Judd Gregg: “I am most surprised to hear my colleagues on the other side object to my request to call up an amendment, to have it…”

“I am most surprised to hear my colleagues on the other side object to my request to call up an amendment, to have it called up and be heard. I thought the Senate was here to do business. I think it is reasonable as part of doing that business that we should address the largest item in this bill that involves passing a cost on to our children, which is the net operating loss proposal. Now, the way this net operating loss works is that homebuilders--that is who it is directed toward, although anybody can take advantage of it; I do not think it is limited to the homebuilders who built all of those homes and made these massive amounts of money by offering people subprime mortgages which they then took the proceeds from over the last 4 or 5 years, which subprime mortgages have now caused this Nation to go through a massive contraction and which have created one of the largest bubbles in the history of Government, in the history of commerce. Those folks, having made a huge amount of money--I mean massive amounts of money, and, in fact, in the last quarter, they were the largest earning sector in our economy--those folks are now asking that they get an additional $20 billion bailout, $20 billion bailout by allowing them, now that they are losing money, to go back and take a tax deduction of their losses against the gains which they had in prior years.”