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“THE HIDDEN HAND” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Transportation was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H5460-H5466 on May 12, 2009.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE HIDDEN HAND
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. LaTOURETTE. Tonight, I return to talk about an old topic and also to talk about something that's just happened in the last couple of weeks.
The Speaker may recall that a number of weeks ago there was outrage at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue when it was determined that located within the $792 billion stimulus bill there was a provision that authorized $173 million in bonuses to executives at the insurance company AIG. At the time, a number of us thought, Well, how could that happen?
It seems, just to review, Mr. Speaker, that when the stimulus package was considered on the other side of the Capitol in the United States Senate, two Senators, in a rare display of bipartisanship--Senator Snowe, a Republican of Maine, and Senator Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon--
authored an amendment that would have put restrictions and basically indicated that if you were a firm like AIG that has received billions and billions of dollars in bailout money, perhaps there should be some restrictions on executive compensation and what people should make.
Well, a funny thing happened, however, on the way to the conference committee. The Snowe-Wyden language was removed and instead this paragraph was inserted.
Now this paragraph, if you read it carefully, Mr. Speaker, indicates that rather than placing restrictions on the bonuses, it specifically authorizes and exempts any bonus at AIG or any other Wall Street giant that received billions and billions of taxpayer money. Any executive compensation scheme that was entered into before February 11 of this year, which happened to be the date that the stimulus package was considered, would be exempt and the bonuses would be paid.
Now I have indicated a number of times on the floor that I know that a lot of people were embarrassed by that. I would suggest that that's what happens when you legislate in a sloppy, rushed, haphazard, nonpartisan fashion.
The Speaker will recall the week of the consideration of the stimulus bill, the members of the Republican Party--the minority party--put forward sort of a novel proposition, and that was since we were talking about spending $792 billion in the stimulus bill, it might be a good idea if Members had 48 hours to read the bill, and further suggested it should be put on the Internet so anybody in America could take a look at this over a thousand pages of legislation.
Well, that proposal passed. It came to a vote here in the House, and every Member who was present that day, Republican or Democrat, voted and agreed that that was a good idea. That we should have 48 hours to read the bill. That was Tuesday.
On Thursday, apparently the majority leadership forgot about the vote on Tuesday. And the bill was filed about midnight on Thursday.
The next morning--and I have apologized to my constituents that I didn't read the thousand pages at midnight. It didn't come to my attention that we had a thousand-page bill that we were going to consider on that Friday until I arrived at the office that morning.
But the debate was 90 minutes and, basically, Members, both Republican and Democrat, had 90 minutes to digest a thousand pages and determine whether or not that piece of legislation deserved an up or a down vote.
It was a bipartisan vote, in that every member of the Republican Conference voted against the stimulus bill, together with some Democrats. But the overriding majority of the Democratic Party voted in favor of it. And it passed and went on to be signed by the President of the United States.
What is strange is that everyone who voted for the stimulus bill voted for this paragraph that authorized the bonuses to AIG. Yet, the next day or days after the bonuses were announced, everybody was coming to the floor beating their chest and pulling out their hair and saying, I'm shocked. I can't believe it. I don't know how this happened. We want our money back.
Well, nobody should have been surprised, nobody should have been shocked, because anyone who supported the stimulus package in the House or the Senate voted--the final conference report--voted to specifically allow AIG and anybody else that had received billions of dollars of taxpayer money and bailouts to receive those bailout payments.
But people were shocked. And so they came up with--I will call them goofy--they came up with goofy pieces of legislation in an attempt to cover their political rear ends.
And so the first one was, Let's tax those bonuses at 90 percent. Well, what a dumb piece of legislation that was, Mr. Speaker. So tomorrow we decide we're mad at somebody else. Maybe tomorrow we're mad at the oil companies so let's tax them at 90 percent. Day after that, we're really not happy with the airlines so let's tax them at 90 percent.
To use the Tax Code to punish a small group of people when the mistake was made when this paragraph was inserted in the stimulus package is inappropriate and, thankfully, the President of the United States--President Obama--expressed his opinion that it wasn't a worthy piece of legislation, and it has died a natural death over in the United States Senate, where it exactly should have.
The next dumb idea that people came up with was, Well, I know. Let's not tax these bonuses at 90 percent. Let's have the United States Treasury--the government--tell people how much money they can make. What a dumb idea that is.
So, today it's the AIG guys. Again, tomorrow, let's say that we are not so crazy about the amount of money that bus drivers make. Well, why doesn't the Department of Transportation--Secretary LaHood--just figure out what the bus drivers in the country should make? Another cover-
your-rear-end piece of legislation.
So in response to all this we have been coming to the floor on a semiregular basis to try and determine, because even though everybody was outraged, no one will say how the first language was removed from the bill and how this paragraph was placed in the bill.
And so we have devised a game that most Americans are familiar with--
the game of Clue. A great game, and I recommend that everyone think about running out to Hasbro to get either the original edition or this edition.
This is the case of ``The Hidden Hand.'' And that is: Who took out the Snowe-Wyden amendment and who wrote that paragraph that I had displayed on the chart before?
