Teaching and Research Assistant Collective Bargaining Rights Act

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate being recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. And I want to say, at the departure of the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, I appreciate his yielding to each of us who have differing opinions on his presentation this evening. And that is something that I'm prepared to do should the gentleman raise an issue with statements I make. I know that Mr. Frank is competitive and very willing to engage in debate. And I know that he had a lot of things he wanted to get off his chest tonight. I was here to listen to it all. And I heard every word.

I thank the gentleman, and I will say into the Record tonight, that is a request that I would be happy to meet with, and I will be looking forward to the time when we come back on the other side of Easter. I appreciate it.

Again, Mr. Speaker, I listened to the statements made on the part of the chairman of the Financial Services Committee tonight. And it occurs to me that a man who has the full attention of the entire committee on any day he decides to choose to hold a hearing or a markup, a man who has full attention of the floor when he decides to speak here, it seems to me that since we have been through 2 days of budget debate, Mr. Speaker, that there must have been a lot of things that the chairman of the Financial Services needed to get off of his chest. And I heard a lot of them tonight. It occurs to me, though, that there is a high degree of sensitivity. And where I come from, when you throw a rock into the pigpen, the one that squeals is the one that you hit.

So I think what I heard is a rejection of the concept that the gentleman from Massachusetts and many of the Democrats that followed him in his leadership on these financial services issues, a rejection that he resisted the idea of regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, resisted the idea that the Community Reinvestment Act was a component of the financial meltdown that we had. And I heard the gentleman say to us that there were three Republican amendments on the legislation that would have and could have regulated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I raised the issue of one. And I do remember the day. It was October 26, 2005. It was an amendment that was offered by Mr. Leach of Iowa that would have regulated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac down the same lines as the regular lending institutions who are providing mortgage loans and real estate. I think that would have been a good thing to do. And I recall that debate. And it was a compelling argument made on the part of Mr. Leach that Fannie and Freddie were underregulated and undercapitalized, and they needed to be capitalized more and regulated more. Now I have just heard the gentleman from Massachusetts say that Republicans are afraid of regulation. In fact, it is the ``fear of regulation,'' he has said, that drives Republicans to reject changes in the control of the financial institutions in this country.

I would submit that we are for regulation. We are for the kind of smart, responsible regulation that ensures that we have viable lending institutions. In fact, we came to this floor and supported amendments that would have capitalized and regulated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I have introduced legislation that would repeal the Community Reinvestment Act. And I have introduced legislation that would capitalize Fannie and Freddie Mac like the other lending institutions and move them towards privatization. I recall the debate that evening on October 26, 2005, when the gentleman who is now the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, and I don't disagree with his characterization here, it is a matter of emphasis, it is not a matter of accuracy, at least the disagreement on the accuracy, but I recall that. And it was that he would not support a bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because he didn't believe that they were undercapitalized, underregulated or in trouble.

Well, it turns out that was October of 2005, and easily, by the late fall of 2008, we can all see that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in trouble. In fact, they have been nationalized. And the risk and the liability that comes to the American taxpayers was calculated at the time to be about $5.5 trillion. Now the taxpayers own Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And regardless of whether there was a majority of Republicans that supported or opposed the amendment that would have regulated and capitalized Fannie and Freddie, it is true that the chairman of the Financial Services Committee opposed those amendments. And I think he underestimates has own persuasive powers. In fact, he must have gotten here for some reason. I think persuasive powers are part of it. I compliment him on that. I think he is an engaging fellow who has a very nimble ability to engage in this debate. And I look forward to those kind of debates, and I know I will be tested. But it remains a fact that some of us wanted to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Some of us wanted to move them towards privatization. Some of us wanted to capitalize them more. Some of us wanted to regulate them more. I am among those people. The voting record and the Congressional Record indicates something else on the part of the current chair of the Financial Services Committee. I don't think the Republicans have been opposed at all to regulations of our financial institutions. We have been in favor of smart regulations of our financial institutions, to essentially fix this problem ourselves.

So there is not a fear of the right wing that regulation is coming. There is a fear that we had an underregulation, and that is why we brought those amendments and brought that legislation. That is why the gentleman from New Jersey brings up the issue of Mr. Baker from Louisiana.

I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

I thank the gentleman. Reclaiming my time, as I listen to that, and you lived in the middle of the Financial Services Committee for these years into the seventh year, and that is background and experience that hardly anybody in America has shared with you, Mr. Garrett, and so I just ask you if you could, in the middle of this, throughout those, beginning into the seventh year at least, characterize the general philosophy that you gathered with regard to the thrust now of the committee and the majority within the committee as to whether before this financial meltdown, this economic crisis that we have, did you sense that there was any initiative on the part of the Democrats in the Financial Services Committee to regulate Fannie and Freddie, to capitalize Fannie and Freddie and move them towards any kind of privatization, or would it have been more or less business as usual with Fannie and Freddie? Which way was that line going from the Democrat side on the Financial Services Committee? And I yield.

Reclaiming, from the gentleman, if he would further examine this question, I understand their response that the Bush administration was very much focused on increasing the percentage of homeownership. And I recall a State of the Union address made by President Bush here in this Chamber one of those Januarys that made the statement that we had the highest homeownership of a free country in the world, or at least the United States, that 68 percent of the people in America lived in a home that was owned by themselves or one of the people that lived in the home with them. It does sound like it is a laudable goal. And it is certainly a goal that would be reached for, that was reached for by the Bush administration. It would be something that would be reached for I think by all of us, Democrats and Republicans alike.

But from the restraint side of this, from those who were lending a voice of caution, that were saying Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the secondary market for mortgages, are getting out of control, they are undercapitalized. They are underregulated, and we need to rein them in before we have a problem that is far bigger than the one that is apparent today. If you had to give credit or blame to Republicans or Democrats in the Financial Services Committee, Mr. Garrett, where was the predominant voice for caution? Where was the predominant voice for capitalization? Where was the predominant voice for regulation? Where was the predominant voice for privatization of Fannie and Freddie during those years before the crisis was evident to all of us?

And reclaiming my time from the gentleman from New Jersey, and I thank him for his historical rendition of what's taken place within the committee. And I would take this a little further and ask this question, and that would be, did the subject of reform of the Community Reinvestment Act or the repeal of the Community Reinvestment Act come up in the Financial Services Committee in the years prior to the financial crisis that emerged here in this Congress, I

am going to pick a date, September 19 of last year? Was there discussion dialogue in the committee, and did it take place in a way that would have illuminated the circumstances we have today, and does the gentleman from New Jersey accept the premise that was delivered by the Chair of the Financial Services Committee that only 1 out of 25 lenders were affected by restraints in Community Reinvestment Act? Does that seem to be a balanced delivery, or would there be a particularly different viewpoint that the gentleman would like to discuss?

I thank the gentleman. Reclaiming, I think this might be a good time for me to lay out how I think the sequence of events took place with the economic crisis that we are in. And I'd ask the gentleman's indulgence and analysis of whether he would agree with this particular analysis.

