Opening Statement by Sen. Hollings
SEN. HOLLINGS: Our Commerce Committee had a full hearing scheduled this morning at 9:30, chaired by our distinguished chairman of the Consumer Subcommittee, Senator Dorgan or North Dakota. And we had as our principal and only witness of course Mr. Ken Lay of Enron. He didn't appear, and tomorrow, I'm calling a meeting of the full committee to get authority to issue a subpoena for his appearance on Tuesday, tomorrow a week, which would be the 12th. There's no question with respect to the jurisdiction of our committee. Others could also have the jurisdiction. If they got a select committee, it would suit me. We're not trying to cop off anything, but we did start with respect to our employees, those who were the pensioners, those who had trust in Enron, and within that trust, kept investing, at the solicitation of Mr. Lay, their particular stock in the 401(k) program. And particularly do we -- we want to make sure that doesn't happen again.
Otherwise, I am going to yield to Senator Dorgan, but I want to cover not just what he has pointed in the morning news as a culture of corporate corruption, but there's a culture of government corruption. I've never seen a better example of cash-and-carry government than this Bush administration and Enron. Specifically, everyone knows how the Bushes got the cash, whether while he was governor using the planes of the largest contributor; as president in his campaign, the largest contributor; to the Republican National Committee running the convention and the Inaugural Committee and everything else like that.
But you ask about where is the carry. Now Enron's advisor, Lawrence Lindsey, he was appointed the chairman of the National Economic Council; Enron's advisor, Mitch Daniels -- all of these people have been on the payroll of Enron -- Mitch Daniels, director of the Office of Management and Budget; Enron advisor Robert Zoellick, he's the U.S. Trade Representative; Enron advisor Harvey Pitt, he was the auditor of the auditors; he's the chairman now of the Securities and Exchange Commission; Enron advisor -- he was on the payroll prior to his coming here as secretary of Treasury -- Mr. Paul O'Neill; Enron advisor -- he was actually a Vice-Chairman of one of the divisions, I think -- Tom White, Secretary of the Army.
Then we got Enron's man, of course, John Ashcroft, the Attorney General, who says, "Wait a minute, with my $50,000, I've got to recuse myself." And sure enough, he's given it to Larry Thompson, who was in the law firm that did all of Enron and Andersen's work.
I think we ought to have a special prosecutor under the law. Enron's man Spencer Abraham, he got 30-some thousand, Secretary of Energy; Enron's man Pat Wood, he was the guy they put in as head of the Texas Utilities Commission, they brought him up here as chairman of the FERC after the present chairman, at the time they were coming to office, refused to go along with Enron's policies. We can get into that.
Enron's lobbyist now is of course the chairman of the party.
But there's plenty of carry. The Secretary of the Army, White, he was moving to take over the electric contracts and has said that the government ought not to be in the business and let us privatize, let Enron broker that.
Pat Wood was moving to deregulate the electric grid. Secretary O'Neill was cancelling the repeal of the off-short tax havens. Now, there's hundreds and hundreds of tax havens there. And the vice president himself, Vice President Cheney, he was either lobbying India or lobbying California or being lobbied by Enron, the six-some calls that he got. He wouldn't take any calls from Senator Diane Feinstein, but he would take a call from the Enron folks.
And go right to the point, and the best pollster I know is Andy Rooney, who on 60 Minutes, he said the first thing we need out of government is a law to stop corporations from buying politicians. If we don't ourselves show any shame in this particular escapade, we'll never get any kind of campaign finance enacted.
So that's one of my main concerns in these hearings, in addition to the consumer element. Let me yield to Senator Dorgan.
QUESTION & ANSWER SESSION
SEN. HOLLINGS: We'd be glad to respond to your questions.
QUESTION: Senator Hollings, you quoted someone as saying that government could be bought and paid for. Are you suggesting that the Bush administration has been bought and paid for as a result of all of this?
SEN. HOLLINGS: Well, they certainly had cash, and they certainly gave carry. There isn't any question in this senator's mind. I have outlined -- we've got an Enron government, and they worked all last year -- yeah, they say "No help here." Come on, they got help from the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of Treasury, go right on down to Secretary of Energy, the whole kit and caboodle. And we even got Mitch Daniels saying, "Look here, in that stimulus bill we want to get Enron $254 million" when they haven't paid any taxes for the last four or five years. And then to say, "No help here," they got help all last year trying to save them at every turn. They had the Vice President soliciting India, California, wherever he could go to get their particular energy plan and everything else going. To say "No help here" is like "I did not have political relations with that man, Mr. Lay." That's what happened to Kenny Boy.