Now there are a number of suspects. We have taken some out, we have put some in. But if you read the news reports of the final negotiations on the stimulus bill, we know that it either happened in the Speaker's office or the conference room, and there was this shuttle diplomacy going back and forth as to what the final bill was going to look like.
As a matter of fact, the distinguished chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rangel of New York, was quoted in the paper the next day words to the effect that, It's difficult to get stuff done when only three people run the institution. So we excluded a couple of weeks ago Chairman Rangel. He's not the hidden hand. He didn't do it.
So, like the game of Clue, we know that it happened in the Speaker's office or the conference room, and we know that the weapon that was used was a pen. What we can't figure out and what people haven't owned up to at this moment in time is: Who did it? It's pretty simple. Quite frankly, somebody did it. The thing didn't appear from nowhere.
{time} 2115
Someone had to actually say to the drafters of the document, take out Snowe-Wyden, and put in what's commonly been now referred to as the Dodd amendment. Put in the Dodd amendment.
Now we have asked repeatedly, and we have asked everybody we can find, Did you do it? And no one has answered the question, I did it or why.
So because we couldn't finish the game of Clue on our own, we embarked on another tack. About a month ago I filed what's called a resolution of inquiry. It was directed to the Secretary of the Treasury, and it basically asked the Treasury to provide to the United States Congress all of the documents and communications with AIG and others to try to figure out who the hidden hand was, how the Dodd amendment had got into the stimulus package.
Well, I want to recognize a champion, somebody who's been more than good to his word, the chairman of the full Committee on Financial Services, Barney Frank of Massachusetts, after it was filed came to me and said, I'll do whatever you want me to do with this resolution. If you want me to not consider it, I won't consider it. If you want me to consider it, we'll consider it. And I said, I would like you to consider it.
So Chairman Frank took it before the Financial Services Committee. Everybody would have 48 hours to read the bill. The resolution of inquiry was called up, and everybody on the Committee on Financial Services, every Republican and every Democrat voted for this resolution of inquiry.
And I'm thinking to myself, Now we're going to get someplace. Now we're going to figure out who the hidden hand is. Now we are going to figure out who sought to protect the $173 million of bonuses paid to AIG.
And right before we broke a couple weeks ago, Chairman Frank came to the floor, good to his word. He filed the report and recommended that the Financial Services Committee report the bill favorably to the House.
Now I thought surely we would have a debate on that. Again, this wasn't a party-line vote. It wasn't close. It was 63-0 or 64-0. And I thought for sure we could get this resolved so we could go down to the Treasury, and the Treasury could hand over the documents and we could be done with the game of Clue, and we could solve whether or not it was the Speaker, did she want to do it? Whether it was Harry Reid, the majority leader in the Senate. Whether it was Mr. Geithner, who is the new Secretary of the Treasury. Whether it was the chief of staff to the President of the United States, Mr. Emanuel, because some press accounts indicated that before it could be removed, they had to get the approval of the White House. Well, who in the White House approved it? We've cleared Chairman Rangel, and a lot of fingers were pointed at Senator Dodd, the distinguished Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, that perhaps he had inserted it.
But what people have said to this moment in time, Mr. Speaker, is that Secretary Geithner called the head guy at AIG, and the head guy said, Well, we've got some legal problems with the bonuses. So we need to go forward.
But nobody yet has come forward and said, I took the language out, and I put the language in, and here's why.
So I was happy when Chairman Frank reported the bill. And I thought, I know that the distinguished leader, majority leader of the House, Mr. Hoyer of Maryland, is going to call that bill up. We're going to debate it. We're going to vote on it.
Again, 63-0, all the Democrats, all the Republicans voted for it. I was sure it would sail through the House. But I've been waiting, and I've been waiting a month.
I know you know this, Mr. Speaker. But legislation can only come to the floor here in the House of Representatives when it is authorized and called up by the majority leader, in this case, Mr. Hoyer of Maryland.
There isn't exception to that. So I waited for the bill to be called up. I waited for a debate. It never happened, and so I filed, about 2 weeks ago, a rule and today at the Speaker's desk is a discharge petition to discharge that rule so we can have a debate, so we can finally get down to brass tacks, and we can figure out who the hidden hand is, and we can figure out who decided that we should protect the AIG bonuses when these companies have gotten billions of dollars of bailout money and why. That's a pretty simple question.
Now I'm optimistic--there's a meeting tomorrow at 4 o'clock with the Treasury Department, and they've been pretty cooperative. They're going to come over, and hopefully we'll be able to resolve what it is that we are seeking through the resolution of inquiry. I hope so.
If not, I really hope that the distinguished majority leader would call up this piece of legislation so that we can have a debate, and we can get on with it. And we can solve this problem that outraged the President of the United States, it outraged Members of Congress, it outraged the public. This would help us figure out how to solve the problem.
Now what we hear a lot of times around here is, well, we have so many important things to do that you're looking backwards.