But I would take us back, Mr. Speaker, to 1978, to the inception of the Community Reinvestment Act. The Community Reinvestment Act, I think, was passed for the right motivations, and the idea was that we had lenders that were redlining districts. They were drawing a red line around districts in particular cities and refusing to loan for real estate in those districts because the value of that real estate was not being sustained, and it was declining. That was maybe the right kind of motive to do that. But as we moved on from 1978 until the nineties, when the Community Reinvestment Act was refreshed under the Clinton administration, and it got a little tighter, it essentially said this, that if you're going to be a lending institution that will--that is inclined to want to expand, you're going to have to make loans into these neighborhoods that were heretofore redlined. And we're going to need you to have a certain percentage of the loan portfolios go into these communities that were red-lined around them and provide those loans to lower-income people. So the bottom line was, the Community Reinvestment Act was a regulation that put an incentive in place to give loans to people that didn't have a record of being able to pay it back and provided a merit for the lenders to do that if they were going to expand. So it was a perverse incentive. It essentially was an incentive that said to lending institutions, if you want to grow, you're going to have to make bad loans. That was the Community Reinvestment Act. Fresh, new 1978, refreshed in the early nineties, about 1993 or 1994 under Bill Clinton. And that became a foundational piece of legislation that didn't seem to be a very big problem except for a couple of things. One of them was, during the last years of the Clinton administration, Mr. Speaker, the technology that we've developed, the ability to store and transfer information more efficiently than ever before created the dot-com bubble. That existed because investors understood this ability to store and transfer information more effectively and more efficiently than ever before. And they invested in that ability. And they didn't make the corrections for the necessity that that ability to store and transfer information needed to translate into more efficiency in our economy, the ability to produce goods and services or deliver them more effectively. That was, Mr. Speaker, the dot-com bubble. So the dot-com bubble came about because of technological success, and let me call it an irrational exuberant optimism about the benefits that would come from that ability to store and transfer information more effectively than ever before. So we had a dot com bubble through the second half the Clinton administration. Part of the reason there was a balanced budget in this Congress was because, 1, the Republican majority here was determined to slow down and shut down spending and the growth in Federal Government, and they did that effectively. The new revolutionaries that arrived here, elected in 1994 and sworn in in January of 1995, were determined to produce a balanced budget, and they did. Part of it was out of fiscal conservatism, and part of it was out of resistance to the Clinton administration. But whatever those proportions were, we had a budget surplus for a number of those years. And we had a dot com bubble in the market that was not adjusted to rationality. And when the lawsuit was brought against Microsoft, that was the needle that penetrated the dot-com bubble until it burst. And when it did, we had a declining economy. A declining economy because of the aftermath of the collapse of the dot-com bubble, translated into the beginning of the George W. Bush administration, the first administration of his, when he was elected in 2000. And Mr. Speaker, when that took place, we needed to do some adjustments to recover this economy and we had Alan Greenspan look at this and concluded, I believe, and by reports that I've read, not characterizing his inner thoughts necessarily, that we needed to stimulate the economy. That brought about decisions made that resulted in unnaturally low interest rates, especially on mortgage lending, which created an unnaturally exuberant housing economy. This unnaturally exuberant housing economy that came about from unusually low interest rates was something that helped bring us out of the decline in our economy that resulted in the burst of the dot-com bubble, Mr. Speaker. And as that was finding its place in this economy, we were attacked on September 11, 2001. Our financial centers literally collapsed. We lost 3,000 American lives all in the matter of a few hours. And we needed to do something to stimulate the economy.

And so the President of the United States, George Bush, this Congress came together and decided to quickly enact some tax cuts and a stimulus policy. That was 2001. That bridged a small gap, and they weren't all that particularly effective.

But on May 28 of 2003, the real Bush tax cuts were enacted, and they were the reduction in capital gains, the reduction in interest and dividend income, and that resulted in a real economic growth. But as this economic growth came from the Bush tax cuts, we also had economic growth that came from the unnaturally low interest rates and this housing market that was created by those low interest rates, and we found our way through to this point now where the foundation of our economic difficulty, rooted in the Community Reinvestment Act, flowing through from, as I didn't mention, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a refusal of this Congress to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even though we had legislation that was brought before the Financial Services Committee, as Mr. Garrett has described, even though there were amendments brought to this floor, which I actively worked for and supported, that would have capitalized Fannie and Freddie, and regulated Fannie and Freddie, those things were resisted by the current leadership, the people that say it wasn't their fault, it was somebody's else fault, seems to be always Republicans fault. But this is a historical document. It can all be read. It all flows through.

In the end, we got to this point where not only was there a dot-com bubble

that burst that I think stimulated the unnaturally low interest rates that put us in the place where we had the housing bubble that burst, but the housing bubble was created not just because of unnaturally low interest rates, but because lending institutions were given an incentive under the Community Reinvestment Act to give bad loans in bad neighborhoods, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were undercapitalized and under-regulated, and there was a perverse incentive for them to pick up these secondary market loans and tranche those and roll them on up the chain.

And while that was going on, we had mark to market accounting, which is a good process when you have a market that's going up, and if you have a market that's going down, it accelerates the decline. It was a brutal and horrible self-inflicted wound, the mark to market accounting component of this.

While this was going on, additionally, we had a Congress that again refused to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and you had AIG that was insuring these mortgage-backed securities and these bundles of securities, and they had such a large market share there was nobody in the country that could look over their shoulder and pass judgment upon their evaluation of the risk.

And so we had a market that was under-regulated, a market that wasn't indexed back to the real estate value that underlined the bundles of toxic debt that we call it today, the mortgage-backed securities. That's how we got here.

There were many people that made mistakes along the way. And there was a failure to be clairvoyant on the part of all of us. But the voices that I have heard, there's been many voices that said, from my side of the aisle, capitalize Fannie and Freddie, regulate Fannie and Freddie. The Community Reinvestment Act is a perverse incentive, and mark to market accounting was a self-inflicted wound, a hideous self- inflicted wound on this country.

All of those things, put together, none of us are without fault in this. But there is no one that laid out the clarity of this in the beginning that can look back to the record and say, I got it all right; you just wouldn't listen to me. Some did. Some got parts of it right and we've talked to some them of them tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I would be very happy to yield to the gentleman from Texas, my friend, Mr. Gohmert, East Texas I might say, and an ``Aggie.''

Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from Texas for that measured response to, I think, the very long response that was delivered by the chairman of the Financial Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I sat here for an hour and took notes on that because I thought it was important that I listen carefully to that presentation, as unusual as it is to have the Chair of the Financial Services Committee come and ask for a late hour after the adjournment, after the break for Easter recess, when most of the Members have gone and have caught flights for home. To have the chairman of the Financial Services Committee come to the floor and ask for an hour to be able to make his case to the American people after a budget is passed, after we've had this intensive 2 days of debate on the finances of this country, I think, is relatively unusual.

In my pages of notes that I took during that 55- or 60-minute period of time, as I scanned those notes after the fact. There seems, to me, to be a lot of things in these notes that are somewhat repetitive, and there are not a lot of significant points that can be raised out to be rebutted. The subject boils down to this, Mr. Speaker, and that is:

Who was in favor of the regulation of our financial industry and who was not? Who is on record as opposing the capitalization and regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Who is on record of supporting the Community Reinvestment Act? Who is on record as advocating the irresponsible financial activities here in this country? Who seems to be, I think, unusually defensive about his position and consistently making the charge that Republicans have a fear of regulation?

Here is another one: ``the fear of the right wing that regulation is coming.'' Another statement would be: ``It was a lack of regulation that did it.''

There is an emphasis on fear of regulation when we have Members who have consistently supported wise and smart fundamental regulation. In fact, we want to see businesses that are able to operate, function, profit, and thrive within the tax and regulatory environment that we give them.

By the same token, Mr. Speaker, we're opposed to the idea that we should leave holes there that will be perverse incentives that would allow Fannie and Freddie to collapse and to put that entire liability on the backs of the American taxpayers--yes, maybe $100 billion for each of those entities, Fannie and Freddie, but $5.5 trillion of potential liability wrapped up in those two. Now it's a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Federal Government. Fannie and Freddie are nationalized, and that's a fact, Mr. Speaker, and they're nationalized because we didn't have the right kind of regulations which I supported and voted for on this floor and that others, who seemed to be very defensive, opposed directly. It's a matter of the Congressional Record. It's a matter of the quotes that have been delivered by Mr. Gohmert of Texas and those that I've pulled out of my memory in the dialogue with the chairman. That's just Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

If you go down through the rest of the list of these flaws that we have in our financial structure, where were these clairvoyant gurus in 2007 when mark-to-market accounting slid through without objection? It's something that didn't show up on very many radar screens. It's something that remains a foundation to the hideously self-inflicted wound that we have in our economy.

That's the regulation of mark-to-market accounting. Additionally, the

AIG, which I spoke of, AIG sitting there as a large insurance company, essentially a bonding company that laid out the premiums to guarantee bundles of mortgage-backed securities in their performance not based upon the value of the real estate that was the collateral that underlined those bundles of mortgages but based upon what their judgment was of the performance, the anticipated performance of these bundles of mortgage-backed securities. Based upon speculation but not oversight over the shoulder of AIG.

