Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo), a Member not on the committee but one of those most active for pushing for one of the bills here.

Mr. Chairman, first, I yield myself 1 minute to say that I regret that my friend from Texas felt the need to absolve himself from the charge of excessive bipartisanship by engaging in a partisan diatribe that was factually shaky. It is true that this recovery from the recession has been slower than any previous one, but that's because the economy Barack Obama inherited from George Bush was the weakest since the Great Depression. Yes, it was a deeper economic downfall under George Bush than we've had in 8 years, and that's why the recovery was slower. But it's also the case, if you look at the chart recently presented to us by a Bush appointee, Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, it would show that in the beginning of 2006, there was a very steep drop in jobs, a month-by-month increase to the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in the last couple of years in the Bush administration, and then less than 2 months after Barack Obama took office, and we were able to begin some policies to stimulate the economy, an equally sharp rise. So we haven't come as far back as we'd like to, but that's because we were so deeply in the hole when we started.

Now I yield 2 minutes to one of the Members who has been a major shaper of this bill, the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Carney).

Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I now have an answer to a question. There was a bill in this package, H.R. 4088, that had never had a hearing, it had never been to our committee, everything else had been through the process, and I asked the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions) about it. He represented the Rules Committee, and he told me it was a good bill, and therefore, there was no need for it to go to a hearing or through subcommittee or committee. That struck me as rather odd. I've never heard that before, particularly from a party that says they wanted to bring us regular order.

But now that the gentleman from Arizona has spoken, let me make a confession, Madam Chair. I was being a little disingenuous. Now, let me alert people to the rules who may be new to the place. You may not accuse anyone else of being disingenuous under the House rules, but you can cop to it.

I knew what H.R. 4088 was, and we just heard it. We heard the gentleman from Arizona--surprisingly, to me--talk about his legislation. His legislation is the bill I was referring to. It was introduced on February 24, I believe, of this year. It had no hearing. It had no subcommittee markup. But it sounded very familiar as he described it, because that's not just a bill. It's a shape-shifter. It used to be the Himes-Schweikert bill.

So let me be clear: yes, we did consider this in subcommittee and in committee. It was voted on and debated. But it wasn't the Quayle bill then. There was no Quayle bill then. This bill had been the product of bipartisan collaboration between two of our Members: the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Himes), the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert). It had a great deal of appeal, particularly for the bank community.

So what happened?

Apparently, the Republican leadership decided it was Christmas in March, so they stole the bill from Mr. Schweikert and Mr. Himes and made a present of it to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Quayle). And Mr. Quayle, I must say, someone told him, Always be grateful, never look a gift bill in the mouth; because when they took the bill from the two men who had created it and took it away from them so that the gentleman from Arizona could get the credit for the bill--in which he had done no work--he seemed perfectly happy with it.

Now, I want to say, Madam Chairman, I've been here for 31\1/2\ years. I'm about to be not here anymore, but I do want to say--and I have thought very much about what I am about to say--that's shameful, shameful on the part of the Republican leadership that engaged in this cheap maneuver, shameful on the part of a Member who would be the beneficiary of it. I am deeply disappointed.

Yeah, it's a good bill. It was a good bill when it was the Himes- Schweikert bill. It was a good bill when it went through the hearing in the subcommittee. And for two Members who worked hard on this to then have it taken away and credit given to someone who had nothing to do with it previously is a bad idea.

Then, for the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions), on behalf of the Rules Committee, he did not want to admit this theft, so, instead, he announced a new principle--and I hope we can now be clear that's not going to be a precedent--namely, that if it's a good bill and a short bill, it doesn't have to go through a hearing; it doesn't have to go through subcommittee; it doesn't have to go through committee. That was the defense the gentleman from Texas made because he was, to his credit, embarrassed to acknowledge the truth.

But having understood that that was the truth, I do want to make it clear: it would have been better if he had not pretended, as it seems to me he did, that this was such a wonderful bill it didn't need to go through the procedure but, rather, had admitted that it was a bill that had gone through the procedure but had been kidnapped along the way and brought here under another Member.

As I said, I am very disappointed in a leadership that would do this and in a Member who would accept credit for a bill with which he had so little to do with.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, preliminarily, I yield myself 15 seconds to say the gentleman from Texas said the American people don't care about this intrigue. Then the question is: Why do they involve in it? Why do they engage in it? Why didn't they just leave the bill with the sponsors? So apparently they cared enough to play that double-game.

I now yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

* * *

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that my name be removed as a cosponsor of H.R. 3086.

Mr. Speaker, preliminarily, I'm here to discuss today's very encouraging jobs report.

I am struck. The previous speaker said he would never engage in expenditures on a credit card when we were already deeply in debt on behalf of his family. I note that he was not a Member of the Congress when this Congress voted to go to war in Iraq, for example, and also in Afghanistan. I voted for the war in Afghanistan. I thought the war in Iraq was a terrible mistake and still do.

All of us who voted to go to war in Afghanistan were voting to go into further debt. War is very expensive. We don't want to send our young people into battle--and some of our middle-aged people--without the best possible equipment. So I thought we had to go to war in Afghanistan in self-defense.

I thought the war in Iraq was a terrible error. The majority of my colleagues, including virtually every Republican, voted to do that.

So this principle that you don't vote to spend money when you don't have it is apparently, for some, a fairly flexible one. In fact, not only did the majority at that time under President Bush vote to go into two wars, they did it while voting for several large tax cuts. So they were exacerbating that very difficulty.

As I said, I voted to go to war in Afghanistan. I was prepared to vote for some revenues to pay for it.

Mostly, though, I want to talk today about the very encouraging report we got today about the economy.

We are in the early stages of recovery. It's not going nearly fast enough. What is now clear is that the recession that President Obama inherited from the previous administration in 2009 when he took office was deeper than people realized at the time. It was clearly the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression; and, in many ways, it was more disabling in the sense of the interconnections, although overall it was not.

President Obama and others underestimated the depths of that recession. Many of us did. So the recovery has been slower than it should have been in the interests of the American people.

But the fact is, very clearly, it is underway. I want to talk about that, and I want to talk about what's retarding it.

One of the interesting things today was the jobs number: 257,000 private sector jobs created, a very significant number. Enough, if it is a pattern, that can continuously cut into the unemployment figure. But it was accompanied by a 14,000 job reduction in public sector employment; and that, unfortunately, is a pattern.

If you go back to the worst of the recession, the end of 2009-- remember President Obama comes in in early 2009. We did pass an economic recovery package which clearly, by virtually every economist's acknowledgment, improved the situation. It didn't cure it. It didn't do as much to reduce the rate as had been hoped because the deficit in the economy was deeper.

But since that end of 2009 when things began to turn around after we had passed an economic recovery program that began to help, after a Federal Reserve under a Bush appointee, Ben Bernanke, reappointed by President Obama, continued its stimulative efforts, here's what happened basically since the last months of 2009 and the beginning of 2010:

We have had, in this economy, in the 2-year period, the creation in the private sector of 3.663 million jobs, approximately. You can't be exact. But over 3.6 million jobs. Unfortunately, during the same time period, a couple months earlier, public sector employment has declined by more than 550,000 jobs. In other words, if the public sector had simply been allowed to stay even, if there hadn't been firings of firefighters and people who shovel the snow and clean the streets and maintain the parks and teach young people and preserve law and order, if we hadn't fired police officers, public works employees, municipal engineers, teachers, sanitary workers, if we hadn't required them to be fired by a perverse set of Federal budget policies that had that negative impact on the municipalities, we would have had a half a million more jobs.

I'm not talking about the public sector increasing. If the public sector had simply been allowed to stay even, if this Congress had not sent money to build Afghanistan--futilely, in my judgment--if it hadn't wasted money on a war in Iraq that never should have begun and kept that money home and we could have had more police officers and firefighters and teachers and public works employees working here in our country, then the unemployment rate would be below 8 percent today.

This is exactly the opposite of what my Republican colleagues claim. Oh, the public sector, they say, is strangling the private sector. No. The truth is exactly the opposite. The private sector has increased, not yet at the rate we had hoped; although, if the private sector can continue to add 250,000-plus jobs a month, then we will. That's 3 million jobs a year. That will substantially reduce unemployment to the point which is where we should be, if we can persuade our Republican colleagues to stop forcing the cities and counties and States to lay off important public employees.

I got an anguished letter the other day from the mayor of the City of Fall River, Massachusetts, about a great addiction program, the Stanley Street treatment program, in his town. He wanted to know why they were cut off from the $1.4 million they had gotten to deal with addiction. The answer is this Congress voted out the whole program. I couldn't be their advocate and say, look, this is a good program, give them money because I was told by the agency about, you know, We know it's a good program. You Give us money. We can't give out money when you voted against it.

That money is in Kandahar. That money is in Basra. If it were doing any good over there, I would feel better about it. But we are spending money futilely overseas in wars, one of which shouldn't have started and one of which should have started--and, by the way, should end.

By the way, I heard my colleague, the previous speaker, talk about spending too much. In fact, one of the major criticisms the Republican Party now has, certainly their Presidential candidates and many here in the Congress, is not that the President is spending too much but that he is spending too little. They've criticized him for withdrawing our troops from Iraq, even though it was on a timetable President Bush had set forward. They want more troops in Iraq. Nothing is more expensive than keeping troops in a near combat situation; and that's right, because

you don't send people into combat without doing everything you can to protect them.

There are people who are criticizing the decision of beginning to reduce the troops in Afghanistan. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at their height were costing $150 billion a year over and above the regular military budget. I cannot think of anything less consistent than to argue that, a, we should be reducing the deficit and, b, we should be continuing to spend money not just on military activity but on nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Let's go back to the job situation. There were 3.6 million private sector jobs created in 2 years.

By the way, that has been reflected in the economy.

On March 9, 2009, then-Speaker Pelosi, Mr. Speaker, convened a meeting in which we talked about things we thought we should do for the financial sector. It was the beginning of our efforts to do financial reform.

I know the Republicans think that financial reform is a terrible idea; that, apparently, we should have derivatives unregulated. We shouldn't have an independent consumer bureau.

We should continue the practice whereby people can make loans to people who shouldn't get them and then sell those loans to other people so they had no interest in whether or not they were repaid. Because we began our financial reform efforts in March of 2009, and we were told it was terrible for the financial industry.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average on March 9 was 6,500. By March 9, now 3 years later, it will very likely be double what it was then. The Dow Jones Industrial Average will have doubled in the aftermath of the passage of the economic Recovery Act, the financial reform bill, even the health bill.

Maybe I don't claim that we did it, but we certainly didn't retard it. So in that time period, 3.6 million jobs were created. At the end of the Bush administration, of course, we were into very substantial job loss. In the very first months of the Obama administration and the last months of the Bush administration, job losses in the hundreds of thousands a month. Now we have begun to turn that around.

And again, let's stress if it hadn't been for Federal budget policies forced by this Congress and by others in the Congress who were reluctant to do the right thing, if States and cities had simply been allowed to keep their current level, in other words, if we had had increases in the private sector and held steady over a 3-year period in the public sector, we'd have half a million more jobs in America today and probably more because these things have some multiplier effect.

And clearly unemployment would be below 8 percent. It has dropped to 8.3. By the way, when unemployment went down to 8.9 and 8.7, the critics of the President said, oh, that's just because the labor force has dropped. Well, the labor force went up in this past month, according to the statistics.

More people were encouraged to look for jobs. And with more people looking for jobs, we still had a drop to 8.3 percent in the unemployment numbers.