I mean, okay. We gave away billions of dollars in TARP money. We gave away and authorized $173 billion, and somehow somebody in the dead of night inserted this language into the bill with a hidden hand. But get over it because we have important work to do in the House of Representatives. Sadly, Mr. Speaker, we have heard that a lot since the beginning of the 110th Congress, the last Congress.
I will tell you, I mean, we voted today. I think every person in the United States needs to feel comfortable because they will not go in and buy a new 44 cent stamp at a post office that hasn't been named by the House of Representatives over the last 2 years.
We spent a lot of time naming Federal buildings. We spent a lot of time naming post offices, and this happened to us last year too.
The Speaker may remember that last summer everybody was talking about not AIG and bailouts, but everybody was talking about gas prices. And in many parts of the country, gas--for the first time in my lifetime, a gallon of gasoline went over $4 a gallon. At that time we asked the new majority party, could we have a debate and come up with an energy bill and relieve some of the pain that people are experiencing at the pump? And they said, Well, we're really too busy to get to that.
So a lot of Republicans took to the floor during our August recess and talked about the fact that we needed to do something. We needed to do all of the above. We needed to have clean coal technology. We needed to look at the renewables, wind, solar, geothermal. We needed to determine whether or not we were going to explore for more oil and natural gas in the United States.
But again, because it is the majority party that calls the tune in the House of Representatives. They're the only people, with some exceptions, that can call up legislation. That never happened.
And they said, you know what, we're really busy, and we really don't have time to talk about gasoline. And a lot of us said, you know, okay, when gasoline was $2.22 on January 29, 2007, which was about the beginning of the 110th Congress when the voters--because we, Republicans, had done such a great job--threw us out and installed the Democrats as the majority party in the House of Representatives, gas was $2.22. And rather than talking about energy, we passed a resolution congratulating the University of California Santa Clara soccer team.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I'm sure that every parent and every player on that soccer team is proud of what it is that they accomplished, but not as important as the pain that our constituents were beginning to feel at the pump.
But you could say, hey, it's only $2.22. What's the big deal? So maybe it's not a crisis. Well, then on September 5 of that year, gasoline goes up to $2.84. And you would say, oh, you know, I'll bet we're going to talk about gasoline prices and the national energy policy. That has to be something that we're going to consider on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Well, when gas hits $2.84, the most important issue that the majority can bring up is National Passport Month. Now I like passports. I think passports should be honored. But gas is creeping up to $2.84.
Well, it begins to get a little more serious. In February of 2008 it hits $3.03. You know that we're going to begin talking and take this problem seriously. But on the day that the national average reached
$3.03 a gallon, the most important piece of legislation that the majority could bring to the floor was to commend the Houston Dynamo soccer team for what they did.
Now, you know, those of us in elected office know the new buzzword, we have to look at the soccer moms. So apparently we had to get the soccer moms not once, we had to get them twice because our two resolutions, when gas was $3.03 and when we started, they honor soccer folks.
But then a big jump happens. In the spring of 2008, gas goes to $3.77 a gallon. And you say, well, listen, you know, we're going to talk about gas now because my phone was ringing off the hook. I assume the Speaker's phone was ringing off the hook. And you know that we're going to have a national energy bill that we were going to discuss because they are honest disagreements. Some people were saying, Drill, baby, drill. Some people were saying conserve. All we wanted to have was a debate.
So gas hits $3.77, and you know we're going to have that debate in the House, but not yet.
On that day, gas hits $3.77, and the most important thing we can do here in the Congress is to commemorate National Train Day. Now, again, I think trains--we've made a big mistake in this country by not investing in rail transportation, passenger rail transportation. But when gas is $3.77, maybe we could come up with something better than National Train Day.
Gas continues to climb. We're out to almost Memorial Day last year, where we are about this year. $3.84 a gallon. And the most important thing that the majority can give us is the Great Cats and Rare Canids Day Act. Now, I have to tell you, I know what a great cat is. Those are lions and tigers and things like that. But I didn't know what a canid was. And if you don't know, Mr. Speaker, it's a dog.
So on that day when our constituents were paying $3.84 a gallon to fill up their cars, we were recognizing dogs and cats on the House floor.
It continues to go up as we get to June, $4.09. It crests $4, as I said, for the first time in my lifetime. You know we're going to talk about gas in the greatest deliberative body in the world.
But no. On that day when the national average was $4.09, we declared 2008 the International Year of Sanitation.
Now some of the people back in my district were not understanding this. They're saying, are you kidding me? We're paying $4.09 a gallon, and you are declaring this the International Year of Sanitation?
But it peaks out there on June 17, 2008, $4.14 a gallon. Now clearly everybody in the country is screaming about energy. All you have to do is turn on the television and see the talking heads. They're all talking about energy, why is gas so expensive? Well, you know now, we're going to get it. Now we're going to understand. We've got to have a national energy debate. What direction are we going to go in to reduce our reliance on foreign oil? Seventy percent of the oil that we use in this country is brought in from other countries. Surely we're going to do something about that.
And I'll bet when I take this sticky note off of June 17, the day that gas hits $4.14, I know we had a debate on energy that day.