Another perverse incentive which was that AIG executives, the people who were actually the executives and the front-line people who were marketing these insurance policies that ensured the bundles of mortgage-backed securities were getting their commission out up front, Mr. Speaker. And so once they cashed their check, they didn't have any responsibility any longer or they didn't have any accountability to what would be the result of whether those loans were performed on or whether they were not.

I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Texas.

I very much thank the gentleman from Texas.

I am starting my seventh year here, and I have watched some sea changes politically. I have watched some things shift. I have watched the majority change. I have watched the Presidency change, and I have watched the majority change in the United States Senate. I don't think that I have worked within every possible configuration out of those three entities but a number of different ones.

And one of the things that I have observed is that the voice that I heard from the Democrats consistently over those first 4 years that I was here, and then to some degree over the next two, was especially, especially from the Blue Dogs, Mr. Speaker, that came to this floor and said, We've got to have PAYGO, pay-as-you-go accounting. We've got to have a balanced budget every year. We have to have a fiscally responsible government. And I would make the argument that they would want to tighten down the spending, that we were spending too much money. They always wanted to spend a little more money than we wanted to spend, but they thought we were spending too much in relation to the tax revenue that was coming in.

So their idea was hold down the Democrat spending idea and increase the taxes a little bit and get this thing to a pay-as-you-go equation. That's the mantra of the Blue Dogs. And we've gone through a long debate on this budget, Mr. Speaker, and it has been two intense days that this comes down to, but this debate has gone on several weeks now.

What I have noticed is the absence of the Blue Dogs. Where are they? Where is that voice of ``we must balance the budget''? Where is PAYGO? What has happened to the people that were the strongest advocates for fiscal responsibility among the Democrats? I heard the debate. I was impugned by your debate over these last 6 years. But where are you now?

Puts me in mind of Punxsutawney Phil. When he comes out of the hole up there in Pennsylvania, Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and the groundhog sees his shadow, he gets scared and goes back in the hole again for 6 more weeks of winter. I don't know that that's necessarily the case, but I think the Blue Dogs have become the groundhogs of politics. They have gone down in the hole, and they are going to stay in there until there is a little bit more favorable climate that comes out, maybe not quite so much bright light shining, not quite so much shadows that are cast by President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, this troika that drives this irresponsible spending bill. But they feel compelled to support the President. But he's our President, too.

But I don't support an irresponsible budget, Mr. Speaker, and I would have been really regretful to come to this floor to see a President of the United States of my party that had offered the kind of spending that would double our debt in 5 years and triple it in 10 years. The kind of spending that grows this irresponsible socialization of America--we rejected for a long time the European socialization--the socialized economy of the Europeans, and now we have--the President's over in Europe and is being lobbied by the Germans and the French. They are saying, Get a grip, Mr. President. Don't be spending money so irresponsibly. The Germans are saying, Get a handle on this thing. We don't agree with you in this Keynesian, almost intoxicated Keynesian approach to spending. This is Keynesian.

And the President said to us on a day in early February that--well, he said to

America that spending is stimulus. And then he said that FDR's New Deal actually would have worked except FDR essentially lost his nerve and was concerned about spending too much money. And so what you had was, according to the President, was a recession within a depression. And if you look at the records, there was a little dip in the economy in the late 1930s, but he argued that along came the biggest stimulus plan ever, which was World War II, which brought us out of the Great Depression.

Mr. Speaker, I will argue that the New Deal wasn't a good deal. No amount of more government spending, more profligate spending was going to get us out of the Great Depression. If you look at the data, there is no Keynesian approach in free market history that you can demonstrate that prevailed or produced a positive result.

In fact, if you look at the New Deal in the 1930s, that Keynesian spending, which I think intoxicated FDR for the first half of that decade, doesn't show that the economy grew. It shows that it was flat and then it declined.

And if you look at the wild Keynesian spending that took place in Japan when they had their economic recession in the 1990s, the more money they spent, the deeper they went into debt and the less they had to show for it. That's odd. That's what Henry Morgenthau said back in the 1930s as well, Mr. Speaker.

So when you look at that data--and if the people on this side of the aisle and the people that are running this show out of the White House can't point to an economic time in history that their model, which is the New Deal, they can't point to a time in history when it works, the data is not there. It does not exist, Mr. Speaker. And yet the President was only critical of FDR to the extent that he lost his nerve and he should have spent more money in the 1930s.

Well, I can tell you this President has not lost his nerve. He is spending money hand-over-fist in a fashion that is unparalleled in American history and maybe unconceived by any world leader in American history. And the price that we are paying for this--we've said over and over again--goes into the next generations. And the best you can hope for with a New Deal, a new New Deal--because we had an old New Deal that was a failed New Deal--the best you can hope for with an uber new New Deal of President Obama's is it may diminish the depths to which we might otherwise decline.

But the price for it's a very, very long delayed recovery, Mr. Speaker. That's what we're faced with today.

This budget that's crossed the path of the floor of this House is an irresponsible budget. It's a budget that spends way beyond our means. It's a budget that doubles our deficit in 5 years and triples it in 10. It's a budget that's irresponsible. It's one that doesn't even meet the needs of the United States of America, and it's one that I don't want to see my children saddled with.

And I can tell you, it's one that my children--or now men--call me and send me e-mails on an almost daily basis and are saying, What are you letting happen to me? What is happening to me? And they are going to be paying the price. My grandchildren will be paying the price. And I fear, Mr. Speaker, that my great grandchildren, should I be blessed with any, will be paying the price.

The gentleman from Texas has a point to make before we adjourn. I will be happy to yield.

I will let that be the concluding word this evening.

Madam Speaker, I am here tonight to talk about some of the fiscal issues that have affected this country and how they were caused and maybe a little bit of who caused them and who didn't cause them.

Over the last several months, obviously there has been a lot of debate

about this and there have been a lot of people who want to point a lot of fingers at other people. And that is natural. We all tend to do some of that in our lives, and it is particularly natural here in Washington. People love to point fingers at somebody else when there are bad things going on, and people love to point fingers at themselves when there is something good that goes on.

In this particular case, with the financial crisis that we have, instead of stepping up and understanding that, I believe every single American, including me, has some degree of blame in the current fiscal situation. Everybody tried to get a piece of the American dream. Everybody tried to punch up whatever retirement plans they had. Everybody tried to get better rates on their loans. Everybody tried to get better rates on their credit cards. Everybody tried to get more mortgages than they could afford. Everybody tried to do it. And, of course, some people in business were there to try to provide those things.

So I think it is a little ludicrous to try to blame anyone in particular, or actually any group of people. I think it is all of us that have some degree of blame.

As I heard some of my colleagues just a few minutes ago try to blame Fannie and Freddie or try to blame individual Members of the House or individual Members of the Senate, I think that is ridiculous, and I actually have more faith in the average American than to think they would think any individual or any one group could do it.

In this particular case, let's go back just a little bit. What were Fannie and Freddie created for? They were created to help the middle class be able to purchase a home. That is why they were created. Because before their creation, home ownership was limited to only about 20 to 30 percent of Americans. About 60 to 70 percent of Americans were never able to afford a home because banks simply wouldn't make loans unless they were absolutely guaranteed of always getting their money back. They wouldn't take any risk whatsoever.

So Fannie and Freddie were created in order to stabilize home ownership that was on the border. They were also created, most importantly, to expand the availability of mortgages to working people. And it happened slowly, over time. This country went from a place where only 30 percent of Americans own homes, to now in today's world approximately 70 percent of Americans own their own homes. That is in contrast to most of Western Europe, where it is about 90 percent of people own their own homes.

I personally think, having been raised in a middle-class, lower- middle-class family, that home ownership is still the best way to guarantee entry and maintenance of a middle-class lifestyle, because it is the largest purchase any of us will ever make, most of us will ever make. It is the most important purchase.

In the normal course of events, over time, you build up equity in a home. And most of us have to remortgage it to send our kids to college. That is how most of us afforded to be able to send our kids to college.

All that being said, Fannie and Freddie and their concept of a government-sponsored enterprise have created over time an immense number of homeowners, an immense number of people who would not otherwise have had an opportunity to get a mortgage.

