Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that in the engrossment of H.R. 2761, the Clerk be authorized to correct section numbers, punctuation, cross-references, and to make such other technical and conforming changes as may be necessary to accurately reflect the actions of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 1852 and insert extraneous material.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that during consideration of H.R. 1852 in the Committee of the Whole, pursuant to House Resolution 650, amendment No. 2 may be offered out of sequence by a cosponsor, the gentleman from California (Mr. Cardoza).

I thank the gentlewoman, the Chair of the Housing Subcommittee who has worked so hard all year on a number of very important pieces of legislation. And I appreciate the kind words of the ranking member. I congratulate him on the newest addition to his extended family. And he correctly says, there is a lot in this bill that we agree with; there are some things that we disagree.

Now, the ranking member of the subcommittee, the gentlewoman from Illinois, the ranking member of the full committee. I should note, the gentlewoman from Illinois is no longer the ranking member of this subcommittee, she was recently moved, but she was during the pendency of this bill. They noted that last year a bill passed the House by 400 to a handful on the FHA, and that is true. And the reason is, that is the difference between us and them.

Last year, when they were in the majority, they came out with a bill that had some things in it that we liked, a couple things that we didn't like, so we were reasonable and conciliatory and voted for it. And now we are in the majority. And it is an odd argument to say that the bill that they passed when they were in the majority, having defeated some of our amendments, somehow now, because we were conciliatory last year and supported it, we are obligated to do the same thing.

The principle of deja vu all over again is not to be found in Jefferson's Manual. It is not binding. We built on what we agreed to last year and we added some things. Let me talk about where we disagree.

Oddly, the administration insists that when we do mortgage insurance for lower income people, we agree, that going forward, and even in fact in helping in the current crisis, FHA mortgage insurance should be available for people with weaker credit who are in the subprime category, now, if they can refinance at a steady rate in the future so they can go there in the first place.

But what the administration says is this: If you are a woman making $48,000 a year and your credit isn't great for a variety of reasons and you get mortgage insurance from the FHA, this administration and the approach of my Republican colleagues is to charge her more than any Member of this House would be charged for the same mortgage insurance, because what they say is, we will extend it to people with weaker credit, but we will charge them more, because people with weaker credit are likely to default. It is true people with weaker credit are likelier to default, but should everybody be penalized financially because some people with weaker credit will default?

What we say is, if you are in that higher risk category and you go forward and make your payments on time, you should be refunded that money after 5 years automatically, 3 years at the discretion of HUD.

So I reject the notion that we should make the person in the lower credit category who conscientiously makes her payments be the one who has to bear the cost of a loan loss rate that is higher for people like her. That is not her fault.

Secondly, we have in here tougher restrictions than last year on the ability of HUD to raise FHA rates. Members will note, the FHA has been making a surplus recently, and the administration likes that and they can use that to put into the general budget so Housing and the FHA subsidize the rest of the budget. And a couple of times on a fully bipartisan basis, through the appropriators and through our committee, we have written to HUD saying, no, don't do that. Don't raise FHA fees when you are already making a profit.

This bill, in fact, reduces the ability of HUD to raise fees unless they can document that they are going to go in the red, and that is one of the differences. If you vote for a substitute, you will be voting for a weaker set of restrictions on HUD's ability to raise FHA fees. That is why the home builders and the realtors have generally been supportive of the approach that we are taking, because we don't want HUD to have the freedom to raise the fees just to make a surplus for the rest of the government and make homeowners do that initial surplus.

In addition, by the way, we take the cap off home equity mortgages, and that is what generates the money. We don't generate the money for the affordable housing fund here by raising fees on mortgage insurance in general; in fact, we restrict HUD's ability to do that. We do take the cap off mortgage insurance. So what we are saying is, there will be more home equity mortgages granted. And, in fact, we put a restriction on the fee that can be charged by those who originate them. Not in the minority's substitute, I believe. And we say that extra money that comes not from raising anybody's fees but increasing the volume is what we can use for affordable housing. We also say that you should raise the limit.

Now, the administration had been opposed to it and they are parading it some but I believe not enough. We now have a situation in which the market is telling us that they will not do mortgages if they go above the FHA-GSE limit. And what this bill does is, A, to raise the limit based on the regional variation in house prices, but, in addition, says to the Secretary of HUD: If

the market freezes up as it now does, you have discretion, the discretion of the Secretary of HUD, to do a temporary increase in the limits. And I think that is a reasonable approach.

Finally, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Be very clear. Look at the bill. Not a penny can go to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund under the legislation before us today until the Secretary of HUD certifies that the FHA fund is fully solvent. That is, there is no way under this bill that a penny can go to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund if it would in any way cause an increase in FHA mortgage insurance or in any way jeopardize the fund.

The question is, if there is a surplus generated by the mortgage insurance rates, and remember, we are saying to HUD you can't charge as much as you want to. So at the lower rate we impose and with the increase in the volume of home equity mortgages that generates a surplus, does it go into the Treasury to do as they wish or can we set it aside for an affordable housing program? And for the first time, because you do not have now a lot, there are a lot of HUD programs, but there aren't any now that help build family affordable housing. We have some for the elderly; HUD tries to cut it. We have some for the disabled; HUD tries to cut it. We do not have a general program for helping to build affordable family housing, and that is what this bill would do. But only if by raising revenue. And, by the way, when we increased it, there was an odd statement in which they said don't raise the upper limit, have the program be focused on the lower income people. They are not competitive.

In fact, raising the upper limit makes money for the FHA. CBO has told us that when you raise the limit, that is a profit for FHA. In fact, raising the limit at the top is one of the reasons why we can avoid charging the people with weaker credit more, which the FHA wants to do, because we recycle some of that profit that they will make from right in the upper end into helping offset the higher loan loss rate from people at the lower end.

So the notion that in any way we are deteriorating our ability to help the moderate people is just nonsense. It is literal nonsense. Because raising the upper limit, all it does is provide more funds which can be used, because the alternative, and again this is in the Bush administration's approach: Yes, we will extend credit to people with weaker credit, but we will charge those individuals more than somebody who is richer even if that individual is making the payment. I don't think that is appropriate for the Federal Government.

There has been a lot of bipartisan cooperation on this bill. There were a couple amendments offered. One amendment is jointly offered by myself and the gentleman from California (Mr. Miller). There are amendments offered by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Tiberi) which we think is a good idea. Mr. Miller has another one dealing with down payment assistance. Mr. Tiberi's deals with the question of counseling. We are supportive of those. There is a great deal of bipartisanship here.

The realtors and home builders, two of the private sector groups strongly committed to helping with homeownership and home building, support this bill and support our versions of it. All the consumer groups, the people who advocate for low income housing do. I hope that the bill is adopted. There are some amendments that would kill it. I will say there is an amendment to strike the funds for the Affordable Housing Fund. Members might want to check. A virtually identical amendment was offered during the appropriations bill to prohibit any FHA money from going there. It was defeated by 2-1. It was a very large vote on this side, obviously, but a significant vote on the other side. We have debated all these issues. I hope by the end of the day we will send the FHA bill through.

And let me just close by saying I welcome what the administration did. We are moving closer. I hope by the end of today we will have sent this bill to the Senate, along with the GSE bill. And I have spoken to Secretary Paulson and I have spoken with Members of the Senate. If the Senate will then take up the GSE bills and the FHA bills, I know there are differences, we want a signature on both bills. We will have a genuine three-sided conference; ourselves, both parties; the Senate, both parties; the Secretary of Treasury, the Secretary of HUD. And I believe if the Senate will act well before Thanksgiving, we can have a good package in which the GSEs and FHA are made sounder and more solid and better able to serve the people.

Will the gentlewoman yield?

I would say that I really am very proud that on our committee, and the gentlewoman is right, there are some areas of disagreement, I think we have shown how you can have legitimate disagreements of governmental philosophy within a framework of some agreement and be able to deal with them so that the disagreements can be reasonably debated and don't spill over and don't interfere.

And the gentlewoman is right, we have been very active; but we could not have been active in a very constructive way if it hadn't been for that spirit, and I thank her for it. And obviously we will still be working with her, but we do want to acknowledge how helpful she was and how constructive in her role as the ranking minority member.

Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman, and I thank the gentlewoman from Illinois. She is absolutely right. If I thought this would in any way impinge on our ability to help middle- and lower-income people, I would be opposed to it. In fact, if this works as we believe it will work, it will be the opposite. Because CBO has consistently scored, we haven't had this particular amendment scored, but prior amendments that have raised the limit at which the FHA can operate have been scored by CBO as generating a surplus, a positive number. That is some of the money that we are going to use. As the gentlewoman knows, while there is some controversy about this thing, we significantly increase in this bill the amount for counseling, because if there had been proper counseling, a lot of people wouldn't have been stuck at pre-prime. The counseling is aimed at people in the lower brackets. This is part of the money for it.

I would be willing, when we get to conference, to say, if, in any way, this would appear to be impinging on the ability to do the rest of the mission, we would cut it off. But the way it is going to work, it will, in fact, generate a surplus which we intend to use to help precisely the people whom the gentlewoman refers to.