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No. It wasn't an energy debate on that particular day. We passed the Monkey Safety Act. Now, Mr. Speaker, I don't know anybody that wants unsafe monkeys. We should want safe monkeys in the United States of America. But on the day that our constituents are paying $4.14 a gallon for gas, do you think that the most important issue facing the United States Congress, this august body, is the Monkey Safety Act? Well, it was to those who schedule the floor. So, sadly, we thought maybe people got it, that that probably wasn't the best use of our time when gas was going through the roof.
Well, this year, Mr. Speaker, as the gentleman knows, we have had a big problem with unemployment. Our Nation is hurting. There are people that have lost their jobs, and there are people that continue to lose their jobs. And so on January 6, which was the opening day of this 111th Congress, we all got together, and it is before President Obama took the oath of office, because we all know that that historic day was January 20, you have an unemployment rate that is beginning to climb. But as you see at the outside, by the time we get to the end, it is pretty significant.
Well, so January 6 is the opening day of the United States Congress. January 20 is the day that President Obama was inaugurated, and there you see unemployment has inched up a little bit. You certainly can't blame President Obama. He was not even the President of the United States then, but the Congress was in session since January 6. That is when the new Congress started. We elected Speaker Pelosi again to be the Speaker of the House.
So we get along to February 3. Again, the Congress has been working hard for 1 month, and you know that we are going to have some economic package to help alleviate the pain that is going on in this country with people that have lost their jobs. But on February 3, the most important thing that we could do here in the House was to pass a resolution supporting the goals and ideals of National Teen Dating. Now, I don't know whether that means that teens are dating nationally or it is a national day of teen dating, but rather than talking about the pain that was being experienced in communities all across the country, we recognized teen dating. Now, again, like with the monkeys, I want teen dating to be safe.
Well, unemployment continues to rise. We get to February 10. Hundreds of thousands of more people lost their jobs, and on that day, the best we can do here in the House is to commend Sam Bradford for winning the Heisman Trophy. And just like the soccer moms, I'm sure that the Bradford family is more than pleased, and they should be. They should be proud of what their son has accomplished. But again, unemployment continues to rise, hundreds of thousands of people are losing their jobs, but we are too busy to talk about that. We are going to do that.
Now, February 24, you will notice a theme here, Mr. Speaker, unemployment continues to go up. And I know we are going to deal with this situation and that we are going to find a way to help people who have lost their jobs. But because the United States Senate didn't enact the Monkey Safety Act last year, we called up the Monkey Safety Act again. And so for the second time in 2 years, we didn't have time to do an energy policy, we didn't have time to talk about unemployment, but we did have time in the House to pass the Monkey Safety Act not once but twice.
Unemployment continues to go up on March 3. And just in case anybody is confused about the United States Congress' commitment to animals, we pass the Shark Conservation Act.
And as unemployment continues to arc out, and I apologize for only going to March 12, because it has continued to rise since then, I bet we are going to talk about unemployment and how we help people back home. But on that day, we passed the resolution supporting ``Pi Day.'' Now, I was excited when I got the whip notice, because I thought it was p-i-e, pie. And I like pie a lot. But this pi is the mathematical 3.14. And rather than discussing a lot of things that are going on in the United States, we felt it was necessary and that the most important thing was to recognize pi and support ``Pi Day,'' and we all did, and we are all really happy that we did, because the country is a better place because we recognize pi on March 11.
So, coming back to the game of Clue, I think that we have demonstrated that maybe we weren't too busy to get to the resolution of inquiry. Maybe we weren't too busy to figure out who put that offending paragraph in. Maybe we weren't too busy to explain to our constituents how folks on Wall Street who have sucked up billions and billions of taxpayer dollars that are paid into the Treasury by hardworking people all across the country, how through a drafting, it wasn't an oversight, somebody intentionally put it in there, how they rewarded these people with $173 million of bonuses.
Now, all we want is for people to say, ``I did it, and here is why I did it,'' and then we can move on to do something else. But to indicate that we are too busy to get to that question I think is not okay.
Now, Mr. Speaker, the second issue that brings me to the floor is last week and the week before, the country was rocked with the announcement of the bankruptcy filing of Chrysler. And a lot of people deserve credit. The President of the United States deserves credit. His auto task force deserves credit. The workers at the Chrysler plants across the country, the ownership, the employees, the white collar employees all deserve credit for making concessions and attempting to work it out. The Italian automaker Fiat had been courted. The President said, You have 30 days to work out a deal with Fiat or bad things are going to happen. Fiat stepped up to the plate. And 1 week ago Wednesday, and this is where, really, it is baffling to me, 1 week ago Wednesday, United Auto Worker members all across the country, and there are about 38, 39,000 of them that work for Chrysler, went to their local union halls to determine whether or not to ratify an agreement making these concessions so that the Chrysler deal could move forward either in or out of bankruptcy, and Fiat could purchase those assets out of bankruptcy if that is the way it went.
