Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I am very happy to see this bill here today; one, because it is important that we commemorate NASA. And secondly, as a tribute to the persistence of the gentlewoman from Houston and the gentleman from Houston, I am particularly glad that we are passing this bill because it will mean I will get an extra 2 hours a week because I've spent about 2 hours a week talking to them since January. So for both reasons, I am very happy that this very worthy bill is about to pass

I submit the following correspondence:

Committee on Ways and Means

Washington, DC, July 30, 2007.

Hon. Barney Frank,

Chairman, Financial Services Committee,

Washington, DC.

Dear Barney: I am writing regarding H.R. 2750, the NASA

50th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act.

As you know, the Committee on Ways and Means maintains

jurisdiction over bills that raise revenue. H.R. 2750

contains a provision that establishes a surcharge for the

sale of commemorative coins that are minted under the bill,

and thus falls within the jurisdiction of the Committee on

Ways and Means.

However, as part of our ongoing understanding regarding

commemorative coin bills and in order to expedite this bill

for Floor consideration, the Committee will forgo action.

This is being done with the understanding that it does not in

any way prejudice the Committee with respect to the

appointment of conferees or its jurisdictional prerogatives

on this bill or similar legislation in the future.

I would appreciate your response to this letter, confirming

this understanding with respect to H.R. 2750, and would ask

that a copy of our exchange of letters on this matter be

included in the record.

Sincerely,

Charles B. Rangel,

Chairman.

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

Madam Speaker, this morning David Wessel, writing in the Wall Street Journal, called deserved attention to the growing maldistribution of income in our country. He observes that ``. . . governments and businesses must come up with new ways to spread its'' (globalization's) ``benefits more widely.'' I commend the report to my colleagues and ask unanimous consent that Mr. Wessel's article be printed here.

[July 26, 2007]

Globalization Study Moves Past Rhetoric

Most of the policy briefs, working papers and trade-

association reports that cross a columnist's desk slide

easily into the trash can or onto the read-someday pile.

But a recent study on globalization, commissioned by the

Financial Services Forum, an association of the chief

executives of 20 huge financial companies, ranging from

American International Group and Citigroup to UBS and

Wachovia, stands out.

Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Madam Chairman I yield myself 2 minutes.

This bill as presented significantly expands the ability of the Farm Credit System to operate in nonfarm contexts in two ways; first of all, in terms of the membership that would be required to be farm credit providers, and, secondly, in terms of the transactions in which they engage. And I think that would be

an error. And I believe that it is a mistake to allow an expansion into the banking system by entities that aren't banks. We have a particular exemption in the Farm Credit System for agricultural lending, and it was meant to be lending by and to agricultural commodities. This bill goes beyond it.

Now, I want to say, and I have had conversations with the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Members have said that especially with the interest in alternative energy, there have been problems in getting loans from banks. I must say that, and I talked to my colleague the ranking Republican, no one has brought this to our attention. Had this been brought to our attention on the Financial Services Committee, we would have responded. And I want to say now, and I talked to the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, I am prepared to have, I think we should have in the fall, joint hearings of our two committees, the Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on Financial Services, to listen to people's concerns here. And if it is documented that there have been problems with the availability of loans for the purpose of alternative energy for agriculture, then, yes, I would agree that something is appropriate. My problem is that this bill as it now stands goes beyond that in several ways. It weakens the restrictions in terms of stock ownership as to who gets involved.

Now, another issue that has been raised was allowing an increase in the town size, from 2,500 to 6,000. My reaction to that was favorable, but we were never able, as we were willing, to negotiate out some limitations and some expansions.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama, the senior Republican on the Financial Affairs Committee.

Madam Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself my remaining minute.

I know my friends have said they sought a compromise. The only problem is they had a unique motion here, it was the unilateral compromise, they compromised with themselves. And they did a pretty good job of compromising with themselves, but I think we need to compromise with each other.

There are two committees here that have concerns: one about the integrity of the banking system and not having non-banks get into the banking system. This House is aware of that because we dealt with a similar issue with regard to industrial loan corporations.

What we are saying here, the gentleman from Alabama and I, is we were not previously told about a problem of a lack of availability of credit from the banking system for alternative energy. If that exists, it needs to be remedied. And as I've said, I've spoken to the chairman of the full committee; I've spoken to my ranking member on our committee. We're prepared to have joint hearings and be available for people to document to us what the nature of the problem is, and then respond, whether it's an increase in size, or what. But I do think the history shows that we should be very careful about who gets into the banking industry and who doesn't. The banking system ought to be preserved very carefully.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I offer this on behalf of myself and our colleague from New York Mr. Rangel, who, in fact, in a previous Congress in 2002, I believe, offered a similar amendment. It would suspend for a year, because we do this 1 year at a time, the work requirement in the public housing sector. We're talking about 8 hours a month.

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

I'm certainly prepared for it to be accepted.

I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time, and I will go make a great speech in my office.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I would just point out that this bill funds what we call the 811 program, housing for disabled. Now, I don't know why we would want to say that we would vote money to build housing for the disabled but no parking. Have we found a new group of totally mobile disabled?

I mean, this amendment would say that if you got funds under the 811 program to build housing for disabled people, you couldn't provide parking for vans, for transportation. I'm really baffled as to the scope, and I do think that telling people that they could not provide parking at a disabled housing facility is a very poor idea.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, the answer to the gentleman from Texas is when you have federally funded housing for the disabled, the parking that goes for the disabled and the service vehicles comes from that money. So the gentleman says, why does the Federal Government have to pay for parking? I don't know who else the gentleman thinks is going to pay for parking at housing that is built for people who are disabled.

If the gentleman is unhappy with this, then perhaps he should draft his amendments more seriously.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I will not object to the unanimous consent request. It will forestall a 15-minute vote and make it a 2-minute vote. And I appreciate the cooperative spirit from the gentleman of Michigan on this as throughout he has been cooperative. I understand other decisions get made, but I did just ask the indulgence of the House because people shouldn't be voting on something with no explanation.

There was implemented in 1998 in legislation, and I think it was part of an appropriations bill then, a requirement that everybody who lives in public housing who is not otherwise fully employed work 8 hours a month in community service. It is not highly regarded by the people who run public housing. It costs money to do this. Understand, when a similar amendment was proposed for the section 8 vouchers, it was defeated, it authorized the Housing Authority to hire someone to administer it. This is not work that is terribly useful.

The way the amendment is written, if you were working, and you are fired or your job ends because of trade or other problems as some people in public housing and you are unemployed, you then have to do 8 hours a month of make-work. So it is a make-work requirement does nobody any good, it is based on the assumption that you can't trust those lazy people in public housing across the board, and it costs money to administer. So that is why the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel), who has long been a proponent of it, and myself have offered this amendment.