I thank the gentleman. I appreciate his advocacy of this. He has been one of those who, from California, has been most vigorous in reminding us of the need to do it.

Madam Chairman, I rise to seek the time to discuss this, with a certain ambiguity as to my position.

To two aspects of it, yes, Madam Chair.

I yield to the gentlewoman from California such time as she may consume.

Madam Chairman, I claimed the time in opposition, but having listened to my two very persuasive colleagues, I have been converted and I now support this amendment.

Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

Madam Chairman, I did want to ask a question of the gentleman from New York. I have a concern about his amendment, only because it does not seem to me to go far enough.

One of the things we have tried very hard to do in our committee is to end what has been a kind of discrimination against manufactured housing, because if we are going to get to more people being able to own homes without getting into a subprime type of situation where people are induced to borrow more than they should, manufactured housing should be part of it.

The gentleman's amendment is properly, from his standpoint, addressed to a situation in his own district where fixed-foundation housing is involved. But my question here would be, and I realize it is under the rule not possible to change the amendment now, but I would have this question: If his amendment would be adopted, if as the process went forward some of us were able to work to expand this so it wasn't limited to fixed foundation, would the gentleman from New York have any objection to that?

And I will yield to him.

Madam Chairman, in the face of that degree of reasonableness, I withdraw my opposition.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I rise to sincerely seek time in opposition.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

We have been debating this. It is a legitimate issue. We debated it when the gentleman from Georgia offered a version of it in the appropriations bill. We debated it previously. We debated a similar argument when we had the GSE bill.

The gentleman says there are 80 HUD programs and HUD money has gone up. The major reason the HUD funding has gone up, the single biggest one, has been in the section 8 rental program. There is a problem with section 8. Section 8 adds equity. But the current section 8 program provides rental assistance for one year at a time. No one can build affordable housing based on an annual grant. So what section 8 does, while it does provide some equity and I have been supportive of it, it increases the demand for housing without increasing the supply.

So in the current formation of Federal policies, the Federal Government puts upward pressure on rentals in the moderate- and low- income areas, because we give people billions of dollars to rent apartments in a way that does not lead to any construction.

This tries to make it a more balanced program. This and the GSE bill take money to begin the process of constructing affordable housing, which in the end could save us money, because it will then say that the rental levels which section 8 is driving up will no longer be driven up.

The gentleman says it is going to be a tax on the FHA. In fact, I hope the gentleman, given his concern about a tax on the people who get mortgage insurance from the FHA, will vote against the amendment to be offered by the gentlewoman from Illinois, because in this bill, unlike the gentlewoman's amendment, we have very tough restrictions on HUD's ability to raise the FHA fund unless it is necessary for solvency.

In a bipartisan basis last year, we wrote to them and we did it in the appropriations bill, because HUD was being told by OMB, not HUD, HUD made it very clear, this was an OMB directive, raise the FHA fees because FHA isn't contributing enough to the budget.

We put into our bill's restrictions, we have a restriction in our bill on the amount that can be charged for home equity mortgages by the originators. It is not in the gentlewoman from Illinois's amendment. We put caps on the FHA. So exactly the opposite is the case. And as far as this is concerned, the bill specifically says that no money can go to the Housing Trust Fund until the HUD Secretary has certified that the fund will be totally solvent and this will not endanger it.

The money that would go to affordable housing does not come from raising anybody's fee. It comes from an increase in volume. We capped the fees. I want to emphasize this. In the bill that we have, as opposed to the gentlewoman from Illinois's substitute, there are two separate restrictions on FHA's ability to raise fees that she doesn't have.

What we do is the law now says FHA can only do 65,000 home equity reverse mortgages a year. We say, no, there is no reason for that limit. We say do as many as the market will bear, with a restriction on what can be charged.

That is what generates the money. It is an increase in volume at a lower price to the consumer that generates the money; and if that increased volume and the lower price to the consumer results in there being a surplus that we can spend to build rental housing, as long as HUD certifies that that would not in any way require any increase in the FHA, we say, go ahead.

As to affordable housing, there is a severe crisis in rental housing in this country, and you had some of the people pushed into subprime situations because there wasn't enough rental housing. We think the Affordable Housing Trust Fund helps deal with that.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to say that I appreciate the candor of the gentleman from California. He is against Federal programs that help build affordable housing; I understand that. By the way, this is not, of course, the old forms of public housing. This is going to be a private corporation.

But I would say to my friends on the other side, I don't think that you can argue both that we already have enough programs to do this and that we shouldn't have any at all. In fact, we do not now have programs that help build family affordable housing. We think in cooperation with the private sector, and the gentleman mentions the market, every private market entity, the Realtors, the home builders who are involved in construction in the private market, support the creation of the housing fund.

Madam Chairman, I congratulate the gentleman's dexterity, on his ability to go 180 degrees opposite on his argument mid-amendment.

He started out saying we can't do this because it will jeopardize the FHA. We point out that in the bill that couldn't happen. This bill says this money cannot be used if it would in any way jeopardize an FHA situation. So he says okay, let's take the surplus and put it into the regular budget. That is a debate. Do we take surplus and put it into the budget to detract from other spending? I don't think so. I guess the question is this. If you take out an FHA mortgage and get mortgage insurance, and if our bill doesn't pass, this administration will raise that fee to make more money, should that go to the war in Iraq and for contractors in Iraq who are wasting money? Or should it go to build affordable housing in our cities, because that is where the money is going. The money is not going to reduce the deficit; it is going to be wasted elsewhere.

What we say is this. We should be building affordable housing. Some Members say don't give money to the States. No, I think that is a very good way to go. I think the States and the localities are best able to respond, and I hope the amendment is defeated.

Will the gentlewoman yield?

I would say to my friend from Ohio, and we have worked together on a lot of things, I understand his purpose is a good one, but I share some of the concerns of the gentlewoman from Illinois.

I hope the gentleman understands that if this becomes part of the bill, as I believe it will, we haven't had a chance to consult with the FHA. We would like their advice. We could wind up strengthening the urging but allow for some exceptions. I would hope as we went forward the gentleman could work with us on doing that.

If the gentlewoman would continue to yield, there are some differences that we have of an ideological sort. There are a lot of general areas of agreement. Mr. Montgomery, the head of the FHA, has been, I think, a responsible and thoughtful administrator of the program. We have a common interest in this, and I would look forward to having him in on this conversation with us, and I think we can move in that direction with some of the flexibility that the gentlewoman asked for.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

The gentlewoman, incredibly, says this will jeopardize the solvency of the fund if we put money into affordable housing. I thought reading was one of the basic things we did around here. In the bill it says nothing can go to the Affordable Housing Fund if it would jeopardize solvency. Simply denying plain facts is not an appropriate way to debate.

In much of her argument she talks about another piece that represents the difference between us. We say that if you are someone with a weaker credible, a lower FICO score, the great god, FICO, that governs the lives of lower-income people, if you get your mortgage insured and you work hard and make all your payments, you should still be charged more than the gentlewoman from Illinois or I would be charged for a mortgage, because that is the insurance principle.

It is an appropriate principle for a private insurance company. For the Federal Government to say to hardworking people who are making their payments that they will be held accountable for the fact that other people didn't make their payments, and I won't be and the gentlewoman from Illinois wouldn't be, that is not appropriate.

So this principle of, yes, they say if you are healthy, you shouldn't get your money back, if you work hard and make your mortgage payments, why should you be charged more because somebody else like you defaulted? Let's all share that burden.

The gentlewoman said, well, it will be hard to give lower-income people loans. Those are crocodile tears. You are going to help these lower-income people by making them pay more for their mortgage than we would pay.

I would also note, and I wasn't in charge of the drafting, but we did adopt several amendments today. The gentlewoman's amendment would, of course, wipe all of them out because it would go back to last year's bill.

I understand there is regret on the part of many of my colleagues at the results of last November's election, and it is appropriate to try to undue last year's election. The appropriate time to do that is in next November's election, not by bills that passed a year ago with a differently constructed House and say let's not make any changes.

We made changes to accommodate refinancing for people caught in the subprime crisis. That is in this bill. It is not in the gentlewoman's substitute. Taking a year-old bill, with none of the improvements we have made, it goes beyond the philosophy.

Now, I understand Members don't want to do an affordable housing fund. That was the gentleman from Texas's amendment. I oppose it. That one makes some sense in terms of ideological division. But to say let's ignore everything that has happened in the last year, amendments adopted here today, several amendments by Members of both parties, the gentleman from California (Mr. Gary G. Miller); the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Tiberi); the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney); the gentleman from New York (Mr. Bishop). We adopted their amendments. The gentlewoman wants to wipe them out. That is not an appropriate way to legislate.

I hope that the amendment is defeated, that we do not say in particular

that if you are someone in a lower-income category and you make your mortgage payments, the Federal Government will charge you more.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

I think the gentlewoman confused a couple of issues. When I talk about not charging someone more because she has a lower credit score, and it is often a ``she'' that is in that category, it is not the no-down-payment category. What the bill does that the gentlewoman has is to say if you are someone with a lower credit score and get a loan with a down payment, you get charged more even if you make your payments.