And you may remember that there were a number of bondholders, people that held the paper for Chrysler, and most of them agreed to negotiate what it is they were owed. There were some that did not. And so the only route left was to go into bankruptcy, and Fiat now will purchase Chrysler's assets out of bankruptcy. But all of the autoworkers that worked for Chrysler went to the union hall and voted whether or not to accept these pretty big concessions, and it passed.
As a matter of fact, I have a Chrysler facility in my district, the 14th District of Ohio. It is the Twinsburg stamping plant. And those approximately 1,200 union workers went to vote on Wednesday, and 88 percent of them voted to approve the concessions that were being asked of them.
And a couple of things. The paragraph, Mr. Speaker, that is on the easel now behind me is, if you look at the agreement reached between the autoworkers and Chrysler, there was a specific provision. And as a matter of fact, the president of local 122 in Twinsburg, Doug Rice, deserves a lot of credit, because if you look at the stamping plant in Twinsburg, what you saw was they were stamping parts for an assembly facility in Newark that was not going to be utilized anymore. So recognizing that there may be a downturn and that people may use that downturn as an excuse to shutter the facility, Doug Rice specifically negotiated a paragraph that is labeled, ``Twinsburg Stamping Plant.'' And, Mr. Speaker, I will insert page 4 of the UAW agreement into the Record.
Sourcing, Product and Investment Commitments
Sourcing
The UAW strengthened our involvement in early product sourcing decisions. Annually, the company will review its five-year global assembly and powertrain cycle plan with the union.
In addition, sourcing-related activities have been identified in which the UAW will participate to accomplish early and direct involvement for our members.
Current and Future Product Commitment and Future Insourcing
Opportunities
The 2007 Product Commitment and Investment Letter reflects the company's plans. It is understood that additional confidential dialogue has been exchanged with respect to the favorable effect of a Chrysler/Fiat alliance on Chrysler's operations. The effect could result in incremental product loading in the company's assembly and powertrain operations.
Union involvement and Supplier Relations
The UAW and Chrysler agree that there are ways in which a seat supplier and its union can achieve a competitive labor cost structure that enables the supplier to provide a competitive bid to the company.
To advance those opportunities the union will explore a variety of means to ensure a competitive, fully fringed labor rate.
During these negotiations the UAW and Chrysler agreed that a fully fringed labor rate of $35 per hour for seat assembly when the work is being done at a supplier is considered by the company to be competitive.
Supplier Meetings
The parties will continue ongoing dialogue to review the supply base and review opportunities to improve the company's supplier base. Discussions will include the quarterly Distressed Supplier Roundtable meetings with senior management from Procurement and Supply, Union Relations and the National Committee, and UAW Chrysler Department leadership.
Product Loading Review
The UAW and Chrysler LLC will meet to review vehicle plans for assembly, stamping, powertrain and components operations in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The meetings also provide an opportunity to discuss long-term plans for the company.
Sourcing Addendum
As stipulated in the 2007 CBA, the current Roundtable and Powertrain meetings will continue to provide an avenue for union involvement in the Chrysler product decision-making process.Roundtable Meeting
The UAW-Chrysler Roundtable Meeting will continue on an annual basis and will include comprehensive vehicle plans for the United States, Canada and Mexico assembly, stamping, powertrain and components.Powertrain Meeting
The UAW-Chrysler Powertrain meeting will continue each year and include a comprehensive review of the United States, Canada and Mexico Powertrain Long Range Plan and Powertrain Plant product loading.
The UAW will continue to participate in the Product Team Sourcing, Pre-Program Start and Program Start meetings, giving us the opportunity to focus on information provided throughout the Chrysler Development System process and Supplier Selection Period. The National and Local Job Security Operational Effectiveness and Sourcing Committees provide an additional avenue for UAW input on sourcing decisions.
UAW, Chrysler and Supplier Partnerships
The company has agreed to a quarterly meeting between the UAW Vice President and Director of the UAW Chrysler Department and Chrysler Purchasing Directors for commodities and supplied parts, to foster partnership between the UAW, Chrysler and key suppliers.
Twinsburg Stamping Plant
During these discussions the company agreed to review the long-term utilization plan for the Twinsburg Stamping Plant and to share those plans with the UAW. The company will consider investment costs and current market demand in determining the plant's suitability for placing non-stamping work in the facility, at tier-11 rates, to keep TSP viable.
fiat investment and Product Commitment
Your UAW leadership has been in intense negotiations with representatives of Fiat and Chrysler over the past several months to arrive at a partnership arrangement that will secure Chrysler's long-term viability. As a result of these discussions, the term sheet establishing the Chrysler/Fiat alliance includes a commitment from Fiat to manufacture a small car in one of Chrysler's U.S. facilities.
In addition, Fiat will share key technology with Chrysler,
(such as the 3.0 liter diesel and 1.4 liter gas engines) and all its product platforms. This is equivalent to an investment by Fiat amounting to more than $8 billion and will create approximately 4,000 new UAW jobs in the United States.
So this paragraph indicates that during these discussions, and this was Wednesday again when they were asked to vote on it, Chrysler agreed to review the long-term utilization plan. The company will consider investment costs and current market demand in determining the plant's suitability for placing nonstamping work at the facility at tier 2 rates to keep the stamping plant viable. So what the people at 122 think that their president negotiated, and he did, was a provision that, okay, we have tough times here in Twinsburg, but now the company has agreed that we are going to look at ways to bring other work to Twinsburg.