Now, that is an example of the wrong-headedness of the very conservative approach of the economy. Yes, we have a deficit. It is a very large deficit, much of it incurred because of the policies of President Bush supported by Republican majorities in Congress. I'm told I didn't read it, but the bill we passed yesterday said that the tax cuts under George Bush did not add to the deficit.

That is Marxist reasoning, Chico Marxist reasoning. It reminds me of the time in one of the movies where Groucho caught Chico red-handed and Chico, denying that he had done it, said, Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?

Bills that passed cut government revenues by hundreds of billions of dollars, and it didn't add to the deficit. Of course it did and it added to the deficits at the same time we were incurring further deficits by going to war. I didn't vote for the war in Iraq. I voted for the war in Afghanistan, but I have for some time now thought we should withdraw entirely.

It is the Republicans at the Presidential level and in the Congress who are resisting that we spend more.

We have begun to reduce defense spending. The President made a very radical decision. He said that after the late forties when we sent troops to Western Europe and Central Europe to keep Joe Stalin, a vicious, brutal murderer from invading central and Western Europe-- countries that had been left devastated by World War II--that having done that in 1948 and '49, it was time to withdraw them.

Well, according to my Republican friends, that's a terrible mistake. They want to keep those troops in Western Europe. That would be good for the economies of Europe, and they need them these days, but it's terrible for the United States. The heads of the military said, you know what, we can take these troops out of Europe and retire them.

That doesn't mean you fire them. I was glad to see General Odierno say we will not dismiss anyone who signed up to serve this country. We are grateful for them, and they should be allowed to serve out fully what they did and get the full veterans benefit that a grateful Nation owes them. But with the turnover in the military in ordinary circumstances, you can reach a reduction fairly soon by simply not hiring new people.

Now, I will add that there is another great inconsistency on my Republican colleagues' point. When I debate with them whether or not we should cut spending for firefighters or public-works employees, whether we should provide money to build highways, whether we should do things where the Federal Government provides funds that I believe are job creating, they tell me you can look it up in all of the debates that we've had here, that government spending doesn't create jobs.

They deny that the government spending money can create jobs, with one wonderful exception. Apparently that doesn't apply to military spending because when it comes to reducing military spending, they have all become the most devoted followers of John Maynard Keynes. They sound like the New Dealers at their most urgent and ardent.

The military to them is the world's great public works project. Obviously, it has other functions; but when we talk about reducing the military, all of a sudden government spending is a great fount of job creation. Well, the fact is that when you reduce military spending, you can cut back on jobs in the near term as you can in other areas.

I do believe that cutting military spending can result in less job reduction than, for instance, cutting the right kind of medical spending. Yes, we should have comparisons of this, but I'm talking now just about the sheer hypocrisy of arguing that government spending cannot create jobs and then turning around and invoking government spending as a part of the military.

In fact, as these numbers show, our having four States and cities to cut back--and by the way the reason States and cities have cut back is not simply that we haven't given them Federal funds, which I believe in a proper approach of this system we should. That was the radical program of revenue sharing, it was called, in Community Development Block Grants, which was first put forward by that--I never thought terribly radical--Richard Nixon in the seventies.

But the fact is that the national economic crisis has hit with particular impact on cities and States, especially since it manifests itself in low-housing prices. Of all the levels of government in this country--local, State and Federal--it's the local governments that rely most heavily on the property tax.

So when property is devalued, as it has been by factors far beyond the control of any city, the city's revenues suffer. And so it's a combination of their natural revenue base suffering as a national policy because of the denial of funding on programs that have existed since Richard Nixon, that they have had to lay off over half a million people.

And because they've laid off half a million people, instead of there being a net 3.6 million increase in jobs in the last couple of years, it's 3.1 million. And 550,000 jobs would be better than 3 percent on the unemployment figures. It would reduce unemployment. And here is, of course, the great mistake the conservative ideology makes and you're seeing it in Europe as well.

By the way, I don't think it's an accident that in America President Obama has resisted this notion that we should make even further and further cuts domestically. I do acknowledge that my colleagues are big spenders when it comes to Iraq, Afghanistan, bases in Europe and other military expenditures, much less useful, I think, for our economy.

But in Europe, they have been falling on recently the notion of austerity. As today's numbers make clear, we have a way to go in our economy, and we need to work to cooperate to keep this economic recovery going and get it more vigorous. Of all the major developed economies in the world, the American economy is doing the best. Obviously, the developing ones--India, China--starting from a lower base, they are doing better. But if you look at the major industrialized Nation, we are doing better because we have resisted a sense of austerity.

Now, sometimes intelligence requires an ability to make distinctions that are beyond some people. Yes, we have a deficit, and we have to reduce the deficit. But at the same time, we have a serious unemployment problem which is getting less serious. It's still serious, but 8.3 percent is better than 8.9 percent or 9.1 percent. And 7.9 percent would have been even better if they hadn't forced cities and States to lay off cops and public-works employers and teachers and firefighters.

But what we need to be able to do is to work on both of these. In the near term, some stimulative activity to deal with the unemployment situation is a good thing. This is not a time to choke off this recovery. But precisely because we are in the early stages of recovery, we can, if we do the right thing in the near term, begin with the end of this current year, start cutting back on the deficit.

Now, it's interesting, by the way, that one of the ways you do that will be to continue to reduce military spending, along with other things. But what do my Republican colleagues say? Oh, no, you can't reduce another penny of military spending.

One of the things I've been told, by the way, is that we've hollowed out the military in past years. I wrote to Secretary of Defense Panetta who, to my surprise, claimed that after the end of the Cold War we had hollowed out the military. I was surprised because Leon Panetta was the Budget Director during that period after the Cold War under Clinton. So, apparently, this was a confession that he himself had hollowed out the military, but I don't think we did.

And I have written him and I have asked others, would anyone please come forward and say on this floor of the House, or elsewhere, given the argument that we've hollowed out the military, can anyone show me one example of where, in the period after the demise of the Soviet Union, one of the great things that happened for human history, we needed to apply military force and didn't have it?

President Clinton didn't lack for the appropriate force in southern Yugoslavia to accomplish his goals. George Bush, in the immediate end of the Cold War, was able to do Iraq, the first President Bush. The second President Bush had too much military from my standpoint in terms of what he used in going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time.

So this argument that we've hollowed out the military is nonsense. With the reductions that are planned, we will still be, by far, the strongest military in the world and well able to defend ourselves.

And yes, if we're going to reduce the deficit, we have to put cuts in a lot of places. We can cut the Social Security that goes to wealthy people. I receive Social Security. I'm prepared to vote to have it all taxed way. That's an effective way to means test it, not by a complicated process at the outset. For those of us who make a certain income and we're getting Social Security, give us a 95 percent tax. That will work very efficiently.

I'm prepared to put some constraints on spending domestically on programs I like. But exempting the military, as my Republican colleagues want, trying to scare the American people by saying that if we're only five times as strong as our nearest adversary we'll somehow be in danger, that isn't remotely the case. Continuing to maintain a full complement of weaponry to defeat the Soviet Union in a cold war when it has long since imploded, none of those make sense.

But here's the point. If we commit ourselves to longer-term deficit reduction, then we can, without in any way causing any loss of confidence, do the short-term spending that will help us. And, by the way, the other area where we should be working to reduce the deficit is in taxation.

One of the controversies we have now is our proposal that many of us support to put a surtax on income for people who earn more than $1 million a year. It's called the millionaire's tax. That's a misleading name. You can have $10 million in your estate, in your accounts, and still not be earning $1 million a year. We're not talking about people who have a million or 2 or 3 or 4. We're talking about people who earn $1 million a year in taxable income every year.

What we've said is every time you earn more than $1 million a year, for every thousand in taxable income, after all of your deductions that you earned, we're going to tax you $56; $56 per thousand for people who are already earning $1 million. It's nonsense to suggest that would in any way be disturbing to them or to their spending patterns; but it would help us reduce the deficit.

So yeah, I want to shore up Medicare. I was struck that the previous speaker had two complaints about the President: one, that he's spending too much money, and, two, that he's not spending enough. He complained about cuts in Medicare. In fact, those are not cuts that went to any beneficiary or even to the actual providers in the real sense. They went to some insurance companies that were getting more than they needed.

But if we will include the military and put constraints elsewhere and ask the wealthiest people in this country to pay some taxes--and, by the way, this argument that tax increases kill the economy, the last time I heard it was when President Clinton asked Congress to raise taxes on incomes above $150,000, a far lower figure than we're talking about today, even correcting for inflation. He said raise the tax on people making $150,000, put the top rate from 36 to 39.6 percent, a fairly small increase I thought at the time. And we did it, over the objection of the right-wing economists, and they told us it would be the end of the economy. In fact, subsequent to that, in the many years after that, we had one of the best economic performances of American history, not necessarily because we raised taxes, but even though we did.

The fact is that people who thought these arguments, they greatly exaggerate the sensitivity of this vast, complex, strong American economy to fairly small changes in tax rates. But the point is that we have been told before that increasing by a fairly small amount of taxes on the very wealthy--and as I said, we were talking then about 150; we're talking about a much higher figure today--that's a way to help reduce the deficit.

Constraining the military helps reduce the deficit, and that brings me back to the point of these job numbers. Totally contrary to what the Republican Presidential candidates are saying when they take time out from saying terrible things about each other--but I will give them credit, as I listen to the Republican candidates make the most devastating, negative, personal attacks on each other, I do have to concede that they are almost always right in what they say about each other. But when they lay off each other, they make extraordinarily negative, excessively denigrating comments about our country, talking about how this country is no longer respected in the world, directly contrary to all of the evidence, denigrating our economy when we are, today, the best performing major developed economy in the world. Still not good enough, but it would be better still if the Republicans would cooperate with us instead of trying to make things worse.

250,000 new private sector jobs, including increases in manufacturing. And, by the way, Mr. Speaker, a significant part of that was because the government intervened, over the objection of the Republicans now running for President and many in Congress, to help the automobile industry.

Let me read from yesterday's New York Times. The headline: In a Surprise, Car Sales Start New Year Strongly. And it says that American and other automobile dealers are doing very well. And then:

Chrysler ends quarter with $225 million profit. The comeback from bankruptcy at Chrysler hit a milestone when the company reported its first full year of positive earnings since 2005.

And it says:

This was a company that just 3 years ago needed a government bailout and a trip through bankruptcy to survive.

The fact is that the intervention, initiated by President Obama and supported by this Congress, particularly our Democratic Members, with some Republicans but with most of them opposing it, rescued General Motors and Chrysler. General Motors is today the number one automobile company in the world. It wouldn't have been if we'd listened to the Republicans.

Manufacturing employment has begun to increase, partly because we've gotten these jobs back at Chrysler and General Motors.

And, by the way, among those that were strongly supportive of the intervention was Ford. Ford had been prudent, had borrowed some money or had mortgaged itself and had some cash. They didn't need a direct participation in the funds that came from the TARP. That hated TARP. But they strongly supported it because they knew if General Motors and Chrysler weren't able to continue to function, the supply chain in America would dry up. That would have cost more jobs, and it would have put Ford at a disadvantage.

So we have a thriving American automobile industry today that's on the upswing that we wouldn't have had if we listened to the Republican argument that government always is bad. Oh, I make an exception: Government is always bad unless it's the military. They impute to the military powers beyond what it has, it seems to me.

