Tom Coburn

When Nancy Gonseth came forward with some pretty credible material. Prior to that, it had been largely rumor.

Florida, as well--where I did believe there was a significant risk because my belief was that a regional meltdown was possible.

In other words, there would be a geographical difference?

Would you think that would be important to Board members, to understand that 73 percent or 53 percent of the loans didn't qualify even under the loose standards?

So no proof of income, just a statement of income?

There is no question in what Senator Levin had laid out that there, in several of the offices of WaMu, especially in Downey and Montebello, that there was fraudulent activity going on, correct?

In hindsight, it looks like this was systemic activity.

In an organization as large as Washington Mutual, with the incentive system constructed as it was, that rewarded growth rather than quality, it was inevitable that certain people would coach borrowers to meet the minimums.

But you did see it happening?

I would ask unanimous consent for Senator Collins' opening statement to be placed in the record.

Make the loans, package the loans, sell the loans, collect the money, with a small residual for WaMu in terms of risk.

I thought he could stand out as the leading mortgage executive if he could blow a whistle and say, enough is enough.

We here in Congress are certainly not without blame.

Make no mistake, the collapse of this institution is a very big deal.

The mistakes didn't have to be made had Congress done its job, and we failed miserably.

When the Oklahoma City bombing happened and we sent emergency funds to Oklahoma City, we paid for them. We decreased spending somewhere else to pay for that spending. His point falls on a flat wall because when we had an urgency such as…

Let me set the record straight. Yesterday in this body we offered the same bill in a way that would not increase the debt. It was immediately tabled, with all Republicans voting not to table it and the majority voting to table it. So there…

I do not care how we pay for it as long as it is legitimate, as long as we do not add to our kids' debt. I am hoping and willing to negotiate on any area of waste in the Federal Government that we can eliminate to pay for it. We cannot pay…

We got this 1\1/2\ minutes ago to see the language. You have an amendment on the floor that actually accomplishes everything you want to do. Why are we doing this? Because you do not want to mess up a package that is clean. It has every…

This amendment saves $6.5 billion over the next 10 years for what it does on fraudulent Medicaid prescriptions-- $6.5 billion--$650 million a year on fraudulent prescriptions. It also creates a prohibition so that erectile dysfunction…

What happens to all this? What is the ultimate? The ultimate is failure of the insurance market.

Yes, they will pay the fee. They will pay the tax and say it is easier. Consequently, the young people in our country, because we do not have a big enough payment under the ``individual mandate,'' are going to say it is smarter for me to…

That is everybody in this country who has private insurance, either through their employer or the individual market.

All I will tell you is, the best guess of CBO--wonderful people, but they can only make decisions within the parameters they are given. There is no question private insurance, individual and family insurance, is going to go up, but…

What it is going to do is exacerbate the cost shifting going on with Medicare and Medicaid right now, which means insurance rates for everybody else in the country are going to go up.