So they went to vote 1 week ago Wednesday, and 88 percent of local 122 voted to approve the contract. Well, then sadly for those folks, the sun came up 1 week ago Thursday, and my day was a lot like the day of other Members of Congress who have Chrysler facilities in their district. The first thing that happened was that we had a conference call, if you wanted to participate, with President Obama's automobile task force. And on the phone was Ron Bloom, who is the head of it, Larry Summers, who is the President's financial adviser, and maybe a couple more. And Members of Congress, Governors and other people who were interested were in on the call.
The notes that I took contemporaneously with that telephone call, it began with, ``This is a good day for Chrysler and the people that work there.'' They went on to describe how the bankruptcy was going to work and basically what I described before, that because some of these bondholders wouldn't come to the table, we had to go the bankruptcy route, but the good news was, on the other side, Fiat was going to purchase Chrysler out of bankruptcy and we were going to move on.
I thought I--I know that I understood that that meant that the plants were going to stay open. We did hear that there was going to be some idling, which they said at 1 o'clock, when you talk to Chrysler, Chrysler will tell you what the idling is, but no indication of plant closures, no indication of job losses, and so we moved on.
So then at noon, at the White House, and it is a pretty famous picture now, the President of the United States, President Obama, made the announcement at 12 o'clock 1 week ago Thursday about Chrysler. And like many Americans, and certainly many people who work at Chrysler, this is what the President of the United States said on April 30 of this year at the White House: ``No one should be confused about what a bankruptcy process means. It will not disrupt the lives of the people who work at Chrysler or live in communities that depend on it.''
Now, that is a pretty clear observation. I understood it. And then at 1 o'clock, the former CEO of Chrysler, Mr. Nardelli, had another conference call in which anybody who had questions or wanted to hear from the head of Chrysler could participate in that conference call. And you could ask questions. I asked a question about the supply chain, would the suppliers be paid?
The first question during that call came from the Governor of the State of Michigan, Mrs. Granholm, and I thought that she asked a really great question. She said that when the President made this announcement, he said, it is a great day, words to that effect, we are going to be able to save 30,000 jobs. And Governor Granholm asked Mr. Nardelli, This is great work, nicely done. We are very proud of you, but I just want to ask a question. I want to make sure that when the President of the United States said 30,000 jobs, he wasn't speaking in code, because there are about 39,000 people that work for the Chrysler car company in the United States of America. And after a lot of discussion about how many people were worldwide and all this other business, no, the President wasn't speaking in code. The jobs are safe. The plants are safe.
Now, I left that phone call feeling pretty good. And as a matter of fact, I called my communications director and I said, Hey, put out a press release praising President Obama, praising his task force, and praising all the people that made sacrifices at Chrysler, because this was a pretty good day. No plants are closing. Nobody is losing their jobs, and we are going to move on.
Let me just go back to that phone call and express the disappointment, because I know that the folks at Chrysler are under a great deal of pressure today. But that phone call, when we got on the phone call, you had to agree and understand that the phone call was being taped. And so what I just referenced about Governor Granholm would have been tape-recorded on that telephone call.
We also had a Democratic Member of Congress on the phone from Wisconsin, and it was Representative Gwen Moore of Milwaukee. She asked directly about the future of the Kenosha, Wisconsin, engine plant which employs 800 people. But for some reason, and Mr. Nardelli now says that he made a mistake and he confused Kenosha with another plant in Trenton, but in responding to Congresswoman Moore, he said, I mistakenly conveyed the status of the Phoenix investment in Trenton, Michigan. It is not even in the same State. I thought Trenton was in Wisconsin. So you have got Kenosha, Wisconsin, and you got Trenton, Michigan.
The facts that I described were accurate, and he basically told Congresswoman Moore they loved the plant, everything was good, everything was going to be okay. And like my folks in Twinsburg, Ohio, I assumed that the 800 autoworkers in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that went to the ballot box to determine whether or not they would voluntarily reduce their compensation and benefits thought that meant they would continue to have jobs.
{time} 2145
But that turned out not to be the case. Later that afternoon, buried in the voluminous bankruptcy filing by Chrysler, which was anticipated, was the fact that the first five, and then erstwhile reporters dug out eight Chrysler plants across the country were scheduled to be closed on a sliding schedule. In the case of Twinsburg in 2010, and roughly 9,000 auto workers who worked for Chrysler were going to be out of jobs and their plants were going to be closed.
Imagine my surprise, among other people, and the fellow from Chrysler called and apologized. He said, We are sorry to have communicated that in that way. We wish we could have done it in another way.
I said, Listen, who knew that these plants were going to be closed? If you were an auto worker in Twinsburg, Ohio, why would you vote for a contract that meant you wouldn't have a job? Why would you vote for a contract that meant that you weren't going to have a job any more? It didn't make sense.