I thank the gentleman for a chance to explain it.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 561) recognizing the 20th anniversary of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act and the impact it has made on homelessness and endeavoring to continue working to eliminate homelessness in the United States.

Mr. Speaker, this is a very important resolution. It is an appropriate noting of the anniversary, 20-year anniversary, of the passage of the Homeless Assistance Act. It marked the beginning of a formal Federal recognition of the problem of homelessness; it's a great paradox, and one of which we should be embarrassed in this country.

It may not seem obvious to people, but before this, certainly 25 years ago and beyond, the homeless population was an invisible one. And it was in the 1980s that people began to focus on it.

Two former Members of this body, both of whom sadly died younger than should have been the case, while still in their fullness of powers as Members of this body were among the first to recognize it, and it was bipartisan. The former Member from Connecticut, Stewart McKinney, whose successor will be speaking on behalf of this very shortly, was one of those who began it. And he was joined in his advocacy by the late Bruce Vento from St. Paul. And they were two men of great compassion and vision. They were skilled legislators who served on the committee as it was then called on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, and they insisted that we, as a body, in this very wealthy Nation, address the terrible tragedy of people who were homeless, including children and war veterans.

A number of things contributed to the homelessness issue. There were some trends in this society, and often we hear about unintended consequences. There were some trends that in themselves were welcomed that had these negative consequences. One was the improvement in urban areas, the transformation of many downtowns in our big cities from places that were considered not very attractive places in which to live to places that people wanted to live in, the phenomenon known as gentrification.

The area that I represented when I was in the State legislature in the 1970s in Boston, in downtown Boston there were boarding houses, rooming houses in many of the downtown parts of Boston. Most of those are now much more expensive housing. They are single-family homes or condominiums. That, from the standpoint of the city, I suppose, is an improvement. But many of those who lived there were priced out of the market and, in many cases, found no alternative housing.

We also had the movement of deinstitutionalization, of deciding that people with various problems, emotional and mental problems, that it was better to try to get them integrated into communities than to have them living forever apart in institutions, and on the whole that was a very positive step. But no major social policy happens perfectly. The combination of the upgrading economically of these downtowns, of the release of people from institutions, these contributed to the homeless problem.

There are, of course, other problems. Vietnam veterans who came back from a war that they didn't ask to start, who were sent by this country to this difficult country and came back to a country that treated them poorly, that did not honor their commitment and the sacrifice of their time and of their health. And in combination with substance abuse, all of these came together.

At any rate, 20 years ago we recognized that we had this problem, and we have begun to deal with it. And this resolution is a tribute to the two far-sighted men who led this fight; to the many, many people who have worked to try to provide a solution to homelessness; to the homeless themselves, fellow citizens of all ages and races and backgrounds who have had to cope with these difficulties, some because of their own failings, often because of no thing that they did wrong but because of circumstances in which they found themselves. In any case, we ought to deal with it.

And this resolution is also very thoughtful, and I call attention to the ``whereases.'' Whereases, to be candid, Mr. Speaker, are often unemployment. They are filler. But in this case the whereases make some very important points, and one in particular I want to address. It talks about the vulnerable groups that are included. Another one talks about the veterans who are involved. That is, this makes clear that we are dealing with people who have a very legitimate claim on our response. In addition, the resolution itself goes beyond really congratulating people for the work they did and deploring the continued existence of homelessness, but it makes some very specific policy recommendations, which, Mr. Speaker, the Committee on Financial Services will be responding to and has already begun to respond to.

For example, in the resolution, clause 6 says that we recognize ``that the lack of affordable housing exacerbates homelessness in the United States.'' That may seem to state the obvious, but the obvious may have been stated but hasn't been acted on. We have not done nearly enough to produce affordable housing. Homelessness requires shelter; it requires services. But it requires, more than anything else, homes for people. Affordable housing, also rental housing, but it requires housing.

The resolution supports the continued efforts of Federal, State, and local governments in their efforts to prevent and end homelessness through the development of affordable housing. It was not an accident that the gentleman from Connecticut who succeeded Mr. McKinney will be soon speaking on this, is a member of our committee, and is a cosponsor with many of us on legislation that will actually return the Federal Government to the job of producing affordable housing.

So I welcome this resolution for what it commemorates but also for what it commits this Congress to do.

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

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

I again note that this is not simply words. Words are important and the work of Bruce Vento and Stewart McKinney, two outstanding Members of Congress, ought to be recognized. The fact that we are talking here about veterans, about children, about other populations that we all want very much to help, they are important. But I want to stress again this is also a commitment for the Committee on Financial Services. I know I speak for the chairwoman of the Housing Subcommittee, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), and my colleague here.

And I want to again point to clauses 6 and 7 of the resolution. The resolution ``recognizes that the lack of affordable housing exacerbates homelessness in the United States,'' and No. 7, ``supports the continued efforts of Federal, State, and local governments and private nonprofit organizations in their efforts to prevent and end homelessness through the development of affordable housing.''

The services that are provided, the shelter, the counseling, they are all absolutely essential. But so is a commitment by this very wealthy Nation to help build affordable housing. And if we were not to make that commitment, then the resolution would, I think, be an empty one.

So I look forward to the Committee on Financial Services working together in a bipartisan way to continue to bring to this floor, and I hope ultimately to the desk of the President, and, more important, ultimately to the streets of our cities and rural areas in this country the housing that is needed. This is a promise that we are going to go forward with building affordable housing, and it is a promise that we fully intend to keep.

General Leave

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

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

Madam Speaker, in few areas of our public life is there a greater gap between what people say and

what they do than with regard to conservatives who decry ``judicial activism.'' It is a constant refrain from conservatives that judges should not be intervening in the policy process to impose their own particular views, and that it is especially egregious when appointed judges make fundamental decisions that ought to be left to elected officials. Their indignation is of course at its highest when decisions by some of those elected officials are in fact overturned by judges in the name of some judicial principle.

As Adam Cohen shows in his very thoughtful essay in the New York Times for July 9th in fact, conservative judges--generally to the great applause of their co-ideologues--are far more energetic judicial activists in this sense than their liberal counterparts. Few examples of conservative indignation at the Supreme Court equal in volume the anger that came when a 5-4 majority of the court decided not to overrule the decision of elected officials in Connecticut regarding eminent domain. Conservatives vigorously objected to the Court's failure to intervene and cancel the decisions of these elected officials. ln the most recent Supreme Court term, the Court ended its work for the year by invalidating several important actions taken by elected officials--regarding school integration and campaign finance reform to name two of the most prominent. The Eleventh Amendment jurisdiction of the court under the conservatives' rule--a great expansion of the constitutional prohibition against suits against States--has been used repeatedly to knock out the application of congressional statutes that seek to prevent discrimination against vulnerable groups.

