an interesting time to consider a new name 

for the baseball team, and so they had 

a ‘‘Name the Team’’ contest in which 

they received over 3,000 submissions in 

just 2 weeks. After reviewing the suggestions and receiving over 70 submissions for one particular name, the people in charge selected ‘‘Dash’’ to be the 

new team name. The idea behind that 

is Dash is what brings the two words, 

Winston and Salem, together, and the 

vision of the owners is to make the stadium a family-friendly environment 

and gathering place for entertainment 

within the Winston-Salem community. 

Now, the Winston-Salem Dash is a 

minor league baseball team which 

dates back its franchise to 1945. 

They’re a class high-A team in the 

Carolina league, and they have been a 

farm team of the Chicago White Sox 

since 1997. They’ll begin playing in the 

new Winston-Salem ballpark beginning 

in 2009. 

With its family-friendly entertainment and plain old American style fun, 

I’m sure the Dash is going to be a great 

success. And just as importantly, the 

new name for the team and the new 

ballpark are going to be an anchor for 

future development as the team stadium is completed and the players take 

the field this spring. 

I’m looking forward to visiting a 

home game this spring to enjoy this 

most American of pastimes and support this addition to the WinstonSalem sports team. And I invite all my 

colleagues to join me there sometime 

and see that I live in the best district 

in the country. 

f 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a 

previous order of the House, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. BURTON) is 

recognized for 5 minutes. 

(Mr. BURTON of Indiana addressed 

the House. His remarks will appear 

hereafter in the Extensions of Remarks.) 

f 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a 

previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. WOOLSEY) 

is recognized for 5 minutes. 

(Ms. WOOLSEY addressed the House. 

Her remarks will appear hereafter in 

the Extensions of Remarks.) 

f 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a 

previous order of the House, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. FRANKS) is 

recognized for 5 minutes. 

(Mr. FRANKS of Arizona addressed 

the House. His remarks will appear 

hereafter in the Extensions of Remarks.) 

f 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a 

previous order of the House, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DEFAZIO) is 

recognized for 5 minutes. 

(Mr. DEFAZIO addressed the House. 

His remarks will appear hereafter in 

the Extensions of Remarks.) 

f 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a 

previous order of the House, the gentleman from California (Mr. SHERMAN) 

is recognized for 5 minutes. 

(Mr. SHERMAN addressed the House. 

His remarks will appear hereafter in 

the Extensions of Remarks.) 

f 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a 

previous order of the House, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. WOLF) is 

recognized for 5 minutes. 

(Mr. WOLF addressed the House. His 

remarks will appear hereafter in the 

Extensions of Remarks.) 

f 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a 

previous order of the House, the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. BOOZMAN) 

is recognized for 5 minutes. 

(Mr. BOOZMAN addressed the House. 

His remarks will appear hereafter in 

the Extensions of Remarks.) 

f 

THE ECONOMY IN AMERICA 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under 

the Speaker’s announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. AKIN) is recognized for 60 

minutes as the designee of the minority leader. 

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Speaker, we have an 

interesting topic that we’re going to be 

talking about and developing over the 

next hour. I’m here representing the 

Republican Study Committee, and we 

would like to talk about the subject of 

our economy and the nature of the 

problems that we are facing but also 

what kinds of solutions are possible. 

I’m going to be joined by a number of 

other congressmen this evening, and 

I’m going to invite them to jump into 

our discussion. And, Mr. Speaker, I 

hope that you find the hour interesting 

and enjoyable. 

Now, one of the problems with having 

Congressman AKIN here is I’m a former 

engineer and I get a little pedantic 

sometimes and I think it’s important 

to exercise some discipline. And the 

discipline in this case is to define the 

nature of the problem in the economy 

in America. 

b 1945 

So before you go offering legislation 

or try to fix something, it’s good to 

know what it is you are trying to fix, 

and that will allow you to answer the 

important question whether or not it’s 

going to work, which is not exactly a 

small question. Unfortunately, we have 

spent an awful lot of money without 

really defining the problem on solutions which have not worked. And so 

that’s why we need to take a little bit 

of time to talk about what’s going on. 

As perhaps many people are aware, 

there are two quasi-governmental organizations called Freddie and Fannie, 

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and they, 

of course, have home mortgages which 

they take care of financially for more 

than half of the different people in 

America that have homes. So these are 

huge organizations, but they are not 

quite government, and they are not 

quite private. They are sort of in a 

gray zone, and they were created, ostensibly, to try to provide decent home 

loans for American citizens. 

The problem, though, with Freddie 

and Fannie, because they are not really 

government, they were also outside of 

the administration’s authority to be 

able to deal with them. 

So Freddie and Fannie started to get 

more and more innovative over the 

past years, and they started to make 

all kinds of loans to all kinds of people. 

As those loans were made, what happened was there was not good control 

to make sure that the loans were being 

given to people that could actually afford to pay the loans. 

In fact, we had, intentionally, Congress started to pass laws and put pressure on these organizations, as well as 

banks, to encourage them to make 

loans to people who could not afford to 

pay. Now, how that would be called 

compassionate, I am not quite sure, 

but Congress did that. 

So what started to happen, in combination, as this was going on, you 

have the Federal Reserve lowers the interest rate, so money is easy to get, 

and all kinds of people jump on the 

housing bandwagon, and you create 

this real estate bubble, people taking 

out loans, which they don’t have jobs 

or the finances to pay off these loans. 

And pretty soon, as we got toward the 

more recent years, this bubble explodes 

and all of these loans, people are starting to default on them. 

Now, those loans had been packaged 

up and cut in pieces by Wall Street, 

sold all over the world. And now you 

have got one whale of a mess on your 

hands. Now, the question should be 

asked, then, well, didn’t somebody see 

this coming, didn’t somebody know 

that Freddie and Fannie were doing 

things that they shouldn’t have done? 

Well, in fact, in the New York Times, 

the President, President Bush, the 

headline on the article in the New 

York Times, in case anybody wants to 

look it up, it’s on September 11, 2003, 

well before any of this came down. It 

says here the Bush administration 

today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings 

and loan crisis a decade ago. 

So here you have the President saying Freddie and Fannie are out of control, we need to get regulations on 


smartinez on PROD1PC64 with HOUSE