By the way, the bill that she would replace with last year's bill would also knock out several protections we have in this bill against FHA fees being raised. The FHA doesn't want to raise fees. OMB has ordered FHA to try to raise fees. Congress has had to intervene.

There are in our version, unlike the version the gentlewoman is offering, protections against fee increases. We have an amendment that was advocated by the gentlewoman from Florida, Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite, and the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Marshall, to limit the amount that can be charged to older people taking out reverse equity mortgages. That is in the bill that the gentlewoman wants to displace, and she would displace it with a bill that has no such protection for older people.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

The gentlewoman has quite honestly joined this one issue. She says it is the principle of insurance. If you are healthy, you should pay less for insurance than if you are sick. That is not the principle we follow in the Federal Government. That is the point the gentlewoman misses.

Yes, if you go to a private company, they will do that. You don't pay more in a Medicare premium if you are sick than if you are healthy. That is apparently what the gentlewoman is advocating, that senior citizens who are sick should pay more premiums than senior citizens who are healthy.

The question is whether a principle that is necessary in a private insurance scheme is appropriate for the Federal Government. She says just because you are low income doesn't mean you have poor credit. True. Not in every case. She knows there is a correlation; that the weaker the credit, the likely the people are to have low income. She, again, is saying explicitly that she believes, and she doesn't deny it, that it is the principle of insurance.

You are a working woman making in the forties, you get FHA insurance, you make all your payments, and you have got weaker credit than somebody who serves in Congress and makes $180,000 a year. You have to pay more, according to the gentlewoman, than I would pay, even if you made all your payments.

What we are saying is at the outset it may be that you want to charge more. Yes, we will give FHA the ability to do that upfront. But you can earn your way out of that. If you have weaker credit, but you work hard, you are diligent and you make your payments, why should the Federal Government charge you more than someone far wealthier than you?

The gentlewoman is wrong to think that is the precedent. In the health insurance field and the Federal Government field, if you are under Medicare, you don't pay more in Medicare premiums if you were sick than if you were healthy. This is what we are saying, that you should not charge people more.

I would also point out, again, that she said we don't want to raise fees to people. Our bill limits what the FHA can be forced to charge by OMB. We have three separate provisions. I will point out again to the gentlewoman, we adopted a provision, there were negotiations between AARP and the originators of the home equity mortgages, the services, and we have in there a reduction, we put a cap on. We cut by one-third the maximum fee elderly people can be charged for an FHA-insured home mortgage.

We reduced the fee that elderly people can be charged by one-third. The gentlewoman's amendment, it is not her fault, she is not gratuitously trying to hurt older people; she just picked up this old amendment from a year ago, this old bill, and offered it without taking into account the progress we have made. That is not a good way to legislate.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, let me ask the gentlewoman from Illinois: If someone has weaker credit and gets mortgage insurance but makes all the payments for 5 years, why does the gentlewoman think that she should be charged more? And how does it hurt the FHA's ability to go forward if, after someone has

made the payments for 5 years, she gets refunded the extra? I would yield to the gentlewoman to answer that question, a fundamental difference on the bill.

No. Answer the question. They are not refunded under your bill. They are under, the gentlewoman would not refund them. How does it hurt the FHA in their ability to lend to people with weaker credit if they say to people with weaker credit, if you make your payments for 5 years, we will refund the extra we charged you?

I yield.

I take back my time because the gentlewoman is simply, I understand her answer. It is, if there is a higher loan loss rate from lending to lower-income people, people with weaker credit, they have to subsidize each other.

We say, no; raise the jumbo limit, and let those people in California and Massachusetts and New York who are getting mortgages at $600,000 and $500,000, let them subsidize it. Nobody is subsidizing. You shouldn't have to subsidize if you are making your own payments.

National Association of Realtors,

Washington, DC, September 14, 2007.

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Representative: On behalf of the 1.3 million members

of the National Association of REALTORS, I urge you to

support H.R. 1852, the ``Expanding American Homeownership Act

of 2007'', when the bill is considered by the full House.

This is an important measure that will allow FHA to function

in the 21st century. Equally important and worthy of your

strongest support is an amendment to be offered by

Representatives Barney Frank (D-MA), Gary Miller (R-CA) and

Dennis Cardoza (D-CA) that is vital to improving the

stability of mortgage markets, a critical component of our

national economy.

The Frank/Miller/Cardoza amendment would increase the

Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loan limits beyond the

language originally included in H.R. 1852. Such an increase

is now needed in light of the significant housing and

mortgage market turmoil that has severely limited the ability

of families to refinance a problematic existing loan or,

alternatively, purchase a home in a high cost market with a

safe and affordable mortgage.

As you well know, many American homeowners now have

mortgages with payments that will soon increase dramatically,

putting them at risk of foreclosure. Raising the FHA loan

limits will provide many of these homeowners living in the

nation's high housing cost markets with a safe FHA loan

alternative. In addition, with the even more recent

tightening of the jumbo market, many homebuyers may not be

able to find a safe, affordable financing option without an

increase in the FHA loan limits.

Although the underlying bill would increase the loan

limits, we strongly believe that the Frank/Miller/Cardoza

amendment is needed to affect real change. H.R. 1852 creates

a new loan ceiling of $417,000. Many markets are

significantly higher than this limit. Median home prices of

communities in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California,

Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania are already far above this

limit. The Frank/Miller/Cardoza amendment creates geographic

fairness by raising the loan limit to 125% of the area median

home price. Under the amendment working families in Newark,

NJ can buy a home for $512,000, and families in Los Angeles,

CA can buy homes for $650,000--both median price homes for

their area.

FHA reform is needed now, more than ever. Please vote for

H.R. 1852 and the Frank/Miller/Cardoza amendment when these

measures come to the Floor.

Thank you,

Pat V. Combs,

President.

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask the Members to follow closely because there are some unusual twists and turns even to this.

In the first place, the gentleman talked about people getting FHA loans who weren't here legally, and he made a big point of that. As he later acknowledged, the bill, as reported, already deals with that.

The gentleman from Georgia is so enamored of this amendment that he's offering it twice to this bill. Now, he's making up for the fact that last week he wanted to offer it and couldn't. The gentleman from Georgia had filed in the Congressional Record a version of this amendment to offer to the Native American housing bill to prevent illegal immigrant Native Americans from sneaking in. And when we pointed that out, the gentleman from Georgia for once thought better of it and didn't offer the amendment. I think he was afraid that the Indians would have said, you know, sir, that's a good idea, why didn't we think of it?

But now, in the amendment, the gentleman offered this amendment in committee, so the illustration he gave of how they are getting FHA loans when they shouldn't, that's already in the bill. What he has done now is to say that this should apply to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which is not created by this bill. The bill does say that if we later, on the floor of this House, created an affordable housing trust fund, funds from the FHA excess, if there are any, will go into it. So there is plenty of time when we deal with the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

So last week he couldn't offer the amendment to keep the illegal immigrants out of the Navajo housing. This week, he's already got it in the bill that covers the bill before us, but he has now got amendment envy in the worst way, so he's going to offer it to a program that doesn't exist yet, preempting our chance to do it. Even that wouldn't be a problem except that he could have said ``forthwith.'' He said ``promptly.'' It doesn't kill the bill; it significantly delays it.

If this comes back to the Committee on Financial Services, it is now wide open. The committee then has a markup, and any amendment can be offered. And I will tell my colleagues that there are Members, yes, there is your indication of what will happen, this will be filibustered again. Thank you for your honesty. I appreciate it. If this bill comes back to committee, it will be wide open.

We are in the midst of a crisis. The President said last month, please pass the FHA bill promptly. Even the United States Senate is now acting on this bill. If it comes back to committee, I have 3 days to notice a markup. How quickly could we do it? Well, I don't think I can have this markup on Yom Kippur. There may be a lot to atone for in this amendment, but I can't have it on Friday.

So we go over to next week. We have markups scheduled next week on HOPE VI and on flood insurance and other important issues, so we couldn't get to this for a couple of weeks. And then when we do get to it, the clappers over there are going to offer a whole bunch of amendments.

Now, if the gentleman just wanted to put this into the program that doesn't yet exist, and that he will have a chance to do it later, he could have said ``forthwith.'' Members are asked, when they rise on a recommit, are you opposed to the bill? The gentleman from Georgia honestly answered that he is. And he used the choice he had to substantially delay this bill. No, not kill it, but this will delay this bill by several weeks in the midst of this subprime crisis.

I would say to Members, preventing the FHA loans from going there, that's already in the bill. Read pages 54 and following. The Affordable Housing Trust Fund, it will be created later. I'm sure the gentleman will offer that amendment again and you will have a chance to vote on it.

So the sole effect of voting for this recommit is substantially to delay the bill on the FHA because the program that the bill covers, this amendment applies already from the committee. And the program that he would apply it to is not yet in existence and won't be in existence until we vote.

And for Members who worry about some cheap shot ad that says, oh, well, ``promptly,'' ``forthwith,'' too complicated, I hope people don't vote for this amendment. Many of them will. You will have a chance to vote for it. Long before the next election, the gentleman from Georgia will have offered this amendment four more times, at least. We've got more bills in our committee, and so you will have the chance to vote for it.