As the internal headline on Mr. Cohen's piece says with regard to judicial activism, ``The conservatives forgot that they're opposed to it.'' It is important, Madam Speaker, for people to be honest about what they believe and not simply to misuse principle as a means of enacting substantive positions without having fully to defend them. I ask in the interests of informed debate on this question of who are the judicial activists that the article by Mr. Cohen be printed here.

[From the New York Times, July 9, 2007]

Last Term's Winner at the Supreme Court: Judicial Activism

(By Adam Cohen)

The Supreme Court told Seattle and Louisville, and hundreds

more cities and counties, last month that they have to scrap

their integration programs. There is a word for judges who

invoke the Constitution to tell democratically elected

officials how to do their jobs: activist.

President Bush, who created the court's conservative

majority when he appointed Chief Justice John Roberts and

Justice Samuel Alito, campaigned against activist judges, and

promised to nominate judges who would ``interpret the law,

not try to make law.'' Largely because of Chief Justice

Roberts and Justice Alito, the court has just completed one

of its most activist terms in years.

The individuals and groups that have been railing against

judicial activism should be outraged. They are not, though,

because their criticism has always been of ``liberal activist

judges.'' Now we have conservative ones, who use their

judicial power on behalf of employers who mistreat their

workers, tobacco companies, and whites who do not want to be

made to go to school with blacks.

The most basic charge against activist judges has always

been that they substitute their own views for those of the

elected branches. The court's conservative majority did just

that this term. It blithely overruled Congress, notably by

nullifying a key part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance

law, a popular law designed to reduce the role of special-

interest money in politics.

It also overturned the policies of federal agencies, which

are supposed to be given special deference because of their

expertise. In a pay-discrimination case, the majority

interpreted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a bizarre way

that makes it extremely difficult for many victims of

discrimination to prevail. The majority did not care that the

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has long interpreted

the law in just the opposite way.

The court also eagerly overturned its own precedents. In an

antitrust case, it gave corporations more leeway to collude

and drive up prices by reversing 96-year-old case law. In its

ruling upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, it

almost completely reversed its decision from 2000 on a nearly

identical law.

The school integration ruling was the most activist of all.

The campaign against ``activist judges'' dates back to the

civil rights era, when whites argued that federal judges had

no right to order the Jim Crow South to desegregate. These

critics insisted they were not against integration; they

simply opposed judges' telling elected officials what to do.

This term, the court did precisely what those federal

judges did: it invoked the 14th Amendment to tell localities

how to assign students to schools. The Roberts Court's ruling

had an extra fillip of activism. The civil rights era judges

were on solid ground in saying that the 14th Amendment, which

was adopted after the Civil War to bring former slaves into

society, supported integration. Today's conservative majority

makes the much less obvious argument that the 14th Amendment

protects society from integration.

With few exceptions, the court's activism was in service of

a conservative ideology. The justices invoked the due process

clause in a novel way to overturn a jury's award of $79.5

million in punitive damages against Philip Morris, which for

decades misrepresented the harm of smoking. It is hard to

imagine that Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, who

were in the majority, would have supported this sort of

``judge-made law'' as readily if the beneficiary were not a

corporation.

The conservative activism that is taking hold is troubling

in two ways. First, it is likely to make America a much

harsher place. Companies like Philip Morris will be more

likely to injure consumers if they know the due process

clause will save them. Employers will be freer to mistreat

workers like Lilly Ledbetter, who was for years paid less

than her male colleagues, if they know that any lawsuit she

files is likely to be thrown out on a technicality.

We have seen this before. In the early 1900s, the court

routinely struck down worker protections, including minimum

wage and maximum hours laws, and Congressional laws against

child labor. That period, known as the Lochner era--after a

1905 ruling that a New York maximum hours law violated the

employer's due process rights--is considered one of the

court's darkest.

We are not in a new Lochner era, but traces of one are

emerging. This court is already the most pro-business one in

years, and one or two more conservative appointments could

take it to a new level. Janice Rogers Brown, a federal

appeals court judge who is often mentioned as a future

Supreme Court nominee, has expressly called for a return to

the Lochner era.

The other disturbing aspect of the new conservative

judicial activism is its dishonesty. The conservative

justices claim to support ``judicial modesty,'' but reviews

of the court's rulings over the last few years show that they

have actually voted more often to overturn laws passed by

Congress--the ultimate act of judicial activism--than has the

liberal bloc.

It is time to admit that all judges are activists for their

vision of the law. Once that is done, the focus can shift to

where it should be: on whose vision is more faithful to the

Constitution, and better for the nation.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman. I thank my colleague from Florida for the generous words about the procedure. There were some differences between us on the parties on this, but in general, this represents a consensus.

And, Mr. Speaker, I want to give credit where credit is due. This is a result of a process that was begun by our former colleague from Ohio, Mr. Ney.

He convened when he was Chair of the Housing Subcommittee a set of roundtable discussions with participation from HUD, from tenant groups, from landlord groups that participate, and from others. And much of what is in this bill came out of the sessions that he and his then ranking member, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), now the Chair of the subcommittee, did.

So as is always the case in a parliamentary body, we will, as is appropriate, focus to some extent on some differences. And there are several amendments that will present sharp differences, but people ought to keep in mind that it is in the context of a great deal of agreement.

In addition to the agreements already there, I have had conversations with several of the Republican Members, the gentleman from California (Mr. Gary G. Miller); the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell); the ranking member of the subcommittee, the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Biggert). We have some agreements about what we should be doing, how this should be interpreted, what we should be doing going further, and I look forward in the general debate to colloquies with all of them so that I think we can further solidify the agreements that we have going forward.

Now, as to the substance of the bill, the section 8 program is a very important one. Many of us believe that the problem has been not with the section 8 program but that it stood alone, that it was not accompanied by programs that would build housing. And in other pieces of legislation that have come out of the Financial Services Committee, some of which have come to the floor, some of which are about to come to the floor, we are going to try to add a supply side, if I may borrow the phrase, to the demand side.

We have a program here which increases the demand for housing by putting money in the hands of people who otherwise would not be able to afford decent housing. But if all you do is that and you don't also help build housing, you can have an adverse impact on price. So we hope to be able to balance it, but that is not the fault of this program.

What this bill does is to make it more flexible. It has much in there that HUD agrees with; although, again, I don't claim that everybody agrees with everything. An indication of the extent to which this simply improves the program, I will include in the Record several letters on this subject. One letter comes from those who are the landlords, who rent.