I would make the point that our military is a superb instrument, full of extraordinary people, and they are very good at doing what a military should do--stopping bad things from happening. It is not fair to them and unrealistic to expect them to be able to make good things happen. Yes, they can stop murderers. But the best armed, the most thoughtful young Americans ever assembled aren't going to be able to get the Shia and Sunni and the Kurds to like each other; or to bring to Afghanistan what it's never been able to get, sadly. I wish we could, but we don't do it with American firepower.

But with the exception of the military, we hear only negatives about government. In fact, we have a private sector that has begun to connect. We are now at a pace to reduce unemployment to a reasonable level. If it hadn't been for the job reductions in the public sector, forced by many here, we would be even better off. And, by the way, we are talking about people who provide services essential to the quality of life, people who pave the streets and shovel the snow and deal with the sewage and clean up the parks and police and fire. These are essential people. We have half a million less of these people. We're not talking about Federal bureaucrats here. These job losses are mostly at the State and local levels. We have half a million less of them.

We have, fortunately, 3.6 million more private employees in this period of recovery from the recession. If we had been able to maintain the public sector, we would be lower in unemployment. I hope, Mr. Speaker, that people will look at this, that they will stop this mindless, partisanly motivated trashing of America when we are doing better than any other developed economy of any size, even though we are held back to some extent by them, that they will instead join with us in saying, look, let's understand that we need spending constraints across the board, including the military; that the wealthiest people in this country, the people running hedge funds can afford to pay a regular tax and not get that carried interest boondoggle that is in no way an incentive to economic activity but simply makes them richer. I understand why they'd rather be richer; although, many of them are, I think, public spirited enough to say let's change this.

Let's put some spending constraints on across the board. Let's raise revenues in a way that will not have a negative effect on the economy or on the quality of lives of those people paying it, and let's lock in that so that in the near term we can stop forcing States and cities to lay people off. We can continue the kind of policies that will help put some people back to work in the construction industry, such as in highways. We can also, I hope, get the people at the Federal Housing Finance Administration to stop resisting the administration's effort to help with housing.

If there is cooperation, and if we learn the lessons of the past, we can make this economy work.

I would include one final point, and I will be talking about this some more. One of the great successes we have seen in the past few years has been the policies under a Bush appointee, Benjamin Bernanke, George Bush's chief economic adviser, whom George Bush gave the most important economic post in America, Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Chairman Bernanke has pushed hard to have the Federal Reserve be a constructive force in our economy. People on the right in particular were saying it is going to cause terrible inflation. Rarely in American history has a flat prediction been more wrong. The quantitative easing, and the intervention of the Fed has produced no inflation. It has made money for the Federal Government. It hasn't cost us anything. It has been very helpful.

In fact, the Fed has been setting a good example for Europe. One of the best things that has happened with regard to Europe lately, as perceived by the markets as well as others, is that people noted that the European Central Bank was beginning to take some of the lessons from the U.S. Federal Reserve and work more like them.

If we stop harassing the Federal Reserve about the reasonable pro- expansionary policies it has been following and we stop forcing State and local governments from firing people who perform useful services and are unfortunately added to the unemployment figure, if we will produce Federal funding not to try to mediate a dispute in Iraq but to build highways here and to clean up our water systems, and if we will ask the wealthiest people in America to give a little bit more, which they won't miss but which will help us, then the good day that we had today--it was a very good day in the economic news. I noticed even Fox News almost begrudgingly had to say, Wow, what a good economic report. I give Chris Wallace credit because he cut right through and said that when there was someone who wanted to carp.

There were 250,000 new private sector jobs today. If we can keep that up, then maybe the 250,000 private sector jobs will become 300,000, and maybe we will add 5,000 or 10,000 public sector jobs that were lost where we need cops and firefighters and people to keep our cities clean.

If this Congress, through an ideological rigidity that has been proven wrong by the facts, does not interfere, if we are supportive of the very sensible program that the President has laid out, independently supported by that Bush appointee Mr. Bernanke at the Federal Reserve, America will continue to have the best developed economy in the world, and we can get the kind of recovery that the American people deserve.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 2 o'clock and 4 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, February 6, 2012, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, one of the most important leaders in the economy of southeastern Massachusetts is about to retire.

E. Dennis Kelly, Jr. joined Bristol County Savings Bank in 1977 as Operations Manager and held various titles before being named the President and CEO in 1993. Mr. Kelly has held this position for the past 18 years, but will retire as the 12th President of Bristol County Savings on March 13, 2012. During his tenure, Mr. Kelly was instrumental in creating the Bristol County Savings Charitable Foundation in 1996, first serving as President and currently as Chairman.

Mr. Kelly has been a community leader and has made a difference in the lives of many organizations, families and individuals throughout the regions where Bristol County Savings Bank operates. Under his leadership, the Bristol County Savings Bank and the Bristol County Savings Charitable Foundation awarded $1.1 million in grants last year and more than $8.0 million in total to area organizations since 1996. In addition to the significant financial support provided by the Bristol County Savings Charitable Foundation, he has personally invested his time and expertise to help develop solutions that addressed community needs. In this role, he currently holds leadership positions in various organizations including Chairman of the Depositors Insurance Fund; former President and current member of the Board of Directors of Annawon Council of Boys Scouts of America; Trustee of the Augat Foundation; member of the Board of Directors of the Attleboro YMCA and Capital Campaign Chairman; Immediate Past Chairman and Current member of the Board of Trustees of Bridgewater State University Foundation; member of the Board of Directors of the Taunton Development Corporation; member of the Board of Directors of the Sturdy Memorial Hospital Foundation; member of the Board of Directors of the Old Colony Historical Society; Incorporator of the United Way of Greater Attleboro Taunton; Board Member of FAIR, Friends of Attleboro Interested in Revitalization; Incorporator of the Hockomock YMCA; and Incorporator of Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island.

Over the years, Mr. Kelly has contributed his time and talent to many other organizations as well and has held leadership positions in various banking and professional associations including Chairman of the Massachusetts Bankers Association; Chairman of the Massachusetts Bankers Charitable Foundation; former Regional Chairman of the New England School of Banking; President of the Heart of Taunton; President of the Route 44 Businessman's Association; Treasurer of the Southeastern Massachusetts Manufacturing Partnership and President of the Taunton Kiwanis Club. In addition he has also served as Chairman of the Board & Campaign Chairman of the United Way of Greater Attleboro- Taunton; Trustee of Morton Hospital & Medical Center; member of the Rotary Club of Taunton; member of the President's Advisory Council for Bishop Feehan High School and Chairman of the St. Mary's Education Fund Dinner.

Mr. Kelly earned a BA in History Education from Providence College in 1969 and was a graduate of the National School of Banking at Fairfield University.

Mr. Kelly resides in Attleboro with his wife, Michelle. They have two sons Thomas and Robert and three grandchildren, Madison, Chace and Landon.

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

This was a matter brought to me by the gentleman from Georgia who just spoke, and his Georgia colleague, the gentleman, Mr. Scott, who's a member of the Financial Services Committee, because of their understandable concern that the impact bank failures could have in the State they represent. I am very supportive.

I do want to make clear that nothing in the passage of this should be taken as a criticism of the FDIC. I have been very impressed with the leadership that was given to the FDIC by the recently retired chair, Sheila Bair, an appointee of President Bush, who was not only, I think, a first-rate chair at the FDIC, but gave us a great deal of her useful advice as we dealt with financial reform.

Bank failures are an unfortunate fact of life. We don't want them to be done unnecessarily, but neither can they be avoided. And, obviously, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the problem is in the business community. The right to fail, as we must remind ourselves, is part of the right to do business.

Having said that, I agree that what the FDIC does should be very transparent. And there is one aspect of what the FDIC does, not directly affected in this bill, but it's one that I think you have bipartisan agreement on in the committee, namely, and I will mention this because of its impact on our economy.

Understandably, bank examiners felt very sensitive to criticism that during the first part of this century they did not say no to enough loans. Loans were made in the mortgage field that shouldn't have been made, but you cannot retroactively go back and undo that by now being too tough and denying loans that should be made. And we have had a frustration on the part of members of our committee because we hear reports from people in the field in the community banks that bank examiners are being too tough.

No one wants to encourage imprudent lending, and the bank regulators tell us they agree with that; but I want to take every opportunity I can to remind the bank examiners that if they run into a situation in which no bank loan ever defaults, then they have been too tough because perfection is unattainable; and what we want to do is minimize the number of failures, but not move them out all together with a regime that will keep good loans from being made.

Having said that, to go back to this, it is appropriate that we get a full study of what happens when a bank fails; and we would ask the FDIC, when they are dealing with a failed bank, to take into account the needs of that particular community so that the disposition is one that has some sensitivity, and that is what I think is here.

I would just say, with regard to community banks, there was a continued recognition they're important. And I would just note in the financial reform bill signed last year, there were several provisions that were in there at the specific request of the community banks to help them. For example, one of the disadvantages community banks have felt is that people with large amounts to deposit would go to larger institutions because the limitation on deposit insurance would make them a little worried about going to a community bank.

We increase that number from $100,000 to $250,000, which is a significant advantage for community banks over the prior situation.

We also, for the first time in our history, change the way in which assessments are levied on banks for deposit insurance by introducing a risk factor. Before the bill was signed, every deposit was levied the same amount of insurance cost. Now there is a risk factor, which means that, dollar for dollar, the larger institutions which engage in riskier activities will be paying more than the smaller institutions.

We also extended, for a period--I would have liked to make it permanent; we didn't have the votes to do that--the transactional accounts.

So, yes, we are aware of the importance of community banks. And I would just repeat what I said at the first, because I have found, surprisingly, that not everybody listens to everything I say the first time I say it. This is not meant as a criticism of the FDIC. It is a recognition of the importance of this process being open and that people understand it.

So I say to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland), the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. David Scott), they were serving their constituents well by bringing this forward, and I hope the bill passes.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on December 27th, Mayor Charles Crowley of the city of Taunton will be chairing his last City Council meeting. It has been a great privilege and pleasure for me during the last four years and nine months to work with Mayor Crowley, as the Member of the U.S. House of Representatives for the city of Taunton. Officially, he is an extremely thoughtful and creative chief executive, who combines a capacity to do serious policy analysis with important management skills. We have collaborated on a number of issues important to the city of Taunton, involving transportation, housing, and economic development, and I have found it easy to represent the city under Charlie Crowley's mayoralty, because he does his homework in a way that makes being the advocate for the city he presides over easy.

For someone who is interested in history, talking with Charlie Crowley is always fascinating. Mayor Crowley is a first-rate historian, and I have rarely been with him dealing with a particular policy when I haven't learned something relevant and interesting about the history of the events or the place we are addressing.

Charlie Crowley has been a friend as well as a colleague. He retires entitled to a sense of satisfaction about the great job he has done-- especially in an era when being Mayor of a city is one of the hardest jobs around.

Madam Speaker, I deeply appreciate the solicitude of my colleagues on my appearance. I want to first assure them that there is much less here than meets the eye. I am going to explain that because, as much as I appreciate the solicitude, responding to it 400 times would seem to me a bit excessive, literally adding insult to injury.

I just want to explain that I discovered a torn ligament. We're not exactly sure how it happened. It was easily repaired today. I am wearing this because the arm was blocked and is not mobile. It is simply to protect the arm.

Madam Speaker, I do want to anticipate any question. This had nothing to do with my retirement. I did not discover it until after my announcement of my retirement. And I would just add that at no point during my 31 years here was this ligament ever essential to the performance of my duties.

