	id AA17645; Tue, 14 Feb 95 18:06:23 CST
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 3 Num. 97


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 3  Num. 97
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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THE MEXICAN RESCUE PACKAGE
 
[From The Congressional Record -- House, H1271-H1278, Feb. 6, 1995]
 
THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE:
Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 1995, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur] is recognized for 60 minutes 
as the designee of the minority leader.
 
 
MS. KAPTUR:
Mr. Speaker, we are holding this special order this evening 
because our various offices here on Capitol Hill have been 
inundated with telephone calls and inquiries regarding the 
Mexican rescue package, and many questions are being asked by 
constituents and citizens of our country that we can not, in 
fact, answer.
 
I was asked today how much money has already left our U.S. 
Treasury as part of the drawdown on the deal that was announced 
last week by the Secretary of the Treasury and the President. The 
facts are that we cannot tell you.
 
Therefore tomorrow morning, likely after the morning business, 
there will be a special resolution brought up here in the House, 
and it will be a privileged resolution. In that resolution we 
will be asking for a vote of the House and a ruling of the 
Speaker so that we can obtain the information that we cannot give 
you this evening about the terms of the arrangement that was made 
by our Government with the nation of Mexico. Our resolution 
requires that the Comptroller General of the United States report 
back to us within a 7-day period.
 
So, we would try to draw to the Members' attention that this vote 
will likely occur tomorrow morning after the regular morning 
business, the 1-minutes and, perhaps, a vote on the Journal, and 
we will look forward to that moment.
 
It is likely that in the way that the resolution will be brought 
up there will be very little time for debate. There may actually 
be an effort by certain interests in this Chamber to table the 
resolution, and we would ask the Members to vote against tabling 
the resolution so that, in fact, we will have an opportunity to 
get the facts that we really want.
 
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio].
 
 
MR. DeFAZIO:
So, the situation we are confronted with is the Treasury, in 
concert with the Federal Reserve Board, agencies of the Federal 
Government of the United States, have extended, as far as we 
know, in excess of $40 billion of credits, loan guarantees, 
currency swaps and other instruments to Mexico, that our 
questions regarding the source of these funds, the exact amount 
and the term of these funds, whether or not these funds are 
somehow secured -- you know, what authorization exists for 
extending these funds without coming to Congress for 
appropriations; the gentlewoman [is] saying that there is a 
possibility that this House will not ask to have those questions 
answered, that we could just be shut down here on the floor by 
ruling of the chair, and we will have no opportunity for debate, 
no opportunity to go forward and ask these questions.
 
I, for one, as a Representative of a district from the Far West 
United States, feel that my constituents -- this is not the 
greatest issue before them, but they would certainly like to know 
what authority the President, the Secretary of the Treasury, and 
the Federal Reserve, have, if it was extended to them by 
Congress, what amounts of money are controlled, what risks are 
involved, what collateral are involved. I mean all sorts of 
things we would like to know about even a small business 
transaction let alone one of this magnitude.
 
But in this ruling we could just be shut down and not have any 
opportunity to discuss that?
 
 
MS. KAPTUR:
That is really what the vote tomorrow is about. We know that the 
constitutional authority of the House as the place within the 
Congress; that is, the first to authorize and appropriate dollars 
through the U.S. Treasury, was essentially shut off. Our Members 
were muzzled. We were not privy to information that should be 
ours in relation to the dollars of our taxpayers being put at 
risk either inside the United States or outside the United 
States, and we thought we were going to have full debate and 
disclosure on this matter when a decision was made without the 
involvement of the legislative branch of the United States of 
America.
 
We now have to resort to special parliamentary tactics in order 
to bring this measure to a vote on the floor, and the gentleman 
is correct, that there are so many questions we want answers to 
that we are being asked, which are impossible for us to obtain, 
and we think that that is not what the Constitution intended, 
that in fact this is not a monarchy, this is not a parliamentary 
government. We are not an arm of the executive branch. We have 
our own status within the Constitution, and our constituents have 
an absolute right to know when their tax dollars are at risk, as 
they are, in this agreement, what the terms of that agreement 
are, what the terms of repayment are, what the nature of the 
collateral is. We need to know how fast money is being drawn 
down. Otherwise you cannot make a judgement as to what might 
happen in the future.
 