I have no doubt. I totally agree that over the last 10 or so years, like everybody else, they decided to stretch some of the definitions to do some things that maybe were questionable, not necessarily for any nefarious reasons, but for the same reason banks were doing it, for the same reason hedge funds were created, for the same reason private equity firms were created, to get a little bit better return.

Now, there were many of us at the time, now I'm talking back in 2005 and earlier, who said, you know, maybe they've gone too far; maybe they've expanded it just a little bit too much; maybe they have to be reined back in.

And back at that time, our friends, the Republicans on the other side of the aisle, were in charge of the House, they were in charge of the Senate, and they were in charge of the White House. And we worked with them. We worked with Chairman Mike Oxley of the Financial Services Committee to try to come up with a bill that would address some of these very issues, and we did. We got a bill out of committee and on to the floor of this House in a bipartisan fashion that would have reined in some of the concerns that these people that have just talked have about Fannie and Freddie, and not just Fannie and Freddie. I don't want to pretend in any way that they were the only ones doing this, but they were also the ones that we were responsible for. It would have reined them in. And it was done in a responsible way, in a bipartisan way, with Chairman Oxley and at that time Ranking Member Barney Frank and the White House, the Bush White House, not the Obama White House, not the Clinton White House, but with the Bush White House.

When the bill got out here some of the more extreme Members wanted to shut down the whole thing, having no clue how most of their own constituents were able to afford a home, and they raised all their concerns, all the same ones you've heard tonight, that government should have nothing to do with mortgage rates. Well, that's ridiculous. That is ridiculous. And they just decided to kill it. This is back in 2003, 2004 and 2005.

And if you don't believe me, we have quotes here from Chairman Oxley himself, who was quoted as saying--now, this is after the fact. This is dated September 2008, talking about those times. And Chairman Oxley himself, this is a quote from the Financial Times, not necessarily the bastion of liberal thinking. He fumes about the criticism of his House colleagues. This is a quote: ``All the hand-wringing and bed wetting is going on without remembering how the House stepped up on this,'' he says.

What did we get from the White House? We got a one-finger salute. When we tried to rein in Fannie and Freddie, the right-wing members of the Republican Party decided to say ``no.'' They decided to let it ride.

Now, I understand what they were doing for political purposes. I don't understand, still don't to this day understand what they were trying do for financial purposes or government purposes. But ideologues around this place never understand that sometimes doing what's right for people is better than winning an ideological argument.

In this case, if we had simply done that one thing, according to, again, this is the Republican chairman of the Financial Services Committee at the time, when the House was run by Republicans, the Senate was run by them and they had the White House. This is a direct quote. ``We missed a golden opportunity that would have avoided a lot of the problems we're facing now.'' That's his quote, not mine. I happen to agree with him, obviously.

We didn't take the opportunity. And what happened? A few years after that things got a little worse. Democrats finally took the House back.

What was one of the very first things we did? We passed a bill to reform Fannie and Freddie. We passed a bill to reduce and restrict subprime loans as quickly as we could. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. This was 2007, after most of the problems had been caused.

Now, that doesn't mean, I won't pretend that myself and others don't have some degree of blame. I am happy to accept my degree.

What did I do? What did people who agreed with me do?

I was happy to push to allow more people to qualify for mortgages. I thought at that time, and I still believe, that that is a good goal. I will admit, knowing what we know now, maybe we pushed a little too hard for some people. I agree with that. I understand that. That doesn't mean when times get better, people like me won't push again, because I still believe that the best way into the middle class and the best way to stay in the middle class is home ownership. And I don't know anyone who disagrees with that, except people that are already in the higher income brackets, who they have theirs, and they're more than happy to pull up the ladder for the next people trying to make it to the middle class.

People want to rewrite history. I understand that. It's not new. It's an old political game. But facts are facts. When the government agencies had

overstepped some of their boundaries, we were there to try to help them, help get them back within those boundaries. We worked with Republicans. We got a good bipartisan bill out of committee, and then that bill fell into the hands of the Newt Gingriches and others of the world who just let their ideology control everything they do and everything they say.

And we didn't have the votes. As soon as we got the votes, we addressed the issues, and we are still addressing them now. Yes, we're trying to fix the mess that we inherited and we will continue to try to do so. But we're also trying to make sure, while we're doing that, that these things can't happen again. And we have done that already, to some degree. We have a few more things that we have to do.

As a matter of fact, today we spent a fair amount of time in Financial Services passing a bill that hopefully will be on the floor next week, or the week after, that will continue that process, to make sure that future mortgages, Number 1, are given to people who deserve it, Number 2, can be paid back, and yet, that balance to allow people to continue to access mortgages, to continue to build themselves up in the middle class, and to continue to be able to stay there.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to yield as much time as she might desire to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Bean).

Mr. Speaker, I just want to take two seconds and show this chart.

As you can see, this chart shows the number of subprime loans over a period from 1996 to 2005. Pretty obvious what happened. Within the first couple of years, subprime loans were reasonable, and a number of them given out. This entire time the House was controlled by the Republican Party, the entire time of this chart.

As you can see from this hashed section, that is when the White House was taken by the Republican Party. And you can see what happened to subprime loans, they skyrocketed. They skyrocketed. And they didn't stop until 2008--actually, they didn't stop. They started slowing down in 2008 and they stopped in 2009.

What happened in 2007 was the Democrats took over the House and they passed legislation to deal with this. That same legislation--or similar, I shouldn't say the same, but similar legislation was passed through the Financial Services Committee in the year 2005 that would have done the same things earlier. Now, it wouldn't have stopped the problems, but it would have lessened the problems. And this chart speaks for itself.

It is amazing to me that people can blame others when the ones on the receiving end of that did not control this House, did not control the Senate, did not control the administration, did not control any of the appointments to any of the regulatory agencies, yet somehow they can be blamed for a lack of action. That is unbelievable rewriting of history. And I just think the people who know the facts will draw their own conclusions.

With that, I would like to yield to the gentleman from Colorado for as much time as he would like.

There are just a few things I want to say before I pass it off to the gentlelady from Wisconsin.

There are a couple of things that people have to understand; yes, Fannie and Freddie have some blame in it, like we all do, but they didn't do anything that everybody else wasn't doing as well. They didn't create credit default swaps. They didn't create excessive leverage. Yes, they did invest in them heavily. Why did they invest in them heavily? They did it because the rate of return was so high they couldn't walk away, because that higher rate of return allowed them to then put more money up for mortgages. They didn't do anything that everybody else wasn't doing.

So yes, we are talking about them tonight because they are government-sponsored entities, but a lot of this was created by people other than them, the private market.

There is one other thing I do want to say. The other thing I have heard an awful lot of is that somehow the CRA, Community Reinvestment Act, is somehow to blame for all of this.

The CRA was a law that was passed because banks were happy to take money out of poor and lower income neighborhoods without putting any of it back in. People were allowed to deposit their money, but they weren't allowed to get mortgages. Simple law says, if you take the money out of these communities, you have to put some of that money back in.

Nothing in the CRA says a single loan should be given that is inappropriate. Nothing in the CRA says a single loan should be done in an unsafe or in an unprofitable manner. That's not what it says. As a matter of fact, it says things just quite the opposite. It simply says, if you want to do business in a certain community, you have to then do business in that community. It's quite simple.

One little fact: In 2006, 84 percent of the high-cost loans were originated by non-CRA covered banks. I'll say it again to make the point. Eighty-four percent of the loans given that were high-cost loans--all of these loans that mostly get a lot of people in trouble-- were not given by banks covered by the CRA. How could they possibly then or how could that law possibly have caused this trouble if they were only giving out 16 percent of the troubled loans? No one else is to blame, just the ones that they don't like.

Absolutely.

I'd like to yield to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin for as long as she might take.

It certainly is uncomfortable for a lot of us, and it certainly is real. I totally agree with everything the gentlewoman just said.