Mr. Speaker, on October 30th, one of the great leaders of Southeastern Massachusetts retired--not from our community, but in his official capacity as the Pastor of St. George Greek Orthodox Church. His retirement comes to some extent as a loss to our community, although after 58 years of superb service, no one can begrudge him that step. But we do not believe he will be retiring from the extraordinarily important role he has played in the life of the community at large.

Father Bebis was a man of great enthusiasm for life, deep learning and an example or religion in its very best sense. To be with him was to draw strength from him, to be inspired and cheered by him, and to feel lucky to be one of the countless people whom he treated as friends.

Mr. Speaker, in the New Bedford Standard Times, Saturday, October 29th, Linda Andrade Rodrigues wrote a very thoughtful piece that captures the spirit of Father Bebis and the love that people in our region have for him. I ask that this be printed here.

[From Southcoast Today, Oct. 29, 2011]

`He Has Illumined Our Minds, Deepened Our Souls, Enlarged Our Hearts':

The Very Rev. Constantine S. Bebis Retires After 58 Years as Pastor

(By Linda Andrade Rodrigues)

Dartmouth, NH.-- The Very Rev. Constantine S. Bebis, the

beloved pastor of St. George Greek Orthodox Church for the

past 58 years, will officially retire on Oct. 30, celebrating

his last Sunday service as ``proistamenos''.

Born on the isle of Crete, Bebis never dreamed that he

would someday come to America. As a young boy, he lived in

Pireaus, Greece, with his widowed mother

who struggled to raise her three young children while working

as a seamstress.

The family survived the German occupation from April 1941

to October 1944.

``Italy bombed us, Germany bombed us, and then the allies

bombed us,'' he said. ``Many of my neighbors got killed. How

I survived was a miracle!''

Bebis said that during this difficult time, the Greeks

longed for emancipation from the Americans and the British.

``I had no money, but I wanted to study English,'' he said.

``I gave an English teacher part of my bread coupons. I

denied myself food so I could buy books and learn English.''

During a catechism class, the teacher asked if any of the

students had considered the priesthood.

``I was the only one who raised a hand,'' he said. ``I

wanted to become a priest like my grandfather.''

At the end of the class, the teacher asked him, ``Do you

want to go to America?''

``Of course,'' he answered.

A short time later an American bishop visited Greece, and

Bebis was chosen as a seminarian. He arrived in the United

States in 1947.

He received a full scholarship to study theology for the

priesthood of the Greek Orthodox Church.

``This country has been wonderful to me,'' he said.

Bebis earned a master's degree in theology and was ordained

on March 25, 1951.

The same year he wed Irene Vouris of Watertown.

``I married a wonderful woman,'' he said. ``Irene was a

beautiful lady, the redeeming feature in my life, and she

gave me four marvelous, successful children: Stephen, George,

Paul and Constance.

``I am also grateful for my 11 grandchildren and four

great-children''

Bebis became the pastor of St. George Greek Orthodox Church

in New Bedford on Oct. 1, 1953.

``When I came to New Bedford, some prominent people told me

that this was a difficult parish in a difficult town, and

they gave me six months,'' he said laughing. ``I found the

people extremely fine, and in every person I saw the image of

Christ.''

Bebis has always been involved in ecumenical activities,

serving as a member of the Inter-Church Council of Greater

New Bedford since 1954.

``I was very happy to associate myself with both my friends

from the Inter-Church Council and the many Catholic

priests,'' he said.

In May 1976, the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople

awarded him the title of protopresbyter, the highest rank of

a married priest in the Greek Orthodox Church.

Bebis reached out to the community as pastor; as founder of

the antipoverty agency, the Agnes Braz and Hope Bean North

End Community Center; and as president of Onboard Legal

Services for the Poor, among a host of other charitable work.

In May 2003, Metropolitan Methodios of Boston conferred

upon Bebis the ancient office of archimandrite, the title

given to priests who are eligible to become bishops.

Bebis was honored by the City of New Bedford in 2004 for

his more than 50 years of service to the community. His

portrait by artist Deborah Macy is on display at the New

Bedford Free Public Library.

A bench in front of the Math and Science building at

Bristol Community College also pays tribute to the Greek

immigrant who became the beloved father to his congregation,

as well as friend and benefactor to the community at large.

Marking his amazing journey are these words carved in

stone: ``He has illumined our minds, clarified our vision,

deepened our souls, enlarged our hearts, broadened our

compassion, enriched our spirit, and our humanity.''

Bebis said that his mission was crowned when the

congregation moved into their new church building on Cross

Road in Dartmouth two years ago.

``It was an emotional thing for some of the parishioners to

leave the old church,'' he said. ``But the church is

flourishing in our new facilities. I am amazed at the

attendance.''

A resident of New Bedford, Bebis said that he will remain a

faithful and supportive member of the parish.

``I decided to retire, but a priest never retires,'' he

said. ``I will still be here as a member of the parish. As

long as I live, I will serve the church.''

I thank the gentleman from Washington.

I urge Members to vote for this bill, although my enthusiasm is tempered. As I contemplate this bill, I think of the words of a former great Member of this body, a former Speaker of the House from my home State, the late John McCormack, who, not wanting to offend House rules, referred to one of his colleagues as someone whom he held in ``minimum high regard.'' That's essentially what I think about this bill.

I thank my colleague from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver) for the good work he did on an important provision that means a lot to public housing in Massachusetts involving federalization. I appreciate the increase in the FHA being maintained so the people who live in the areas I represent and in California and elsewhere are not discriminated against. So, for that, I am grateful.

But there is a serious flaw in the bill in two areas, or there are two serious flaws in one area each.

The HUD budget is good in that federalization but severely lacking. I regret the fact that we will be spending more on community development and building important institutions in Afghanistan than we are in America.

And even more important is the issue that the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr) mentioned. It is incredible to me that my Republican colleagues brought out of their subcommittee a bill that would give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission less money this year in the coming year than it got this year. Now, the Senate was able to bring it back up to level funding.

Understand, we are talking about derivative regulation. We're talking about AIG. We are talking about a dangerously unregulated operation. We are talking about the thing that has us concerned now about the extent to which there may be a contagion from Europe to America because of derivatives, credit default drops issued by American banks. I think we have a handle on this, but we would do better if we had the bill fully implemented. You can read today in The New York Times about the role of the CFTC trying to straighten out the MF problem.

It is extraordinary that we give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission a new responsibility. Because of prior foolish moves by this Congress and a President, we had not regulated swaps, a very important new form of derivative. They are a dangerous instrument, and they need to be regulated. And this is a wholly new responsibility for the CFTC. And the members of the Appropriations Committee on the Republican side would have given it, if they had their way, less by a significant amount for the next year than this year. We got it up to even.

But let's be very clear: People who do not want to give the CFTC any additional money are basically telling the American people that they think it was just fine what AIG did. It was just fine that we have these unregulated derivatives, that people were able to accumulate debts far beyond what they could pay.

The CFTC was also given, under our legislation, a specific mandate to deal with speculation. I know there were some on the Republican side who think speculation has nothing to do with oil prices and it has nothing to do with food prices, and I think the evidence is clearly to the contrary. People who can tell me that these ups and downs in the oil market are purely because of supply and demand, I await for them to describe to me when Santa Claus arrives.

The fact is that regulating derivatives is an essential part of preventing the problems that we ran into a few years ago and we are now trying to prevent. And level funding the CFTC--and level funding only because our Senate colleagues insisted on overcoming a Republican effort here to give it less money in the current coming year than in the current year--is a terrible act of irresponsibility.

I hope that we will be able soon to remedy this. But I fear that what you do with this, Mr. Speaker, in this legislation is to open us up to the kind of irresponsible, unregulated financial behavior that led to the greatest crisis we have had in so many years.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I intend to talk about the Federal Reserve, but preliminarily, having listened to my colleague from Texas, I did want to note a little bit of a dissent.

He cited Queen Isabella of Spain and King James of England for having decided what kind of country we should be. Now, the question of the religious nature or not is obviously a legitimate one to debate, but I was a little surprised to be told that I was to be in any way bound by what Queen Isabella or what King James said hundreds of years ago. I thought one of the purposes of the American Revolution was to tell European monarchs that we would here in America make our own choices.

But I want to talk today about the Federal Reserve and particularly, frankly, about my disappointment in a debate, I guess, I've been having--it's been kind of one-sided because he's never spoken to me-- with Mr. George Will.

I know it's common advice to Members of Congress and to other political leaders not to get into an argument with the people in the media. I think that's a great mistake. I think that respect for openness and democracy should make this a two-way street and that the notion that responding to criticism in the media that's inaccurate is somehow inappropriate or hypersensitive is a great mistake. What I would have looked forward to was a debate, with probably Mr. Will and others, about the Federal Reserve.

I did file legislation last April to change the structure of the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee, which votes to set interest rates to the extent that we can, and it now consists of the seven appointees to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors who are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate--people selected in that democratic way but with 14-year terms to guarantee some independence. They are Presidentially appointed and confirmed by the Senate, but they serve for 14 years so that there is not, presumably, the chance for one President

to get everybody. There are built in some staggered terms there.

But there are also five votes that are cast by regional presidents at the Federal Reserve Bank. These five people--it's on a rotating basis. The New York president always gets it. Four others out of the remaining ones go on periodically. These are people helping setting the most important public policy in America: monetary policy, interest rates.

But they come with nothing remotely resembling public participation in the process. They are selected by the Federal Reserve boards of directors, which they in turn have largely selected; and those boards, not surprisingly it's the Federal Reserve regional system, are marginally people, more than anyone else, in the financial community.

Now it's very important for people in the financial community to be represented, and I am very glad that the regional presidents come to the meetings and should be allowed to speak, be encouraged to speak. But having people who are appointed by bankers, who then appoint new bankers to appoint new people, be 5 of the 12 votes in setting monetary policy I believe violates democratic norms.

I think it also gives a bias against the mandate the Congress has given the Federal Reserve--it's not been changed--to worry equally about inflation and unemployment, because, and the record shows this, the regional bank presidents tend to be concerned more, on the whole, about inflation than an appointment. They don't regard the two as equal. That's not surprising given whom they represent. That's a legitimate argument for debate. And I filed legislation last April to leave the regional presidents in the position of speaking but not voting.

Mr. Will differed with that, and I look forward to a debate. Mr. Will does not agree with Mr. Bernanke's policy of trying to respond to our economic troubles by increasing the availability of money, the quantitative easing. Mr. Will is apparently on the side of people who have been proven to be quite wrong factually that this is going to lead to inflation.

Mr. Bernanke's policies have, in fact, I think helped alleviate the crisis--although not doing as much as we would like, because there are limits to what monetary policy could do. Contrary to predictions, they are not costing the Federal Government money; they haven't led to inflation. I would be glad to debate that with Mr. Will. But instead he engages in a kind of snarkiness that I found unbecoming. I had thought Mr. Will to be someone who was committed to intellectual debate, but that simply wasn't there in his approach.

Let me say, and I will document this, that his response in his column, and then in a follow-up column, basically seemed to me to be a sad combination of blatant factual inaccuracy, of logical confusion, and, sadly, I must say, of intellectual dishonesty, and, finally, great inconsistency.

Let me begin with the factual inaccuracies.