Please, if you support the low-income Housing Trust Fund as a concept and want the funding available when we set it up, if you support, in particular, the President's request that we move promptly to let the FHA be available for the subprime crisis, do not vote for a recommit whose sole effect will be to delay for several weeks passage of this bill. It won't kill it, but a several-week delay. I've got to hold off and call the hearing, we have to then have a long markup, they will be offering more amendments. It will substantially delay a very important bill, and I hope Members will defeat it.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Clerk be authorized to make technical corrections in the engrossment of H.R. 1852, to include corrections in spelling, punctuation, section numbering and cross-referencing, and the insertion of appropriate headings.

Madam Speaker, David D'Allesandro was a very successful CEO of one of America's leading financial institutions, the John Hancock Company. Mr. D'Allesandro consistently demonstrated during his tenure as the leader of this important corporation that social responsibility and successful activity in the private sector are fully compatible. In the Boston Globe on September 3rd, he published an article that exemplifies the thoughtful and constructive approach he brought.

Madam Speaker, I believe that the most important thing we can do domestically is to demonstrate that understanding and support of a prosperous private sector is not only consistent with support for a vigorous and well funded public sector, but in fact benefits from such an approach. As he says, ``If we are going to be globally competitive and continue to attain record profits in this ever-evolving competitive globalization, that same corporate America has to `cough up' and take more financial responsibility for our greatest asset: our children and their education.''

Noting the great wealth that is being created by pools of private capital America, he asks pointedly, ``If there is that much money running around, why does the National Education Association report that we are facing a potential nationwide teacher shortage with more than a million teachers retiring in the near future and the need for more than 2 million teachers in the next decade? . . . Among the reasons for this turnover is inadequate pay compared to other professions with the same training requirements.''

Madam Speaker, David D'Allesandro is asserting a point that other corporate leaders must understand in their own interests and in the interests of a more equitable society. I ask that this very thoughtful article be printed here because it makes such an important contribution to our national debate.

(By David D'Allesandro)

Economy Thrives, but Schools Go Begging

Starting tomorrow, traffic in and around every major city

including Boston will once again be congested due mainly to

two seasonal phenomena: school buses packed with

children and cars of executives back from vacationing through

the lazy days of August.

But something is different this year. Very different. The

children are returning to many public school systems that are

strapped for cash, and the executives are returning to

businesses that are overflowing with cash.

As a capitalist, I believe in free markets, reasonable tax

rates, competition, high compensation for performance and I

am all for businesses being incredibly successful. But there

is something disturbing--really disturbing--that while

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson recently said, ``This is far

and away the strongest global economy I've seen in my

business lifetime,'' our public school systems are suffering

beyond comprehension.

Business, particularly large corporations and private

equity funds, will spend billions each year on reinvestment

in products, technology, distribution, advertising, and an

endless array of tools. Yet, they are not directly assessed

to subsidize their overwhelming reliance on our education

system to feed them high quality, educated adults who will

fuel their growth.

Their counterargument is that part of their personal and

business taxes find their way back to schools. And, or course

they will quickly point out ``this or that'' voluntary

corporate public education initiative. But the growing

disparity between their growth and schools' budget problems

seems particularly and fundamentally wrong.

Let us consider just a few indicators: Despite some recent

credit market issues, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit

record levels over 13,000 this year. And even touched 14,000

in contrast to bottoming at less than 7,300 just five years

ago. Record profits the last few years have been a big

driver.

Goldman Sachs recently stated in US News and World Report:

``If we and the consensus are correct, then the period 2003-

2008 will have been one of the most powerful periods of

economic growth globally since accurate data bas been

collectible for much of the world.''

Armed with hundreds of billions of dollars, private equity

firms have been dominating the acquisition landscape. They

have scooped up thousands of companies including many high

profile ones like Hertz, Toys R Us, Neiman Marcus, Metro

Goldwyn Mayer to name a few. Their capital, combined with

considerable tax breaks, have created enormous wealth for

these private firms.

So, if there is that much money running around, why does

the National Education Association report that we are facing

a potential nationwide teacher shortage with more than a

million teachers retiring in the near future and the need for

more than 2 million teachers in the next decade? As alarming

as that is, the NEA says 50 percent of new teachers leave

within five years. Among the reasons for this turnover is

inadequate pay compared to other professions with the same

training requirements.

Why, according to a 2007 Boston Globe examination of

property tax rates in 298 Massachusetts cities and towns, has

the average homeowner's tax bill gone up 49 percent since

2000?

Why are so many communities being forced to consider

overrides to improve school buildings, provide basic

services, and maintain after-school and sports activities?

When towns like Stoneham are almost forced to eliminate all

competitive sports activities, there is something terribly

wrong.

While the politicians debate options from ``cheeseburger

taxes,'' increased highway tolls, casinos, and Governor

Patrick's new bond debt proposals, both the federal and state

governments need to rethink who are the true benefactors of

our education system. In all fairness, if businesses are

being properly assessed for these windfalls, then more

current tax dollars should find their way to education. If

not, then the government should step up and fix it.

Naturally, corporate America will say that the problem is

inefficient school systems. And while that may very well be

correct, most corporations are not particularly efficient

either. This is primarily a diversionary tactic to shift

focus away from the corporate coffers.

Corporate executives will also contend that reinvesting

large profit sums in public education would not be in the

direct interests of their investors. Well, they would be

wrong. A highly educated American work force ready to compete

with the emerging economies of countries like India and China

is very much in the interests of shareholders.

If we are going to be globally competitive and continue to

attain record profits in this ever-evolving competitive

globalization, that same corporate America has to ``cough

up'' and take more financial responsibility for our greatest

asset: our children and their education.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Reauthorization Act of 2007.

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

This is a reauthorization, and I believe with the initiative of the gentleman from New Mexico, which I hope the House will adopt, will extend the Federal program that responds to the economic needs of the Native Americans. It also has a provision reauthorizing the Native Hawaiian legislation.

The program primarily provides funding, subject, of course, to appropriation, to the recognized tribes for housing. Members will be aware, if they represent areas where the tribes are and if they have visited those areas, that inadequate housing is a serious social problem for many of our Native American residents. And this is a bill that provides money to them to help them meet that need.

Now, the program is changed in three ways: First, as I said, it has not yet been changed but we expect it to be. Our committee has unanimously expressed its support for an amendment that was drafted by the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce), who will be offering it, which creates an economic development program to go along with the housing program, and we do believe adequate housing and economic development go hand in hand.

Secondly, at the request of the tribes, the Indian Housing Council, we have added in this a provision for a reserve fund and we have also provided funding for a self-determination program. So this bill comes before us strongly supported by the broad range of the tribes and it continues Federal support to help the tribes themselves build housing and will, I hope, also now have a component for economic development.

There is one item of some controversy which I think all of us involved here regret but we cannot ignore. The gentleman from North Carolina will be offering an amendment which says that no funding under this bill, including the housing program and the, I hope to be adopted, economic development program to the one tribe, the Cherokees, who have recently decided that the descendants of the slaves that the tribe had in the 19th century will be excluded from tribal benefits despite a treaty obligation to the contrary, we hope in the end that will never be necessary. In fact, I believe we will see an amendment that will make it clear that the amendment will only apply as long as the tribe maintains that position and there is pending litigation in the tribal court to change it. We hope it is changed. That's, as I see, the only controversy that applies to the program itself. I take it back. I know there will be an amendment to strike the Native Hawaiian program, and we will very vigorously oppose that. We have had that debate before. This is a program that works well, that is overwhelmingly supported in the State of Hawaii, and we believe should be allowed to continue.

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

Mr. Chairman, there are issues in which a number of Members of the House are recognized as leaders. There are sometimes issues where one particular Member, by the force of his commitment, by the intellectual powers he brings to bear, by the length of that commitment, really stands out as a leader. And on this particular issue, the issue of Native Americans in general, that is our colleague from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) dating back from his days in the State legislature in Michigan, when he represented a district with no Native Americans. They named cars in his district after Native Americans, but they're the only ones with those names that lived there. And just out of a concern that America honor its commitment in this area, which we haven't always done, he has been for many years a champion of the cause of Native Americans.

I am delighted to have worked with him on this bill, he is the sponsor of the bill, and I yield him such time as he may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I also yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I agree that the amendment is a useful one, and I support it. The gentleman from Oklahoma, who is a member of the Financial Services Committee, has been a very able advocate for Native Americans on a variety of issues, as well as on others. I think this is an example of his constructive approach. But I do want to take some exception with the reasons for it. And we can do things for somewhat different reasons. I don't think what the gentleman from North Carolina was doing was rash.

In terms of what is best for the tribes, what we are doing here is trying to enforce a treaty. Frankly, I think the tribes have suffered more from violations of treaties than they have been the violators of treaties. I think that, in fact, it is a national embarrassment that this Federal Government has historically been the one that has initiated breaches of treaties and ignored treaties. So I am glad to say this is a sign here, not simply on the merits of including the Freedmen, but a reaffirmation by this Congress that we will hold everybody to those treaties. I do believe by establishing that principle, we will be doing the Native Americans in the end some good, as well.