By the way, if it were a race item, in reality, wouldn't everyone losing their homes today be black? The answer is that it's not. It's across all lines. Blacks are losing their houses. Whites are losing their houses. Hispanics are losing their houses. Why? We've all been victimized. I want to be clear. I want to repeat again:

Fannie and Freddie didn't do anything that everybody else wasn't doing. I'm not saying they're not without blame. They are as I am and as, I think, everyone is. We all have some degree of blame. Okay. At the same time, what about those who were in charge at the time? I'll go back to the chart of subprime loans.

During that entire time that subprime loans were charging upward, this House was controlled by Republicans. The Senate was controlled by Republicans almost that entire time. Particularly when they went through the roof, that's when they took over the White House. Why? Why did it happen overnight? Nobody sat down and said, ``Let's do subprime loans.''

What happened is we got an administration at the White House that said, ``We don't need regulation. Let the market do whatever it wants. Let human greed go unregulated.'' Now, there's nothing wrong with human greed. We're all greedy. It's what drives a lot of us--we all want more--but unfettered greed, unregulated greed, unlimited greed always leads to disaster. It always does. We had an administration that believed the market could regulate itself, period. Now, the market can regulate itself to some degree, but when you say to the SEC, ``Do nothing. Look the other way on credit default swaps. Sit on your hands when anybody comes up with new instrumentations and when banks have special investment vehicles that are off the books,'' this is the result.

Congress has some blame. No question about it. Personally, I should have screamed louder. Now we have the votes. Those people with the votes should have done something.

I want to point to the chart behind the gentleman from Colorado again. During the time period when Republicans had control, they did nothing. Nothing. Since we took over--and I'll go through the litany later because I'd like to yield to the gentleman from Minnesota--we have taken action. With action sometimes--there's no question about it--the horse is out of the barn to some degree. You can only do so much when that has happened, but we have done what we could do when we could do it. We will continue doing it this week and again next week.

With that, I'd like to yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

I would like to thank the gentleman.

I would like to just read one little fact. May 25, 2005, there was a vote in the Financial Services Committee of the House that was then under the control of Republicans. The chairman was Mike Oxley, who's been mentioned here a couple of times. I knew him. I served with him. He was a good man. He was a true conservative. But he was a good man. He fought for his ideals as we all fight for ours. And he, at that time, had control. He won a fair number of times, but he would talk to you openly, honestly, and didn't pull any punches.

Chairman Oxley at the head, Representative Frank as the ranking member of the minority party, May 25, 2005, H.R. 1461, a vote of 65-5. Every single Democrat and, obviously, most of the Republicans on that committee voted for a reform bill of Fannie and Freddie. That bill came out, went to the Rules Committee, and was changed. Dramatically changed. Why was it changed? Pure ideology.

The Republicans--as the Democrats do now--if the Democrats stick together, we can pretty much pass any bill we want out of Financial Services or any other committee. That's the way the House works. At the time, the Republicans were in the majority. They could have passed any bill they wanted without a single Democratic vote if they chose to do so. Chairman Oxley preferred to take an important issue and work hard to get bipartisan support. And he did.

My colleagues here all serve on the Financial Service Committee. You can't name me too many times we have a rollcall vote that we get a 65-5 vote on any issue of major importance today or almost ever. I have been on the committee 11 years now. It almost never happens. That is hard work. That is work that deserves credit. That is work that says it's a serious issue that should rise above ideology of either side. The bill wasn't perfect, in my opinion, but it was pretty good. And it was the best we could get at the time. We were in the minority. Understand that. Something is better than nothing.

So 65-5, the bill comes out and gets tossed aside by people that didn't know much about the issue, yet ran this House, because of ideological purposes. That tells you--I think it should tell you--there was an attempt to take action even in 2005. When that happens, you send the bill out, the committee has done its work, you think everything is going well, you think people are in agreement; and when the leadership of this House says, ``Forget about it. We're doing what we want to do on an ideological basis. We don't care about this bipartisanship,'' that tells you, don't even try this again. Don't waste your time. And there was nothing else that happened until Democrats took the House back, and we acted quickly. Representative Ellison just listed a whole bunch of those items, and as he said, we're doing more today.

Yes, I would.

I recognize the gentlewoman from Wisconsin.

I appreciate my friend from Iowa yielding, and I appreciate his discussions here on the floor tonight.

And if I may seek indulgence in the last 5 minutes, I'm hoping to pay tribute to one of my constituents that won a--not won, but earned a Silver Star, if I might be allowed to do that at the end of the hour.

But what had concerned me, you know, we all have these meetings and hearings and it goes on all day long and often, around 11, 12, midnight, I sit down and I can catch up on some news. I can catch up on replays, sometimes on C-SPAN. But anyway, C-SPAN does help because, you know, we can see things from our office that we weren't able to get to the floor because of other things going on.

But I had seen on C-SPAN debate with the chairman with whom my friend from Iowa was engaging earlier, and I had seen him engaging with my friend from Texas, Mr. Culberson.

And I became very disturbed. As we know, there are rules of decorum here on the floor that we're not to insult another Member of Congress, that we're not to insult a Senator or the President, and so I became intrigued and very concerned as I heard Chairman Frank making statements. I've gotten the Record since then. The comment was made about my friend Mr. Culberson by Chairman Barney Frank.

``I've never seen people, Mr. Chairman, so attached to something they hate. This is presumably a psychological disorder which I'm not equipped to diagnose.''

Well, that caught my attention. He's accusing Mr. Culberson of having a psychological disorder, and so it seemed--well, in Shakespearean words, ``Me thinks he doth protest too much.'' So I began to listen more. He went on and continued speaking, and this is a quote from Chairman Barney Frank.

``Speaking about being undone, my Republican colleagues are being undone by the loss of their whipping boy.''

So I'm wondering this is a gentleman who is getting very sensitive and who is lashing out with what seemed to be inappropriate, perhaps not skirting over the rule, but there were other comments that certainly seemed inappropriate and unnecessary.

Chairman Barney Frank said, ``The bill under consideration is 5\1/2\ pages. I believe even the gentleman from Texas could have read it by now, and if the gentleman from Texas had not been able to read this 5\1/2\-page bill, I will talk long. Even if you read it slow, you'll get it done.''

He went on and said, ``My colleagues on the other side are kind of like kids who have a toy bear or a blanket, and this security blanket means a lot to them. Their security blanket is being able to complain about something that happened before the break. This bill undoes what happened before the break and makes it a nullity. They at some point, Mr. Chairman, have to outgrow the security blanket.''

So he's calling people on this side of the aisle little children. Of course the debate that was going on was the concern from our side that, first of all, we had been promised by our new President and by the Speaker, and we'd even passed a bill in here that said we had to have 48 hours to review any bill that they rushed in here to the floor. We had to have that chance. Yet they came in and immediately filed a bill. I think it went up on the Internet at around 11:00 or 12:00, and at 9:00 or 10:00 the next morning, we were having a debate on it and a vote on it that day. There was no 24 hours, but we were told we had to do that. It was critical. It was a crisis. People were losing their jobs every minute that we didn't vote on it and pass it.

So they ran roughshod. They would not allow any Member of this body the time to read the bill. They ran roughshod over everybody. Nobody had a chance to read it. Then to come in and accuse people on this side of the aisle, who were concerned about that, of being kids wanting a security blanket, I'll tell you: It is a security blanket to me that we could be able to read bills before we cram them down the throats of Americans. So I'm hearing this on C-SPAN.

Here is another comment by Chairman Frank: ``The gentleman from Texas has now had a chance to read the bill, and has a question for me about this bill.''

He goes on and says, ``He can have all the Special Orders he wants in order to beat that dead horse, because it is a dead horse. This bill that he does not want to debate the merits of, that he is probably prepared to vote against--that he didn't want to debate the merits of? That was uncalled for and was inappropriate. We were entirely prepared to try to debate the merits, but here again, it had to do with seeing a bill rushed through here without a chance for anybody to read it and then rushing in last week and saying, ``Here. Let's quickly vote on a 90 percent tax after the fact, ex post facto, a bill of attainder in all likelihood, due process issues, taking issues, equal protection issues, all kinds of questions about it.

Rush that in as a fix. Then here they come, rushing right back in, saying, ``Well, we've got another fix. This will even be better,'' and we wonder why people would want to question it. Well, you know, is this 5\1/2\-page bill any better than the one you rushed through last week? There were concerns.

