Floor Statements

I begin, appropriate to this bill, on a note of bipartisanship. My counterpart on the Financial Services Committee said we must reduce spending, and I agree. And we will have a chance this year to reduce the most wasteful drain on our economy imaginable, the war in Iraq, $100 billion a year, far more than the excess in any other program. So I hope the American people this year will heed his view and we will put in place a policy that will save us $1 trillion over the next 10 years if the wishes of some to stay in Iraq are maintained.

Secondly, let me reinforce what the chairman said. It was in late November of last year that Speaker Pelosi urged us to begin thinking about the economy and called together a group of economists, labor leaders, and business leaders. And she took the lead and more than anyone else is responsible for the fact that we are confounding the cynics by acting so quickly and responsibly today.

Lastly, on the housing piece. What we have is a private housing market that has gotten itself into a terrible jam. And part of this bill is to use public and quasi-public entities, entities created by the Federal Government, to go to the aid of the private market. The private market has stopped making loans for houses above a certain level because of, as my friend from Alabama said, a lack of confidence. What we do today is to empower the Federal agency, the FHA, to help untangle that with a higher loan limit. And those two creations of the Congress, quasi-public/private Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we here today send the public sector to the rescue of a mortgage market at the upper end that can't function on its own.

But let me say this: there has been an argument that we should not have done that without further structural reform in those two entities. I have agreed to those limits and, in fact, pushed for them being raised now because we're in an economic crisis and we need a short-term response.

But I am committed, and I know my friend from Alabama joins me in this, we will not agree to any further extension of those loan limits after the expiration date of December of this year unless we are able to accompany them with structural reform. And let me say, I see my friend nodding, that's our commitment.

So we are committed. And the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and I and Members are now talking about the FHA bill. We will not, and let me give this commitment, we will not bring out of our committee an increase in the time at which the jumbo loans can be paid for until we have comprehensive reform.

Given that, we have here a reasonable package. We get money out, thanks to the Speaker's insistence on this bipartisan framework, to precisely the people who will spend it, which is what we need now. And we send the FHA and Fannie and Freddie in a responsible way to the aid of the private market because private sector-public sector cooperation is the foundation of our economy.

Parliamentary inquiry. Is my understanding correct that, as the Chair of the Financial Services Committee, I will control 20 minutes?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, what's in this stimulus package is, A, good; B, not enough. But I believe it is important to move it. I say ``not enough'' because the Committee on Financial Services has been dealing particularly with the subprime crisis and the troubles that's generated.

We have in this stimulus package, by agreement between both sides here and the administration, some things that would be very helpful. There are further things that are important that are not in this package. No one should think that because they're not in this

package we are not going to go and deal with them.

As soon as this is done today, the staff of the Committee on Financial Services will be working closely, we've been in consultation with the Senate and others, on a broader set of measures that will both diminish the economic problems that the subprime crisis causes and also try to deal with the distress that results.

But let me talk today about what we do. We increase in this bill loan limits for the FHA and for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We made a mistake at some point in public policy by setting as a limit for those three agencies, which deal with housing finance and facilitate housing finance, one flat nationwide dollar limit. In fact, nothing in our economy varies in the pricing area as much as house prices, because houses are immobile. Automobile prices, clothing prices, food prices, there are some regional variations; but they tend to be closer.

House prices have a very great variation, for obvious reasons; and, in fact, the limits that have been set which were intended to prevent luxury housing from benefiting from these public or public/private programs in much of the country excludes not just luxury housing but housing for people of moderate and middle incomes.

Now, that's always been a problem to many of us, but recently it's become part of an economic problem. The mortgage market, we understand, has been suffering at the lower end, at the subprime end, because people with weaker credit were charged too much with, we should always note, a racial and ethnic discriminatory factor; but, in general, there was a problem there.

What we now face, and have for some time, is a problem at the higher end. Because of the uncertainty in the mortgage market, people are unwilling to invest. People are unwilling to buy the mortgages. We have come to be dependent, unhealthily so it seems to me, on the secondary market in which the originators have to sell their loans.

People will not now invest in buying loans that are above the levels at which the FHA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac can provide assurance. Those levels are too low.

So what we do in this stimulus bill is to raise the levels of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA, not uniformly but sensibly, as a percentage of median income with a cap. And that's a very important piece in trying to unlock the mortgage market and getting money flowing again.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 2 minutes to the chairman of the Subcommittee on Capital Markets, a man who had a major role in our dealing with the structural issues going forward, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kanjorski).

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the Chair of the Housing Subcommittee of our committee, who has played a very significant role and will be in a major role as we go forward in the necessary next steps after this, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Bean), a member of the Financial Services Committee, who has been particularly creative in trying to make sure that there are tax incentives in here that will help the business community play its most productive role.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), the member of the leadership who has had a major role in recognizing the need for this package.

Mr. Speaker, as I listened to my friend from California, I was struck as he excoriated the President's program, that in his metaphor he seemed to think the President can't tell one body part from another, which is a troubling thing.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to our very distinguished majority leader, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to a member of the committee who has been a hard worker on this, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott).

Madam Speaker, I yield now 1 minute to a member of the Financial Services Committee whose expertise in the world of business and finance has been very helpful to us, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mahoney).

Madam Speaker, I'm now going to yield to the Chair of the Financial Institution Subcommittee, who has been a very important part of our effort to try and deal with this crisis, the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney) for 1 minute.

Madam Speaker, I now yield 1 minute to a member of our committee who has been very active in trying to deal with housing and especially with the area of manufactured housing, which is such an important part of our efforts to meet the housing needs, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Donnelly).

Madam Speaker, the argument has been made that this is just a short-term fix, and that is what we hope it will be. We have both a short-term and a long-term problem.

A recession is, by definition, a specific incident in the cycle, and what we are trying to do now is to respond to what we believe and hope to be a specific, more short-term weakness. That's why we are able to come together in a bipartisan way.

And partisanship is, I believe, a much unfairly maligned concept. Partisanship is essential to a healthy democracy. There has never been a self-governing polity in the history of the world, I believe, of any size where political parties did not emerge, because large numbers of people trying to govern themselves need an organizing principle other than the authority of the leadership.

In America today, a division between the two parties reflects serious, thoughtful differences on how the public and private sectors should interact. We're a capitalist Nation and we're all capitalists, but we differ. On the Republican side there is, I think, an unjustified belief in the essential self-sufficiency of the capitalist system.

We believe, following many who have done work on the technical ``doctrine of market failure,'' market failure in the economic sense, that the free market is a great generator of wealth, but that to achieve the quality of life we want, there must also be a vigorous public sector that interacts with it. That's partly in expenditures, because there are public goods that all of us want that the private sector does not have the capacity to produce, public safety and transportation, and including some compassion for those among us who will not live minimally decent lives unless the rest of us show some of that compassion.

There is also the need for regulation. And the biggest single problem we face today, I believe, is the consequence of too little regulation. It is possible to overregulate, but it is possible to regulate inadequately.

Innovation is very important, and innovation does not survive and grow if it doesn't meet a real need in the economy. One of the innovations of recent times was securitization made possible by large pools of money, by great liquidity that came from various places, not from depository funds, because funds that are in depository institutions are regulated. But a lot of money was generated now, not by bank deposits, but in other ways. And we've also got the ability, technically and in other ways, to sell off those loans.

The lender-borrower relationship that was at the core 30 years ago of many transactions has been essentially diluted. And it turns out that those who thought they had a way to substitute for that missing lender- borrower relationship were deluded. The relationship was diluted, but they were deluded in thinking that they had these techniques that would allow them to deal with it.

We are in a difficult situation today because the innovation and securitization, which has many advantages, was allowed to go forward without adequate regulation, without people knowing, literally, what they were doing and what they were buying and what they were selling, and keeping things off their balance sheets, and not being reserve requirements and not being careful about what loans they bought. We have differences between the parties as to how to deal with those, and we will continue to work on those.

