Senate Proceeding on Apr 22nd, 2009 :: 7:07:05 to 7:13:45
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7:07:05 to 7:13:45( Edit History Discussion )
Speech By: Byron Dorgan

7:07:08 to 7:07:29( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: quorum call: mr. dorgan: mr. president? the presiding officer: the mr. dorgan: mr. president, i a consent the quorum call vacated. objection, so ordered. mr. dorgan: mr. president, let me just make another brief comment about the amendment that is and i will but i mentioned earlier the grand tradition of the senate has demonstrated by the truman

7:07:30 to 7:07:50( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: committee, harry truman, a memb of this body, had a committee, a select committee established in 1940 to invest -- to inv and abuse with respect to defense contracting. and when i talked about the truman committee, i said that i had -- had talked to one of america's great authors, herman

7:07:51 to 7:08:12( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: wolk. and i mentioned his work, "wa and he also wrote, "winds of war," and he wrote "kane mutiny." i inadvertently mentioned "moby dick," which, of course, was melville. but one of the great authors in

7:08:13 to 7:08:33( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: our country, "winds of war" and "war and rembrance," an unbelievable men, who i believe now is i had the opportunity last year and the year before as well to have a chance to visit with him. and by the way, he's still writing. he's writing on a new work, one of america ace great authors. and -- america's great autho. and he talked about the truman committee. and he said something interesting because he wrote so

7:08:34 to 7:08:54( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: much especially about the second world war. heaid i don't know much about beyond 1945 but i know everything just before and he put it books. and then he said this. he talked about the contracting that's going on in iraq and the stories of waste and fraud and abuse. perhaps the greatest waste, fraud a

7:08:55 to 7:09:15( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: of this country -- those are my words -- but he talked about reading about all this. he said, you know, you ought to create a truman committee, and then he described to me the select committee headed by harry truman. and i went back and read the record of what they did. 1940, harry truman with a member of hi own party in the white house called for the creation of

7:09:16 to 7:09:36( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: a select committee and traveled around this country to military installations and met with contractors on military bases and so on and he concluded there really needed to be an investigation. ey put together back then a bipartisan committee with subpoena power. select committee and it met for

7:09:37 to 7:09:57( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: seven years and held 60 hearings a year and taifd the taxpayers $15 billion. $15 billion. by cutting down on the waste and the abuse in defense contracting. and they did it in the middle of a war. think of it. now, my point earlier, when i me

7:09:58 to 7:10:18( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: was to describe the truman committee in the grand tradition of what the senate can do when it should do what is to make certain that the taxpayers' money and to make certain this economy works and taxp effectively. and so now we find ourselves in a circumstance unlike any that

7:10:19 to 7:10:40( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: we've paced in my lifetime, an that has occurredment and the victims of that wreck are all over. got lots of folks out there, millions job today. can you imagine one person coming home -- just one -- say, "honey, i've lost my job today." i've worked this there 20 years, i've done a good job. it's not my fault, i've tried

7:10:41 to 7:11:03( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: hard but i don't have a job anymore because i was told they were laying off at the plant, laying off at the office. just one person. think of that conversation to tell the kids, dad or mom doesn't have not just one time or $100,000 times. think about it millions of times that it's happened in recent months.

7:11:04 to 7:11:26( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: 3.6 million people since recession began have had to come home and say, "i've lost my job." th work. it desibes why it's so important for an economy to expand and lift opportunity in this great country. time. i mean, it's not -- it's not some inherent right of ours to live in an economy that grows in an unrelenting way.

7:11:27 to 7:11:47( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: that's not some inherent right. this economy will grow and will produce expanded opportunities for the american people if we do the right things. and we've been through a period where a lot of people in very important positions did a lot of wrong things, trading a lot of piper that didn't have any value at all, making money on both

7:11:48 to 7:12:08( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: sides, buying things they never had from people in will never get and making money on both sides of the trade. that's not real finance. that's not real investment. that's not real productivity. that's a paper economy that's built on speculation and is destined to come down. and i just described a bit

7:12:09 to 7:12:29( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: awhile ago just the subprime loan scandal. that's just a part of it. but i described it. it almost makes you sick to see the greed and the avarice that existed under the name of responsible business. shame on those people. shame on a of them that were making a the bank with permagrin because they were making so much money they couldn't count it, leaving all kinds of victims in their

7:12:30 to 7:12:50( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: wake. and now creating a circumstance where this economies that coll now our job is to try to lift it back up and find out what happened. but when do you that, you have to put the pieces of the puzzle together to decide we need to understand all of what has happened. we owe it to ourselves and to the american understand all of what has happened to make sure that we zipper it back up and make --

7:12:51 to 7:13:11( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: and never allow it to happen again. now, we can't delegate that responsibility. i supported the commission and i compliment my colleagues that offered it. i support that. having an outside group of efforts take a look at this, make recommend to me. but we cannot delegate responsibility. it's our responsibility and that's why this amendment that i have offered with senator

7:13:12 to 7:13:33( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: mccain is so impor finally, let me conclude -- i know the chairman wants to -- to finish his work -- let me say again, the underlying bill to which we're talking amendments here is so important because it is part of the solution what? these folks that have been doing these things, there has to be a responsibility and the funding for prosecutors and investigators

7:13:34 to 7:13:45( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: bottom of that and make people accountable for their actions and their behavior that steered this economy into the ditch. i have great hope for the future of right things here, and i believe that we k.