And, by the way, we are not automatically doing them a favor. In a tight rental market, as we have in many parts of this country, it is a good thing for the public purpose that landlords are willing to participate. Many of these landlords, they don't have to be in the section 8 program, so we try to reach out to them. And here is a letter endorsing the bill from the Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, the Institute of Real Estate Management, the National Affordable Housing Management Association, the National Apartment Association, the National Association of Home Builders, the National Leased Housing Association, and the National Multi Housing Council.

We also have strong support from those in the public sector at the local level who administer this: the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials and the Council of Large Public Housing Agencies. And then we have also a letter from a large coalition of advocacy groups, of religious groups that are in the business of building the housing. There is a very broad degree of support for this bill.

I understand there are a couple of points of difference, and I realize, too, there are some points of difference that couldn't have been presented. I would have liked them to be. But I think that the three amendments that are in order on the Republican side do present some of the most important differences.

I should note, by the way, that while three amendments reflect the disagreement that many in the minority have with the bill, two of the other amendments are really bipartisan. The manager's amendment is an amendment in which the gentleman from Illinois and the gentlewoman from California collaborated.

So the manager's amendment, one of the six amendments, it is designated as the Waters amendment, but it is very bipartisan. And the second one that is bipartisan is an amendment that deals with situations that threaten the ability of people to stay in affordable housing in the district my colleague from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) and our colleague from the committee from Ohio (Ms. Pryce).

So we have two amendments which are completely bipartisan. We have those three. And then the one that the gentlewoman from New York will offer on domestic violence, which I don't think is terribly controversial.

So I understand that we haven't resolved all the differences. I do think that, and let me put it this way, of all the housing bills that have come to the floor from this committee, this is the

least controversial. I don't want anyone to get bored. When we come back in early September, we can fight again. But I do think on this one, while there will be some disagreements, what we reflect is a basic consensus on how to improve an important social program that, as I said, began under Republican leadership in the last Congress and we have largely continued the process.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

July 12, 2007.

Dear Chairman Frank and Ranking Member Bachus: We are

writing to lend our strong support for H.R. 1851, the Section

8 Voucher Reform Act of 2007 (SEVRA), which is scheduled to

be debated in the House today. We represent a diverse array

of constituencies--ranging from housing providers to tenants

to apartment owners to membership organizations to religious

leaders--who all agree that this is a very strong piece of

legislation.

Simply put, SEVRA is a good government bill. It stabilizes

the voucher program with a permanent funding policy, while

simplifying the rules about how to calculate tenant rents and

streamlining the housing inspection process. As a result, the

voucher program will run more efficiently, tenants will be

rewarded when they increase their work effort, and there will

be less unnecessary paperwork for all parties involved--

housing authorities, tenants, and property owners.

The voucher program is our nation's leading source of

housing assistance for low-income people. It serves nearly

two million families with children, elderly people, and

people with disabilities. Making sure that it operates as

effectively as possible is in their interest as well as in

our national interest.

We give this bill our strong endorsement so it can continue

through the legislative process and be enacted this year.

Sincerely,

AARP, American Association of Homes and Services for the

Aging (AAHSA), American Network of Community Options

and Resources, Association of Jewish Family &

Children's Agencies (AJFCA), The Arc of the United

States, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP),

Coalition on Human Needs (CRN), Consortium for Citizens

with Disabilities Housing Task Force, Corporation for

Supportive Housing (CSH), Easter Seals.

Enterprise Community Partners, Housing Assistance Council

(HAC), Institute of Real Estate Management, Jewish

Council for Public Affairs, Lawyers Committee for Civil

Rights Under Law, Local Initiatives Support Corporation

(LISC), Lutheran Services in America, National Advocacy

Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, National

Affordable Housing Management Association (NAHMA).

National AIDS Housing Coalition, National Alliance of HUD

Tenants, National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI),

National Alliance to End Homelessness, National

Apartment Association, National Association of Home

Builders, National Association of Housing Co-ops,

National Association of Realtors, National Association

of State Mental Health Program Directors, National

Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community

Development.

National Council of State Housing Agencies (NCSHA),

National Housing Conference, National Housing Trust,

National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, National

Leased Housing Association, National Low Income Housing

Coalition, National Multi Housing Council, National

People's Action (NPA), National Training and

Information Center (NTIC), NETWORK, a National Catholic

Social Justice Lobby.

Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC),

Presbyterian Church (USA) Washington Office, Public

Housing Authorities Directors Association (PHADA),

Public Justice Center, The United Methodist Church--

General Board of Church and Society, Travelers Aid

International, United Cerebral Palsy, United Jewish

Communities (UJC).

I thank the gentlewoman, not so much for yielding but for the really extraordinary work she has done on this, the gentlewoman from California, and I want to say how much I admire the two tracks she has worked on. On the one track, she has been one of the leaders on our side in the House on the issue of Iraq and ending our involvement in the war in Iraq where I am a strong follower of her.

Simultaneously, she has engaged in some very careful and thoughtful legislative work, and I think that is the mark of a complete legislator, to be able to do the ideologically based advocacy but also work in a bipartisan way, continuing work which began when she was the ranking member and in a seamless way to go forward.

I spoke during the rule where I expressed my strong support for the legislation. I have rarely seen legislation so broadly supported by the landlords, by the local housing authorities that administer it and by the beneficiaries. There is a three-way operation here, and all of them consider this bill to be an improvement.

As the gentlewoman from Illinois said, it does not improve everything as much as everybody would like; nothing ever does. But she is correct, this is an improvement. I would ask my friend from California to yield to her so we can talk about it, but she has already done some of the things that she talked about. For instance, in the manager's amendment, we will increase the reserves available to housing authorities to avoid any damage that would come in the transition on the new funding formula. I know the gentlewoman has some other concerns, and I hope if the gentlewoman from California will yield to her, I can respond to them.

The gentlewoman has stated this correctly. I know this is going to be in the appropriations bill. We expect it. I haven't seen the appropriations bill yet. I have great confidence in the subcommittee chairman, but I certainly agree with her in principle. And unless there is some very unusual wording which we could change, yes, I would be subject to saying, yes, that is exactly what we intend.

The answer is, again, yes. This is a very important subject which the gentlewoman from Illinois has identified. I promise we will work together. If we decide this needs to be a legislative change, I can promise the gentlelady that the committee will entertain the appropriate legislation and do that.

The answer here is definitely yes. I think a hold-harmless provision is appropriate.

The purpose of the change, as the gentlewoman knows, in our mind was to prevent a kind of downward ratcheting in the overall usage. But consistent with that, we don't want to penalize particular authorities.

