Announcement by the Acting Chair

Floor Speech

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Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. I thank the gentleman.

Madam Chair, I am fascinated. I have been here for 5 years. And the fact is that people who don't have any idea about how a business is run are constantly telling people how to run their business; they are people who don't have the foggiest idea of who auto dealers are or who our responsibility is to and the fact that all recalls are not created equal.

There is not a single person in our business that would ever put one of our owners in a defective car or a car with a recall. But that could happen. That could happen.

So if you are telling me that, because the wrong phone number is printed in an owner's manual, that is a recall, we have to get that car off the road, my God, can you imagine what would happen to this owner if they opened up that glove box and saw that? What a horrible situation to put them in. Now, you shake your heads and you say, no, that is not what is going on.

Now, please, this is what I do. This is who I am. We are a third-generation automobile business, sold thousands of cars. And these people are not just customers. They are our part of our extended families.

But somehow we believe that, if we can redefine, if we can tell people: ``This car has been recalled. You can't possibly get in it'' and you say: ``Well, what is the recall?'', well, you know what? One pound per square inch on the tire pressure is not printed correctly. That is horrible. How could that possibly be? You have got to get that car off the road.

You are subjecting automobile dealers to the same things that you are subjecting rental car companies who don't have to worry about it because, by the way, as those cars come off the road in a recall, the factories pay them for those cars as they sit waiting to be repaired. There is no loss of revenue for a rental car company. That is why they are so happy about it.

And what will they do with us when we take a car off the road? They will say: ``Send your customer to us and we will rent them a car.''

If you can't see the difference, if you can't see the unequal balance in it, then there is a problem here. If a safety recall is a safety recall, that is one thing. But if it is something else that is cosmetic, that is something altogether different, to group them all under the same umbrella and say: ``This is a problem. This is a problem hunting for some type of an issue and there is no issue here. There is none of us in our business that would ever put any of our owners in an unsafe car.

But I will tell you what. I wish some of these ridiculous amendments would expire.

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