Beyond that, in terms of timing, I understand this is in the courts. But let's be clear what is in the courts. The issue here is whether a decision taken by the tribe to exclude the Freedmen, I believe, in violation of the treaty should be upheld or not. At any minute, the tribe could resolve this by saying, okay, we will abide by the treaty. So it is not that they need judicial permission to do that. They don't have to await the outcome.

Given all that, I do agree if the court decision, the tribal court as I understand it, upholds the right of the Freedmen, if the current status of the Freedmen is maintained, then the amendment wouldn't be necessary, and, in fact, if that had been the case, the gentleman from North Carolina wouldn't have offered it.

As all the Members have said, this is a very agonizing issue for many of us. None of us wants to be put to this kind of a test. But the principle of adhering to the treaties, I think, governs. The gentleman from Oklahoma has proposed a useful amendment. As I understand it, he cooperated with the gentleman from North Carolina. They worked together on this. And what this says is if the resolution comes either by a court decision that says the Freedmen must be continued as tribal members or by a decision by the Cherokees, and again, they aren't bound by a decision by the court not to do this. They could always do it. So from the standpoint of cutting off, you know, they say when people are in civil contempt they have the keys in their pockets. The Cherokees have the cash here. It is entirely up to them as to whether or not the benefits continue to flow. Nothing in the gentleman from North Carolina's amendment would in any way impede the flow of funds to the Cherokees unless they are found to be by us, I think very clearly, in violation of the treaty.

So if the Cherokees, either because of the tribal court or of their own volition, decide to continue what has been the status quo of the Freedmen, then there is no cutoff. So I do not believe it can fairly be said that this will penalize them. It leaves it in their hands.

Mr. Chairman, I am very pleased that the gentleman from North Carolina and the gentleman from Oklahoma, we have had the cooperation from Members on the other side, I think we have come to as good a resolution to a difficult situation as possible. I hope both amendments are adopted.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I want to express my strong support for the amendment and my appreciation and admiration for the gentleman from New Mexico. This is a very important piece of this.

We try to do this in our committee increasingly. We tried to do it with regard to the recovery from the hurricane as well. It is housing and economic development. They are both necessary, and they go together. If you don't have decent housing that is affordable, you are going to have a hard time filling the jobs. But if you don't have economic development, then housing without it is somewhat sterile.

The gentleman from New Mexico has come up with a very thoughtful approach here. It is very logical to make this part of this program. There was some original talk about it being separate, but I think from the standpoint of making sure this survives all the way through the process, it is better to link the two, because the underlying housing program is going to expire and, frankly, putting them together this way gives us more assurance that it will ultimately be signed and not caught up in some unrelated controversy.

So both procedurally and substantively, the gentleman from New Mexico has made the right choices, and I join in hoping the amendment is adopted.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, to begin with, I implore Members of the House not to give in to this effort to invoke judicial activism, to cancel the vote of the people's elected Representative.

My friends on the Republican side are very selective in their denunciation of judicial activism. From time to time, they complain, if the courts uphold some fundamental constitutional right, that our ability as elected officials to make public policy has been trifled with. Here the shoe is very much on the other foot, and I think the foot on which the shoe is is in the mouth.

This is an effort to overrule the overwhelming decision of the people of Hawaii through their elected officials to create these programs. There are few things in Hawaii that are as broadly supported as this housing program.

There are controversial aspects of some of what goes on in Hawaii. We are aware of none here. This has been fiercely defended by everyone who is representing Hawaii who has been here since I have been here, and this Congress is voting on it.

What are we told? What is the argument? Well, the Supreme Court doesn't think you should do that. What happened to the objection to judicial activism? What happened to the will of the people?

In fact, as the gentlewoman from Hawaii has pointed out, there is no clear-cut Supreme Court decision here. There is room for us to make choices. But I am struck at the ease with which some of my conservative colleagues invoke this principle of popular rule against judicial activism in such a selective fashion.

This harms no one. This isn't excluding anyone from anything. It is providing housing for people who need it. The gentlewoman from Hawaii has given a very good explanation of the history.

I do not understand, Mr. Chairman. This is a fairly small program affecting a fairly small number of people in Hawaii. It is overwhelmingly supported by the people of Hawaii.

Mr. Chairman, what motivates Members of this house to get up and interfere with the arrangements that the people of Hawaii have arrived at? What drives them? What angers them that the arrangement has been reached that says this to the Native Hawaiians? And no one disputes the history that our friend from Hawaii has given. The United States came in and overthrew the government. That is very well documented.

What drives people at this point to continue to battle against this effort to help these Native Hawaiians and to invoke the courts to say we don't care what the votes were in Hawaii. We don't care about an overwhelming vote in the U.S. House.

This is a very reasonable effort by the polity of Hawaii, the Native Hawaiians and others, to meet a very real need. No one is saying the program is badly run. No one is saying it is corrupt. No one is saying it is unnecessary.

There is some hyper-abstract, ideological objection to people reaching out to their fellow residents in need. And while it is overwhelmingly supported, what we have is an ideological objection, the nature of which I cannot understand. No one has told me what harm is done by this. I don't understand who this hurts. But somehow, people are motivated to attack this program which helps this particular, fairly small minority of people. And then, absent any rational arguments in my judgment, they invoke the principle of judicial supremacy, which they so often scorn in other contexts. I hope this amendment is defeated.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

I just want to give a little more information than we got in the last intervention from the gentleman from Georgia.

He disappointed me when he decided to inform us that the bill had been defeated in March. Yes, it was defeated. It was ``defeated'' by a vote of 272 ``yes'' and 150 ``no.'' It lost because it required two- thirds.

But I must say, Mr. Chairman, to refer to a bill having been defeated to refute the notion that it was widely supported and to neglect to mention that in fact it got a 122-vote majority and simply failed by 10 votes to get two-thirds, is a very incomplete reporting of the facts.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, as I understand this amendment, it is to make illegal what is already illegal, and since it was offered I

guess to the appropriations bill, it is to make apparently for the second time illegal what is already illegal, but the gentleman from Iowa explains why it is necessary.

It is that as we approach the next to the last year of an 8-year term for President Bush, his administration is still unable and apparently, according to the gentleman, unwilling to enforce that law.

The gentleman says the Federal Government, headed of course by President Bush, is the largest employer of people who are here illegally and not able to work; and he says that they lack conviction.

Mr. Chairman, I'm prepared to take on various responsibilities as chairman of the committee. Defending the President against the gentleman from Iowa is not one of the things I'm prepared to do today.

The gentleman from Iowa believes it's important for us for the third time to pass a law that he said the administration wouldn't enforce. I suppose the House could do that. I don't see any reason to think that they're going to enforce it any more this time than the other two times it was binding.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, this is an amendment that does not make a great deal of sense, even in its own terms.

First of all, the PAYGO principle applies in the appropriations process. Authorizations are authorizations. The Appropriations Committee balances the various authorizations. Nothing is committed to be spent by this bill.

What it says, however, is really quite striking. It says no authorization or appropriation shall be effective except to the extent that this act or the amendments made by this act provide for offsetting decreases. In other words, if you thought that it was important to provide housing for the Native Americans who live in such desperate straits in so many places and make up for that elsewhere in the Federal budget, you couldn't do that.

This says if you want to help the housing needs of American Indians, then you better reduce housing somewhere else. For the disabled? For the elderly? It does not allow for there to be offsetting decreases elsewhere.

I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Well, I will take back my time to say the gentleman has just stood up and said, look, I don't understand this language; I just borrowed it from you. Well, don't borrow things if you don't know how to use them. I mean, don't lend your car to someone who can't drive.

The fact is that the gentleman apparently didn't understand the implications of what he borrowed because the way this goes now, PAYGO in general has broader application. In this particular case, what it says is within this act. So if you want to spend more money on Indian housing, you have to in the same act, under this act, find offsets elsewhere. This is an example of how he misunderstands the process.

I would also say by the way there's a selectively to this because we don't get this amendment on every spending bill. Maybe it was offered on some of the other bills, the Ag bill, the space authorization. I don't see it all the time. I didn't see it on the Defense bill. Are we going to get this on the Iraq supplemental? I mean, I don't know how much we're going to spend here, but whatever we spend here, we spend in about, what, a week in the Iraq supplemental. I don't see it coming there. Somehow this becomes particularly important when we are trying to help people in dire straits; but even there, it's not logical.

Nothing in here will break PAYGO. PAYGO applies in an overall basis at the appropriations process.

If the gentleman wants me to yield, I'll be glad to yield.

No, that's not what it says.

I will take back my time to say the gentleman hasn't read his amendment. Here's what it says: to the extent that this act or the amendments made by this act provide for offsetting decreases in spending of the Federal Government.

Now, the rules of the House are such that you could not here offset other programs. You have germaneness rules. So under the terms of this amendment, you would have to make reductions in this same act subject to the same act.

No, because the gentleman keeps repeating his error.