We have already done some work, for instance, with the Dade County authority to take into account the fact that their shortfall came because of a hurricane, so they were not penalized by that. But the hold-harmless provision is a perfectly reasonable one, and I agree with the gentlewoman. I promise to work with the gentlewoman to do whatever we need to do legislatively to accomplish it.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from California is absolutely correct. The alternative interpretation would make no sense.

Of course, HUD should have and does have the authority to select replacements. What we set was a maximum number of participating agencies, and if an agency withdraws, then a new agency should be replaced.

If I may, I should note that the chairman of the subcommittee, who is such a devoted supporter of fairness, has raised some questions about the Moving to Work program, or whatever the new name is, and I have spoken with her. And I think what would be appropriate, and I think we would all agree, when we return from the summer recess to have a hearing on how the Moving to Work program is, in fact, operating, and I think that would be an appropriate thing to do.

But certainly under this law and under the agreements we reached, we set a number of housing authorities that are eligible to participate, and there shouldn't be any question, if an authority drops out, then HUD has the obligation, not just the permission, but the obligation to replace it.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman from California.

I appreciate the gentleman from California making this very important point because it gives us a chance to highlight an important issue that this committee will be acting on.

I should just note that later today we will be considering an amendment on behalf of the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Pryce) in similar circumstances, and we will be directing HUD to allow these to go forward.

The gentleman just learned of this, I know, and brought it to our attention, and I would begin by saying to him, if necessary, I would be supportive of doing the same in his case. I hope it won't be necessary.

Here's the situation that may people may not understand. Forty years ago and more, or about 40 years ago, we began, not us, with the exception of Mr. Dingell, began a program of affordable housing where the Federal Government lent people money at either no interest or very low interest in return for it being affordable, but for some reason they put what they called an expiration date of 40 years.

Now, we stand to lose a lot of housing that is good housing currently affordable. We are looking for ways to let that be transferred to others who would keep that it way. I think HUD is being overly technical in some of these interpretations. It would clearly be in everybody's interest, for no budgetary cost we can preserve these units.

By the way, if the units are lost, what then happens is, under certain laws, the current tenants are entitled to enhanced vouchers. So we would then be paying more in enhanced vouchers to a new landlord. That doesn't make sense.

I just want to make this commitment to the gentleman. I hope after today's bill, which I hope it passes and the amendments for Mr. Markey and Ms. Pryce are passed, that we can then sit with HUD on a bipartisan basis and try and find a way for them to do this administratively. If they tell us that they need a small fix, if there's some legislative problem, we could do that on suspension immediately. Even the Senate would do that one quickly.

I would say this. I hope that we will, today, get HUD's attention so that we can sit with them and work this out. I would rather have it done in policy. If necessary, we'll do a little fix.

And I would also say before the end of this year, and this is high on the agenda of the gentlewoman from California and myself, because this situation occurs all over the country in everybody's district or in most districts, if necessary, we will pass a bill that will give HUD all the authority necessary to prevent this loss of affordable housing for no good reason.

So I admire the gentleman for bringing it to our attention. I think, frankly, if we pass this bill and pass the Markey-Pryce amendment, we'll probably get a better response out of HUD, and if necessary, we will legislate it.

I thank the gentlewoman.

Mr. Chairman, again, I want to emphasize, this is a process that began when the Republicans were in power, when Mr. Ney was the chairman.

The gentlewoman from California was the ranking minority member and has continued in her chairmanship. The gentlewoman from Illinois is the ranking member. This is an example of how you can make something better and deliver better, with one exception, there is no additional money in this bill.

I hope that we will succeed in authorizing 20,000 new vouchers. That's an issue we will debate, although it is subject to appropriation, as to whether or not it gets done. I think our appropriator friends would like to do it.

But most of what this does is to improve the delivery. We talk about it a lot. It isn't always done. And in that context, we often thank the staff.

This is a case where the staff of the Financial Services Committee and subcommittee on both sides, we already did a great deal of work; this is a more technical bill than many that have come forward.

This is a less than ideological breakthrough. We hope to have some of those. We have had in the past. It's more a systemic examination of a very large program with improvements of a technical and specific sort in many aspects of it. It took a good deal of hard work, and it took a good deal of mutual cooperation.

As I said, there were some differences, and we will debate those differences, but it should be made clear that those differences come within a context of a broad agreement on making the program better.

There is a lot of talk about waste and fraud and abuse. Waste and fraud and abuse are more generally decried around here than diminished. This is a bill that will make it much less likely that money will be wasted, much less likely that there will be an abuse of the public purse. As I said, let me say in closing, it is to the credit of the gentlewoman from California, the gentlewoman from Illinois, and the people who have worked with them.

Every stakeholder is a supporter of this bill, the landlords, the tenants, the advocacy groups, the housing authorities that administer it. It is rare that you get this degree of agreement. It's a process that began with civil conversation. I am pleased to see, at least on this night, it's going to end with a civil conversation, and the product will be significant improvements in one of the most important social programs in the Federal Government.

Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

The gentleman has given a very clear statement of what is in here. This bill does not create the bilingual mandate; it puts it where it should be.

The other thing I would say is this, and I understand there are some who oppose it on principle. But from the court's standpoint, having HUD do the translation of all these documents means that they don't have to be done individually. So it also is cheaper for HUD to do. It is not just that it is more appropriate for the Federal Government to do it, but it is cheaper, because there will be some basic HUD documents so this will avoid the unnecessary duplication of translations. And I thank the gentleman for that very clear way he stated it.

The gentleman and I are of a similar generation. It is my understanding from some of my younger staffers that they don't ship documents these days; they have other ways of getting them there. I couldn't send one, myself, and my friend couldn't receive it. But, fortunately, it wouldn't be up to us.

Madam Chair, I ask unanimous consent that I be substituted for the gentlewoman from California as the manager for the remainder of the bill.

Madam Chair, I rise to claim the time in opposition. And unlike my distinguished friend, the gentlewoman from Illinois, I'm really in opposition.

I yield myself 3 minutes.

First, Madam Chair, in the interest of conciliation that has marked this debate, I would say to my friend from California, I would be willing to accept this amendment that puts a time limit on people being able to stay in section 8 if we could work out a time limit on their being poor. I think it is entirely accurate that when you're no longer poor, you should no longer be able to live in section 8. But what if we can't?

I can understand people who think that there are adults who have not been very responsible in their life choices, but some of the adults come with children. The gentleman exempts the disabled and the elderly, but his amendment does not exempt families with small children. So you have a parent with children.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Would the gentleman point that out to me in the amendment?

No. They have a certain number. They can make certain exemptions up to 20 percent.