Mr. Will's thesis in this column is that I filed that bill largely because I did not agree with a vote last summer of the Federal Reserve open market committee, 7-3, in favor of Mr. Bernanke's policy. And it's true, I differed with those three. I agreed with the policy of the seven of the three, and I differed with the three. And here's what he says:

``Frank says he has `long been troubled' from a `theoretical democratic standpoint' by the `anomaly' of important decisions affecting national economic policy being made by persons `selected with absolutely no public scrutiny or confirmation.' ''

That's absolutely right. I do think there is a shocking lack of respect for democracy when we are talking about fundamental powers given to people who are neither elected nor appointed and confirmed by other elected officials but are selected by a small, self-perpetuating group of people who want particular economic segments. I'm ready to debate that.

But here's what Mr. Will suggests, basically, that I was not really bothered by that. I notice that he is sort of denigrating my formulation here because what he says is, ``It was not, however, until August that this affront to Frank's democratic sensibilities became so intolerable that he proposed a legislative remedy.'' Such snarkiness about democratic sensibilities that seem to be unbecoming to Mr. Will. But here's his fundamental point: That while I said I was troubled because we shouldn't be giving a self-selected group of private citizens of a particular economic interest governmental power, that that was sort of a cover, he's suggesting, because they didn't do anything about it until August when the vote had taken place.

There's one problem with that, Mr. Speaker. I did it in April, not August. The bill had been filed in April and I publicized it in April. It is true that in August I put out a statement noting that this 7-3 vote was an indication of what I thought was a result of having this undemocratic element. But Mr. Will's fundamental refutation of my position was that I wasn't really concerned about democracy and public participation or having a kind of guild socialism that I would have thought he would have been opposed to, of having the guild of bankers be the ones who set public policy for the banks. He said it wasn't until August that I did this, but I did it in April, and he was flatly wrong.

Now, he didn't know that I did it in April instead of August because he didn't talk to me. He didn't think it was necessary, given his lofty philosophical position, to do any fact checking, and he was simply wrong. And he was not just wrong about it being April instead of August, which is not a minor error. It's fundamental.

By the way, I said ``intellectual dishonesty.'' Let me explain what I meant by that.

I wrote a letter to The Washington Post pointing out that while April and August both start with ``A,'' they are, in fact, several months apart, and it was kind of hard to argue that I did something in April because I knew what was going to be happening the following August. So he was simply wrong, and that was central to his argument.

Here was his acknowledgment of error. It's a correction note to a recent column, and he says, ``In a recent column, I suggested that Representative Barney Frank's legislation to reform the Federal Open Market Committee was introduced in August, when in fact it was introduced in April.'' He suggested it. Here's how he apparently suggests things.

Quote, It was not until August that he proposed a legislative remedy.

It's doesn't sound like he said I suggested. He said I said it. But even more important, the fact that it was April and not August was a central flaw in his argument. He doesn't acknowledge that in his, I think, intellectually dishonest correction. He says, oh, I suggested August when it was really April, as if that was kind of almost an incidental error. But it wasn't an incidental error. It was fundamental to his misreading of my motives.

What was also an inaccuracy was his beginning the column by saying, ``Fond of diversity in everything but thought, a certain kind of liberal favors mandatory harmony (e.g., campus speech codes).''

In other words, he began, that's when he led to saying I did this in August because I was so upset about this vote, that that's the only reason I did it, not because of any concern about democratic input. He, here, is saying that this was an indication of me as one of those liberals who is opposed to free debate, and I'm for campus speech codes.

Well, in fact, you couldn't be more wrong on that one either. I've have been one of the Members of this House, I'm proud to say, most supportive of free speech. I have specifically opposed campus speech codes.

Again, this looks clearly as if this is just an example of the kind of mentality that leads meetings for campus speech codes. I have spoken against them. I have said that I do not think that the concept of hate speech is a reasonable one as far as the law is concerned. People can call it anything they want, hate speech, but, no, there shouldn't be any restrictions on it. There shouldn't be any laws against it.

I am very proud, along with my colleague from Texas Mr. Paul and our departed colleague Mr. Wu, we voted against legislation that would have prevented one of the great ranting

homophobes of our time, the Reverend Fred Phelps, from holding up vicious and obnoxious signs at the cemeteries of men and women killed in war as long as he did them so that he wasn't right in the cemetery grounds. We thought there was a free speech problem with this, and the Supreme Court agreed with us.

So Mr. Will is just again factually inaccurate and accusing me of being one of those people who is for stopping dissent. Once again, if he'd asked me about it, I would have told him, no, I have a record of opposing campus speech codes and that had nothing to do, disagreement with dissent had nothing to do with my position here.

And that leads me to his logical confusion. Those are his two great factual errors: his misdescription of me as being someone who is for campus speech codes and for curtailing speech, and his deciding that I did it in August when I did it in April, which invalidates his central thesis about my motive.

But even more shocking for me was this fundamental, logical confusion from Mr. Will, who, I had frankly expected better of in this context.

He conflates two very separate points. He says this is an example of my not supporting diversity of speech. I am totally for diversity of speech. This is not a case of free speech or diverse expression of opinions. This is a case of exercising government power.

I did not say that Federal regional presidents shouldn't be allowed to talk about Federal Reserve monetary policy or anything else. There was no restriction on their speech. The bill says that they shouldn't be given a vote on public policy.

I am frankly very surprised, as I said, that Mr. Will confuses the two and tries to denigrate my move to keep them from voting to make public policy as an example of being opposed to free speech. This is really quite surprising and an example, I think, of his just deciding he was going to use any argument that he could against it.

As a matter of fact, the Federal Reserve presidents are all invited to the meetings and can speak, even those who don't vote. And I'm all for that. And so this notion that this is somehow an example of liberal opposition of free speech, when I am someone who has a very good record on free speech, and when I am not in any way impinging on their right to speak, is a further disappointment.

Mr. Will clearly disagrees with the policies that Ben Bernanke is following. In the column, he suggests that my concern for protecting both sides of the Federal Reserve's mandate, unemployment and inflation, is misguided. He doesn't say that exactly, but he says, ``The actual language of the mandate speaks of promoting `maximum employment,' which is problematic: `Maximum' means `the highest attainable,' and this might depend on ignoring the other half of the mandate.''

So he's sort of justifying people ignoring the employment mandate by saying the only way you can support it is to ignore the other half. That's not true. That's not supported by the record. That's not supported by logical analysis.

I'm prepared to debate with Mr. Will whether or not we should do what I think he really wants to do, which is go to a single mandate on inflation. A number of my conservative colleagues want to do that here and amend what we call the Humphrey-Hawkins Act, and do away with the Fed's concern about unemployment. I think that would be a great mistake.

I admire Mr. Bernanke because he has preached to us about the dangers of unemployment. He has pointed out that a decision to cut the budget very quickly right now rather than defer that for a later time in a 10- year period exacerbates the unemployment. He has called it a headwind for the economy. I welcome the fact that Mr. Bernanke, a George Bush appointee originally, has been so diligent in worrying both about inflation and about unemployment. And as Mr. Bernanke has pointed out, we have in fact been more successful in holding down inflation than in combating unemployment, and that I think is an appropriate thing. Again, I would be willing to debate that with Mr. Will.

But the tactics he uses of trying to denigrate my motives and falsely imputing to me an opposition of free speech, as I said is, I think, disappointing. I would have preferred to talk about this on the merits.

Mr. Will also is sneering in his reference to ``cheap money.'' He talks about Mr. Bernanke's policy about ``cheap money.'' That's, of course, one of these pejorative ways of talking about something that you disagree with. In fact, cheap money suggests that you are devaluing the currency. That hasn't been the case. I am prepared to debate, as I said, whether or not what Mr. Bernanke has done in quantitative easing has been good or bad. I think it has been good, and those who have been critical of it have been proven wrong factually. It hasn't cost the government money, and it hasn't led to inflation. But Mr. Will won't do that. It is, again, falsely setting up this notion in which I am an opponent of free speech, and that's why in August I decided to do this. I have been a great supporter of free speech. I did it in April and not August, and this isn't about free speech; this is about public policy.

And as I read the column in which Mr. Will wholly inadequately acknowledged his mistake by treating it as if it were almost a clerical error that he said August instead of April, I reread the column, and it struck me what a terrible inconsistency it is. This is a column in which he is attacking Elizabeth Warren. And he criticizes Ms. Warren on no basis factually once again, and I don't think he has had much to do with her as I read this caricature of her, but he says in here: Many members of the liberal intelligentsia agree that other Americans comprise a malleable, hence vulnerable, herd. Therefore, the herd needs kindly, paternal supervision by a cohort of protective herders. And he says because such tutelary government must presume the public's incompetence, it owes minimal deference to people's preferences. This convenient theory licenses the enlightened vanguard, the political class, to exercise maximum discretion in wielding the powers of the regulatory state.

Mr. Speaker, he has just described the practice whereby bankers get to pick Federal Reserve presidents to vote on the open market committee. I don't know many people who believe that. That's Mr. Will's defense, in effect, and the point is this: he writes one column criticizing me, sneering in a way, at my objection to there being banker-selected votes on the open market committee on the grounds, among others, that this is, in my judgment, a violation of democratic norms. That's clearly not my real reason, and it's almost as if he understands why anyone would think that. In fact, here's Mr. Will, who on the one hand says these preferences are not really theirs. This convenient theory licenses the enlightened vanguard, the political class, to exercise maximum discretion. And it says that the public should not be able to do this.

So here's Mr. Will denigrating and attributing to liberals this notion that an enlightened vanguard ought to make the decisions as opposed to the public. That's what he says we think.

Here is Mr. Will in defense of the system by which it happens that I'm trying to change: Heavy representation of the economy's financial sector in the governance of the Central Bank does not seem bizarre. Oh, yeah, I think it is in the governance. In the discussion and the input of policy. So Mr. Will is critical of me because I did not think that the banks ought to be picking the people who vote on policy that is so central to the banks. That's his position when it comes to the Federal Reserve. But when he gets a chance to attack Elizabeth Warren unfairly, he takes exactly the opposite position. On the one hand, he is defending a kind of corporatist--I said the socialist, but it is kind of a corporatist position that, as he says, means ``heavy representation of the economy's financial sector in the governance of the Central Bank''--he's for that, as opposed to my view that nobody should be voting on monetary policy who hasn't either been elected or appointed by people who are elected, preferably as I propose, not those directly elected, but with 14-year terms so you get the independents.

So I'm for a system in which, if you're going to vote on monetary policy, and if you're going to regulate the

banking system, you have this ultimate democratic input. He says no, let's have heavy representation of the economy's financial sector in the governance of the Central Bank. But then when it comes to, I don't know, consumer protection, he is accusing liberals of being the ones who are against the preferences of the public. He says, we, the liberals, believe that we owe minimal deference to people's preferences and instead governance should be from an enlightened vanguard. Well, the enlightened vanguard, in the case of the Federal Reserve, are the bankers.

So to make his particular substantive conservative point, Mr. Will is very flexible in his argument. I wish he would have simply said this: that he does not think--because I think this is what he believes, it sort of comes out here--that he doesn't think we should have the Federal Reserve equally concerned with employment and inflation. A number of conservatives think that. I think that's wrong. I think Ben Bernanke has been very helpful in doing both. I think that's been shown. The argument is that if you worry about employment, you'll sacrifice anti-inflation. In fact, it's the other way around. It's not a sacrifice, but we've been more successful in fighting inflation than with regard to employment. But that's a debatable issue.