What type of precedent does this set? It is our understanding 
that never has the authority of this particular set of 
institutions within the Government of the United States been used 
to such a degree, and, therefore, we think there are some very 
serious constitutional questions to be asked, as well as 
questions to be asked about the nature of the agreement itself.
 
You know, I say with some humor this evening, "I hope the Mayor 
of Washington, DC, will take it in the humor that I offer it, 
but, you know that the District of Columbia here in our Nation's 
Capital has been having a lot of difficulty with its finances and 
is about to go bankrupt. It has been on all the pages here in the 
Nation's Capital and in other parts of the country, and we know 
that it's going to cost the District of Columbia real money to 
bail itself out, and it's money that we don't have in this 
Congress."
 
So I had an idea over the weekend that what we ought to do for 
the Mayor of Washington and the citizens of the Nation's Capital 
is to get the executive branch involved because they obviously 
are very creative in figuring out how to make things happen and 
make it seem as though you are not spending any real money, and 
they ought to work up a Mexico-type deal for Washington.
 
 
MR. DeFAZIO:
Perhaps, if the gentlewoman would yield, I like that idea, and 
perhaps what the Government of the District of Columbia could do 
would be similar to what Wall Street has been doing.
 
They can go down to Mexico, get a bunch of pesos, which are 
declining rapidly in value, and then they can take and exchange 
them to the Federal Reserve Board for United States dollars at a 
preferred rate, and by arbitraging this they can probably earn up 
to a billion quite readily, and they can pay off their debts.
 
I mean, if we can do this for the Government of Mexico and the 
Wall Street speculators, why would we not do it for the District 
of Columbia?
 
 
MS. KAPTUR:
I figure, if the Capital of Mexico can draw on the taxpayers of 
the United States, why should not the Capital of the United 
States be able to draw on the taxpayers of the United States? I 
agree with the gentleman, and, knowing that those tesobonos are 
paying anywhere between 20 and 40 percent interest rates, the 
Mayor of Washington would certainly be well advised to get in on 
that because he could probably get the money he needs in a flash.
 
 
MR. DeFAZIO:
I bet, if the gentlewoman would yield further, I would imagine, 
if the city were to engage, perhaps, Goldman Sachs as their 
financial adviser, perhaps they could do very well on this matter 
because, if I could go back to the questions the gentlewoman is 
asking, as I recall, the gentlewoman from Ohio and a number of us 
signed a letter with a series of questions probably 3 weeks ago --
 
 
MS. KAPTUR:
There were 13.
 
 
MR. DeFAZIO:
To the Treasury and the Secretary of the Treasury and asked many 
of these same questions in a just, straightforward, and friendly 
manner. We thought it was things it was essential we know before 
any sort of bailout go forward.
 
Have we had any response?
 
 
MS. KAPTUR:
I am glad the gentleman put that on the *Record*.
 
We asked over 12 questions, over a dozen questions; the first 
one: Who are the creditors that Mexico was paying off, seeing as 
how they were going to be borrowing the money from us to do it. 
We wanted to know specifically. We did not want to know some sort 
of general answer.
 
We have received no reply from the Department of Treasury to our 
questions.
 
 
MR. DeFAZIO:
So, if the gentlewoman would yield further, it is not exactly 
like we are sandbagging them with this resolution of inquiry. We 
have been waiting 3 weeks on issues of national concern involving 
tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars, and we have had no 
response to a group of Members of Congress who have asked these 
questions.
 
 
MS. KAPTUR:
That is correct.
 
I yield to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown].
 
                   [...to be continued...]
 
 +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +  +
 
[Copies of The Congressional Record are normally available for 
viewing at your local library.]
 
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Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

 Brian Francis Redman    bigxc@prairienet.org    "The Big C"
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    Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"        
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