The fact is that PAYGO applies in a broader context. That's the problem. If you want to do PAYGO, you want to be able to say at the appropriations process, we'll shut this down here and we will increase it there.

Again, as I said, it's very selectively applied. The amendment does not have any real effect on PAYGO, except if it were adopted it would apparently require us in this very bill, in which we authorize more money for Indian housing, to reduce, I don't know, Indian housing or something else because it's internal to this.

You couldn't say that a Mars space shot was wrong or that we're spending too much money in the farm bill. It would be internal to this act. That's the problem with taking the general PAYGO principle and trying to microapply it.

The fact is that the Indian housing program is a very important one. To single this out for this kind of restrictive approach beyond the general PAYGO principle would victimize people who are very much in need. So I hope the amendment is defeated.

I thank the gentleman.

The gentleman from Georgia misunderstands my view.

What I want is fiscal discipline. What I object to is the very selective application of that to people who are in need. The gentleman from Iowa says we are going to restore freedom.

I don't think the freedom of Navajo children that live in inadequate housing is something worth defending. I am especially struck by the fact that we are about to ask the President to spend tens of billions more where we spent hundreds of billions in the war in Iraq.

I offered an amendment a year ago to restrict spending on a manned space shot to Mars. I lost on the floor of this House.

I don't know how every Member voted. I do know a majority of the Republican Party voted against me because the President wanted to send a man to Mars.

I voted against the Agriculture bill. I voted for an amendment that would have cut the spending there. But to be accused of being careless with the taxpayers' money by people who have supported this enormous corruption-ridden expenditure of hundreds of billions in Iraq is like being called silly by the Three Stooges.

Now, back to the gentleman from Georgia. He says well, don't blame me. The gentleman says he just borrowed the amendment from other people. It's germane to its rules. The gentleman could be more creative than that.

Here's the point. This is why you don't do the PAYGO in this restrictive fashion program by program, selectively by program by program.

When you like a program that spends a lot of money, in some areas you don't do it. If you don't like the program, you do it, and you claim it's just the neutral principle of fiscal responsibility. But PAYGO is sensibly applied over the whole budget, over the whole appropriations process. You can say, you know, we need more in the environmental area, we need more in the housing area, we need more in the transportation area. Let's reduce it in the manned space shot to Mars.

The way this is written, the only way you could have this pass and be valid would be if you cut within this program. The gentleman says, well, those are the rules of germaneness. Yes, that's why you do PAYGO on a broader scale.

To say you can only do Indian housing if you cut other things that are germane to this bill is precisely to shield the manned space shot to Mars, it's to shield expensive military spending, it's to shield cotton subsidies beyond what ought to be, and then say, you know what, if you're going to interfere with the freedom of these Navajo children to live in squalor, then we're going to have to make you cut back on money elsewhere.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I noted in the list of amendments submitted there was a second amendment that the gentleman from Georgia had on the question of illegal immigrants being in the program.

I was wondering whether that was going to be offered.

I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

I appreciate that. I was struck by the gentleman offering it. I thought it was dangerous for the gentleman to offer this amendment to a Native American housing program which cracked down on illegal immigrants, because I think the Native Americans' response would have been, why didn't we think of that? So it was probably good for all of us that he decided prudence overruled his decision to offer it.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Announcement by the Acting Chairman

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Clerk be authorized to make technical corrections in the engrossment of H.R. 2786, to include corrections in spelling, punctuation, section numbering and cross-referencing, and insertion of appropriate headings.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the very important work the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Marshall) is doing on this, and the bipartisan cooperation we have.

It is really disappointing that we have to bring this resolution forward. It does not speak well of the government of the People's Republic of China that this is necessary, because they are trying to have it both ways in an inappropriate manner.

On the one hand, China insists on being treated with the respect due a great world power. And they are proud of their economic strength, and they say to America, in fact, they try to have it both ways in two ways. Maybe they're trying to have it four ways, because what they tell us is, open up, economic competition is the way. If we are selling more goods in your country than you are selling in ours, that's because we're doing a better job of it. And so they want respect as a world power, and they want an openness in the economy, but only in one way, because when it comes to areas of economic activity where they don't have that overwhelming advantage, where, frankly, cheap labor doesn't buy you a lot, where our technology and our level of sophistication works to our advantage, all the arguments they've used go out the window. Now they're no longer this great world power. They're a poor country that has to shelter its banking activity from the United States and others. They don't single us out. They shut out much of the world.

The argument that you should open up your economy and let economic forces play out, without imposing political barriers, that apparently works with manufacturing of their goods, but that's exactly the argument they repudiate when we talk about our financial institutions.

I would add that there is, of course, another example of this with regard to the intellectual property failings in China, but we're here to focus on the financial services. And so what we are saying to the Government of China is, essentially, I guess I would say this, they may be credited with one of the great engineering feats in history, even more impressive than the Great Wall of China, is turning the Pacific Ocean

into a one-way street, because when it comes to allowing the forces of economic competition to determine outcomes, where they would have an advantage, they're all for it. But where we say, look, we have these very important financial institutions, as my two colleagues have mentioned, institutions which will benefit the Chinese, which will help with the savings rate.

The gentleman from Georgia has made it clear. This isn't an assault on China by the outsiders. This is something that would be of interest to the Chinese because the Chinese use the same argument to us. They say, look what we're doing for you. We're giving you these cheaper products. Don't turn them down.

Well, I don't understand why that doesn't translate into their doing the same thing.

And so you cannot, I think, in this world consistently, at the same time, be a complete free trader where you have an advantage, but a mercantilist and protectionist and restrictionist society where you think somebody else might have the advantage.

But this resolution is aimed only partly at China. It is also a directive from this House. And I hope, with a very large vote, and I hope our colleagues in the Senate will do it, to the United States regulators, to the Securities Exchange Commission, to the bank regulators, to the Federal Reserve, the Secretary of the Treasury: do unto others as they do unto us in the financial area. Do not allow the Chinese financial institutions a freedom to operate in the United States that they would deny to us. And I want to stress that.

There have been criticisms that have come from China and from some in the United States who say, yes, China sells a lot, but don't be restrictive. The answer is openness.

Well, this is the test. Is openness a two-way ocean?

And if the Chinese continue to resist living by the doctrine they preach to us, then the United States regulators, those in the United States who decide whether Chinese institutions can have access here, really, in their own interest, should take account of that because if you continue to have a situation in which Chinese financial institutions are allowed activity in the U.S. that the Chinese Government denies to American institutions in China, I believe this body will go beyond a resolution. And I can tell you that the committee that I chair will begin to consider, then, legislative changes. And we're often told that you can't legislate that because of the WTO. But here we're asking them to live up to their WTO responsibilities. And if this continues, I will consult with our colleagues in the Ways and Means Committee, and I think we will try to put some binding legislation here. I hope it doesn't come to that.

And I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Marshall) for taking the initiative here and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Roskam) and others. This is, I hope, unanimous, but certainly overwhelming, it was unanimous in the Committee on Financial Services' request.

And the gentleman from Georgia read a very impressive list. Every important entity of financial institutions in the United States was on the letters that the gentleman from Georgia read.

So we hope that the Chinese Government will listen. And if they don't, we hope the United States regulators will listen, because we are only asking here that the Chinese live by the doctrines that they profess to believe in. And we believe that this is something that is in the mutual interest of both countries.

I submit the following exchange of correspondence regarding H. Res. 552.

Hon. Barney Frank,

Chairman, Committee on Financial Services,

Washington, DC.

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

H. Res. 552, calling on the Government of the People's

Republic of China to remove barriers to United States

financial services firms doing business in China. I

understand there are certain provisions of this legislation

as it will be presented to the full House that fall within

the Rule X jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

In the interest of permitting your Committee to proceed

expeditiously to floor consideration of this important

legislation, I am willing to waive this Committee's right to

sequential referral. I do so with the understanding that by

waiving consideration of the bill, the Committee on Foreign

Affairs does not waive any future jurisdictional claim over

the subject matters contained in the legislation which fall

within its Rule X jurisdiction.

I would ask that you place this letter into the

Congressional Record when the House has H. Res. 552 under

consideration.

Sincerely,

Tom Lantos,

Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I misspoke. I said that this has passed our committee unanimously. I was reminded by our very able staff that the committee sentiment was so overwhelming that we unanimously decided we didn't even have to take it up in committee. So this did not pass the committee unanimously; this bypassed the committee unanimously.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the important role he has played in our committee as a representative from a State which has a very large number of Native Americans. The gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Boren) has played a lead role in helping us live up to our obligations to Native Americans. And I am very proud of the role that the committee has played in general in this area, in the coinage area, a couple of things that have come up in the housing area and elsewhere, and the gentleman from Oklahoma has been a major part of that.

I am also very pleased to be here with one of the great advocates for human rights in general and particularly for Native Americans, our colleague from Michigan (Mr. Kildee), who has been the major mover in insisting that we live up to the obligation we as a Nation have to Native Americans. This bill is in furtherance of that. It is, I am glad to say, and has been from the beginning, bipartisan, and I hope it is passed. And I just want to pay tribute to the work of both the gentleman from Oklahoma and the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. Speaker, during the recess recently, one of the men from whom I learned a great deal, I hope with some impact about how to be a successful advocate for a better and fairer world, died.