Yes, not exceeding more than 20 percent of the families. It doesn't single out children. Well, maybe there will be 30 or 40 percent, because in my experience, it may differ, you say make an exception for a hardship. That's not the exception for people in section 8; it's the rule. There aren't a lot of rich people living in section 8 or middle income people.

The fact is that under the gentleman's amendment, if adopted, there will be single parents with children of 7 or 8 or 10 years old, several of them, and at the end of 5 years, they'll have to move. Those kids didn't do anything to anybody.

And you know what we've learned from education and from homelessness, 7 years, the gentleman tells me. He does give them 7 years. It's very biblical. But they'll still have to move after 7 years.

Churning poor people isn't useful. Making people move isn't useful. We've adopted some rules here. The gentleman knows we agreed with him that we should not charge them for more rent if they're making more money. We don't want to have a disincentive. We've done other things to improve it.

But here's a fundamental point. People in section 8 housing are there because they meet strict income criteria. Under the gentleman's amendment, someone who continues to be poor, who continues to meet the income criteria, who has lived up to every rule, who has small children, who has tried diligently to get a better job, but in many parts of this country, by the way, we're talking about working people. There are many people who can work full-time at twice the minimum wage and not be able to afford rental housing in his district or in parts of my district or in other districts, the gentlewoman from California's district. And they'd be evicted. They'd be evicted from housing that they were eligible for, for no reason other than the clock.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I would say to my friend from California, work on that in a future amendment and we will look at it.

But I want to address the gentleman from Ohio. He says he wants to help these people and save them. Boy, would they be in trouble if somebody came to hurt them. He is going to help them by evicting them when they remain economically eligible. And he says it is encouraging dependence.

In fact, in many parts of this country, you can be making two and three times the minimum wage and not be able to afford decent rental housing, and that is who gets the section 8.

And then he says that section 8 housing is so terrible that we have to keep people from having to live there. But does the gentleman think that there are people who say, ``You know what? I can live in a nice place or I can live in a lousy place. I think I'll choose a lousy place until the gentleman from Ohio comes along and rescues me from it''?

People live in the best place available to them, and throwing them out of the place they now live in when they have done nothing wrong because you don't think it is good enough for them when there is no alternative that is as good is hardly helping them.

The section 8 program is one that serves many people who work. It is a sliding scale of subsidy, and to say that it encourages dependency totally misunderstands the program. Many of these people are people who are working and they work at low-wage jobs in areas with high rent. How are you encouraging dependency by telling them and their children that after 7 years they go out? What kind of an incentive is that?

So, Madam Chairman, this amendment takes people who have already been in some economic difficulty and makes their lives harder. I hope that it is rejected.

Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Madam Chairman, I thank my friend and colleague for yielding.

And I want to say, as I said to the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell), people are saying why are you making this exception. We are making this exception because we think this ought to be the rule. And we are dealing with this now because we have time problems in this area and in the area of the gentlewoman from Ohio. But it is our intention to pass legislation before the end of the year, I think on a bipartisan basis, that will make this a rule for the whole country. So this is not singling out any one area except for the fact that we face time restraints, as the gentleman from California did and the gentleman from Ohio did.

So I want to thank my friend for bringing this forward. And I want to make it clear this is the first step of what we believe will be a general policy of preserving affordable housing.

Madam Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

The gentleman is a member of the committee defending the committee's product. I believe he has the right to close; is that correct?

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

Mr. Speaker, this bill has two parts.

One part is to reiterate what is already the law. It is already the law that only people who are in the country legally may benefit from this. The second part is how to enforce it, and what it does is to continue an unfortunate tendency that goes counter to everything we have tried to do about privacy, of making the Social Security card a universal identifier, and there are real dangers in that.

Members who have been concerned with privacy know that an unreasonable and unrestricted use of the Social Security card is a problem. Indeed, we have talked about legislation, bipartisan, to restrict the requirement that you give your Social Security number. But here is what this bill says. It does not change the law. It's already illegal for people who are not here legally to get these benefits.

The gentleman mentioned 26,000 FHA loans in Colorado, zero section 8s. I haven't heard the evidence. I would be glad to listen to it. I will invite people, if there is evidence that this is a problem with section 8, let's listen to it. But here's what you impose on the housing authorities. There is now a requirement that people show that they are here legally. But now in this legislation, if it's adopted, would narrow that.

So here is what you would have to take to get someone who wanted to get into section 8:

They could show you their passport. The number of really poor people carrying passports is less than you might imagine. Although, I don't know what they might imagine, so I take that back.

Or a USCIS photo identification card. Well, if you are a citizen born in the United States, you don't have one.

Or a driver's license. You may not have a driver's license.

So if you are an 82 year-old who doesn't travel a lot to foreign countries and you are an American citizen, what are you going to show them? Your Social Security card. What this does is put more legal emphasis behind that.

I would say to Members, Members can vote as they wish. But the next time people complain to you about privacy problems and about Social Security numbers floating around being misused, if you voted for this, say, yes, I helped, because that's what this does.

The only thing this adds to American law is a requirement that most people trying to get section 8s will have to show their Social Security card, because a lot of them won't have driver's licenses, and they won't have passports. If they are American citizens, they won't have that card. The most common form of identification required will be the Social Security card.

I have been working, the people in the Energy and Commerce Committee, the people in the Ways and Means Committee, we have all been working to restrict the idea that the Social Security card is an ID card. I thought that was fairly generally accepted, that we don't want the Social Security card to be the ID card.

What's the Federal Government saying here? Because, yes, you can say,

well, who wants to steal the identification of a poor person? You know, being up against a section 8, no big deal. But once the Federal Government, the minority has been consistently arguing, once we have stated the Social Security card is the most universally accepted, the Social Security card is considered to be the best form of identification, then what's the argument against every business in America doing it? How do you stop this from becoming that universal identifier?

Members can cover themselves by voting for something that's already in the law. It's time to cover yourself anyway; it's kind of late.

But understand what Members will be doing. They will be furthering the practice of using the Social Security card as an identifier. They will be weakening our efforts to undercut.

Members may be unhappy to understand the implications of what they are doing. But I do not think it is wise for this House to continue a pattern of saying that the Social Security card will not just be a means of checking for Social Security but will become the universal identifier, that people will have to show it. Because if we, the Federal Government, say you have to show it, then how do you tell the hotel that they can't say it? How do you tell anybody else that they can't require the production of Social Security cards?

The logical consequence of this will be a serious impediment to our efforts to protect privacy and to deal with identity theft. The unrestricted use of the Social Security card is a serious problem there, and this makes it worse.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the instructions of the House on the motion to recommit, I report H.R. 1851 back to the House with an amendment.