Whether or not, given even in monetary policy you should have quantitative easing, whether in a time of severe economic slowdown the monetary policy ought to be eased, Mr. Will thinks that's ``cheap money,'' and he sides with the three Federal Reserve presidents, apparently, who inaccurately predicted it would be inflationary. Again, those are legitimate policy decisions, but that's not what Mr. Will has done.

He has, just to summarize, inaccurately described my position as that of a liberal who is against free speech. I'm not. I have a record of which I am proud in defending free speech.

Free speech means, by the way, you defend the right of obnoxious people to say hateful things. Because if you're not an obnoxious person and say hateful things in this country, you don't try to shut them up. I do believe that free speech means that people should be able to do that. People should be able to say offensive things. And I've got a record of supporting it.

But he claims that it's because I don't like dissent in the sense of free speech that in August, after a certain number of votes on the Federal Open Market Committee, I introduced my bill. So he's wrong about my views on free speech. He's wrong. I did it in April instead of August. And he was forced to acknowledge that--it was such a blatant factual error--not by saying, oh, I made a mistake by making this assumption of his motives because I thought he did it in August, but simply throwing it off as if it was kind of a clerical error.

Then, in the whole article he confuses free speech with government policymaking power. I am very much in favor of free speech. Everyone has a right in this country to unrestrained speech. Everyone does not have a right to exercise governmental power. To me, governmental power should be rooted in the democratic system.

Mr. Will disagrees with that with regard to the Federal Reserve because he wants bankers--he thinks it's fine for bankers to have that great role in government; but when he comes to attacking the liberalism in general, he suddenly reverts to the opposite position and he denigrates those who aren't ready to respect the people's preferences and is critical of those who want an enlightened vanguard to go forward.

I should add that he's not the only defender there who, sadly, to me, won't stand with legitimate arguments. There is a former Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin, who was very critical of my position that the regional president of the Federal Reserve ought to be able to speak on policy but not vote on it. What he says is, among other things, that this will cause a loss of prestige for the Federal Reserve system and you won't get good people to be there.

I am shocked at Mr. Mishkin's denigration of people in the Federal Reserve. He describes being the president of a regional Federal Reserve bank is a very important job with significant regulatory power, none of which I would diminish.

Then he says because they couldn't vote every couple of years on the Open Market Committee, it wouldn't have enough prestige for him to serve. He cheapens them, it seems to me. He also claims that I'm trying to undermine independence and subject them to short-term considerations.

I want to stress again, the people in whose hands I would leave monetary policy are appointed by a President, confirmed by the Senate-- hardly an easy process, as we know, these days--and then appointed for a 14-year term. So these are not people who are subject to short-term whims. Of course, a 14-year term goes over three Presidential terms.

We then have Mr. Fisher, one of the regional presidents, who in a particularly arrogant way, here's what he has to say. We are being attacked--we, the Federal Reserve--from the right and from the left, and I don't see much difference between a certain Congressman from Texas named Ron Paul and a certain Congressman from Massachusetts named Barney Frank.

Well, the whole language, he doesn't see any difference between myself and Ron Paul.

Mr. Paul and I worked together on a number of things. We both think we are way overextended militarily, that we should be bringing the troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq. We both opposed restrictions on free speech and we think that people ought to be gambling with their own money on the Internet. But we disagree fundamentally on economic policy. We disagree on the Federal Reserve. I have been in favor of quantitative easing. Mr. Paul has been against it. Those are legitimate issues for debate.

But you get this smearing, a certain Congressman here and a certain Congressman there, and he doesn't see any difference. If this man really can't see any difference between the positions of myself and Ron Paul on economic matters, then he's hardly competent to be doing anything, much less voting on Open Market Committee policy.

Once again, what we get is a refusal to debate the merits. And there are debates to be had. Should we have an equal concern at the Federal Reserve with unemployment and with inflation? I think we should. Has the policy of Mr. Bernanke, supported by many others from appointees of both Presidents and some Federal Reserve regional presidents, to increase the money supply in the face of this terrible slowdown that we've been dealing with, has that been a good thing or a bad thing? I think it's been a good thing. That's debatable. But they won't debate it.

Instead, we get this collection of illogic, of inconsistency, and of factual error rallying around the notion of the Federal Reserve system as being unassailable. Well, too many people made that mistake when Mr. Greenspan was in charge, and we should not be making it again.

Mr. Speaker, I will continue to press forward. And I hope on the part of those on the other side we can now debate whether or not it's appropriate in a democracy for us to do as Mr. Will proposes and to give the financial community such an important role in the governance of their own industry or whether we should go for a more appropriately democratic one; whether Mr. Bernanke's policy has been good for the economy in terms of quantitative easing; and whether or not we should abolish the mandate of the Federal Reserve to care equally about unemployment and inflation. I look forward to debate those, but I hope in better terms.

The Selection of Voting Members To Serve on the Federal Open Market

Committee

Congressman Barney Frank, September 12, 2011

I have long been troubled by the anomaly of having officials-- selected with absolutely no public scrutiny or confirmation--voting on some of the most important decisions the federal government makes. Therefore, I introduced H.R. 1512, which eliminates the role of the Federal Reserve's regional presidents as voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee. The Federal Reserve (Fed) regional presidents, 5 of whom vote at all times on the Federal Open Market Committee, are neither elected nor appointed by officials who are themselves elected. Instead, they are part of a self-perpetuating group of private citizens

who select each other and who are treated as equals in setting federal monetary policy with officials appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

For some time this has troubled me from a theoretical democratic standpoint. But several years ago it became clear that their voting presence on the FOMC was not simply an imperfection in our model of government based on public accountability, but was almost certainly a factor, influencing in a systematic way the decisions of the Federal Reserve. In particular, it seems highly likely to me that their voting presence on the Committee has the effect of skewing policy to one side of the Fed's dual mandate--specifically that they were a factor moving the Fed to pay more attention to combating inflation than to the equally important, and required by law, policy of promoting employment.

In 2009, I asked staff of the Financial Services Committee to prepare an analysis of FOMC voting patterns. It confirmed two points. First, the great majority of dissents, 90 percent--from FOMC policy before 2010--came from the regional presidents. Second, the overwhelming majority of those dissents were in the direction of higher interest rates. In fact, vote data confirmed that 97 percent of hawkish dissents came from the regional bank presidents and 80 percent of all dissenting votes in the FOMC over the past decade were from a hawkish stance.

When I raised my objection to the inclusion of the regional presidents as voting members, I was given two responses by defenders of the current system. Alan Greenspan argued that it was important to have first-rate people agree to be regional bank presidents and that giving them votes on the FOMC was an important inducement to getting them to accept that position. Secondly, others argued that it would be wrong to have only Federal Reserve governors based in Washington voting on these things and that there needed to be a diversity of views from other parts of the country.

The first of these does not seem to me to have much weight. Being the regional bank president is an important and prestigious job, and I simply do not believe that we could not find people willing and able to carry out its responsibilities if they were not rewarded with a vote on a central matter of economic policy. As to the second argument, for diversity, it needs to be analyzed further.

It is true that having the regional presidents' vote provides geographic diversity but it provides far less diversity in every other way than presidential appointments. In particular, the notion--which I did hear in opposition to my legislation--that the Federal Reserve Bank presidents are representative of various segments of our economy is flatly wrong. The presidents are, of course, selected by the board members of the regional banks, a majority of whom are selected by member banks, making this a wholly self-perpetuating operation.

So the important question then is ``Who are the directors of the regional banks?'' Do they ensure a degree of diversity in the decision making of the FOMC? The answer is ``No.'' Not surprisingly, given all the factors involved, the members of the board of directors are overwhelmingly representative of business, and particularly financial industry representatives. That is, not only are the regional presidents appointed and reappointed by people, a majority of whom are elected by the member banks of each regional bank, they are not in any way representative of the American economy. They in fact, represent the very particular segment that elected them. Of the 5 regional presidents who are currently voting members of the FOMC, all of them were selected by boards where representatives of private and financial institutions account for the majority of board members.

Until recently, the tenor of Federal Reserve deliberations was one that promoted consensus. And while it is clear from the voting patterns that the regional bank presidents exercise some influence in the direction of focusing concern more on inflation than unemployment, it is very unlikely that was a significant factor until recently. But things have changed. In particular, the Federal Reserve has been affected by the disdain for consensus and the contentiousness that has affected our politics in general. It is also the case that the Federal Reserve has been, for a variety of reasons, thrust more centrally into policy making than it had been previously. First with the events of 2008 and thereafter in dealing with the fmancial crisis, and since then in being forced to bear the lion's share of federal economic policy making in the light of stalemate on the fiscal side.

What all this means is that the voting presence of the regional presidents on the FOMC has now become a significant constraint on national economic policy making. The 7-3 vote of the FOMC in August in favor of keeping interest rates low is stark evidence of how much of a constraint this is. Obviously it is not a matter of pulling a switch and achieving a guaranteed physical result. How people in the fmancial community react to the decisions has a major effect, and a 7-3 decision is clearly less effective in influencing other's decisions--which is the way in which the decisions are executed--than a 10-0 vote.

Those who are critical of the Federal Reserve for not doing more--and I have been one of them--should take this into account and make sure that their criticisms are not of Ben Bernanke, who in my view has been trying hard to deal with the situation responsibly, but rather of a structure over which he presides and where he confronts people appointed by business interests who do not share the commitment to equal consideration of the full employment section of the Federal Reserve's dual mandate.

It is not at all surprising that those appointed by Presidents-- Republican or Democratic--are more supportive of taking action to focus equally on both mandates, than are those who come from the collection of business interests who appoint the regional presidents. And the proof of that is that the record of greater dissents coming from the regional presidents than from governors is equally the case whether the governors were appointed by Democratic or Republican presidents.

Finally, one other factor of our current degraded political atmosphere exacerbates this. That is the refusal of the Republicans in the Senate to do their constitutional duty and treat the confirmation process as it is supposed to be treated--namely by looking at the merits of each individual nominee. The influence of the regional bank presidents is obviously great when there are seven governors and five presidents voting on the FOMC. In the current situation, we have an equal vote between the presidents and the governors and that greatly adds not simply to the influence that presidents have, but to their ability to effectively constrain or veto items such as further use of unconventional tools to promote growth.

I have fmally taken into account the argument that some diversity from a geographic standpoint would be a good thing, as would diversity from an occupational or institutional point of view. Just as I think it is helpful that Members of Congress commute between Washington where we talk mostly to each other and our districts where we talk to everybody else, I believe following the British model of having voting members of the Committee setting interest rates from outside the capital is a good idea. Soon I will be submitting a new version of the bill in which the President will be required to appoint seven governors subject to Senate confirmation as today, but also to appoint four representatives from regions outside of Washington to come to Washington for FOMC meetings and vote, also subject to Senate confirmation, but not otherwise employed by the Federal Reserve system. This will ensure important policy makers are either elected or appointed by elected officials, and give geographic and occupational diversity to the views that shape the decisions that are made.

Mr. Speaker, for some years now I have had the privilege of sharing with our colleagues information about a very important event that is held annually in Massachusetts by an organization that does great work in making health benefits available to people who need them, in the best possible setting.

ROFEH International was founded by the Boston Rebbe, Grand Rabbi Levi Horowitz, and is now led by his son, Grand Rabbi Naftali Horowitz. Rabbi Levi Horowitz was widely respected for his expertise in the field of medical ethics, and Project ROFEH, founded by him at the New England Chassidic Center, does extraordinary work in making the great healthcare available in the Greater Boston area accessible to people in other places. On November 20th, at their annual dinner, Project ROFEH-- New England Chassidic Center will, as it has in the past, honor people who have performed extraordinary service for others.