Leon Shull had been, for many years, the executive director of Americans for Democratic Action. He had a passion for social justice which he combined with a clear-headedness about how to get there that was extraordinary.

Too often in our politics, we see a divide between the people with passion, the people with reason, people who feel very, very deeply about the need to correct injustice, and people who are able to calculate in a cool manner what types of political activity will be effective. Leon Shull was one of those rare people who combined both of them in a way that made each of those qualities more important. There wasn't any trade-off with Leon between his pragmatic and clear-headed political analysis and his strong idealism. His idealism and his pragmatism worked together. They strengthened each other.

He was determined to be effective because he felt that he had a moral obligation not simply to will a fairer world, a world with fewer poor children, a world with less discrimination based on race or gender or sexual orientation or religion, a world with less widespread killing for unjustified reasons; he felt the moral obligation to diminish those things to the extent that any one human being could. And because he felt morally obligated to do it, he knew he was morally obligated to be effective.

He worked with many people who would give in from time to time to that wonderful feeling of just lashing out, of just letting your emotions run. But he knew the work to which he was committed was too important for that, that he owed the children and the victims of racism and poor, elderly people and working people thrown out of jobs, people in other parts of this world living in dire poverty, he knew that he owed them not just goodwill, but a commitment to making their lives better.

He was for many years the leader of Americans for Democratic Action.

Americans for Democratic Action immediately after World War II under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt and John Kenneth Galbraith and Walter Reuther and others was a very important organization in which liberals fought a two-front ideologic war against conservatives who wanted to retreat from the New Deal on the one side and from Communists who were anti-democratic on the other.

As time went on, the Americans for Democratic Action, ADA as it is known, became less important, probably because the Democratic Party, I believe, moved more in that direction. But it was still important to have that organization then as it is now as an independent force, and Leon Shull kept that organization vibrant.

There is an expression used about boxers who are fighting in a weight class heavier than their own, that they are able to punch above their weight, that they have a strength and a physical ability that allows them to be competitive with people bigger and theoretically beyond their reach.

Leon Shull punched above his weight, and ADA under him punched above its weight. He was in this city for many years a beacon for those of us who believed that the liberal tenets of Franklin Roosevelt were still very relevant, that a wealthy society in the United States had both the obligation and the resources to diminish inequality, not to dispose of it altogether in a capitalistic system, but to diminish it.

Leon Shull was an ally of people fighting racism, of people fighting poverty, of people fighting unjust wars, of people fighting for rational environmental policy, of people fighting for free speech and fairness. And with all that, he was a gentle man. He was a fierce advocate of these policies, but in personal demeanor a man of gentleness, a man who inspired the love and affection of those who worked with him. In later years he retired and he moved away from Washington, and I saw much less of him.

Mr. Speaker, when I read of his death, I realized as I thought about it all that he is one of the people from whom I learned a great deal. To his wife, Anne, to his daughters and others who have lost this great man, I send my deepest sympathy; and to his memory I express my gratitude for being the model of an effective liberal.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 180) to require the identification of companies that conduct business operations in Sudan, to prohibit United States Government contracts with such companies, and for other purposes, as amended.

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

Mr. Speaker, this is a good day for the cause of human rights and for drawing on the strength of the American people to vindicate the values that are so widely shared among our people.

This bill is part of a package of two. Subsequently we will deal with a bill involving the country of Iran. Both of them have a similar purpose; namely, to empower Americans in their individual capacities, through their State governments, through organizations to express in a concrete way the overwhelming opposition in our country to the genocide being perpetrated by the Government of Sudan in Darfur, and to the effort by the sometimes pro-genocide Government of Iran to acquire a nuclear weapons capacity.

Now what we have, we have sanctions against those countries. Let me say a word about sanctions. People are sometimes supportive of sanctions when they agree with the cause and denigrate the notion of sanctions when they disagree with the cause. History is clear. When economic sanctions are widely supported globally, they have an impact.

I had a great day years ago, Mr. Speaker, standing in Statutory Hall and listening to Nelson Mandela thank the Congress of the United States because we had enacted sanctions. He said that the enactment of sanctions by the U.S. as part of a worldwide enactment of sanctions brought an end to apartheid earlier than it would have otherwise. Our former colleague, Mr. Dellums, the mayor of Oakland, had a very proud day then. He had been the leader of it, and it is very fitting that the initiator of the bill we are dealing with today is his successor, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), who has been the driving force in the bill we have before us.

And what we have is this: There are American citizens, State governments and others who have funds invested in collective investment entities. They have invested the funds to get a maximum return, pension funds, State governments and others, individuals in mutual funds. And they have in many cases gone to the investment entity and said, We don't want our money helping the dictatorship of Iran go nuclear. We don't want our money used to perpetuate genocide in Darfur and help a government that does that. We want you to sell our investments in companies that are complicit in this through economic support.

And they have been met in some cases by the argument, Well, we can't do that because we have a fiduciary responsibility as the investment entity to maximize returns, and, therefore, we cannot sell this company and that company. And to the extent that they are complicit in Darfur and complicit in Iran's nuclear weapons, that is irrelevant.

Mr. Speaker, I think that is often more of an excuse than a reason. But today, we render that debate moot because the two bills we are dealing with, now with Darfur and subsequently with Iran, do not compel any investment entity to do anything. These are not bills of compulsion. They fully respect the market. What they say is, if you are a mutual fund, if you are a pension fund manager, and significant numbers of the investors in your entity or the beneficiaries of your entity come to you and say, Clean my hands; I do not want to be financing these outrageous regimes and their terrible practices, you cannot plead, Oh, I am sorry. The law won't let me do it, because these bills have a common theme. They prevent lawsuits against these investment entities who take these issues into account.

And they have a powerful double effect. First, they will add to the effectiveness of sanctions because there is in the United States widespread anger at both regimes. Not only will they add to the effectiveness of sanctions, they do it in a way that is fully respectful of the autonomy of these entities. As I said, there is no compulsion, no interference of the market. It is freeing Americans to do this, and that is also important because you have the regime in Iran and you have the regime in Sudan trying to avoid the public obloquy that they so richly deserve by saying that is just the American administration. They try to separate the President and his policies in opposition to both of these from the American people.

What these bills do is to make it clear, as I think they soon will once they are law, that the opposition to the genocide in Sudan and to the weapons nuclearization in Iran are widespread throughout this country, and that this opposition is not just the President and not just the Congress. It is a broad, deeply held American view.

One final point. A letter from National Council on Foreign Trade complained that with these bills we were going to let the States get into the foreign policy business. No, this is the Congress of the United States into the foreign policy business. This does not say that any mutual fund anywhere at any time can divest for foreign policy reasons. I think, by the way, they already have that right, and we make it clear in this bill. We are not trying to say that they don't.

But what this package of bills does is these two bills makes two foreign policy judgments. The United States Congress, by passing these bills, will say we have an absolute horror about the genocide in Darfur and want to do everything we can to put an end to it, and we are overwhelmingly opposed to the regime in Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. These are two very specific foreign policy judgments that Congress will make. We will then be empowering people in the United States to join us in implementing them. But the argument that this somehow throws open the foreign policy process willy-nilly is simply wrong

I submit the following correspondence:

Committee on Education and Labor,

Washington, DC, July 27, 2007.

Hon. Barney Frank,

Chairman, Committee on Financial Services, House of

Representatives, Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Frank: I am writing to confirm our mutual

understanding with respect to the consideration of H.R. 180,

the Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act.

As you know, Section 7 of H.R. 180 amends the Employee

Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to provide a safe

harbor for

changes of investment policies. I am writing to confirm that

this provision falls within the jurisdiction of the Committee

on Education and Labor.

Given the importance of moving this bill forward promptly,

I do not intend to object to its consideration in the House.

However, I do so only with the understanding that this

procedure should not be construed to prejudice my Committee's

jurisdictional interest and prerogative in H.R. 180 or any

other similar legislation and will not be considered as

precedent for consideration of matters of jurisdictional

interest to my Committee in the future. The Committee also

asks that you support our request to be conferees on the

provisions over which we have jurisdiction during any House-

Senate conference.

Sincerely,

George Miller,

Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, first I ask that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to inject into the Record at this point a letter from 41 national organizations, the Save Darfur Coalition, strongly supporting this legislation

Washington, DC, July 30, 2007.

Dear Member of Congress: We write to request your vote in

favor of H.R. 180, the Darfur Accountability and Divestment

Act, which is ``under suspension'' and scheduled for a floor

vote on Monday, July 30th.

Three years ago this month the United States Congress

recognized the crisis in Darfur, Sudan as genocide. Today,

the escalating violence in the region demands that Congress

take decisive action.

Together our organizations represent concerned Americans

from all states and of many faiths--Darfur advocates and

American citizens from across the political spectrum working

together to end the genocide.

We strongly endorse the spirit and substance of H.R. 180

and encourage its quick passage. This legislation will be a

powerful action to put much-needed economic pressure on Sudan

with the goal of stopping genocide. Thank you for your

consideration of this legislation.