Chairman Frank also went on and said, ``Apparently, there are two alternative strategies that the minority has in discussing this bill: One, discuss a bill that was passed 6 weeks ago; two, ignore the rules of the House and just talk whenever they feel like it. Neither one seems, to me, to advance debate.''

So I'm hearing these things coming from Chairman Frank. There was something amiss here.

He went on to also say, ``This is a revolt against King George, in effect, and it is--King George Bush.'' That is really unnecessary, slamming the former President. Talk about a whipping boy. They made former President Bush quite the whipping boy at every chance. They still are.

I mean, the Constitution makes very clear that Congress is the one that has

to appropriate money and pass spending bills. After the Democrats took the majority in 2007 and 2008 and passed these enormous spending bills, which only Congress can do, they still want to blame the President who had no power to legislate.

Chairman Frank also went on and said, ``I wish I didn't have to listen to some of these speeches, particularly the repetitive ones about the bill 6 weeks ago.''

He also said, ``But when Members complain about something that might happen that won't happen, it is because they are against what is happening but don't have the confidence that, if they said it, people would believe it.'' This was also a slam at the motives of the people who had proper concerns about the rush repeatedly to pass something so it looked to people across America that something was being done.

As a former judge, when I hear people being that sensitive and lashing out at others, there is something here, so I had gone back and had pulled some quotes to see if, perhaps, this was the source of the sensitivity.

On September 25, 2003, at the hearing on H.R. 2575, The Secondary Mortgage Market Enterprises, Mr. Frank said, ``There are people in the country who are prepared to lend money to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at less interest rates than they might get elsewhere. I thank those people for doing that. I must tell them that I hope they are not doing that on the assumption that, if things go bad, I or my colleagues will bail them out. We will not.''

Also on page 4, ``I think it is clear that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are sufficiently secure, so they are in no great danger.''

Also on page 4, this again is Mr. Frank. ``I don't think we face a crisis; I don't think that we have an impending disaster. We have a chance to improve regulation of two entities that I think are, on the whole, working well.'' Well, we know now they were not at all.

In debate on the floor here on H.R. 1461, to reform regulation of Fannie and Freddie, October 26 of 2005--this is in the Congressional Record--Mr. Frank said, ``There are banks who complain that because Fannie and Freddie are perceived to have some backup from Congress--and let me say right now, if you are listening, if you are buying Fannie's or Freddie's paper because you think I am going to vote to bail you out, sell it and cash it in. I am not going to do that. I do not think there is a Federal guarantee.'' We know, apparently, he didn't mean what he said or he has changed his mind since then.

On July 19 of 2008--and this is Air America's 7 Days quoting Chairman Frank--``It's really been a test of regulation . . . a conscious decision brought by Alan Greenspan, who is the arch de-regulator. Because in 1994, not coincidentally, the last time the Democrats had a congressional majority before this year, a bill was passed that was called the Homeowner Equity Protection Act, that said to the Federal Reserve, `Look, we now have loans being made by non-regulated entities, so please pass some rules. We give you the statutory authority to pass the rules to contain their activity and make it more responsible.' Alan Greenspan said, `Oh, no. That's interfering with the market. I can't do that.' He didn't do it; that's where the crisis came.'' Interesting place to blame.

In any event, on September 10 of 2003, there is one other quote from Mr. Frank. ``The more people, in my judgment, who exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury''--and these are Mr. Frank's words--``which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disaster scenarios.'' That was from The Wall Street Journal on October 2, 2008, bringing back that quote from 2003.

So, as I look back--and I was looking for the justification of why such an intellectual man as Mr. Frank would be lashing out, calling names, accusing people here on the floor of having psychological disorders--I began to get a picture, and it may have to do with what the gentleman from Iowa pointed out earlier about who ends up squealing. There was something there that did trigger, perhaps, more sensitivity than we might have thought necessary, but when you get to the bottom of it, there are quotes here that are a problem, that did help protect Fannie when they should have had some things done to shore them up and should have had a protection that prevented that from happening.

So I appreciate the gentleman yielding.

Again, I go back. There was no need to lash out at Mr. Culberson and at others, but the more you look back at the quotes over the last 5 years, even into the nineties, you begin to see, maybe, why there is such sensitivity on these issues.

I appreciate my friend yielding. I yield back to him.

I appreciate my friend from Iowa yielding.

I have run across some quotes.

I was at the home of some friends of mine in Dallas, and they had a number of fantastic quotes from our history, and I think what we've seen today as this budget, this terrible, terrible budget was passed, just one of the quotes from Thomas Jefferson, this brilliant man, was, ``the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.'' And that's exactly what we saw today with this budget. Liberty was yielding, the government taking more and more control of everything. Thomas Jefferson knew it.

I mean, it's like Solomon said, There is nothing new under the sun. These things that people think are new and innovative, it is not new. It failed in the New Testament church, it failed the Pilgrims when half of them nearly starved the first winter. They came up with this grand idea, let's give everybody their own private property and make them responsible for producing on their own property--and they have access. It's theirs. They can borrow it, sell it, whatever. It's theirs. It was a great idea. And that carried over 150 years into the Constitution, this idea of private property and the government not trying to run everything.

But what I would humbly submit, the way it appears to me and why we're seeing so much government intervention, the more it does, the more it feels like it has to do.

But what we've seen like Madoff, things like Countrywide, some of the people there who shoved people into mortgages they couldn't afford, packaged them together and then sold them off without recourse, made their millions. You know, things like that, those are the things this Nation, this government of this Nation, are supposed to be looking for. We're supposed to make sure there is a level playing field. We're supposed to protect this Nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We had some domestic enemies that were hurting people in this country.

But what happens is when we get so caught up in trying to run everything, telling Detroit exactly what kinds of cars you have got to make, telling the business people this is what you have got to do, we're so busy telling people how to run their lives, how to run their businesses, that we lost what we are supposed to be doing. We're supposed to provide these people with a defense from the crooks from the domestic and foreign enemies. But oh, no. We're too busy telling them what they are supposed to do.

I love what Abe Lincoln said. He said, ``We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other Nation.'' He concluded, ``though but we have forgotten God. Because if you know that there is an ultimate Universal source of right and wrong, then you care more about doing right and trying to help others do right.'' And that's what this government is supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be catching cheaters, dishonest people hurting America, and we lose that grip when we try to run everything.

And I would also point out as you try to get your hands around this huge budget that increases the deficit--I mean, people--we got beat up in 2005 and 2006. My first years here, we were in the majority. We were beat up because we were spending too much money, and we were. But then turn around to 2007 and 2008, the Democrats have control of everything. They are not reigning in spending. It goes through the roof. And now it's gone even further.

So if you want to know the bottom-line secret of what this budget is about, I would submit to you it can be found in one action: that was in this administration sending Secretary of State Clinton to China to beg them to loan us more money. That's what this budget does. It makes us beg China for more money.

You know, many in this body think this Nation will go on forever. We know no nation will last forever. We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. But those rights are like any inheritance. You only get to have them if people are willing to fight and protect them, fighting government and then fight our enemies abroad.

Well, in the summer of 2008, media from around the country released reports on an attack on an American military outpost base in the Kunar province of Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. Accounts say that 45 U.S. paratroopers and 25 Afghan soldiers were assaulted by up to 500 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, bombarding our soldiers with rocket- propelled grenades and mortars. Nine U.S. soldiers were killed, 15 injured, and it was called the deadliest attack on American forces in Afghanistan since 2005.

I am here today to honor these servicemembers for their incredible sacrifice and to especially recognize one in particular who I am so very proud and humbled to represent as his U.S. Congressman.

Army Specialist Aaron David Davis, from Kilgore, Texas, was serving as an anti-armor gunner of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team and was sent in as reinforcement when insurgents assailed our soldiers on July 13, 2008.

In the rural town of Wanat, Afghanistan, Specialist Davis and his men were bombarded by enemy fire from all sides as insurgents took over homes and mosques in their attempts to seize the newly established American base there. Specialist Davis and his fellow soldiers were vastly outnumbered, but they continued to courageously fight. Specialist Davis saw many of his fellow soldiers killed in the midst of that chaotic combat and was wounded himself; yet he was not deterred from fiercely protecting the base and his friends.

