Date: 2008-09-24
Speaker: TIM MURPHY (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Pennsylvania

Mr. Speaker. while Congress and our Nation is concerned about the crisis in our financial markets. it is important that we keep our ear to what the people of this Nation are saying. Theyre "hearing words about liquidity. about the markets. about margins. there are even concerns about mortgagebacked securities. What they want to hear is the talk about three basic principles to get this Nations economy back on track. First and foremost is to protect the peopletheir nest eggs. their pensions. their homes. It is more important that we look at establishing that as the base of what we should be working on and not simply talking about Wall Street and protecting millionaires there. It is what people have in their own funds. their own accounts that they want to make sure were attending to. Second is the issue of accountability. Most workers. most employers. most executives are good people. honest and decent. Godfearing. ethical people Who are trying to do the right thing. whatever their job is. But there are also those who bend the rules. break the itules. ignore the rules. or create their own rules. This is what has gotten our Nation into this mess. And there has to be accountability. strong accountability to investigate and prosecute anyone who bankrupted their firms on Wall Streetor on Main Street--and then expect the taxpayers to pay for it. Third. it is important that Congress. in the future. review the regulations carefully to close loopholes and to prevent further mismanagement and misconduct. But there is a fourth principle which we have to make sure that we in Congress take care of. and that is to do something about our economy. Over the last couple years. many times in this Congress weve debated and discussed issues where we could be boosting our economy. One of those has to do with health care. I have spoken many times about the $400 billion waste in our health care system each year. money that people pay out of their own pockets each month to pay for health care that were wasting. Were spending money we dont have to try to protect our economy when we can save money on such things. In the health care area. for example. we waste $50 billion a year on health care acquired infections. We could be saving that money to make our hospitals accountable. Unfortunately. Congress has not acted on that. We could save money by using electronic medical records or electronic prescribing to take care of the waste. fraud and abuse in our health care system. and we have far to go. But another major area where our economy can get going is to stop spending $700 billion a year on energy that were purchasing oil and gas outside of our Nation. 0J 2145 Much of that. of course. several hundred billion dollars. is to go to OPEC. OPEC buys- its lavish palaces. its beautiful hotels. its built islands. and unfortunately they also buy up our debt. Were going to owe them on our national debt for several years because they buy that up. And recognize also what OPEC is doing with that is not only are they owning our economy. they will own it for the future. they are also nations building weapons and threatening our national security and our economic security. Oddly enough. while Secretary Paulson is asking us for $700 billion to help get Wall Street back on its feet. its $700 billion a year we spend each year on energy. If we drilled our Outer Continental Shelf. if we went for the Colorado shale oil. if we looked at the North Slope of Alaska. while just drilling the Outer Continental Shelf alone would yield $2.6 trillion in Federal income. But we continue to set that offlimits. That does not include how much we could have in Federal income if we also use a shale oil in Colorado and also the North Slope of Alaska. We put together a bipartisan bill. Congressman ABERCROMBIE. Congressman PETERSON and several of us worked and drafted a bill which unfortunately this Congress has ignored. It is not enough just to say we will open up by default these areas for oil drilling. because the oil companies know they wont invest in that because they expect Congress to once again pull the rug out from under them. We have to take definitive action to get our economy back on its feet. So follow these principles. Protect people and their money. have accountability to those who did wrong. and work on reviewing the rules and regulations. But above all. I hope that Congress in these final waning days of this session does not continue to ignore how we could be boosting our economy and change it from the largest bust in our history to the largest boom in our economy. That is what we can do. That is what I still hold out some small ray of hope that our Nation can do.