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. 1851, to include corrections in spelling, punctuation, section numbering and cross-referencing, and the insertion of headings.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to manage the time in lieu of the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

The gentlewoman from Illinois decided to get into another bill, the FHA bill, and made a couple of statements about it, one of which is inaccurate and one of which is incomplete.

The inaccurate one is to suggest that it has been held up because of the fact that we want to use some of the money that will be generated by the bill, by specifically removing the cap on home equity mortgages, for affordable housing. I understand her objection to our trying to spend some money for more affordable housing construction, but that is not what held up the bill.

We ran into a dispute between those people who do the home equity mortgage servicing and the AARP over the fees to be charged. We adopted an amendment; it was a bipartisan amendment. Our colleague from Georgia, Mr. Marshall, and the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Ginny Brown-Waite) offered an amendment, and that led to a dispute. I asked that the groups try to work this out, and they have done that, so we are now able to come to the floor with that bill. But we then ran out of time because of the appropriations process. But what held that bill up was that dispute over funding.

Secondly, the gentlewoman said we passed this very good bill last year. We passed a bill last year, and I voted for it because, with the other party then in control, we couldn't make it better. But here is the major difference between that bill and the bill we will bring forward regarding subprime. Under the bill we passed last year and under the position of the gentlewoman from Illinois, people with weaker credit who make all of their payments will be charged more. I think it is inappropriate for the Federal Government to do that.

The FHA, under the bill that was passed last year, would extend credit to borrowers with weaker credit, would guarantee their mortgages but charge them more. Under our bill, because we don't think that the Federal Government ought to charge people more if they are meeting their responsibilities, we cross-subsidize, and we say, if you have weaker credit, your initial payments will be higher. But if you make your payments for 5 years, you will get all of the money back, and I look forward to debating that difference.

I don't think we should be penalizing people, and I don't think people making $40,000 a year who are diligent in making their payments ought to pay more than us.

Mr. Speaker, on this resolution, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) who was the main sponsor of this important resolution.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?

In the fall. As the gentlewoman knows, this period is appropriations period, except for the voucher bill where we had gotten in line.

But I would hope that we can work in committee on the subprime. I would note, by the way, that 2 years ago, the current ranking member of the full committee was the chairman of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions, and he was pretty far along in conversations with my two colleagues from North Carolina, Mr. Watt and Mr. Miller. And frankly, I think if we had not been interfered with from above, we might have gotten a bill a couple of years ago, I think we can pick up where we left off. I am optimistic we can do a bill this fall.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her leadership on this bill.

This legislation began last year when she was the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, which you, Mr. Speaker, now chair, and in a bipartisan way we've brought forward this bill.

A brief history here. The administration, I think, made an error in granting authority to the company, Dubai Ports World, to take over seaports. They should have anticipated the reaction.

I think it was a mistake to let Dubai buy those ports and I'm glad that that was dropped, but I think there was an overreaction. Foreign direct investment is a very good thing for our country. It is a source of jobs.

I remember when I first came here in the early 1980s one of our major goals on the Democratic side, with a lot of Republican support, was to get more foreign direct investment. We had a bill we called the domestic content bill. It was to require that a certain percentage of each car sold in America be made in America, and the purpose of that was frankly to help get Japanese, at that time, automakers to come here.

People should understand foreign direct investment means we're talking direct investment as opposed to buying our bonds or buying financial instruments. It means putting money in here that creates jobs, and it ought to be something welcomed. In a few cases, there could be a problem, but the general rule should be that we welcome foreign direct investment.

Now, after the Dubai Ports and the reaction to it, concern grew in the rest of the world that we were not fully supportive of foreign direct investment, and there was this view that we had scared it away. I mention that because there are some who have incorrectly reported this bill, the CFIUS bill as we call it, the bill giving statutory reform to the Committee on Foreign Investments in the U.S., as an effort further to restrict foreign direct investment. That is the exact opposite of the truth.

We've worked very closely here, not just with the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Paulson, a great supporter of foreign direct investment, but also with the Financial Services Forum headed by the former Secretary of Commerce, Don Evans. He's been a real leader in this effort.

This is an effort by the Congress to make clear that we welcome foreign direct investment as a rule, but we will have procedures in place to prevent those exceptional examples where it might be problematic, where it might cause a security problem.

So I, again, want to stress this is the Congress of the United States reaffirming that foreign direct investment is a good thing for our economy, and it is our belief that the structure we have set up will help move things quickly.

By the way, Mr. Speaker, people won't be required to go through the CFIUS process, but they will be given assurance if they do that they can go forward. Now, that's very important

for people making investments. So this is a wholly supportive operation, and I thank the gentlewoman from New York and the gentlewoman from Ohio who have worked hard on this; the minority whip, the gentleman from Missouri, who is one of those who helped lead the fight for this. This is a genuine bipartisan bill. We passed it last year, and it's something that I know you will find it hard to believe, Mr. Speaker, after we passed the bill, somehow the United States Senate was unable to do that. I know that will cause some surprise to you, but there we are.

This year, it's different. We passed the bill, and the Senate under the leadership of the Senator from Connecticut, Mr. Dodd, has passed a very similar bill, not identical, but they're close. I prefer in a few details what we have, but given the nature of the legislative process, we thought the best thing to do in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and with both parties was to accept the Senate version.

So this is accepting the Senate version, but we're accepting the Senate version of our version because what the Senate did was to make some fairly small changes in the bill that we adopted last year.

Now, with that, Mr. Speaker, I'm ready to yield. My understanding is that the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who is concerned about this bill, wanted to raise a technical point. So I would ask the gentlewoman from New York if she would yield to the gentleman from Missouri for the purposes of his and I having a colloquy.

Mrs. MALONEY from New York. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my distinguished colleague, Ike Skelton, as much time as he may consume.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield to me, I would say that I share the chairman of the Armed Services Committee's desire that the intent of Congress be clear. I also note the chairman has identified a technical error in the Senate amendment which should be corrected involving required reports of presidential decisions. I will work to accomplish a correction of this error, and I agree with the gentleman's statement of what the legislation intended and in the specific incidents that he cited.

If the gentleman would yield to me, I'm glad to say, yes, I will work with the gentleman to ensure that this technical and clarifying change is made, and I agree with him the best way to do that is through the conference on the National Defense Authorization Act.

And while this technically falls in the jurisdiction of the Financial Services Committee, I am deviating from the script I was given to say that I think the besetting sin of this place is an excessive concern about turf. The people who put jurisdiction ahead of substance really should think better.

So I am delighted to be able to provide an example of intercommittee cooperation with my very good friend whom I admire, the gentleman from Missouri, and I will look forward to his correcting this error in that conference with the blessing, I believe, of our committee.