The ROFEH International Award will go to Dr. Joseph Upton. The Grand Rabbi Levi Horowitz Legacy Award goes to Professor Neil Hecht. And in a special award, the 50th Jubilee of Congregation Bais Pinchas, the Jubilee Award is being given to the Blechner family, the descendants of Sidney and Toby Blechner, who did so much to make this organization the great success it is today.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that the biographies of Dr. Joseph Upton and Professor Neil Hecht and Sidney and Toby Blecher be printed here, along with the explanation from Grand Rabbi Horowitz of the Jubilee Award to the Blechner family.

Dr. Joseph Upton

With a broad background in surgical training Dr. Upton was

originally recruited by Joseph Murray to be the first

designated hand and microsurgeon in the Longwood teaching

hospitals. During the past 34 years his practice has been

focused on clinical surgery, education and clinical research.

His large practice draws patients from well beyond all

regions of the United States and he is known nationally and

internationally as a reconstructive surgeon with expertise in

upper limb surgery and microsurgery and excels in the

evaluation, planning and technical expertise of difficult

problems.

Dr. Upton was one of the original plastic surgeons who

ushered in the advent of free tissue transfers and limb

reattachment surgery in the 1980's. He is known for taking a

difficult problem and finding a better, easier solution. Many

of the first transfers in this region of the country, in

fact, the world were performed by Dr. Upton in the 1980's.

During his few decades on staff he was an active

participant in the gross anatomy course at the Harvard

Medical School. Dr. Upton continues to perform many flesh

dissections and teaches yearly flap dissection courses. He

has always been eager to take new and some old technologies

directly to patient care. In the operating room he is known

for his innovative approaches, which incorporate old and new

ideas with new technologies.

As an educator he has functioned at many levels in his

daily routines and usually has a medical student, resident

and clinical fellow in attendance. All participate as he can

teach at all levels. His microvascular/hand fellowship

program is based at BIDMC within the Department of

Orthopedics and the Division of Plastic Surgery. He has given

lectures, keynote addresses, instructional courses and

completed many visiting professorships nationally and

internationally. Original papers in peer-reviewed journals

are evidence of his scholarship. More detailed descriptions

of many of these procedures are

found in the textbooks or invited discussions in peer-

reviewed publications.

Dr. Upton's research has been almost entirely clinical and

he rarely describes a new procedure without medium or long-

term outcomes. At the Boston Children's Hospital and Shriners

Burns Hospital he has accumulated the largest experience with

congenital problems in the world. His collection of hand

models of congenital malformations is unique. He has had an

exhibit in the Boston Museum of Science for 30 years. He was

an active participant in the Joseph Vacanti Tissue

Engineering lab for 13 years and worked on cartilage and

skeletal constructs and prior to this worked in the Folkman

Laboratory at The Children's Hospital.

Professor Neil S. Hecht

Neil Hecht is professor of law and Founding Director of the

Institute of Jewish Law at Boston University School of Law,

where he has taught for almost 50 years. He received

Rabbinical Ordination from Yeshiva University, a Juris Doctor

from Yale Law School and a research doctorate from Columbia

University School of Law.

In 1980 Professor Hecht fulfilled his life-long dream of

introducing Jewish law into the curriculum of a major

American law school. Through his efforts, Jewish law is now

taught in over thirty law schools, and he was instrumental in

creating a permanent Jewish Law Section in the Association of

American Law Schools. Moreover, its successful reception at

BU Law School led to his founding of The Institute of Jewish

Law in 1983, which was established for the purpose of

publishing treatises, monographs, and teaching materials.

Under its auspices, he has written or edited 36 volumes to

date. Among these works are Jewish Jurisprudence (a two-

volume commentary on Choshen Mishpat, Jewish Civil Law, which

contains the only preface ever written by Rabbi Joseph

Solovetchik, zt'l), The Jewish Law Annual, and Controversy

and Dialogue in Halachik Sources (a four-volume work in

Hebrew and English exploring the nature of controversy and

authority, machloket, in Jewish law).

From 1985 to 1986, Professor Hecht served as the Visiting

Gruss Professor of Talmudic Civil Law at New York University

School of Law. In the 1990s, he also served as co-director of

the Joint Project in Jewish Legal Bioethics, a collaborative

initiative of the Institute of Jewish Law and Boston

University's Schools of Medicine and Public Health. His many

professional and public service activities include serving as

a founding director on the Board of Directors of the

International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists,

chairing the Jewish Law Section of the Association of

American Law Schools, and becoming an elected member of the

American Law Institute.

Among other honors, he was recognized by the Ashmolean

Museum of Oxford University, by Boston University School of

Law where he received the Silver Shingle Award for

distinguished service and the Melton Award for Teaching

Excellence, and by Yeshiva University which awarded him the

Bernard Revel Memorial Award for his contributions in the

field of Jewish legal scholarship.

The relationship between the Hechts and the Rebbe's family

dates back to the early part of the 20th Century. Professor

Hecht's great-grandfather was a close friend and strong

supporter of the Rebbe's grandfather, Grand Rabbi Pinchus

Dovid Horowitz, zt'l, when the latter lived in Brooklyn.

Sidney and Toby (Thurm) Blechner A''H Epitomized What Giving of Self to

Community Means

``V'kol mi she'oskim b'tzarchei tzibur be'emunah''

Toby, daughter of Menachem Mendel Thurm, founder of World

Cheese Company, the first kosher cheese company in the USA,

came to America from Germany. Sidney, fortunately and with

the hashgacha pratis of God, survived six years in

concentration camps and arrived in New York in 1947 where he

met his beloved partner to be of 59 years. They married on

Lag B'omer 1948, and soon settled in the Roxbury section of

Boston.

Though having gone through the fires of Europe, this ``ood

mootzal may'aish'' together with his eishet chayil decided to

look only forward and rebuild what their families and

communities lost in Europe. They started to build a family

and Sidney became successful in the lighting industry. His

honesty and integrity were admired by all he came into

contact with, Jew and non-Jew alike. Toby, meanwhile, worked

tirelessly with the fledging Roxbury community to build up

religious Jewish institutions. Both became active in the

Young Israel of Greater Boston, Congregation Beth Pinchas of

Roxbury, Maimonides School, and New England Lubavitch

Yeshiva. When the Jewish community migrated to Brookline,

Sidney made himself and his resources available to help with

lighting up the makom Tefilah or makom Limud Torah of many

institutions that moved to Brookline.

At the same time, the Blechner family became very close to

the Bostoner Rebbe Z''L and Rebbetzin A''H while sharing

their philanthropic efforts among CJP, Young Israel of

Brookline, Daughters of Israel, Religious Zionists of

America, Yeshiva University, Talner Congregation, B'nai

Brith, Israel Bonds, and many ``matan b'seser'' recipients.

But it was the special charisma and charm of the Bostoner

Rebbe Z''L and his Rebbetzin A''H that attracted Sidney and

Toby to daven at the Rebbe's shul. Toby had a special seat

next to the Rebbetzin and Sidney especially enjoyed the

Rebbe's nusach and warmth on the Yamim Noara'im. They became

active supporters of ROFEH as well as the New England

Chassidic Center where Sidney was honored as ``Man of the

Year''. Instead of plaques on his office wall, Sidney

preferred simple thank you letters as appreciation for the

tzedakah and chessed that he and Toby were able to provide to

others.

It takes a lot of hakarat hatov for people in today's

generation to think back to those who built up a miniscule

Torah community of Boston in the 50's to what is has become

today for all newcomers to benefit from.

Sidney and Toby Blechner were the patriarch and matriarch

of a beautiful family of 4 children, 18 grandchildren who are

Roshei yeshiva dedicated to teaching Torah in their

communities, professionals in finance, law, education,

computers, graphic design and who serve in the Israeli army.

It is therefore most fitting to bestow the ``Congregation

Bais Pinchas Jubilee Award'' in their memory.

This Year We Celebrate the 50th Jubilee of Congregation Bais Pinchas in

Brookline, Massachusetts

Receiving the Jubilee Award on behalf of their parents, the Blechner

family

It is important for people in today's generation to

recognizing and appreciate the good done by those who built

up a community of Boston in the 50's to what is has become

today for all newcomers to benefit from. Mr. and Mrs.

Blechner were dedicated their time and efforts in seeing to

it that the Boston community should be successful and thrive.

Sidney and Toby Blechner were the patriarch and matriarch who

helped to build and beautify the Boston community, of a

beautiful family of 4 children, 18 grandchildren who are to

teaching in their communities, professionals in finance, law,

education, computers, graphic design and who serve in the

Israeli army.

It is therefore most fitting to bestow the ``Congregation

Bais Pinchas Jubilee Award'' in their memory.

Sincerely,

Grand Rabbi Naftali Y. Horowitz,

Bostoner Rebbe.

Mr. Speaker, there is no way that those of us who have stayed at home can discharge the debt we owe to the men and women who put their lives and safety at risk as members of the Armed Services, but it is important that we do what we can to show that we understand how deep that debt is. On October 23, I will have the privilege of participating in an effort to do that in the town of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, where the Greater New Bedford Community will gather to honor Army Pfc. Nathan Medeiros. Pfc. Medeiros is recovering from serious shrapnel and burn wounds he sustained from a roadside bomb last month in Afghanistan. His friends and neighbors will be gathering to show how deeply they honor his courage and appreciate his sacrifice.

Mr. Speaker, the wounds from which Nate Medeiros is recovering remind us all that while war is sometimes necessary in national self defense, it is always terrible in the toll it takes of our best and bravest. I am honored to be able to participate in this community effort to show Nate Medeiros how deeply we feel the debt to him, and Mr. Speaker, as an example that the nation should note, I ask that the article from the New Bedford Standard Times from October 11 about this event be printed here.

Event Scheduled To Honor New Bedford Soldier Wounded in Afghanistan

(By Brian Fraga)

New Bedford.--An event will be held later this month to

honor Army Pfc. Nathan Medeiros, a New Bedford native

recovering from shrapnel and burn wounds he sustained from a

roadside bomb in Afghanistan last month.

``Honoring Our Own: Nate Medeiros'' is scheduled for Oct.

23, from 3-7 p.m., at the Seaport Inn in Fairhaven. Due to

military regulations, the event is not a benefit, and there

will be no admission charge.

``After all, this will be the true epitome and best way to

honor Nate for his heroic efforts,'' said Carl Pires, a

friend of Medeiros's family who is coordinating the event,

and will serve as its emcee.

The night will also feature performances by local musicians

and artists such as poet Charles Perry and singers Tiny

Tavares, Candida Rose, Glenn ``G-Money'' Enos, Navelle

``Chops'' Turner and Irving Washington III, former lead

singer of the R&B group Portrait.

New Bedford Mayor Scott W. Lang, State Sen. Mark C.W.

Montigny, D-New Bedford, and U.S. Rep. Barney Frank are also

scheduled to be on hand to speak and present resolutions to

Medeiros and his family, Pires said.

On Sept. 14, Medeiros, 28, an infantry machine-gunner

assigned to the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the 25th

Infantry Division, was on patrol in Afghanistan, clearing

roadside bombs from an area known as ``IED Alley.''

Medeiros said he had just noticed two Afghan men crouching

at a distance, and was pointing out their location to his

fellow soldiers when a roadside bomb detonated less than 2

feet from where he was standing.