We, however, have a short-term, we hope, shortfall that needs to be addressed. And let me talk for a minute for those who say, Well, what makes you think people are going to go out and spend more because of this? The purpose of a short-term stimulus like this is not to get people to spend more; it is to help them not to spend less. We're not talking about the need for a surge over the norm in consumer spending. We are talking about a fiscal crunch that faces many Americans, in response to which they will have to cut back spending. And people are saying, Oh, they're going to buy flat screen TVs, they're going to do this and that. We have, thanks to the leadership of Speaker Pelosi, a bill before us that will send most of the individual money to people who don't have the option of saying, Well, I think I'll buy another flat screen TV, but who need the money. Helping them avoid pain in their lives and damage to the economy is the justification for this very narrow, short-term stimulus.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the leadership that my colleague and neighbor from New Hampshire has shown on this bill, and I appreciate, also, the work on the other side.

Let me begin with a very important point: People in this country, I think, and our friends in the media misunderstand the true and legitimate meaning of partisanship. Partisanship has a very essential role to play in democracy. The Founding Fathers simultaneously launched this Nation, denounced parties, and formed them, because it does seem inevitable when large numbers of people are going to govern themselves that some forms of organization come forward.

Partisanship is not only not a bad thing, it's a necessary thing in a self-governing polity. Partisanship becomes a problem if the legitimate differences that define the parties spill over angrily and make it impossible to work on issues where those differences should not exist.

I think the Committee on Financial Services, under my predecessor as chairman, Mr. Oxley of Ohio, and I hope under my own chairmanship, have shown that that is not necessary to be the case, that it is possible from time to time to have legitimate strong differences on an ideological or partisan basis without that in any way interfering with our ability to come together on areas where we should agree. This bill, obviously, today is an example of the latter.

We have a bill that has been brought forward in a totally bipartisan manner to improve the efficiency with which

assistance goes for rural housing. That's the second point I wanted to make. Much of what we do is, in fact, to improve the efficiency with which programs work, and the committee has had a chance to bring several bills to the floor that do that. We will be doing more.

The gentleman from New Hampshire mentioned one of the conflicts we are trying to resolve here is between the rules that apply when you were trying to use tax credits for low-income housing and those that apply when you were talking about the programmatic legislation. We do something about that here.

Under the leadership of the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel), and the Financial Services Committee, we are working out legislation that will do that kind of reconciliation for all housing programs. And we will shortly have on the floor of this House a bill that will greatly increase the efficiency with which all housing programs can be merged, tax-based ones and appropriations-based ones, increasing the amount of housing we can build at no further increase to the taxpayer.

And the third point I would note is that this is rural housing. Too often when people think about Federal housing programs they think only about the urban areas. Urban areas are important, but so are rural areas. And I am very proud that this committee has given equal attention, or let me say appropriate attention, to both. Obviously, the need is often greater in the more heavily populated areas, but we have given fully proportionate attention to the rural areas.

So, I am very proud we have a bill today that shows how you can be bipartisan, even while there are legitimate partisan differences, that aims at increasing the efficiency with which Federal funds are spent and which recognizes that people in the rural areas have a need for housing assistance, to some extent, just as do people in the urban areas.

I thank the gentleman from New Hampshire for the leadership he has shown. I appreciate the gentlewoman from West Virginia, who has become the ranking member of the Housing Subcommittee and with whom we have very good relationships. And I hope the bill is passed.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3959) to amend the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 to provide for the phase-in of actuarial rates for certain pre- FIRM properties, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, from time to time in this House we are asked to choose, to some extent, between the strong views of people concerned with excessive spending by the Federal Government and those interested in environmental protection. Let me say to the Members, today is a happier day because we bring forward a bill today out of the Financial Services Committee which is authored by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett), who will soon be speaking, which advances the legitimate concerns of both those interested in saving taxpayer money and those interested in environmental protection.

We have a Federal flood insurance program that exists because of market failure. That is, we do not believe that if you abolish it altogether the private market could entirely handle this. In fact, there are some areas where this committee is moving, and this House has voted, to expand the role of Federal flood insurance, particularly in the area of disasters. But as we do that, it is important that we do it in a responsible way.

There has been legitimate criticism of the flood insurance program as it was existing before. Frankly, this committee, both, again, under Mr. Oxley's chairmanship and recently, addressed it, and it encouraged people to build where they should not have built from an environmental standpoint and incurred too much taxpayer money. Essentially, there was too much subsidy in the program, from both the environmental and fiscal standpoints, to builders.

In the bill that we adopted last year in the previous session, we began to address that. We began to charge people a more appropriate amount, but we did not do it fully. The gentleman from New Jersey had an amendment that he wanted to offer that we considered in committee, and we had talked about it being offered on the floor. I regret that he wasn't given the chance to offer it on the floor, and I gave him my word that we would, as soon as possible, bring it forward. And it is my intention, if this bill passes today, as I expect that it will, if and when we get to work with the United States Senate on comprehensive legislation, this will be a part of this. In effect, this is a delayed amendment to the flood insurance bill we've already passed, and it will be treated in any deliberations in which I am a part as if it had been included back then.

So, I think the gentleman from New Jersey has done us a service by giving us something that is both environmentally and fiscally responsible.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for his kind words.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 3959 and to insert extraneous material thereon.

I thank the gentlewoman who chairs the Housing Subcommittee for the time and for her very creative and diligent work on this bill and others. And I also want to acknowledge our new ranking member of the Housing Subcommittee, the gentlewoman from West Virginia.

Let me begin by noting that obviously in the parliamentary forum we focus on areas of difference. Members should note how small those are relatively in the context of this bill. This is a significant rewrite of the HOPE VI program in which there was not a lot of objection. In fact, I think every amendment but one that was offered was made in order. I disagree with several of the amendments, but I do want to stress the commonality of reform that is in here as we go forward.

There are two basic areas of difference. Two amendments on the other side of the aisle from the two gentlemen from Texas would reduce the requirement that with Federal money we replace low-income units that we destroy. Yes, there are low-income units that should be eliminated as they now exist, but that does not mean that the total number of housing units available for lower-income people ought to be diminished as a conscious Federal policy. And the amendments of my two colleagues from Texas would do that.

The Sessions amendment would allow the Federal Government to give people money simply to tear down all of the houses that poor people live in in a particular area on the grounds that those weren't very nice houses. No doubt in many cases they are not nice houses, but the poor people who live in those houses didn't decide voluntarily to live in bad housing as opposed to nice housing. They had nowhere else to go. And if you tear down where they now are and build zero in its place, you have exacerbated the housing crisis.

Similarly, the amendment of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Neugebauer) would diminish our capacity. We say if you tear them down, you have to replace them. You don't replace them in the same place. You can do it in a much broader area with more flexibility. You have 4\1/2\ years to replace the ones you have torn down and may go to the Secretary of HUD and get a waiver, say there is a court order, there is this land shortage. Some of these were, in fact, so useless. There are a lot of reasons you can go to the Secretary of HUD. So we are not saying that the one-for-one has to be followed in every case. We do say that should be the standard.

Here is the problem with the Neugebauer amendment. He says the housing authorities only have to replace units that they tear down that were occupied. Most people who run housing authorities are diligent, hardworking people in difficult circumstances, but there is incompetence in some housing authorities. People who have incompetently been unable to rent housing for one reason or another shouldn't be rewarded by then being allowed to tear that housing down.

In other words, if housing authorities, who have the obligation to use the money available to house people, refuse to do that or are unable to do that, we should not reward them by saying then you don't have to build those. And there will be places where people don't like poor people living in their community, and the political leadership of that community could then order the housing authority to leave some of those units vacant, and then we will apply for a HOPE VI grant and we will be able to replace far fewer because we will be rewarded for leaving them vacant.

The gentlewoman from West Virginia's amendment, and again there is some common agreement that we should go towards encouraging green building, but here is the difference. I know the homebuilders say this is bad for them, but understand, this is a Federal program with Federal money. We are not talking here about imposing on private-sector developers any requirement whatsoever to do energy efficiency. We are here as the landlord, not as the regulator.

What we are saying is that we are the Federal Government and we will set an example. We will take the money that we, the Federal Government, makes available, and hold ourselves to a high energy efficiency standard. If people think that is inappropriate and it is too expensive, they don't have to apply to come here. That leaves everyone in the private sector free to do as they wish.

Beyond that, one of the strongest advocates of this has been my colleague from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver), the chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee. He has to fund all of this, and he has to fund it going forward. We don't simply build the HOPE VI projects and walk away. We don't. The builders do. It is not their fault.