Sincerely,

Bill Wasserman, Executive Director, Save Darfur

Coalition; Jason F. Isaacson, Director, Government and

International Affairs, American Jewish Committee; Ruth

Messinger, Executive Director, American Jewish World

Service; Bryan Ardouny, Executive Director, Armenian

Assembly of America; Gedlu B. Metaferia, Executive

Director, African Mutual Assistance Association of

Missouri; Sylvia Oliva, Clerk of Peace and Social

Concerns Committee, Annapolis Friends Meeting,

Religious Society of Friends; Aram Hamparian, Executive

Director, Armenian National Committee of America;

Daniel S. Mariaschin, Executive Vice President, B'nai

B'rith International; Raj Purohit, Senior Fellow,

Citizens for Global Solutions; Imelda Gonzalez, General

Councilor, Congregation of Divine Providence; Rabbi

Marla J. Feldman, Director, Commission on Social Action

of Reform Judaism; Bakheit Shata, Founder/Executive

Director, Darfur Community Organization, Omaha, NE;

Shirley Bodisch, OP, Dominican Sisters; Anita Sharma,

Executive Director, ENOUGH: a project to end genocide

and crimes against humanity; Eric Cohen, Chair,

FidelityOutOfSudan.Com Campaign; Mark Hanis, Executive

Director, Genocide Intervention Network; Nina Schwartz,

Vice President, Help Darfur Now; Lisa Stenchever,

Education Coordinator, Holocaust Museum and Study

Center; Steve Gutow, Executive Director, Jewish Council

for Public Affairs; Rabbi Shawn Zevit, Director of

External Affiliations and Tikkun Olam, Jewish

Reconstructionist Federation; Sr. Sheila Kinsey, OSF,

Leader, Justice, Peace & Integrity of Creation Office

Wheaton Franciscans, Wheaton, Illinois; Marie Lucey,

OSF, Associate Director for Social Mission, Leadership

Conference of Women Religious; Joellen McCarthy, BVM,

Mary Ann Zollmann, BVM, Peggy Nolan, BVM, Leadership

Team of the Sisters of Charity, BVM Dubuque, Iowa;

Hilary O. Shelton, Director, NAACP Washington Bureau;

Sr. Elizabeth Rogers, Justice and Peace Representative,

North American Province of the Cenacle Sisters; Eddie

L. Koen, Jr., National Chair, National Black Law

Students Association; Rev. Dr. Bob Edgar, General

Secretary, National Council of Churches; Martina W.

Knee, Member, Executive Committee, San Francisco Bay

Area Darfur Coalition; Andrea Schuver, Co-chair, Save

Darfur of South Palm Beach; Julie Driscoll, SCN, Vice-

President, Sisters of Charity of Nazareth; Sister

Marilyn Gottemoeller, Sisters of Mercy, Regional

Community of Cincinnati; Diana Oleskevich, CSJA,

Justice Coordinator, Sisters of St. Joseph of

Carondelet and Associates; Sister Catherine Marie

Kreta, CSJ, Justice Coordinator, Sisters of St. Joseph

of Carondelet--Los Angeles Province; Sister Patricia

Murphy, CSJ, Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet--St.

Louis Province; Sister Marge Wissman, Sisters of St.

Francis, Oldenburg, IN; Scott Warren, Director, STAND:

A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition; Gabriel Stauring,

Co-Founder, Stop Genocide Now; Adam Sterling, Director,

Sudan Divestment Task Force; Rob Mosher, Director,

Government Affairs, U.S.-Armenia Public Affairs

Committee; Dr. Geoff Tunnicliffe, International

Director/CEO, World Evangelical Alliance; Czerina

Patel, Executive Director, Yenza: Building Bridges,

Spotlighting Success and Amplifying Voice in Africa.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the main sponsor of the bill, as I said, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), who as a member in the last term of both the Foreign Affairs and Financial Services Committees was very well-suited to push this and continues to be a very strong supporter of it.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida, who has been a leader on human rights. Also, I should say that I am very proud of the bipartisan cooperation we have had in the Financial Services Committee on this.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to one of the other main coauthors of this, the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to a member of the committee who has been working hard on this, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Miller).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds to say we agree with the gentleman from Virginia. There will be a rollcall. Among the people who we hope will look at it are the few right across the hall there. We do plan to have a rollcall.

Secondly, I just want to say that people have commented on the overwhelming support, but this could have been more divisive, and the staffs of both Democrats and Republicans on our committee, Chris Tsentas of Ms. Lee's staff and others worked very hard together

Mr. Speaker, I now yield the remaining time to the gentleman from American Samoa (Mr. Faleomavaega).

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

Will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman for making this point. The gentleman from California is a very careful student of the intertwined legal and economic issues, and the point he is making now is very important. We expect this to be subjected to a sensible economic analysis; that is, if you are providing real value to that government, then you are covered. Clearly, if you have a secondary market for bonds, you've enhanced the value of the initial instrument. So people who support a secondary market for a particular instrument are clearly investing in the underlying issuer. They know that. It is a conscious act. No one is going to be trapped.

So the gentleman is making a very important point, and we want to be very clear. We will be expecting the administration, in preparing this list, to use the same kind of economic analysis we would use in any other case. If an activity, a purchase, an investment, a loan, any financial activity is contributing to the financial enhancement of the Iranian Government, then it triggers, we would believe, this bill.

Will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman once again for helping clarify a point. Sometimes when we do legislation I wish we had a clause that we could automatically print out that says ``this bill does not do what this bill does not do,'' because people are forever reading into legislation things that aren't there.

We have some people who have claimed that they do not now have the legal authority to do the divestment. When this bill becomes law, as I hope it will be, and its companion bill, that argument won't be able to be made at all.

I agree with the gentleman from California. I don't think it's a good argument now. But we do want to make clear, in absolutely nailing this down, we in no way want to give any support to the argument that, in the absence of this bill, the authority isn't there. So I thank the gentleman for once again helping us be very clear about what we're doing.

Mr. Speaker, again, I want to thank the bipartisan leadership and staff of both committees, because the Foreign Affairs Committee, under the leadership of the gentleman from California and the gentlewoman from Florida, have worked on this.

I, in my remarks on the Darfur bill, really spoke about both bills. Let me just reiterate, this is a chance for us to make very clear the overwhelming opposition, staunch opposition of the American people to the nuclear weapons plans of the regime in Iran and other aspects of that regime.

And I hope that we will, I'm told it will be tomorrow, have two overwhelming rollcalls in this House which will be, in themselves, an expression of the American people's views on both the genocide in Darfur and the nuclearization of the Iranian military, and that will then be followed by a widespread demonstration across this country of people's determination as Americans that we will do what we can to stop both of those. So I think this is a very good day for the bipartisan legislative process

I submit the following correspondence.

Committee on Education and Labor,

Washington, DC, July 27, 2007.

Hon. Barney Frank,

Chairman, Committee on Financial Services,

House of Representatives, Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Chairman: I am writing to confirm our mutual

understanding with respect to the consideration of H.R. 2347,

the Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act.

As you know, Section 7 of H.R. 2347 amends the Employee

Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to provide a safe

harbor for changes of investment policies. I am writing to

confirm that this provision falls within the jurisdiction of

the Committee on Education and Labor.

Given the importance of moving this bill forward promptly,

I do not intend to object to its consideration in the House.

However, I do so only with the understanding that this

procedure should not be construed to prejudice my Committee's

jurisdictional interest and prerogative in H.R. 2347 or any

other similar legislation and will not be considered as

precedent for consideration of matters of jurisdictional

interest to my Committee in the future. The Committee also

asks that you support our request to be conferees on the

provisions over which we have jurisdiction during any House-

Senate conference.

Sincerely,

George Miller,

Chairman.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3067) to amend the United States Housing Act of 1937 to exempt small public housing agencies from the requirement of preparing an annual public housing agency plan, as amended.

Madam Speaker, I ask that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on this bill and include therein any extraneous material.

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

This is a bill that was brought forward in the previous Congress by the gentleman from Texas. It is very important that we regulate when necessary; it is equally important that we not regulate when it is unnecessary. This is an example of our recognition of that principle.

We have rules that govern housing authorities. These are complex and difficult issues that housing authorities face. But one set of rules should not be made to fit all. Smaller housing authorities ought to have more flexibility than the larger housing authorities. This bill, brought forward by the gentleman from Texas, and I congratulate him for his persistence in calling this to the attention of the committee, acts on that principle.

It exempts from excessive regulation, but not entirely from regulation, smaller housing authorities. In particular, I would just say that there was a rule for example that plans be made every 5 years and in some cases housing authorities have to report on certain things every year. In this case what we would say is that the smaller housing authorities would file their plan every 5 years and only if there are any changes of any significance in the covered matters would they have to report again. So it would save a lot of time, energy, and paperwork for the smaller housing authorities. It will help these people with the difficult job that they do.

I thank the gentleman for bringing the bill forward.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I thank the staffs of the majority and minority, who worked very well together on this, as they do on many bills

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