An American military helicopter finally came to the rescue, but even after he was told to get on the helicopter that would surely be his ticket to safety, a wounded and hurting Davis was more concerned with the protection of others. With his own life in peril, he stayed and continued to fight.

Among his heroic actions, Specialist Davis crawled to the frontline to check on a fellow soldier, and then he helped save three fellow soldiers, putting them on gurneys and helping get them airlifted out of the ongoing battle. While fighting to protect these men, Davis was again wounded, receiving shrapnel in his left hand, left arm, and behind his right eye. He became so wounded he finally had to be lifted away from the fight himself.

There is so much more to the story, and I wish there were more time to elaborate on this young man's incredible selflessness. Aaron Davis spend many weeks recovering from his wounds at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and he is now back on active duty at Fort Sam Houston, continuing to boldly serve his country while still further rehabilitating.

He was recently awarded the Purple Heart for the wounds he suffered, as well as the Silver Star, the third highest military decoration that can be awarded to a member of any branch of the United States Armed Forces, for his incredible courage and unwavering commitment to his country and his fellow soldiers. Specialist Aaron Davis deserves our thanks for his bold bravery and selfless sacrifice.

It is the courage and commitment of Aaron Davis and his fellow soldiers and those like them that allows us to continue to enjoy our freedom as U.S. citizens. We are manifestly proud and permanently grateful. To Specialist Aaron Davis, may God bless Aaron Davis and he and all he has done for this Nation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank to you my colleague, Congressman Capuano for leading this Special Order tonight.

I wanted to just kind of go back and share with those who are listening tonight that when I came to Congress, I was elected in 2004, I came in 2005. I asked to serve on the Financial Services Committee. I had no idea at that time that it would be the busiest committee in 2009 as we've worked to address the economic downturn, the likes of which we certainly haven't seen in my lifetime.

But to reflect back on that history, what I was so pleased to discover, because we talk a lot about partisanship in the media and there's a feeling that there's never any working together in Washington, is I came to the committee in 2005 under the chairmanship of Republican Mike Oxley and Ranking Member Barney Frank, and they demonstrated what work together really means. It was a committee that put partisanship aside. Both leaders of both parties recognized hard work and good ideas; it didn't matter which side of the aisle it came from. They worked hard to find common ground. And I was very happy to be there and learned a lot from Chairman Oxley and respect him, as I've also come to see that Chairman Frank, as he took the gavel in 2007, has continued in that tradition. It's exciting to see what's possible in committees when ideas prevail over ideology.

As I mentioned, it's been a busy committee, and we haven't slowed down. And we have a chairman that's very deliberative and consensus- driven. Unfortunately, when Chairman Frank took the gavel in 2007, he was faced with some serious challenges. The subprime mortgage crisis, the issue of bringing proper oversight to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and he really stepped up to those challenges. In fact, prior to that, we'd already been working. In fact, prior to the recent problems with the mortgage crisis, in 2007, we immediately passed legislation to address the subprime crisis and, in fact, Chairman Frank made sure that we passed robust oversight for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That did pass and become law.

Unfortunately, the mortgage reform went to the Senate, where it did not move and get to the President for signature and did not become law. And we are now, just this week in committee, and, in fact, today, we were marking up another mortgage reform bill that we'll be bringing forward, and we're more hopeful that the Senate and the President will act on that and it will become law so that we can eliminate the lending practices of the past that introduce too much risk to the system and set up people to fail. It's not home ownership if you're only there for a little while and ultimately can't make your payments.

We have to move beyond the lack of due diligence and proper underwriting standards that allowed no doc, low doc loans, drive-by appraisals, triple A rated securities that really weren't triple A that contributed to an economic downturn of not just systemic proportions domestically, but international ramifications. And we're continuing to work hard on those issues.

We've worked to address foreclosure avoidance. We've worked to address the credit crisis. And all of this has been led by a chairman who continues to respect good ideas, regardless of which party they come from.

I find it interesting that many have chosen to demonize particular individuals in the Congress, or suggest that one Member, particularly when he served in the minority, somehow could bring the downfall of Fannie or Freddie or our system in general, when, in fact, well, for over a decade, many on both sides of the aisle talked about the need for proper oversight to these large institutions, Fannie and Freddie. And yet, it wasn't until Chairman Frank had the gavel that we actually moved from rhetoric to resolution and passed that resolution in the House so we could bring that oversight. Unfortunately, by the time it did pass, it was too late to preclude government takeover of these institutions.

Let me move on to a couple of other areas that we've been working on in committee and, again, where there's been effort to work together. Let's talk about the TARP funding. One of the things that I was impressed with was that when past President Bush came and Secretary Paulson at the time came to Congress requesting funds to support greater stabilization of our financial institutions, Chairman Frank didn't hesitate to bring some sincere bipartisan effort to the equation. He didn't accept the request as it was, which was, essentially, a blank check. He demanded greater accountability and more specific definition of the purpose of those funds, and has continued to fight to improve that ever since.

But what he also didn't do is he didn't lay blame. He didn't step back and say, that's another party's problem. He brought constructive solutions forward. And that's what we all need to do in this body if we're to address the challenges we continue to face.

We've had countless hearings, not only in the past Congress, but in this Congress, to address issues about agency abilities and lack of abilities; if you look, for instance, at the Madoff scandal and the SEC's inability to have addressed that long before they finally did and when it was too late.

We've had hearings about the AIG fallout and does that bring about the need for a greater Federal role in insurance regulation.

We've had hearings about systemic risk and how we can bring a greater authority to have an umbrella oversight beyond the functional regulator so we can determine where there might be risks in the system that, in a future downturn, could do what happened recently, affecting all of our businesses, our families' savings for retirement and for college, reducing the values of our homes. And we need to avoid that type of systemic fallout when we have future downturns, which we're always likely to have in normal cycles.

We've talked about providing resolution authority so that, as the FDIC has been able to wind down failing banks in a way that has not been disruptive to businesses and families who are depositors of those banks, but to reorganize those institutions in a way that doesn't bring further panic to the system, we don't have, and our Federal Government doesn't have, clear authority relative to someone like an AIG or other institutions that don't fall under FDIC's ability to do that.

So as we continue through these hearings and continue our hard work, I think it's important that we focus on solutions and not playing the blame game. This is my fifth year in Congress, and I've never come to this floor to attack an individual or a party, and I don't ever intend to do that. But I thought it was important to come, at least call it as I see it and lay the record more clearly where there have been those who have cast blame clearly in the wrong direction.

Many economists are telling us this is the worst crisis we have seen since the Great Depression. We have been forced to make hard choices, and we are going to continue to make hard choices. And we are going to make

some mistakes along the way, but our intent needs to be, on a bipartisan basis, that we roll up our sleeves, we work together, and we find the best solutions possible. I am glad that on the Financial Services Committee we have a chairman and a ranking member who both step up to bring that kind of leadership in the continued tradition that was here when I came in 2005 under Chairman Oxley and then Ranking Member Frank. I am glad to be on that committee and will continue to do my part.

I will mention one other thing. I happen to vice chair a coalition that's called the New Dem Coalition, which is a pro-growth caucus. And we have been very focused on pro-growth, pro-innovation solutions to some of the challenges that we are facing. I also happen to chair the task force for the NDC on Financial Services regulatory reform. And I have also appreciated the chairman's deliberative approach and feedback to some of the suggestions we have made to him for committee consideration relative to regulatory reform.

We are focusing on regulatory performance. Clearly, the SEC's inability to determine that there was a problem that ultimately resulted in the Madoff Ponzi scheme suggests that we don't need more regulation, but better regulation, and a greater degree of best practices in the agencies who should be accountable for it.