If I am the contractor to build the buildings, my obligation is completed the day I have done the building and gotten the money for it. But we, the Federal Government, then have to fund it on an ongoing basis. What we are saying is, as the landlord, we want to build it in a way that makes it energy efficient going forward.

We will take an up-front cost because, over time, over 20 and 30 and 40 years, we will reduce our operating budget. So we are being told that as the landlord we can't make the decision about how efficiently to use funds and how to say we will reduce costs going forward. So I would hope that the gentlewoman's amendment is defeated. It would take it from a mandatory to one factor among many.

We also have an argument about the standard. We do mention one standard. The homebuilders are wrong in their letter where they talk about the LEED standard. That is out of the bill in the manager's amendment.

On the green communities, we do mention the green community standard; but we explicitly give the Secretary of HUD the ability to propose another standard if it is equivalent in energy savings, and that's the key.

So the amendment of the gentlewoman from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito) makes this one factor among many, not a required factor, and everything we do with our money to be energy efficient.

And, secondly, she would allow a much weaker standard in many cases than ours does. So we allow flexibility, but flexibility as to how to achieve the goal of energy efficiency, not flexibility as to how much energy efficiency to offer.

I hope the bill, as essentially presented, or a couple of amendments I think are relatively noncontroversial, are accepted.

Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

As the gentleman may know, an amendment is going to be offered to restore that, and I agree with the gentleman that that amendment should be accepted.

The gentleman from Alabama correctly quoted the carpenters' letter. The manager's amendment responds to that. The manager's amendment, which we are now debating, removes reference to the leadership and energy and environmental design. So the objection raised by the carpenters we thought had some validity to it, and the manager's amendment takes care of it.

So there is no reference to that. So two of the points the gentleman made we agree with, and we're correcting, restoring main street and removing any reference to LEED. There will be other differences, but I did want to acknowledge this is an example of how we're trying to work together.

I yield to the gentleman from Alabama.

Yes.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

I appreciate the cooperative spirit, and we should note that the one-for-one replacement will remain in effect, but there's a question about what it accomplishes.

Let me describe the one-for-one replacement, because it is not nearly as prescriptive as my friend would have indicated. In the first place, communities will have 54 months after the demolition with which to replace the housing. Secondly, it does not have to be new public housing. We have explicitly added here the ability to do project-based vouchers. We have worked with some of those who in fact try to do HOPE VI, to make it more flexible.

Third, there's a waiver in here. One of the factors in the waiver, the gentleman from Texas correctly mentioned open spaces, one of the desirable things. My colleague from Massachusetts, Mr. Capuano, offered an amendment that has been incorporated into the manager's amendment that would say when you apply for a waiver, your willingness to put in more open space would be one of the justifications for a waiver for one-for-one. So we do have flexibility.

On the other hand, I reject the notion that we shouldn't be prescriptive here. This is not the Federal Government reaching out and telling people what to do. This is a restriction on the expenditure of Federal funds for a limited purpose. Here is the problem: we do have a shortage of affordable housing units. We do not want to see a Federal program contribute to a diminution of that. We allowed flexibility in the replacement.

Here's the problem with the gentleman's amendment: most of the people who run housing authorities are decent, hardworking people who have taken on a tough job, and we have tried to help them. But there are political situations in some community where the people running housing authorities are not supportive of this purpose.

What the gentleman's amendment says is if they leave the units vacant, they can then permanently get rid of the units. That is the problem. Going forward it gives people an incentive or reward not to fill the units. Most housing authorities won't be like that, but there is incompetence and there are people who for political reasons say, We don't want these people, they are too much of a problem.

So rewarding housing authorities for leaving units vacant by allowing them,

if the people left them vacant may want to have fewer housing units, allowing them that is a very bad idea. We should have flexibility, I agree with the gentleman. But that is flexibility with the waiver; that is flexibility in how you deliver placement. In other words, show why you're trying to do it. But to diminish the requirement at the outset arbitrarily to reward people for leaving units vacant, to reward the incompetence. People say, We have got too many other units here. We're going to leave them vacant. Remember, elderly housing is a major component. That would be a very grave error.

We have, I believe, in much of this country a shortage.

Now, if a community comes forward and says to HUD, You know what, there is no population here left anymore, there is nobody who wants to live here anymore, those are considerations that can be put into the waiver. So we agree there should be flexibility. That is why we have a waiver component.

By the way, in addition to open space, if you show you are going to do day care facilities, if you show you are going to do health care facilities, that can further justify fewer units. If you say you are going to build more large units for large families, yes, you can trade in a couple of small units for a large unit. All of those are encouraged.

The only thing we disagree with, because we believe we have built flexibility in here, is, as I said, to give people in some cases those who are, and it is not the majority by any means, people who are not supportive of this, give them an incentive to leave housing vacant.

Now, let me say this to the gentleman: His amendment didn't say housing that was physically unoccupiable. I agree the bill does not make that consideration. I would say to the gentleman, going forward, we might be able to work on a situation where units that were physically not habitable might not be counted. I agree with that. If that was the amendment, I think we might be working something out, and I hope we will as it goes forward. But what the gentleman's amendment says, units that are perfectly in good shape, that the authority either can't rent because they are incompetent or decides not to, that those can be disregarded.

So I hope the amendment is defeated. But I would promise to work with the gentleman as we go forward so that units that are in fact not habitable, not occupiable, would not be counted.

I would yield to the gentleman.

Taking back my time, I would agree with that if we didn't have a waiver in there, if we didn't have a variety of ways of meeting the one-for-one replacement. It is not all public housing. In fact, one of the things I plan to do in future legislation in cooperation with my colleagues is to go to some of the other housing programs we may have, maybe the Low Income Housing Fund or others, and give a preference to housing authorities who have that HOPE VI obligation. So, in other words, there would be a wide variety of ways in which they could replace the housing, not simply by public housing, because, I agree, that would be self-defeating.

I appreciate that. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, first, there are two points,

and the gentlewoman tends to confuse the two. One is should there be flexibility in the standard. Both versions have that. Our version says the green communities or a standard promulgated by the Secretary, but we say it has to be substantially equivalent in what it accomplishes.

Secondly and more important, the bill with the manager's amendment says that a green component must be in any HOPE VI application. The gentlewoman dilutes that. She says it will be one factor that can be considered. But under her proposal, if you are very strong elsewhere, they would not have to be very much in the green. So there is a real difference there. We both say it is a good idea, but the bill says you must include the green component. Her bill says you may include the green component. You will get points if you do, but you might not. Both have flexibility as to how you reach that.

Now I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver), the chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on HUD and Transportation.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

First, Mr. Chairman, yes, the carpenters objected to the LEED standard. They did not object to the green community standard. We thought the objection was reasonable and met it.

Secondly, again, the bill, without the gentlewoman's amendment, does provide flexibility. We say, however, that when HUD does an alternative proposal, it has to meet the minimum standard. That is the difference.

We put in the minimum. The other difference is that her amendment would allow some of the projects to go forward without green components, depending on how they were otherwise rated and others would not.

I yield for the remainder of our time to the head of our Subcommittee on Energy Efficiency for the Financial Services Committee, my colleague, Mr. Perlmutter of Colorado.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I am suffering a little disorientation because I didn't get the anti-immigration amendment. So I hope the gentleman from Georgia isn't ill and was not, therefore, able to present it.

On this amendment, I congratulate the minority. They make a reasonable point. Yes, I think that we should have included the veterans. To that extent, I think this is worth supporting. I do not understand why this has to come at the expense of people who had committed an offense and have come out. I had thought there was these days some sense that rehabilitation was a goal. As the gentlewoman from California will explain, we are talking about a very narrow category of ex-offenders. We certainly don't believe that when you come out of prison, you ought to then become homeless if you have otherwise satisfied society's reasonable demands. But I do not oppose this because, I agree, we should be including the veterans.

I will say this. What this does is two things: it says include the veterans, but then excludes people who have been sentenced, served a term, et cetera, and have shown that they met all these conditions. We will be going forward with this bill with the Senate, and there is no need to put these two issues against each other. So I believe that we can accept this with full support then for the veterans, but then not have the other issue foreclosed. I would ask the gentleman, I will yield to him, if he would clarify this.

