Date: 2002-07-09
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. today President Bush went to Wall Street. and he went to Wall Street because he believes that Wall Street is now in trouble. It is in trouble with investors. it is in trouble with the American people. it is in trouble with the international capital communities. and therefore. the President went to Wall Street. The President today recognized that we have a crisis and a scandal in the financial markets in the United States. that. rightfully. professional investors. amateur investors. and people who really do not even know how to invest but have a stake in Wall Street through their pension plans have lost their confidence and are starting to think that somebody ought to go to jail. This did not happen today. it did not happen yesterday. it did not happen last week when the President made up his mind he was going to Wall Street. This has been a crisis for the average American for more than a year. This has been a crisis since Enron and Tyco and many other companies started to falter as their fraudulent bookkeeping schemes started to come to light. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have had their pensions evaporate as companies disguised their financial health and then immediately declared bankruptcy. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who thought they might be able to retire in the next couple of years now recognize that they are going to have to work the rest of their lives if they are going to get by. This was a crisis for tens of thousands of employees whose jobs evaporated overnight because of the greed of the corporate executives who. while they told employees they. could not provide additional health care dollars. they could not provide extra compensation. they could not give to their pensions. were taking hundreds of millions of dollars off the top of the. corporation. This has been a disaster for millions of shareholders across this country and in the rest of the world as they lost value in their portfolios. some of it for their retirement. some of it for their children. some of it for their families. because of the deception. the greed. the dishonesty that was rampant on Wall Street these last couple of years. Yet it took almost 18 months for George Bush to ask what was going on. It took almost 18 months for George Bush to deliver a major speech on this crisis. The President did not deliver the speech when it was just the American family that was in trouble. He did not deliver the speech when it wasjust the workers at Enron or ImClone or Dynergy that were in trouble. When we in California tried to tell him that they were manipulating the energy market. that they were gouging our consumers. that they were gouging the State. that it was all manipulation. they told us there was nothing to talk about. that they were comfortable that the market would work it all out. There was no market. It was manipulation. It was greed. It was dishonesty. It was fraud. The same was true when he appointed Harvey Pitt as the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. who said that the previous chairman of the Securities and- Exchange Commission. Mr. Levitt. had been too hard on American corporations. when he tried to get honesty and transparency in their accounting processes. the industry came to Congress and got them to stall out. So Mr. Pitt said he is coming to be kinder and gentler to these corporations. That is not what we need. We need a watchdog. We do not need a lapdog. But Mr. Pitt was appointed to be a lapdog. I do not think Mr. Bush can retrain him fast enough to take care of the American investor. the American worker. and the American shareholder. Every week now we get a new revelation. And the interesting thing is that. many of the things these corporations were doing may not be against the law. Merck was taking money that went to the pharmacists and saying it was their revenue. They never saw the money. it never came to them. And they are saying this is generally accepted within accounting principles. Generally accepted to what? To misstate revenues. to misstate earnings? I do not think so. But apparently it is. That is why we need what Senator SARBANES is presenting to the Senate right now. a strong. independent review board. and not some industry control board that the President has been for. or that Mr. Pitt has .been for. controlled by industry. making up the rules for industry for the good of the industry and not for the American people. An investor today in the American stock market. whom are they to believe? Are they to read the 10K statements? They apparently have been misleading. Are they to read the page that is signed off by the accountant? They have been lying to the public. Are they going to go talk to the attorneys? They have been misleading the public and the boards of directors and others. Mr. President. we are glad that you finally recognized this is a crisis. but for millions of Americans who have lost their pensions. lost their jobs. and lost their savings. this was a crisis a long time ago.