On the recordMay 18, 2010
I will not take a long time to respond. First of all, the distinction between a public company--and, again, my colleague is absolutely correct; we want to end bailouts of those companies, and we certainly want to discourage the kind of behavior that can put a county or a city or a community or a State in fiscal jeopardy. But the legislation also looks backward. On page 2 of the amendment it says: ``Municipal government, local government, or county government which has defaulted on its obligation.'' So it isn't just those that may default. Orange County, CA, for instance, defaulted, and worked itself out of its difficulties. But now I am to understand that because Orange County was in default a number of years ago, got out of its difficulties, yet the adoption of this amendment would preclude Orange County potentially from getting any kind of assistance. I don't understand that. Again, there are a lot of reasons, aside from natural disasters, why this can happen. Some of them have nothing to do--a major industry which all of a sudden finds itself departed. How many times have we seen a company located in a State or a locality, particularly a county, that is the major employer, employs thousands of people, all of a sudden go offshore. There is a dramatic decline in tax revenues that come in. So that community's obligations to its citizenry on education, health, highways, everything else, all of a sudden are in jeopardy.