Sadly, one of the problems we have had with some veterans, because of problems that were created, some veterans have committed offenses. I would ask the gentleman, what about a veteran, and this has two parts, yes to veterans, no to people who are ex-offenders. I would ask the gentleman: How should the housing authority on this treat a veteran ex- offender, assuming again it was an honorable discharge. Someone who was honorably discharged, later got into some trouble, completed all the term, et cetera, how should the housing authority under this deal with a veteran who's an ex-offender?

And I will yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I take back my time to repose the question. I am sorry the gentleman had trouble hearing me. He may not be sorry he had trouble hearing me, but now I will try to be more clear. We say in this ``preference for veterans.'' We agree with that. But it also denies that, not preference, but listing in this category for ex-offenders. What does the housing authority do if a veteran who was an ex-offender who has served his or her term, satisfied all the conditions, how do you treat under this amendment a veteran who's an ex-offender?

I will yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry the gentleman doesn't want to answer the question. I still don't understand. It seems to me the housing authority is entitled to guidance. What do you do if it's a veteran who's an ex-offender?

I will yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman has got that mantra that he keeps repeating. He can send out a taped phone call with that and not take up our time.

We are, I assume, going to back this, but I think there is this ambiguity. So I will have to say we will have to deal with this further. I would not want to give to the veterans with one hand what you might take away with another one. We do know some veterans, not entirely through their fault, given the conditions in which they serve, problems that occur, some of them become offenders. So we will deal with that going forward, and I would assume people would want to vote for this because we should have included veterans. But I will say, especially after my inability to get an answer, the question of ex- offenders will remain an open question and we'll have to deal with that going forward.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the instructions of the House in the motion to recommit, I report the bill, H.R. 3524, back to the House with an amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee On Financial Services have until noon on January 3, 2008, to file a report on H.R. 3524.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the Senate bill (S. 2271) to authorize State and local governments to divest assets in companies that conduct business operations in Sudan, to prohibit United States Government contracts with such companies, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I yield for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller).

(Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, this is a very important piece of legislation on one of the gravest subjects facing the world: the terrible genocide in Darfur.

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by yielding such time as she may consume to a former member of our committee, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), who was from the beginning the major force behind this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from California.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to join in thanking the people that have been thanked, particularly members of the staff, Mr. Tsentas, Mr. McGlinchey and Mr. Segel, because this took a great deal of work. This was one of those issues where there was a great deal of agreement in principle, but where a lot of work had to be done to translate that principle here in the House. And it was a case where the House took the lead, the Senate then acted, and some negotiation took place.

There was some resistance, I am sad to say, from the administration. The State Department was busy getting Senators to hold us up for a while. But a good deal of good lobbying took place on a bipartisan basis. And many Republicans in the Senate resisted this effort to hold it up, and as a result we have a bill that does what it should do. And I want to be clear what that is.

We are not here compelling anyone to divest. We ran into a situation in which a large number of Americans, revolted by the massive violation of basic human principle that has gone on in Sudan, engaged in by the Government of Sudan, sadly, protected in some ways by the Government of the People's Republic of China, too little resisted by other African nations, too little resisted, in particular, by some in the Arab world who, sadly, it seemed to me, allowed ethnicity to influence them, and for a variety of reasons there has not been the mobilization of international protection for these innocent victims of genocide that there should have been.

What we have is a situation where a number of Americans said, I cannot in any way be part of this. And they approached those entities who invest money on their behalf. As we know, much of the investment that goes on in this country is done not by individuals directing their own investments, but through third parties, mutual funds, pension funds, other entities. And they were told, those who wanted to divest, Oh, we can't do that. We can't honor your moral conviction because we have an obligation to make as much money for you as possible. And indeed, there were invocations of potential lawsuits if, in fact, a mutual fund or pension fund were to say, Look, we're not going to divest in this way or stay an investment fund. We didn't think that those were real threats, but we figured we had to act.

So, what this bill does is not to compel anybody to do anything. It empowers individuals who want to withdraw their funding from this genocide. It empowers entities that want to withdraw funding to do so without fear of lawsuit. And I think it is a solution that looks at how the marketplace works and uses that set of institutions and the law in a reasonable way.

I cannot understand why we ran into the resistance that we did. And I don't think bureaucracy is a bad thing. Bureaucracy is an essential part of civilized governance. But bureaucracy in the bad sense, bureaucratic resistance in the bad sense, slowed this bill up. People have said, It's too late. I agree. It should have happened a long time ago. It certainly should have happened earlier this year. There was resistance that shouldn't have come from the State Department. There was some concern by the Treasury. They were excessive.

I am very proud that both Houses have now overwhelmingly said, No, enough is enough. We're going to go forward. And we wish we could do more to stop this mass murder, but we can at least allow Americans to withdraw from any participation. And we hope that the cumulative effect of this and elsewhere would be to force a withdrawal.

And there is one very important point. We have sometimes, when the United States Government expressed its revulsion at violations of human rights, people have tried to say, Well, that's just the government. That's not the people. This empowers the American people. When there are withdrawals as a result of this, it will be coming from State and local governments and individual citizens. So no one will be able to deny the concentrated force of this, and we hope that adds to its moral impact.

So, I do intend to ask for a recorded vote on this because I hope we will have an overwhelming demonstration, once again, virtual unanimity, if not complete unanimity, that will send a message that will help get the bill signed. And particularly to the Government of Sudan and to those governments, and that includes some in the Arab world, it includes the People's Republic of China, they will understand the extent to which, across party lines, across ideological lines, they have instilled in the American people the feeling of revulsion. And they should understand our determination to do whatever we can to put an end to this terrible set of events.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, how much time is there remaining?

Mr. Speaker, before yielding to my last two speakers, I do ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on S. 2271.

I yield 3 minutes to a very hardworking member of our committee who has a great deal of concern for this issue, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Cleaver).

Mr. Speaker, I didn't want to just echo what my friend has said, and so I yield myself 30 seconds. My appreciation for the fact that we on both sides here, the majority and minority on the committee, were able to work so well together, and I mentioned some staffers, Mr. Pinder of the minority staff working well with Mr. Segel, Mr. McGlinchey and Mr. Tsentas and this is very well drafted legislation. I am very proud of it. It achieves a moral purpose in a very thoughtful way.

Mr. Speaker, I submit the following exchange of letters on S. 2271:

House of Representatives,

Committee on Foreign Affairs,

Washington, DC, December 14, 2007.

Hon. Barney Frank,

Chairman, Committee on Financial Services,

Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Chairman: I am writing to you concerning the bill,

S. 2271, the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007.

I understand that are certain provisions of this legislation

as passed by the Senate that fall within the Rule X

jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Provisions

within the jurisdiction of the Committee include sections 7,

8, 9 and 10 of the Senate passed bill.

In the interest of permitting your Committee to proceed

expeditiously to floor consideration of this important

legislation and clear it for the President, I am willing to

waive this Committee's right to an additional referral. I do

so with the understanding that by waiving consideration of

the bill, the Committee on Foreign Affairs does not waive any

future jurisdictional claim over the subject matters

contained in the bill which fall within its Rule X

jurisdiction.

I would ask that you place this letter into the

Congressional Record when the Committee has S. 2271 under

consideration.

Sincerely,

Tom Lantos,

Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

I appreciate the indulgence of my colleagues.

I am glad that we will finally be acting on this. I share the frustration of my friend from New York and, indeed, all of my friends from New York and elsewhere, Connecticut, who wanted a more comprehensive bill. There is a consolation. I think 1 year or so ago there were people who thought even a 7-year extension was much too much and were talking about phasing this out. I am glad that we are moving forward. I want to address those who say, well, this was supposed to be a temporary program until the market could take over. I never believed that. I always wanted this to be a government program.

I am a believer in the market; I believe almost all of us are. I understand how the market principle works in insurance. If you have a greater risk, you pay more; your premiums go up. We do that because we want to discourage people from taking certain risks, or at least make them pay the full cost. We also want to give them an incentive to diminish the risk. Those principles don't apply to terrorism.

I don't want a situation to exist whereby, if you build a large building, because that is essentially what we are talking about here; people can't build large buildings without bank loans, and they can't get bank loans without insurance. I don't want the cost to go up in any particular part of this country because murderous, vicious thugs want to do this country ill.