We are also working on addressing issues of market stability and transparency, making sure that we bring to the table some counters, or countercyclical mechanisms to offset the pro-cyclical nature of our system as it occurs currently, which has contributed to repeat cycles of booms and busts and booms and busts. And we need to be more prescriptive in working with our regulators to ensure that they consider and have the flexibility to weigh in on things relative to capital requirements. So as we see a bubble in formation, maybe increasing some of those requirements so as to encourage some deleveraging where clearly we were overleveraged. Conversely, when we are in a precipitous downfall, as we have all experienced recently, that is probably the time that the regulator should have the ability to consider easing up on those capital requirements so it doesn't require forced selloff of other equities as it did when we had the mortgage crisis, which created a more systemic-wide problem.

We have to improve consumer and investor protections. And so we look at things like the credit default swap market, which has been roughly a $62 trillion unregulated market that left many counterparties out there and ultimately required Federal intervention to assist AIG in their downturn.

Those are the kinds of things that we are working on. And we don't have all the answers, but we are working together on a bipartisan basis to find those solutions--and had a late night dinner this week. Those are the kinds of things that we are going to have to continue to do to bring real solutions to the table and help create an environment so that our businesses and our families are on a solid foundation that supports sustained growth as we turn our economy around.

Thank you. And I yield back.

To the gentleman from Iowa, I appreciate your organizing this hour on the floor. And I came here ostensibly to talk about the issue affecting the American public today, and that you touch on it at the end there as far as the regulation of our financial system. But inasmuch as the chairman of the Financial Services just did spend the last hour addressing the sub issue of that is whether the charges against him, whether they were legitimate, was the basis of his discussion for the last 55 minutes whether it is legitimate as some on this floor and outside in the media as well and other groups and what have you and have accused him of being primarily or ostensibly responsible for some of the problems that we now find ourselves in.

I will just spend a minute, even though he spent 55 minutes, on that. As I said before, in Congress there have been various champions on either side of this issue. Richard Baker, when I came to Congress and you came at the same time, was a champion of trying to rein in the excesses that were in the GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. There were other people on the outside, as well, actually in the Bush administration. He chastised the Bush administration for not pushing this legislation and putting other impediments of going forward with it. The truth of the matter is that the Bush administration in the form of the Secretary of the Treasury, I believe it was both Snow and Paulson, who came to the Financial Services committee while I was there, and said, there are problems in the GSEs. There are problems in the Fannie Mae. There are problems in Freddie Mac. And they were ones that the Bush administration was, in fact, pushing for some sort of control, some sort of limitation, some sort of reining in of the GSE. So the Bush administration was doing that.

Richard Baker, who was always sitting up in the top row way above me since I was a freshman and a sophomore at the time, was championing that cause as well to say how do we rein them in? And I became involved with it, and I put in some amendments myself, and one was to direct the new regulator to establish limits on the GSE's portfolios in case there were any issues of safety and soundness or possible systemic risk, a word that we discuss now.

Representative Paul offered amendments to cut off Fannie and Freddie's $2 billion line of treasury which would have been one of the key aspects of sending a message to the private markets as to whether they can believe or not, whether the Federal Government were to stand behind them. I know the chairman just said, and he said repeatedly, ``to those investors who believe that when they are investing in the GSEs that the full faith and credit of the United States Government would stand behind them, I'm telling them right now it is not the case. Well, that, of course, was the case. It was an implicit guaranty. It became explicit, however, when things began to fall apart in the last year, and now you and I know what has been the cost to the American taxpayer, literally hundreds of billions of dollars.

But the chairman did say, as far back I think it was, as in the year 2000 which before I was even there, when the Bush

administration was pushing these issues saying there are some problems here, he said he did not see, the chairman said, actually he would have been the ranking member at that time, he did not see the need for the further regulations because he said ``there are no problems here.'' And he did it again I guess in 2003, saying, again, he did not see a problem with those, either one of those companies. I know later on he did say that, probably in 2003, any one of us would have said the same thing with regard to other banks, the Bank of Scotland or some other banks what have you, there wasn't any problems there, and now, of course, we know--I shouldn't have mentioned this particular bank that he had said--but other banks back in 2003, a lot of us would not have said there were problems in those banks. But we are talking about a different level of problems with that situation.

Today we are having problems with those banks, with their investments. With the GSEs, the argument that a number of us on our side of the aisle was making, that President Bush's administration was making as well, was a systemic risk, that by allowing basically unfettered lending by these institutions and by the implicit guaranty that the Federal Government placed behind them by the $2 billion line of credit, you place a systemic risk. And by putting no limitations on either one of those organizations, you allow them to borrow and borrow and borrow with no limitations on their portfolio, which is something I and others were pushing strongly to try and rein them in, you create a systemic risk. So, yes, there was obviously a systemic risk both in 2003 and 2000 as well, until it finally exploded to what we have today.

So I think that is where the outside groups, maybe some Members in this Congress, try to say, that some Members were pushing for tighter regulations, others were leading the fight saying there wasn't any problem, that you didn't need it, so that in 2005 the facts were some of us were actually going to committee, and I don't have them all here, but I was going to committee and saying, here are some other bills, yes, he is right, a lot of Republicans voted against those bills as well, but he was obviously the ranking member and saying that there was no need for those.

And I will yield back.

I guess it would be a fair generalization that from the other side of the aisle that the push was, the emphasis was for the GSEs to focus on their public housing program, in other words, that they should be created, although that was actually a change in their original mission, as you know, but that new changed mission was to say, how can they be used to advance the cause of affordable housing? And so that was always the posture from the other side of the aisle. And that is why there was constant pushback when Ed Royce or other Members on our side said, well, maybe we should put some limitations on one of my amendments, on the portfolio, rather the conforming loan limits, to say that it shouldn't be too high. Well, no, they want to have no limitations, or the portfolio limits, no, there should be no limitation. So it is always clear they were in one direction and we were slightly in a different. I yield.

Well, my dad always said give credit where credit is due. And the chairman was correct to say that those of us who were really strongly pushing these issues didn't get as much support as we would have liked to from our colleagues on this side of the aisle. But as I look at some of the other amendments I put in, I got almost virtually no support from the other side of the aisle for some of our amendments which would have put in limitations. For example, I put in an amendment that would require the GSEs to hold only mortgages and mortgage-backed securities that exclusively support affordable housing.

Now there is an idea if you think about it, if the idea behind the GSEs, one of the functions is to support affordable housing, then if you put that amendment in, it should fall in line with what the other side of the aisle was advocating. And they should support it. But there is another side benefit to allowing them to expand and grow outside of the area of affordable housing and that basically helps their balance sheet and also helps the remuneration to the people at the top of the organizations, to their CEOs, because if their balance sheet is good and their profits are based just like AIG, these bonuses and what have you, it benefits them as well.

But we got no votes, well, from the chairman, I'm certain of, but basically from everyone from the other side of the aisle.

My good friend, I'll explain one other amendment. The portfolio limitation, Representative Price offered that amendment as well. Same thing, to reduce the amount of the GSEs portfolios again. I do recall that the chairman was opposed to that, and I believe that just generally speaking, no support from the other side of the aisle.

So I think that's the underlying message that's probably out in the media and outside of this House as well, as to where the two parties stood on it. Maybe we didn't have as much support as you and I would have liked from our side, but clearly it was a one-sided push for a long time of seeing that there was a systemic problem and trying to do something about it.

Well, I'm certainly not going to question the statistics of the chairman because I believe he was holding a paper or had some other statistics before him. Since I don't have them, I'd certainly take the chairman at his word.

I think though that you have to see the larger issues that came out of that. And the message that the government was sending, whether through that or through other mechanisms, did have a profound impact upon the rest of the marketplace, not only in the low-income area but otherwise, not only through that program, but through the Federal Reserve regulations, the Boston Fed issuing certain guidelines, if you will, as far as lending practices, and that had profound impact, not only on those institutions as the chairman made reference that may come under their auspices or their control or their authority, but through the rest of the marketplace as well.

In other words, once you sort of get the ball rolling as far as what the new underwriting standards, and this is really what was being created during this time, in one segment of the market, that ball was just continued right across the rest of the marketplace as well. Some of us, as I said before, seeing that as just the beginning piecemeal of this was rolling out we said there may be a problem as that ball goes along and grows, gains weight and what have you and has impact elsewhere, and eventually we saw that it was picked up by the rest of Wall Street.