HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Appropriation for S & L Bailout

The House passed and sent to conference with the Senate a bill (HR 1340) providing $18.3 billion for completing the savings-and-loan bailout. The Resolution Trust Corp. (RTC) would use the money to dispose of 80 bankrupt thrifts it is now keeping open. This brings to about $105 billion the appropriations approved by Congress since 1989 to reimburse lost deposits at more than 700 failed thrifts. Congress also has granted the RTC authority to borrow more than $100 billion for working capital that the agency is expected to repay by selling off S & L assets.

Supporter Marge Roukema (R-N.J.) said: “I hope we will all summon the courage to do the right thing and pass this legislation. Bring an end to this sad chapter in the history of our financial institutions.”

Opponent Rod Grams (R-Minn.) complained that the S & L bailout is exempted from the pay-as-you-go discipline of the 1990 Budget Enforcement Act. “Congress has already used over $100 billion in deficit spending for the RTC, without a single spending offset,” he said.

The vote was 214 for and 208 against. A yes vote was to pass the bill.

How They Voted: Rep. Becerra (D): Yea Rep. Moorhead (R): Nay

GOP Substitute on S & L Bailout

The House defeated a Republican alternative to the Democrat-drafted S & L bailout (HR 1340). The GOP measure sought to strip the bill of its $18.3 billion expenditure on grounds that the Resolution Trust Corp. already has ample resources of $12 billion to resolve its backlog of failed thrifts. The measure also would have deleted language writing into law contract set-asides for minorities and women. And it opposed a longer statute of limitations for fraud and negligence suits against S & L executives.

“We do not need to be giving away $18 billion of taxpayer money,” said sponsor Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), or approving “the mandated quotas that are in this bill for minority- and women-owned businesses.”

Opponent Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Tex.) called the GOP alternative a “reprehensible” return to the time when “Congress sat on its hands, did nothing, while the losses mounted astronomically.”

The vote was 180 for and 242 against. A yes vote supported the GOP alternative.

How They Voted: Rep. Becerra (D): Nay Rep. Moorhead (R): Yea

Dismantling Soviet Nuclear Weapons

The House refused an amendment to cut $300 million from a program to dismantle nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union and prevent their global spread. The $300 million was to have been shifted to accounts for repairing U.S. military equipment. The vote occurred during debate on the fiscal 1994 defense budget (HR 2401) that later was sent to conference with the Senate.

Amendment sponsor Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon) said the account for dismantling Soviet weapons is overfunded at the same time money has run short to keep U.S. aircraft and other weaponry in good repair.

Opponent John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.) said: “It makes eminent sense to spend a few hundred million dollars to get rid of the Soviet weapons that we spent $4 to $5 trillion countering over the last 45 years.”

The vote was 149 for and 263 against. A yes vote supported the amendment.

How They Voted: Rep. Becerra (D): Nay Rep. Moorhead (R): Yea

Source: Roll Call Report Syndicate