I don't believe that those who have been the victims of these kinds of terrorism ought to bear that cost. That is

national defense. No more should any one State have to pay to protect itself against an invasion. We should have a national defense system that includes saying, we will hold you harmless against these murderous attacks. And it is, of course, because there is very little you can do to protect yourself against this. What do they do, put anti-aircraft guns on the roof? This is not a case where the market is failing. It is a case where national purpose is what is relevant, not the market.

Now, the other point to make is that I do regret the breakdown in the United States Senate of the legislative process. And, in particular, and I believe that the chairman of the banking committee, the Senator from Connecticut, wanted to move on this, but we were told, partly I think they made a mistake by waiting too long, but then they were told it had to be done unanimously. And we were told that the senior Republican on the committee, the Senator from Alabama, simply refused to deal with this.

Had this been up in the Senate and had the Senate voted ``no'' to nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological coverage, had the Senate voted ``no'' to group life and the very important provision of our colleague, the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz), to protect people against discrimination if they wanted to travel to Israel or elsewhere; if the Senate had voted against the reset mechanism, I would have been disappointed, but I would have said, well, that is the way it works. But to have the opposition of the senior Republican mean that no debate or discussion, much less a vote, could take place is a breakdown of the system.

We are in a position where something at this point is better than nothing. But I want to say, as chairman of the Committee on Financial Services, we will begin early next year to try to get this back on the Senate agenda, and I will be urging my Senate colleagues not to put themselves in a position where this kind of one-person veto can prevent, not an outcome, none of us have the right to an outcome, but the American people ought to have a right to debate and discussion.

Now, there is a problem, Mr. Speaker, that I acknowledge, and it is a problem that those of us who have been frustrated by this, really, I mentioned the Senator from Alabama. I disagree with his obstruction. But let's put the blame where it belongs also, on James Madison. We had an election last year, and we elected a new House and we elected one- third of the Senate, and that is part of the problem. We have a House that responded to the election of 2006. We have at this point a House and a Senate each responding to somewhat different electoral impulses. We are here as a result of the election of 2006, every single one of us. Or subsequent special elections, sadly, in some cases.

In the Senate, two-thirds of that Senate was elected in 2002 and 2004. That is the disjunction. And it is not personal in general, it is electoral, and it is a frustration that cannot be overcome easily. But it does make me determined, as I go into the second year of this session, to pay more attention to that need. And we will be doing everything we can again. Again, we cannot guarantee outcome in the Senate or anywhere else, but the American people ought to be able to get the benefit of votes and debate.

So this is a recognition that terrorism insurance, in my judgment, should be here as long as terrorism is here. It is not a case of waiting for the market. It is a case of stepping up, as we should, for national defense purposes. And we will work, and I will be following the lead of my colleague from New York (Mr. Ackerman) and others as we try to make this bill an even better bill, reflecting what it was in the House.

Madam Speaker, there are times when it is important for people to admit when they have made mistakes, and I made one. I voted last week ``present'' on a resolution that it was Christmas. Now, when I read the resolution, I decided to vote ``present'' because it made some controversial statements about the constitutional history of the United States and the role of Christianity in that.

I am not a historian. I don't know whether that was an accurate statement or not, and I didn't want to vote on it one way or the other. It also made a number of statements about Christian theology, about which I am even less expert, being Jewish and not being an expert in other religions. So I voted ``present.''

But it was then called to my attention that earlier this year I had voted for a resolution congratulating people for observing Ramadan, so I was in the awkward position of having voted in favor of celebrating Ramadan and having abstained on Christmas, and the mistake was I should have abstained on Ramadan as well.

The point is, and this reinforces it to me, it is really none of the business of the Congress of the United States as an official body whether or not people celebrate religious holidays. Our job is to preserve a free society in which people are able to celebrate their religious holidays if they wish to. But picking and choosing among religious holidays, seems to me, is odd.

By the way, when you announce you have the power to approve a holiday, I assume that means ordinarily you have the power to disapprove it. Does that mean that we could have said we don't approve of Ramadan or we don't approve of Christmas? Again, these are examples of the intrusiveness.

As I said, I find myself in an odd position, where people said, Are you pro-Ramadan and anti-Christmas? Frankly, I observe neither holiday. I wish well those who do, but as an individual, not as a Member of Congress. In fact, I have had obviously, living in this society, much more association with Christmas. But, again, that's as an individual.

That was driven home to me when I see a debate, particularly on the Republican side, between candidates as to the nature of the religion of my former Governor. This whole tendency further to entangle religion and politics is harmful to both, in my judgment. So I will acknowledge, and I understood when the Ramadan resolution came forward, in fact it was brought forward, let's be honest, for a broadly political reason. People thought that having us celebrate Ramadan might in some way alleviate an anti-American feeling that has grown out of the Iraq war. That is not what you talk about religion for.

So I should have voted ``present'' on both, not out of any disrespect for either religion, but out of respect for a system of democratic governance in which we politicians don't decide what is or isn't good religion. I would hope that that would no longer be part of the Republican Presidential debate. I don't believe Mormon theology has any point there. I will say this: I am no great fan of Governor Romney, nor he of me, but he served for 4 years as Governor of Massachusetts, and I don't remember a day when his religion was relevant.

Deciding that will alleviate any anti-American feelings on Ramadan, and then, okay, we will get back and show you that we are going to talk about Christmas. And we're going to talk about the constitutional history of the United States in these terms, and then let's have a debate about religion. It is not negative about religion to say that religion is best served when politicians do not seek to use it, intrude into it. Our job, again, is to preserve a Nation of freedom in which people can practice religion as they wish. No one ought to be looking for my approval as to this or that religious holiday.

So I will announce in the future I will not applaud people for Ramadan or for Christmas or for Yom Kippur or for any of the other holidays. I will work very hard to make sure every American and everyone in this country can observe those religious freedoms. But entangling us into religion for political purposes is simply a great mistake and serves no good.

Therefore, I do apologize. I erred when I voted for the Ramadan resolution. I should have voted ``present'' on Ramadan. I should have voted ``present'' on Christmas. But, even better, we should simply abstain from bringing into this very political body

of elected people issues about this or that religious holiday. Let's leave religious holidays in peace.

I thank my friend from Ohio and the other friends who have gathered to, really, mourn our own loss.

I served on the Financial Services Committee with Julia Carson. And let's be honest, there are Members of this body who, if you get to see them coming before they see you, you may not have a long conversation. But I sought Julia's company. She was a dedicated fighter for social justice, but she was also a delightful woman.

She had that kind of air she put on of, ``Oh, poor me.'' I feel sorry for anybody who fell for it. She had a brilliant mind, a wonderful sense of strategy, and, as I said, she put all that at the service of caring for poor people. As a member of the Financial Services Committee, she was a constant unyielding advocate for fairness in our society.

And I do also want to note, a number of people have mentioned my former colleague, many of us served with him, Andy Jacobs. Andy was the Congressman from that district. He retired. And rarely has any politician fought as hard for another politician as Andy Jacobs did to elect Julia Carson. And to the minds of many, Julia wasn't a natural fit. People thought that she was not conservative enough for the district, not, let's be honest, white enough for the district. And race continues to be the besetting problem of America. We have made some progress in it. We haven't solved it.

Andy Jacobs' dedication to helping to elect Julia, and, obviously, she got there on her own, But Andy's helping run interference as Julia carried that ball really was one of the great acts of statesmanship, and then Julia made the most of the opportunity.

I had the pleasure of going out to her district a couple of times because there was this sense on the part of some that a woman like Julia Carson, with her background and her set of values, couldn't possibly represent Indianapolis. Somehow they thought that something had gone wrong. But the people knew better, and the people stood by her. And they stood by her because she was, as I said, as staunch a fighter for making this the kind of America we all want to live in as I ever saw.

I miss her a great deal. I miss coming into the committee and seeing her pretending to look kind or angry and sad, with a twinkle in her eye ready for that comment that was going to put everything in perspective. Julia Carson was a wonderful Member of this body. And the dignity with which she bore her last months of pain troubled all of us, but it was a fitting example of the extraordinary quality of a great woman.

I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio and others for giving us this chance to express our appreciation for having had the benefit of her colleagueship for a while.