``I turned back around and just as I do this, I'm blown

into the air and back onto my side,'' said Medeiros, who has

undergone several surgeries to remove shrapnel and debris

from his legs.

Medeiros, a graduate of New Bedford High School's night

program, also sustained lacerations to his face and neck,

swelling in his hands and partial hearing loss.

He arrived home in New Bedford last week on leave, and will

be present for the event.

``It's great to have him home,'' said Medeiros' mother,

Cherele Fortes, who said her son surprised them in coming

home.

``He looks good. He's got some scars, some bruising, but he

is in great spirits. He is an amazing kid. God still has

plans for him. That's why he's still with us,'' Fortes said.

Mr. Speaker, last week, on the death of former Cape Verdean President Aristides Periera, I noted the great achievement of that country in showing the world that a nation winning its independence in the post-World War II period can progress economically while fully respecting democratic norms. Earlier this week, that extremely admirable record was recognized as well by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation as they awarded the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership to Pedro de Verona Rodrigues Pires, the recently retired President of Cape Verde. President Pires was elected to two terms as President and was one of those responsible for the great record of economic development a record recognized by both the Bush and Obama administrations in their strong support for Cape Verde's participation in our Millennium Challenge program. President Pires' popularity and record of success was such that some urged him to support a constitutional amendment so he could run for a third term, but he refused to do that, demonstrating a strong commitment to both the spirit and the letter of democracy.

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the people of Cape Verde for the example they set so much of the world in combining economic progress and democratic commitment, and I am glad to once again express to President Pires, whom I had the privilege of meeting in Brockton, Massachusetts last summer, my great admiration and respect for his work.

Mr. Speaker, I ask that the article from the New York Times about Pedro Pires winning the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership be printed here, because the example set by President Pires and by the people of Cape Verde is one that deserves to be chronicled widely, and, I hope, followed.

[From the New York Times, Oct. 10, 2011]

Ex-President of Cape Verde Wins Good-Government Prize

(By Adam Nossiter)

Monrovia, Liberia.--Pedro de Verona Rodrigues Pires, the

former president of Cape Verde, the desertlike archipelago

about 300 miles off the coast of West Africa, has won one of

the world's major prizes, the $5 million Ibrahim Prize for

Achievement in African Leadership.

The record of governing in Africa has been poor enough

lately that the Mo Ibrahim Foundation decided not to award

the prize for the past two years. In many African countries,

leaders have refused to leave office after losing elections,

tried to alter constitutions to ensure their continued tenure

or gone back on pledges not to run for re-election.

But on Monday the foundation of Mr. Ibrahim, a Sudan-born

telecommunications mogul whose goal is to promote good

government in Africa, announced it had picked Mr. Pires of

Cape Verde, a sparsely populated former Portuguese colony of

500,000 people, mostly of mixed Portuguese-African descent.

The islands are a perennial exception to the many low

rankings that international organizations, including Mr.

Ibrahim's, give to nations on the continent for human rights

and governing.

Mr. Pires served two terms--10 years--as president until

stepping down last month. During that period, the foundation

noted, Cape Verde became only the second African nation to

move up from the United Nations' ``least developed''

category. The foundation says the prize is given only to a

democratically elected president who has stayed ``within the

limits set by the county's constitution, has left office in

the last three years and has demonstrated excellence in

office.''

Mr. Pires resisted suggestions that his country's

Constitution could be changed to allow him to run again, a

further point in his favor, the foundation said. In addition

to the $5 million award paid over 10 years, the winner

receives $200,000 annually for life thereafter.

``It is wonderful to see an African leader who has served

his country from the time of colonial rule through to

multiparty democracy, all the time retaining the interests of

his people as his guiding principle,'' Mr. Ibrahim said in a

statement. ``The fact that Cape Verde with few natural

resources can become a middle-income country is an example

not just to the continent but to the world.''

Mr. Ibrahim publishes an index scoring African countries on

how they govern, and this year the index noted significant

improvements in Liberia and Sierra Leone, while nonetheless

finding an ``unchanged continental average'' in ``overall

governance quality.''

Madam Speaker, I want to quote from a column earlier this week written by Paul Krugman, who does an extraordinarily good job of presenting the case for a change in our economic policies to deal with the unemployment that plagues not just us, but others in the world.

The column is headlined ``Holding China to Account.'' And he begins: ``The dire state of the world economy reflects destructive actions on the part of many players. Still, the fact that so many have behaved badly shouldn't stop us from holding individual bad actors to account.'' And that's what Senate leaders will be doing this week--they did it already, they've begun the process--as they take up legislation that would threaten sanction against China and other currency manipulators.

Respectable opinion is aghast, but respectable opinion has been consistently wrong lately, and the currency issue is no exception.

China has an enormous trade surplus with the United States, and a significant part of that is due to their conscious intervention to undervalue their currency. Now, that comes, to some extent, at the expense of some in China in terms of the cost of living. On the other hand, it provides employment.

There are of course other ways in which China interferes with the free trade to which they supposedly adhered when they were allowed to join the WTO, a move I voted against. They are manipulating the rare- earth situation, restricting exports illegitimately to force companies to come there. We recently had a situation where General Motors was told that they wouldn't be allowed to sell their electric car in China unless they gave up their technology--again, a blatant violation.

So we should be more aggressive in general. But particularly on the currency issue, the manipulation by the Chinese is quite clear. As Mr. Krugman points out: ``To get our trade deficit down, we need to make American products more competitive, which in practice means that we need the dollar's value to fall in terms of other currencies . . . but sensible policymakers have long known that sometimes a weaker currency means a stronger economy, and have acted on that knowledge.

``The United States can't and shouldn't be equally aggressive to Switzerland. But given our economy's desperate need for more jobs, a weaker dollar is very much in our national interest--and we can and should take action against countries that are keeping their currencies undervalued, and thereby standing in the way of a much needed decline in our trade deficit. That, above all, means China.''

Now, I am very pleased to say, as Mr. Krugman notes, that the Senate is moving ahead on this, and a bipartisan majority in the Senate is voting for this bill. I was disappointed to see the Republican leadership in this body announce that they won't take the bill up. It is extraordinary to me that the Republican leadership of this body apparently plans to go to the defense of the Chinese economy by not allowing a bill that got bipartisan support in the Senate to allow us to respond to Chinese unfair manipulation of their currency.

Now, there is one argument against it, which is, well, we'd better be careful, we might make them angry. They might retaliate. How do they retaliate beyond what they're doing? The Chinese are in violation in area after area of the very free-trade rules to which they said they were there.

There is this view that goes around in this country that almost everybody in the world is doing us a favor by letting us be nice to them. The notion that we somehow will anger China ignores the way the Chinese are now behaving, and it ignores the economics. China has much more to lose in a dispute with the United States economically than we do. They have this enormous trade surplus with us. They buy American debt, it is true, not as a favor to us, but because that's the safest place to put their debt. If they had a better place to put it, they would put it somewhere else. This is no favor to us.

I am for an American role of cooperation with the world. I wish we would do more to alleviate hunger, to fight illness in poor countries. I am very much in favor of our continuing to work with the multilateral organizations, but this notion that we should not stand up for our own legitimate economic interests against a nation like China--which is so abusive of the process--because they might get mad at us is simply a total misreading of the situation.

So I ask that Mr. Krugman's column, documenting the case for the Senate legislation that directs our administration to take action against Chinese currency manipulation, be put in the Record.

And I want America to be cooperative with the rest of the world. I want us to share our wealth in ways that will help people who are desperately poor. But this notion--and it really comes down to this-- that we have somehow taken on this geopolitical role, where we are the guarantors of stability everywhere in the world and therefore we should not be too aggressive in our own interests because we might--we should not ever be putting the legitimate economic needs of our citizens above geopolitical interests, that is wrong; and Mr. Krugman documents it.

[From the New York Times, Oct. 2, 2011]

Holding China to Account

(By Paul Krugman)

The dire state of the world economy reflects destructive

actions on the part of many players. Still, the fact that so

many have behaved badly shouldn't stop us from holding

individual bad actors to account.

And that's what Senate leaders will be doing this week, as

they take up legislation that would threaten sanctions

against China and other currency manipulators.

Respectable opinion is aghast. But respectable opinion has

been consistently wrong lately, and the currency issue is no

exception.

Ask yourself: Why is it so hard to restore full employment?

It's true that the housing bubble has popped, and consumers

are saving more than they did a few years ago. But once upon

a time America was able to achieve full employment without a

housing bubble and with savings rates even higher than we

have now. What changed?

The answer is that we used to run much smaller trade

deficits. A return to economic health would look much more

achievable if we weren't spending $500 billion more each year

on imported goods and services than foreigners spent on our

exports.

To get our trade deficit down, however, we need to make

American products more competitive, which in practice means

that we need the dollar's value to fall in terms of other

currencies. Yes, some people will shriek about ``debasing''

the dollar. But sensible policy makers have long known that

sometimes a weaker currency means a stronger economy, and

have acted on that knowledge. Switzerland, for example, has

intervened massively to keep the franc from getting too

strong against the euro. Israel has intervened even more

forcefully to weaken the shekel.

The United States, given its special global role, can't and

shouldn't be equally aggressive. But given our economy's

desperate need for more jobs, a weaker dollar is very much in

our national interest--and we can and should take action

against countries that are keeping their currencies

undervalued, and thereby standing in the way of a much-needed

decline in our trade deficit.

That, above all, means China. And none of the arguments

against holding China accountable can stand serious scrutiny.

Some observers question whether we really know that China's

currency is undervalued. But they're kidding, right? The flip

side of

the manipulation that keeps China's currency undervalued is

the accumulation of dollar reserves--and those reserves now

amount to a cool $3.2 trillion.

Others warn of bad consequences if the Chinese stop buying

United States bonds. But our problem right now is precisely

that too many people want to park their money in American

debt instead of buying goods and services--which is why the

interest rate on long-term U.S. bonds is only 2 percent.

Yet another objection is the claim that Chinese products

don't really compete with U.S.-produced goods. The rebuttal

is fairly technical; let me just say that those making this

argument both overstate the case and fail to take the

indirect effects of Chinese currency policy into account.

In the last few days a new objection to action on the China

issue has surfaced: right-wing pressure groups, notably the

influential Club for Growth, oppose tariffs on Chinese goods

because, you guessed it, they're a form of taxation--and we

must never, ever raise taxes under any circumstances. All I

can say is that Democrats should welcome this demonstration

that antitax fanaticism has reached the point where it trumps

standing up for our national interests.

To be fair, there are some arguments against action on

China that would carry some weight if the times were

different. One is the undoubted fact that inflation in China,

which is raising labor costs in particular, is gradually

eliminating that nation's currency undervaluation. The

operative word, however, is ``gradually'': something that

brings the United States trade deficit down over four or five

years isn't good enough when unemployment is at disastrous

levels right now.

And the reality of the unemployment disaster is also my

answer to those who warn that getting tough with China might

unleash a trade war or damage world commercial diplomacy.

Those are real risks, although I think they're exaggerated.

But they need to be set against the fact--not the mere

possibility--that high unemployment is inflicting tremendous

cumulative damage as we speak.

Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said it

clearly last week: unemployment is a ``national crisis,''

with so many workers now among the long-term unemployed that

the economy is at risk of suffering long-run as well as

short-run damage.

And we can't afford to neglect any important means of

alleviating that national crisis. Holding China accountable

won't solve our economic problems on its own, but it can

contribute to a solution--and it's an action that's long

overdue.