Although the apologies are nice, we have a situation where 39,000 auto workers went into the ballot box believing that by approving this new contract and these concessions, they were going to save the company and they were going to save their jobs.
So I issued a second release saying that is not what I heard on the conference calls, it is not what I heard from Chrysler, it is not what I heard from the President's Auto Task Force, and it is not what I heard the President of the United States say on Thursday.
Well, the first response to my local newspaper, Cleveland Plain Dealer, was that I was confused. And so I immediately went out and I bought one of those new Miracle Ears, and I now have the Miracle Ear so I can understand things a little more clearly than I did before. But I began checking with other people on the call, and their recollections were the same as mine.
I called Chrysler and said, You know what, I don't think I misunderstood, but I know this telephone call was taped because your contractor said at the beginning of the call the call is going to be taped, and if you don't want to be on a taped call, hang up and don't participate in the call.
I said to really prove this, Why don't you just give me the tape. And then I said, Well, okay, not the tape, give me the transcript.
They called back. They said there is a transcript; the lawyers have to figure out whether or not you can have the transcript. This was last Wednesday. And today, I got kind of a terse letter that has a question that was asked by a representative of my Governor, Governor Strickland, on the phone call, and they have been kind enough to give me those two paragraphs, but no transcript, no observations, no words that I know that they have that were spoken by Governor Granholm, no words that were spoken by Representative Gwen Moore of Wisconsin either.
So I have to tell you, it is a difficult conversation that we are having.
The mayor of Twinsburg, Kathy Procop, who is a wonderful mayor, sent Mr. Bloom, the head of the President's Auto Task Force, a note; and I have to tell you, he was very prompt in responding to her on May 6 and basically she was saying, I don't understand. I don't understand how we went from Twinsburg is open and people popping champagne corks celebrating to Twinsburg is now closed. So Mr. Bloom in the operative section of the letter, which is the second full paragraph, writes: While the original February 17 plan submitted by Chrysler was not deemed viable by the task force, the more recently proposed Fiat-
Chrysler alliance plan has been approved. This plan included the same plant closure schedule as the one originally proposed by Chrysler, and the President's comments were meant to convey the message that the bankruptcy of Chrysler had in no way changed these plans.
So when the President spoke at noon a week ago Thursday and said no one should be confused about a bankruptcy or what the process means, it will not disrupt the lives of people who work at Chrysler or live in communities who depend on it, it is kind of like in baseball where they put an asterisk next to the record, that ``except.'' I mean, it would have been a simple thing for him to go on to say except for the eight plants that have been identified but not revealed to anybody in the February 17 plan which we rejected. Then everybody would have understood. Everybody would have known.
But when the leader of the Free World stands up and says, It is not going to disrupt the lives of people who work for Chrysler or the communities that depend on it, I can just tell you, Mr. Speaker, that 1,200 people work at the Twinsburg stamping plant. It is disrupting every one of their lives. And the city of Twinsburg, where it is located, the Chrysler plant is 13 percent of their tax base. And it is clearly not only the pain of individual families and individual employees, but it is clearly going to affect the schools, the police department, the fire service, the garbage pickup. So I have trouble accepting this paragraph from Mr. Bloom that the President was just saying, Listen, no lives are going to be disrupted unless we have already determined you are going to get the ax.
The problem with that is they all point to this document that was rejected by the President's Auto Task Force that was filed on February 17. The problem with that argument, and when people were saying I was confused, it was a simple misunderstanding, we went out and I read and my staff read the agreement, or the proposal, that was filed by Chrysler on February 17 that was rejected.
Nowhere in this document, nowhere in the 177 pages is there any indication that the stamping plant in Twinsburg was going to be closed; that the plant in Kenosha was going to be closed; that the plant in Fenton, Missouri, was going to be closed; that the plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, was going to be closed.
So I guess when people say that the workers who voted for the contract and then were told the next day that they were going to lose their jobs should have known, the only way they could have known, because everybody says we didn't make it public, we couldn't make it public, the only people who would have known are people with ESP, people who can read the minds of the President's task force and the minds of people at Chrysler, because clearly nobody else could have contemplated that these 9,000 people who voted in good faith to ratify a contract that reduced their benefits, reduced their pay, could have said, Listen, I'm voting to end my job. As a matter of fact, the president of Local 122 who I mentioned earlier, Mr. Rice, will be here this week. But in conversations with me on the telephone he said, Look, we are shocked. I specifically negotiated this paragraph into the UAW-
Chrysler agreement that said that we were going to bring more work to Twinsburg. So to go from voting for an agreement that you think will not only preserve your job, and you are getting additional work, to not having a job, I don't understand why people are surprised that people are surprised.
So, clearly, Mr. Speaker, we have a problem. So in the spirit of the theme, since we have almost concluded The Case of the Hidden Hand as to how the AIG bonuses got into the stimulus package, we have developed Clue, The Travel Edition. And this is one that you can play in a car with your kids. It is called The Travel Edition because we are talking about Chrysler. In this case we don't have a pen. The perpetrator didn't alter the stimulus package with a pen. Instead, he or she used an ax. They basically used that ax to stop the employment of 9,000 people who work in this country making automobiles.