Mr. Speaker, there are times when we will have arguments across the aisle. I don't think there is any need for us to engage in that now because our differences are across the building, not across the aisle.

Let me begin by saying to the gentleman from Texas, we agree, we will not let this program die. And as the gentleman from Texas knows, he has had to sit through this on the Rules Committee three times this year, twice this past week, because we did originally think about taking the bill the Senate had passed, amending it, and sending it back. I am disappointed to say that we heard from all points that if that happened, the Senate might be so unable to function as to kill the program.

The United States Senate has perfected something I call ``the strength of weakness.'' They labor to do anything whatsoever, and having done it, tell people that if we ask them to change one bit of it they will collapse in a heap. It's like the song from ``MacArthur Park,'' someone left the bill out in the rain, and they won't be able to remake it because they will never have the recipe again. That's what we keep hearing.

But, on the other hand, and here's where I do disagree with my friend from Texas, I know we've had some disagreements here about the role of preemptive strikes in foreign policy. Here our disagreement is on the role of preemptive surrender in interbranch negotiations.

I agree that if all else fails and the Senate does not act on this bill, we will have to acquiesce. I regret that. I think it would be much less good public policy than we could do if we had the normal legislative process. But I have spoken to the Senators from New York. They report to me that the Governor of New York and the mayor of New York, and New York is not the only entity covered by this, and indeed, some of these things, they're all universal. But people are concerned, and so we have reluctantly agreed not to endanger the chances of this if the Senate is unable to act.

On the other hand, and here's where I differ, I am unwilling at this point to let it end without the Senate once again being given a chance to function on several issues. The gentleman from Vermont just talked about the smaller companies. The reduction of the trigger from $100 to $50 million was done unanimously, I believe, or overwhelmingly, by our committee at the request of small insurance companies who wanted to be able to insure. The argument is, if they do not have the smaller trigger, many of them would not feel able to bid on insurance for these building projects. So, I think that's important.

We had the inclusion of group life insurance. I am afraid that in the Senate version, this is kind of the analog of the old neutron bomb. Remember the neutron bomb; it killed people and left the buildings standing. The Senate would have us have a provision that ensures buildings but ignores people. Well, people die in these terrorist attacks. We all remember that this Congress, in 2001 or 2002, passed a program that cost us billions of dollars to compensate those who lost their lives. Why should we not allow that to be done to the insurance system? That's another thing we would like to have in there.

And as part of the life insurance, as has been noted by a colleague, there is a provision that was not contested in our committee that would prevent discrimination against people who are traveling to places that some companies might think inappropriate to travel, particularly Israel. There is a provision in here that says you're not going to be penalized for, and this was brought to our attention by some of our colleagues from Florida. Now, all of those are in the bill we want to send back.

Also, a reset mechanism that, obviously it applies to New York where they've already had a terrorist attack, would apply nationally so that you don't get only one bite at the apple if the terrorists choose to strike again. And I think the major reason for doing TRIA is to neutralize the effect that murderous thugs who wish this country and its people ill can have on our policies. That's why we want terrorism insurance. This is part of national defense. This is to make it a government program as part of our defense against this activity.

But there are other parts of this where we have accepted this. Frankly, this looks like what a conference would look like if we were in a rational world where we could have a conference. We said 15 years, they said 7. We've accepted 7. By the way, I will say that in the prior Congress, we only had 2.

The reason for a longer term is that this is important if people are to be able to build in our large cities and other areas which are threatened by terrorism. Because you cannot get the building without a loan, you cannot get the loan without insurance, and a 2-year timeline is obviously too short for major building projects. We accepted that. We wanted protection against nuclear, biological, chemical, radiological attacks. No one thinks that's out of the picture. The Senate said no to it. We accepted that. So, we compromised with them.

And finally, a PAYGO issue arose at the last minute. We didn't do it well here, and the Senate did it well, and I congratulate them for that. It was good legislating. So we accept their term of 7 years. We accept their version of PAYGO. We accept their jettisoning of nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological. But we would like to include group life, and we would like to accommodate the smaller companies, and we would like to have the reset mechanism.

In the end, as I said, we understand we can't compel them, but we believe it is worth another try. Passing this bill will in no way jeopardize our ability in the end, if nothing else fails, to accept the 7 years that the Senate sent us.

But I appeal to the Members here out of an institutional concern. Let's understand that in the end, if the Senate refuses to do certain things, they may have an advantage. But let's not make it easy. Let's not continue a process by which Senators can avoid tough issues. Maybe some Senator will raise some of these issues. Maybe, I know it's ``maybe'' in a land of fantasy, the Senate would vote on some of them and Senators would have to decide if they wanted to say no, it's okay if you can't travel to Israel with your life insurance, it's okay if the smaller companies are kept out, it's okay to insure buildings but not people. Maybe it won't work, but no harm will be done.

I would also add this: In terms of the rule, nothing in the bill that we are proposing today is new except for the Senate PAYGO, and the Senate PAYGO, we all agree, I believe, is superior, given the need to do a PAYGO.

This is a bill that was voted on in subcommittee and in committee and came to the floor. It was amended in various ways. It was a bipartisan product. In the end, the vote was something like 300-plus to 100-plus when the bill passed here in the House; not unanimous, obviously, but with a lot of bipartisanship.

Everything in the bill today, with the exception of the Senate PAYGO, has already been through subcommittee and committee and the floor. But we are saying to the Senate there are important issues here, on group life, on the reset, on travel, on smaller companies. And we are simply, I hope, not ready to say to them we roll over and play dead without giving them another chance to address these issues.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

I would only ask to amend one thing. It is not the majority. Here we wanted a conference, and in the Senate, it was both parties that refused. It was not the majority. Indeed, there was objection more from the minority side. So I would only differ with the notion that

it was somehow a majority decision. We asked for a conference, and we were told on a bipartisan basis over there they wouldn't give us one.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman.

If it were up to me, obviously, we would have done this earlier. The only thing I can say is, and I appreciate the spirit of cooperation, I only regret that he cannot love me in December as he did in May.

I would just say on this, and I didn't want to make it in any way partisan, but what we have been told is that the senior Republican on the committee, the gentleman from Alabama, has said this is all he will accept. I have talked to the chairman of the committee, the Senator from Connecticut, I've talked to the Senator from New York, and they were ready to discuss it. But they said that given Senate rules, they could not get the Senator from Alabama to do anything else, and they didn't feel they could change that.

There were also concerns that even if we were to send back exactly the bill that he had wanted, another Senator might object, because that is a volatile place. But we did talk to the Senator from Connecticut, we talked to the Senator from New York. The Senator from Alabama, the ranking minority member, was the major opponent.

I would yield to my friend.

No, this is not ping pong. This is ping. We're keeping pong

over here. That is, we are going to send them and give them one more chance. But we are keeping their version over here if all else fails.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 862, I call up the bill (H.R. 4299) to extend the Terrorism Insurance Program of the Department of the Treasury, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on the pending legislation.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the House passed a version of the terrorism risk insurance program by a large vote, 300-something to 100-something, earlier this year. It happened after a very open process at the subcommittee and committee level. We had a very good set of meetings. There were concerns raised. I think there was general agreement that terrorism insurance had to go forward, but there were some very legitimate debates about how to do it. Not all of them, obviously, have been resolved.

We had, unusual for our committee and I think maybe for other committees, a full markup in subcommittee followed by a full markup in committee. The bill that emerged was much closer to a consensus product, although obviously not unanimous. There were amendments offered by both sides. There were bipartisan compromises worked out. We came to the floor. It wasn't as open a process as I would have hoped, but it still represented, we thought, a fairly good piece of legislation, and, of course, it got well over 70 percent of the House Members voting for it. Then it went to the Senate and nothing happened for a very long time, and I regret that. We had hoped that we could continue this process and in fact have a conference. The Senate did not act.

Finally, the Senate acted and sent us a bill which was an extension of the current program, better in my view than the current program, not as comprehensive as the bill we passed. And we were told by the Senate, as we have been from time to time this year: This is all we can do. Take it or leave it. That seemed to me to be a problem and, now, not so much for substance as for institutional concerns. Members have asked, well, in the end we may just have to accept what the Senate sent us. That is possible, and we have preserved the option to do that.

