John Garamendi

Ah, the taxpayers who they were so concerned about a moment ago. They don't want BP to pay; they want the American taxpayers to pay.

If I recall correctly, it's not only the extraordinary economic damage, 11 people were killed in this blowout. Eleven men who were working on that, who had families, who were trying to earn a living were killed as a result of it. Now, for…

Let's see, that fellow Murphy was right. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong. And BP didn't plan for what could go wrong. In fact, they ignored it. They put together an application that just ignored the possibility of the worst…

About 18 months ago they sat here and they said, ``Drill, baby, drill''? I heard the same thing tonight. They said, End the moratorium on deepwater drilling. Drill. And I am going, You want another oil spill? Thirty-eight in the last 18…

The answer is oil. If you take a look, 2002 to 2008, where did the subsidies go? Well, the oil industry got over $70 billion of taxpayer money in direct tax subsidies, $72 billion. The green renewable energy got $12.2 billion over that…

You know, that's really, really interesting. And if I recall the vote, when that was on the floor, the Republicans voted against that. They didn't vote for one of the most important conservation programs we have that not only would save…

I see our colleague, Representative Jackie Speier, arrived with the next generation that is going to have to live with our decisions that we are making right now with regard to climate change and the extraordinary consumption of…

If I might interrupt you for a second, well, maybe more than a second. We prepared a little diagram here, and let's consider this a quiz for the American public. Which of these energy sources gets the most Federal subsidies? Would it be…

Thank you very much, Representative Lee. And thank you for all the work you did dealing with that problem in the San Francisco Bay when the ship hit the bridge. We had our own little spill over there. I had pulled this placard up with the…

We call it the West Coast Ocean Protection Act. And it would prohibit new leases off the West Coast of the United States. This is a $32 billion a year industry along the West Coast--California, Oregon, and Washington--that is dependent…

It's time for us to not only pay attention to the ocean, which this resolution does; it's also time for us to protect the oceans. We know that climate change, the increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is leading to the acidification…

I am sure the admiral is able to read the amendment and would understand it doesn't go into effect until the command structure, including the President of the United States, says it is okay and the review has been completed.

I'm astounded. I'm astounded with what I just heard. This is a problem that was actually created nearly a decade ago by the Republicans as they were playing financial games. And to stand here on the floor and say this has to be fixed now…

Well, just before we took the floor here for this discussion, I was listening to our Republican colleagues say that government regulation is wrong. Well, no, not in the case of Wall Street. The statistics you just gave us, did you say the…

Let's take a look at some of the facts about that. I heard you, in one of our discussions, talk about this and the effect in your community in Ohio, the men and women, the small businesses, their inability to get loans. Why don't you pick…

That history is not a good chapter in America, and these men that were involved in all of this, to whom did they owe their allegiance? I've said many times, it's about the fundamental American values. I know that in my community, a small…

It's one of those basic American values that Wall Street seems to have forgotten and the Republican Party seems to want to be absent from Wall Street, and that is honesty, transparency. That is, explain what this product is all about, and…

That's in the bill that you and the other members of the Financial Services Committee put together. It was voted on here on this floor in December, as I recall. I had the pleasure of being elected in November, and I was here for that vote…

Mr. Ellison, thank you so very, very much for pointing out what was the history of the great 2008 collapse. You saw those enormous job losses that were occurring during the Bush period and then the slow but steady improvement in the number…

If you would like to wrap this up from the perspective of Ohio, one of the States hardest hit for many, many years now, but a State that's coming back with leadership such as yours.

We have to find a good adjective, but the tower of shame. Then they took individual pieces of those products, took them out and repackaged them----

So ultimately we wound up with a situation in which the financial industry had set up a scheme to sell mortgages to people who couldn't possibly pay those mortgages over time. They were often sold with teaser rates, low interest rates for…

I think that book is misnamed, ``The Great Short.'' I think probably ``The Great Fraud'' would be a better name for the whole thing.

Now, when AIG got that money from the taxpayers in the TARP bailout, the Wall Street bailout, what did they do with that money? Did they give it to the homeowner that was going to lose their home, or did they give it to Goldman?

So, this was the packaging of the mortgages that were being sold to people who couldn't afford to pay their mortgages?