QUESTION: Senator Hollings, doesn't Congress have a bit of an appearance problem, too, with Enron and campaign...
SEN. HOLLINGS: There's no question. This culture of cash-'n'-carry government, we are part of it, and I'm trying my dead-level best, one-line amendment that the Congress is hereby empowered to regulate or control spending in federal elections. I've had that up for 20 years. I've got almost a two-thirds; I got a majority vote at one time. I'm going to try again. McCain-Feingold is a half a haircut. It says do away with the soft money, but not the hard money. So you might as well give them money to Grover, Grover Norquist and all his private entities, let him run it, rather than the parties. The soft money went to the parties, and the parties ran these elections. So now the soft money's going to go to the corporate and private interests, which is going to really be hard money, and they're going to run the elections.
QUESTION: But didn't you get some contributions from Enron?
SEN. HOLLINGS: I sure did, but I got $3,500 over 10 years, but our friend, Kay Bailey Hutchison, she got $99,000. Heck, I'm chairman of the Commerce Committee. That wasn't a contribution. That was an insult.
QUESTION: Chairman Hollings, (inaudible) the need for a special prosecutor, are you saying that you lack confidence in the Justice Department's investigation...
SEN. HOLLINGS: At this point, I do, for the simple reason I've given, that the attorney general himself has recused himself. Now he's given it to Larry Thompson, and Larry Thompson is from the law firm that represented both Enron and Andersen. So I don't think there should be any connection; in other words, it should be independent. Of course, finding somebody in this town independent of Enron is easier than finding bin Laden, I can tell you that.
QUESTION: Does that then mean, sir, that as part of your investigation, as part of your committee work, you will now begin to look more specifically at the administration, ask members to come and testify...
SEN. HOLLINGS: No, we're looking in the principal thrust here of the consumerism. You don't have to go after the Bush administration, they've gone after themselves. I mean, if you can't get that documented, do away with the offshore tax havens, put in there and make all those calls on behalf of Enron, come up here now with a stimulus bill--that's one reason I helped hold that bill up before Christmas, all $25 billion to corporate America, with 4254 million for Enron. And they call that a stimulus bill. A payoff: That's cash-'n'-carry government, if I've ever seen it. It's the best example I know of.
QUESTION: It sounds like Senator Hollings is not talking necessarily about the criminal part of this, but about the fact that the Bush administration --
SEN. DORGAN: I understand, but that's not something we've discussed as a committee. That's something -- I deeply respect Senator Hollings' opinion. I haven't gotten to that point yet. But we have had a long discussion about the role of the committee.
SEN. HOLLINGS: I'm not satisfied with the Powers report. After all, Dean Powers, as far I know, is a very honorable gentleman. But he's a member of the board. And of course, that's how the board acted last fall. When everything was going down, they said, now, let's -- and, you know, have a study of ourself. And I'm confident Mr. Lay thought it was going to be a whitewash. And when he saw it wasn't a whitewash on Saturday, that's when he said, "Ah, I can't possibly testify now, because that there is a roadmap to indictment." So you don't have Mr. Lay. But that's not to say that the Powers report included everything. I know if I'd have been a board member, there are a lot of things I might have left out too, take care of some of my board members. We don't know. It ought to be absolutely crystal clear on the part of the free press that there is no conflict of interest. That's my point. I'm not finding anybody criminally liable, but I'm sure finding conflict of interest.
QUESTION: Senator Hollings, is there anyone at Enron you might give immunity to? Are there any executives that you would --
SEN. HOLLINGS: No, we hadn't discussed immunity. But there are a lot of members of this administration that I want to know what did they know and when did they know it. I've given you six advisers that got off all that as the Enron escapade -- had stock and everything else, were paid by Enron, and now they're in the administration, working like the dickens for Enron. We got -- thank y'all very much. We got an Enron government.
STAFF: Thank you, press. Thank you.
© : t r u t h o u t 2001
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