Let me be very clear, Mr. Speaker. We are here dealing with a new bill that we introduced. The Senate bill still sits at the desk. It will be available if the Senate continues to refuse to act in any kind of a bicameral manner. But I am not ready to give up yet, Mr. Speaker, on some important issues, the most important of which is the institutional one. It is simply not in the spirit of the United States Constitution for one of the Houses to say, this is it, take it or leave it, especially when you contrast the way in which the two Houses acted. We had subcommittee and committee markup and debate on the floor. The Senate had one of their not very open processes. The bill emerged from some quiet conversations among the senior members of both parties and went to the floor, no amendments, no votes, here it is. As I said, I regret that. We may not be able to prevent it from happening in this instance. I do think it is important for us to send the message that we do not want to see this sort of procedure repeated.

So what we did was to in effect have a virtual conference. We looked at the Senate bill, we looked at our bill, and we came up with what I think might well have resulted had there been a conference. The bill we passed had a 15-year extension. The reason for a long extension is that we are talking here about building projects. We are talking about the need for terrorism risk insurance if we are to get large commercial buildings, or residential, but especially commercial buildings built in our big cities. You can't get those buildings obviously without bank loans and you can't get the bank loans without insurance. That is why the Chamber of Commerce scores this as an important bill, why the real estate industry, the cities, a whole range of business and urban interests tell us this is important. And you need to have some assurance of a timeframe in which to build. We thought 15 years. The Senate said 7 years. We didn't here come with a split-the-difference. We have accepted

the Senate's 7 years. We were told at the last minute that there was a PAYGO problem in a calculation by the Congressional Budget Office that I still do not understand, but we have no option but to abide by it. We came up with a PAYGO solution which was not a very good one. The Senate came up with, and I give them credit here, a much better PAYGO solution. They had more time to work on it, but they did it well. We have accepted the Senate PAYGO solution. So we accept that term of years, we accept that PAYGO solution.

We had also broadened this from simply being in case a building was destroyed to include group life insurance and protection against what sadly we cannot rule out, nuclear, biological, chemical, or radiological attacks. The Senate rejected both of those. We split the difference. We accepted their rejection of nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological attacks. We did feel that group life insurance should be in. I should say that including the group life provision is something that was called to our attention on a bipartisan basis from Members from Florida which says that you should not have your life insurance cancelled if you go to Israel. That is basically what we are talking about, or maybe some other areas where the insurance companies think there is a problem when there isn't one. And we checked, and the number of payoffs they have had to make of people who died going to Israel or other countries on their list is negligible, zero, from what we could tell. So we included a provision in our bill that was overwhelmingly supported by both sides, to say that there were rules; not that you couldn't deny someone life insurance if they were going to a hazardous area, but that you had to have a rational process by which you defined that.

We put group life back in. Members will remember that after the 2001 mass murders of so many innocent Americans by vicious thugs, we adopted a very expensive program to compensate people. A better way to do that would be to have this group life insurance as part of the terrorism risk insurance.

And at the request of smaller insurance companies, we lowered the trigger from $100 million to $50 million per incident, because small insurance companies said to us: We would like to be able to insure some of these buildings. Our colleagues from some of the smaller States brought this to our attention. But if it is $100 million that you have to absorb before this kicks in, we can't do it; we can do it at $50 million.

So we accept the Senate version on 7 years versus our 15. We accept their version of PAYGO. We accept their rejection of nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons. We do ask that group life insurance be kept in with the travel provision I mentioned, and that the trigger go from $100 million to $50 million.

Finally, there is the reset provision, which says that if you have once been attacked and you have to deal with it, should that same area be attacked again, the clock starts again. That is, you would not be in a position where, having been attacked once by these vicious murderers, you would be unable to get full insurance if they did it a second time.

Those are the differences. As I said, we have no guarantee that the Senate will do this or pay even serious attention. We have retained a vehicle in case they don't. But I don't want, and I said this earlier, we are not debating preemptive strikes here. We are debating preemptive surrender. I don't want to have a situation where the United States Senate passes legislation, sends it to us and says, You may not even think about changing things.

We are prepared to compromise. But I think inclusion of group life and that travel protection is important. We think that the smaller insurance companies had a legitimate concern. We think the reset provision is legitimate.

We are asking the Senate again to consider them. We can't compel that. But I think it would be a mistake for us to set the precedent that, when they confront us with these ultimata, that we simply cave in.

Let me repeat, because I got it right now. I was quoting before the lyric from ``MacArthur Park.'' What the Senate tells us is, Look, we were able to do this, but we can't do it again. You just have to accept it as it is. And the theme song apparently is, if people will remember; I will say it because I sing something awful.

``Someone left the cake out in the rain.

I don't think that I can take it

'Cause it took so long to bake it

And I'll never have the recipe again.''

If someone in the Senate tells us, we left the bill out in the rain, or at least they are telling us that if we were to try to get them to change it, it would be leaving the bill out in the rain, and they couldn't remake it because they don't have the recipe.

Mr. Speaker, I think it's time to send the Senate back to their recipe books and ask them to keep track. I understand in the end we may not be able to change things, but I do not want this House simply at this point to say, Okay, you gave us an ultimatum, we accept it.

I would hope, and we are going to be here obviously next week, that the small life insurance companies, people interested in the ability to travel to Israel and others would then at least go to Senators and say, Can't we at least even have a vote on this? Can't you even consider this?

And that is why I ask that today we send this bill back over. We retain a vehicle if the Senate remains impervious, but I think it's worth a try.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, there is no chance of waiting until after it expires. I don't know why the gentleman would have said that. He knows there is zero chance of that.

Now, I agree it has waited too long. But I would have been more impressed with the urgency if I had had people joining us in trying to get the Senate to act. We passed the bill months ago. We would have liked to have seen an act. But I didn't hear all this passion trying to force the Senate to act, and it was partly the minority in the Senate that was blocking it, that is, block the ability to have a conference.

Here is the point. I think telling the life insurance companies that they should not be restricting people's ability to travel unfairly is important. We think group life is important. We think that not allowing your community to be disadvantaged if it has been attacked once is important. And we may not be able to accomplish them this year, but we think it is important not simply to cave in and say those aren't even worth fighting for.

We are going to send a message, I hope, by voting for those principles because we pass the bill this year, and we may have to accept a minimal position, but we will be back here in a month or two and we hope to renew some of these things.

So I just reject the notion that the Senate can achieve this by waiting and waiting and waiting and then saying, Oh, well, there isn't enough time. There is not enough time because they held it up. No one can seriously argue that having seen this delay of many months, and again I didn't hear all this passion trying to make the Senate act for all of those months, nobody can argue that another day or two is going to make a difference. And that's what we're talking about.

So I reiterate, there is no chance of this expiring. Everybody knows that. We have preserved our ability at any point simply to accept this bill. The question is do we give up now or do we send them the message that the ability to travel to Israel, the concern for the small insurance companies being able to insure commercial properties and the concern for group life and not just property, that those are important issues.

We can take that vote today and send that message. And if we have to, we will accommodate reality. But we will have sent that message, and it gives us a basis upon which to act next year.

I yield now 6 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Ackerman).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney), a representative from the city who is Chair of the Financial Institution Subcommittee and has been very active on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

The gentleman said why put the provision in if the Senate said it's not going to talk about group life? Because I don't think that we should have a de facto amendment to the House rules that puts the Senate in charge of what we can discuss.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

The gentleman has raised a red herring. There is no chance of it expiring, and the fact that he would talk about a nonexistent threat of expiration seems to me to be an indication that there's nothing substantive to talk about.

In the end, we would retain the vehicle to pass this bill. But we will not give up talking about issues prematurely, and that's why we will not allow the Senate's unanimous consent agreement, very hastily done, to shut off debate here. But there is no chance of this expiring and the gentleman from Alabama knows that.

I yield now 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott), a member of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I would just say the gentleman from Alabama appears to have the Senate's preference for conflict avoidance confused with genuine consensus.

There weren't 100 votes for that. They didn't have a roll call vote. They're barely able to act, and so a couple of Members worked out a deal and the rest of them waved it good-bye. But the notion that that comes with some great significance clearly misunderstands what's happening, and it certainly shouldn't keep us from legislating.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Sires).

How much time remains?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley).