And as you see around the edge, of course in the top right you recognize the President of the United States, President Obama; and his economic adviser, Mr. Lawrence Summers; Robert Nardelli, the former CEO of Chrysler; Mr. Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury; and Ron Bloom who was the head of President's task force. I also, just for the benefit of the Speaker, I put a picture of President George W. Bush up there, and you may ask why did I put President Bush up there, and I would just tell you there are some people in this country who blame President Bush for everything, and so we wanted to make sure that we had him as a potential suspect.
But, again, in this group, and I really don't think it was the President of the United States, President Obama, but in this group between the President's Automobile Task Force and Mr. Nardelli and others at Chrysler, somebody knew, and I would suggest more than somebody knew, that the bankruptcy filing which was going to be filed a week ago Thursday afternoon had a provision in it to cease the livelihood over time of eight Chrysler plants employing about 9,000 people. The only problem with that is they forgot to tell the 9,000 people. They forgot to tell the people who were thinking that they were being good employees, good Americans, and agreeing voluntarily to a reduction in the amount of money they make, but the trade-off was Chrysler was going to survive and they would have jobs.
So hopefully at the 4 p.m. meeting tomorrow with the Department of the Treasury, we will solve the Case of the Hidden Hand and figure out how the AIG bonuses were protected. We now embark on a new mission, and that is where, we go the ax, we got the weapon out of the way, we just need to identify what room it took place in and which one of these gentlemen, and I would remove the 43rd and 44th President of the United States who knew, and why didn't you tell anybody? And why did you let 9,000 people vote to end their jobs?
Now, we are going to continue to ask Chrysler for a copy of that telephone call from 1 p.m. in the afternoon. We are going to, if necessary, file another resolution of inquiry directed at the White House. But we will, I think, get to the bottom of this.
Again, Mr. Speaker, I know, sadly, that what we will hear is, Let's look forward; let's talk about rebuilding. Let's talk about doing wonderful things.
But before you can look forward, you need to look back and you need to find out what happened to these 9,000 hardworking Americans that have manufactured American-made cars in some cases for many, many years.
But I fear based upon our debate on energy prices and gasoline prices last summer, and based upon our experience with the AIG bonuses this year, that we will again be told we are too busy. We have post offices to name. We have to honor pi, 3.14, the mathematical formula.
This is my last chart and the last observations I will make. This chart indicates the number of people who work for Chrysler who have lost their jobs from January 12 of this year to this week.
And so in January, 4,000 people at Chrysler lost their jobs. Again, rather than figuring this thing out, we passed a resolution here in the House of Representatives honoring the life of Claiborne Pell who was a wonderful and great former United States Senator; but we didn't talk about Chrysler.
Then in February, and by then about 9,500 people from Chrysler have lost their jobs. And for a reprise, a surprise revisit, we again, because the Senate apparently didn't take it up last year, we again passed supporting the goals and ideals of national teen dating. So while people are losing their jobs at Chrysler by the thousands, at least teen dating has been covered here in the Congress.
We get to the middle of March, and you are now up to about 11,000 people at Chrysler have lost their jobs all across the country, and the Monkey Safety Act makes a return appearance. This time there was a tragic accident where a pet monkey attacked a woman and really injured her, and so I don't make light of the fact that she will need serious medical attention and the Monkey Act is probably a decent piece of legislation, but when you have 11,000 Chrysler workers out of work, what are we doing passing the Monkey Safety Act again?
{time} 2200
In April, we got up to about 13,000 jobs, and, you know, we'll do something for Chrysler, but the Great Cats and Rare Canids Act comes back to the floor. And, again, when 13,000 people are out of work, we talk about cats and dogs.
But then it gets up to 16,000, and, you know, just like with gas prices, just like with the AIG bonuses, I know that the United States Congress will not sit still while 16,000 of their countrymen have lost their jobs. But the most important piece of legislation that the majority can schedule on the day that 16,000 people were now unemployed at Chrysler, we awarded a Gold Medal to Arnold Palmer, the golfer. Now, I think Arnold Palmer is a great American. I think Arnold Palmer deserved the Gold Medal. I don't know, when you have 16,000 Chrysler workers out of work, why that's the most important issue that the majority can bring to the table.
And now this week, that number is up to 18,000. That 18,000 does not include the 9,000 people that voted the other day to terminate their jobs. But, again, we have a repeat, 18,000 people at Chrysler out of work, and the most important issue on the House floor, National Train Day.
Madam Speaker, we are not too busy to do this, as these charts clearly indicate, and the 9,000 workers and the people in communities all across America that will now see their tax bases decrease, people out of work, deserve to know which one of these gentlemen, or do we have to add another suspect, which one of these gentlemen knew, as they sent those people into the polling place to approve a concession contract, which one of these people knew that they were going to terminate their jobs, close their plants, and decimate their communities.
So, Madam Speaker, I look forward to returning to another day and continuing the adventure of Clue, the Travel Edition. I thank the Speaker for her courtesy.
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