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin with the schizophrenic attitude towards the Senate. The gentleman said a number of times that the Senate passed this unanimously. Yes, by avoiding conference, by making a deal.

But he also continually said, correctly, that this bill was passed way too late. Why are we here now? The answer as to why we're here now, Mr. Speaker, it's the Senate that he was so admiring of. Yes, the Senate passed it without a vote, on November 16. We passed the bill on September 19. The House passed the bill with 3\1/2\ months left to go in the year. The Senate passed the bill less than a month ago. The Senate passed the bill, by the way, a different bill than ours, after we had adjourned for the recess.

So the Senate, whom he extols for having managed to put everything under the rug and make one of their deals where nobody gets fingerprinted for anything, they sent us this bill, and the earliest we could have passed it was last week. So all this rhetoric about 6 months, et cetera, well, that's, Mr. Speaker, his friends in the Senate who caused that problem. If they had worked with us, we would have had several months.

Now, we are going to pass a bill. We understand that. And we may well be able to pass only the Senate bill early next week. We have preserved our ability to do that. There is no chance of this expiring. The question is this: Should we acquiesce in a procedure by which the United States Senate waits until after we have adjourned for the Thanksgiving recess and sends us a bill and says, this is it, take it or leave it, or do we say, no, we don't like that and we're going to at least try to make you vote on things.

Now, I know the gentleman from Alabama likes the Senate version apparently where you just have unanimity so-called. I prefer democracy. I prefer letting things get voted on. Maybe the Senate won't vote, but let's at least give them one more option. It may take us another 3 or 4 days. So the notion that we are somehow delaying this for 3 or 4 days, no. We waited from our bill in September to theirs in November. Two months later they passed it. Three days or 4 days isn't going to make any difference and we'll get the bill through.

Here's what we want to do. We want to say that the point that the gentlewoman from Florida made that you should not arbitrarily cancel people's life insurance because they're traveling to a country that's on the State Department watch list, whether it's the nation of Israel or others that Americans want to travel to. Yes, if you can show that there's danger there, you can cut off their insurance. But don't say that we're just going to give up on that. Maybe we can't do it this year. Let's take the motion to recommit, then, because we're going to pass this bill soon, anyway, and we may have to pass the Senate version. Let's have a referendum on the freedom to travel provision. Let's have a referendum on whether or not we include group life or say that we insure buildings in this country but not life. Let's have a referendum on whether smaller insurance companies should be able to participate. Under our bill they can. Under the Senate bill they can't. And let's have that reset mechanism that the gentleman from Queens, New York, talked about so eloquently, which says we're going to rebuild and any place that's hit, we will rebuild them again.

Let me say, we have a referendum on those issues. We may not be able to win this year, but I want to be able, as chairman of the committee, to go back early next year and say to our friends in the Senate, okay, your rope-a-dope tactics may have worked, but they didn't work on the merits.

And we want to go back at you on small insurance companies and on group life and on the question of freedom to travel, and we want to bring it up again.

And the last point, when we're talking about why is this being done now, it's supposed to be temporary? I never thought it would be temporary. Here's the point: If you go through the private market, it is paid for by the insured, ultimately. I do not think that those people who are choosing to do business in areas that may be singled out by the terrorists ought to have to pay the higher cost of insuring themselves for that. Against fire, against theft, against liability for someone falling down, sure, that's their responsibility. But defending ourselves against terrorism is not a market matter; it's a matter of national security. And the whole country ought to come together in a unified way and say you may not threaten New York or Chicago or Atlanta or Miami, or any other part of America, or Los Angeles, as they threatened the airport. You may not threaten us and make us pay more. You cannot make it more expensive to do business in one part of this country than another. We will come together as one Nation in this program and say, yes, you are responsible for insuring yourself against various dangers. But for insuring yourself against murderous thugs seeking to do harm to this country, this country will come together as one in a national program and rebut that, and we will not allow them to intrude.

Now, again, it may be that in the end the best we can get is the Senate bill. But at this point, I urge the Members not to vote down, in principle, a reset mechanism that says, okay, you only get hit once and then you're gone, or the freedom to travel, or group life, or smaller companies.

I hope the motion to recommit is defeated and that we let the Senate know that we will continue to engage in democracy in this part of the Capitol.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3526) to include all banking agencies within the existing regulatory authority under the Federal Trade Commission Act with respect to depository institutions, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, this is a bill that was broadly supported in our committee that we believe will enhance the ability of the Federal bank authorities to provide consumer protection. It's a little bit of a complicated story.

Congress passed an amendment to the Federal Trade Act that gave the Federal Reserve System the right to promulgate rules which defined what were unfair or deceptive practices engaged in by banks. The Federal Reserve has, for many years, declined to exercise that authority.

The issue was first brought to my attention when I was ranking member of the committee by a very distinguished public official who, sadly, died earlier this year, Ned Gramlich, who was the Federal Reserve Board Governor in charge of, among other things, consumer protection. And here's how it played out.

The Comptroller of the Currency and the Director of the Office of Thrift Supervision a few years ago promulgated very strict rules preempting State rules and State laws and regulations regarding the activities of national banks. As a result of that ruling, which was challenged but upheld by the courts, States have virtually no authority over the banking practices of national banks. Only the national bank regulators may regulate.

The problem is that there were, in many, many States, most of the States from which we here come, consumer protection laws which were invalidated by that. In fact, the preemption said even when there were rules of general application that were covering the banks, the ability of the States to enforce them was limited. They had to go through the Federal regulators. So we then went to the Federal regulators, but many of us were opposed to that. We were critical. And on a bipartisan basis there was criticism of it on the Financial Services Committee. Our former colleague, the gentlewoman from New York, Mrs. Kelly, who was chairman of the Oversight Committee, was a very strong critic of what she believed to be excessive overregulation. But that has been upheld, and there is no realistic chance of undoing it.

So the second best for us was to have the Federal bank regulators able to provide the consumer protections that were lost when the State rules were invalidated. I spoke with the Comptroller of the Currency, and his response was, Well, here's the problem. Under the Federal Trade Act, the Federal Reserve has the right to promulgate the code of unfair deceptive practices. He indicated to me that he would like to do that, in fact, two Comptrollers said we would like to do this, but we don't have the authority to promulgate the rules. The Office of Thrift Supervision, which preempted, interestingly, does have the authority to promulgate the rules.

Now, what motivated our colleagues of an earlier era to give the Federal Reserve the right to make the rules for the Comptroller of the Currency and to give the Office of Thrift Supervision the right to make the rules only for themselves? I do not know. I can't speculate. Based on most recent experience, it was probably the Senate's fault, because almost everything that goes wrong these days is. But I don't know that for sure. On the other hand, it's our job to try to correct it.

What this bill does is to say to two of the Federal bank agencies, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation through its depository institutions has some authority over both national and State banks since it insures the deposits in both, we take away in this bill from the Federal Reserve System the power they have refused to use to promulgate a code of unfair and deceptive practices and give it, instead, over to the Comptroller of the Currency and the FDIC, either jointly or concurrently, and it comes with their support.

The Fed said they didn't like it, but they weren't using the power. The Comptroller of the Currency, he is, after all, a defender of this preemption. He has maintained the preemption. This is not an effort to undo the preemption. He acknowledges that in presiding over this national set of rules, it would be helpful to him to have this code of unfairness and deceptive practice, and what the code does is give some notice to the banks as to what are prohibited practices and what aren't. So this bill does nothing in terms of substantive promulgation of the code, but it gives to the active agencies, the Comptroller of the Currency, who promulgated the preemption, and the FDIC, the ability to put into effect what we think should have been put into effect before. It comes with the support of those agencies, and I think that if we get this done, they will proceed to do it.

I should note that the Office of Thrift Supervision, which already has the authority to promulgate such a code, is in the process of doing so. No legislation is needed. But they have put out a proposed rule in that regard. We have, many of us, encouraged them to go forward with it. And as a result of what OTS is doing under its authority and what this bill would give the Comptroller of the Currency and the FDIC by early next year, we should have in place rules that will tell people what are unfair and deceptive practices. And as I said, I would have preferred that the preemption would not have been so far reaching, but it's a fact of life. This will then empower the Federal bank regulators fully to be available to provide consumer protection when it's appropriate in lieu of the State laws that were cancelled.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the good news is that I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.