The Vice President has violated a number of rules, maxims, constitutional provisions; but he has clearly violated one that I would have thought him wise enough and old enough to understand. No matter how difficult the situation in which your own misactions have put you, and no matter what kind of a corner you have gotten yourself into, try to avoid saying something that no one will believe.

When the Vice President offered his justification for his refusal to follow the fundamental principle of openness, he made a statement that no one would believe. Apparently, in this case, even he didn't believe him, which was a new reach for him. He is now trying to take it back.

The gentleman from Ohio said to be careful what you wish for. Well, here is what I wish for, I would say to my friend from Ohio: a Vice President of the United States who will follow the law, who will not show contempt for the norms of a democracy.

Mr. Chairman, we've just heard one of the least persuasive arguments that we have ever heard in this body. We hear them repeatedly. People who are opposed to doing something use the argument that we shouldn't do it, even though they're objecting to it on its own basic grounds because it doesn't go far enough. If, of course, it went far enough, they would be even more upset, Mr. Chairman.

The argument that if you cannot solve every problem for everybody, you should not try to improve the situation for large numbers of people is never what people really think. It is always advanced by people who don't want fully to defend the position they take. The objection is to accommodating the many millions of Americans for whom Spanish is the primary language.

I have to say, I do not understand the impulse to make life harder for others when making it easier for them has no cost to us. I represent a large number of people who speak English. Nobody has ever said to me, you know what? My life is now more difficult because people who speak primarily Spanish can get a refund.

What is the impulse that drives us to object to making life easier for many of our hardworking fellow citizens in some principle when it comes at no cost to us?

And by the way, I have a large number of people for whom Portuguese is a primary language. I do not think they will tell me, when I go back to march in parades in that area, we're very upset because you supported allowing tens of millions of our Spanish-speaking friends this advantage and you didn't do everything for us. It is, of course, reasonable for a community to take into account large numbers.

And so again, I am really troubled by this lashing out at our fellow citizens when it comes at no cost to the rest of us. You talk about benefit cost analysis. What is the cost, it's minimal, of letting people who work hard who have trouble with the English language?

And as the gentleman from New York has pointed out, overwhelmingly the younger people learn English. No one who has had any association with an immigrant community has any doubt about the accuracy of what he said. The young people learn English, they become the translators and interpreters for their parents and their grandparents.

There are people who came to America out of love for this country and they work hard, and they are much more comfortable, particularly reading sort of technical information, in the language they grew up with than the new language. Their children and those who come after will speak English. Why do we want to make their lives harder? Why this objection to trying to ease the transition for these people?

I very much hope this amendment is defeated. I would hope we would say we are a better country than to begrudge people who have taken the difficult decision to immigrate to make their lives better, this very small accommodation.

I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.

I was struck when the gentleman of Florida said, why should we do this at the expense of other people? That's the crux of the disagreement between us. It doesn't come at the expense of other people. The fact that the largest single linguistic minority gets an ability to do this in their own language, which will, by the way, also probably increase tax collection, so it probably is an offset and it probably makes money for the Federal Government. But the gentleman's phrasing ``at the expense of,'' that's what troubles me. It does not come at my expense if we reach out to hardworking people who have trouble with English.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, might I inquire, who has the right to close?

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, sic transit gloria Oxley. Mike Oxley, my Republican predecessor, is barely gone, when one of his great works is being trashed by his former colleagues.

Indeed, as I look at this assault, the gentleman from New Jersey started out talking about small business, but small business clearly appeared to be the stalking horse here. He talked about the New York Stock Exchange. They don't deal with small business. He talked about Sarbanes-Oxley in very negative terms broadly. His complaint is not about small business, but about Sarbanes-Oxley in general. If you analyze what the gentleman said, it was an assault on Sarbanes-Oxley.

Now, Sarbanes-Oxley was passed by a Republican House and a Democratic Senate. It was signed and claimed as a great triumph by our Republican President, George Bush.

I am sad for President Bush. No Child Left Behind, Sarbanes-Oxley, immigration, Medicare part D, even the war in Iraq. Mr. Chairman, are there no Bush policies left that can escape the assault of the Republican Party? I am inclined to think that there are only two Bush policies left that command strong support on the Republican side: illegal wiretapping and torture. Everything else they appear to have abandoned.

In fact, 10 days ago, the Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary Paulson, explicitly disagreed with the gentleman from New Jersey on the need for this amendment and said, no, we don't want to do this now. This is working.

What is working is a couple of days ago the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, our former colleague Mr. Cox, said, we don't need legislation. We are in the process of changing this. All five of the Commissioners appeared, and none of them asked us for legislation. Mr. Cox specifically said it is not needed.

This is a vote of no confidence in Chris Cox and the SEC. They have said, yes, we should change this. We have more time. It is in a deferment period, and the SEC is in the process, along with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, of winding this down, of making it easier.

Mr. Cox was asked just yesterday, well, what is this going to cost small business? He said, we don't know yet, because we are changing it already for the big businesses that have to pay. But we are going to look at that, and we will make adjustments.

So Chris Cox, on behalf of a unanimous SEC, three Republicans, two Democrats, along with the Republican Secretary of the Treasury Mr. Paulson, says we are fixing this. Please do not at this point legislate.

Of course, what we see is, if you listen to the gentleman from New Jersey, this is the beginning of an assault on Sarbanes-Oxley in general, because much of his speech was not about small business, it was about Sarbanes-Oxley in general, which he does not like and thinks is a terrible burden and is driving people overseas.

It is not driving small business overseas. Nobody argues that. It is not driving small businesses off the New York Stock Exchange; they were never on it. So this is step one in the assault on Sarbanes-Oxley. It is an unnecessary assault because the SEC, under Chairman Cox, with a Republican majority and Secretary Paulson are already trying to fix this problem.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

I voted against No Child Left Behind. I understand that. You have got nothing with Bush, and I understand that. I just felt sorry for the poor man being abandoned so much.

I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

First, as to executive compensation, the gentleman from New Jersey, he finds inconsistencies where none exist. They are kind of like Harvey, his invisible rabbit.

On executive compensation, the SEC has said when asked that they do not have the power to do what our bill does. That is very different than Sarbanes-Oxley. With regard to Sarbanes-Oxley, Chris Cox has said I am doing this, so they are quite different.

The SEC with executive compensation said we can make them say how much it will be; if you want to go further, we have no power to do that.

That is exactly the opposite of what they have said on Sarbanes-Oxley in which they said we are fixing this, and Chris Cox said there is no reason for you to legislate.

The gentleman from New Jersey is being unfair to Chairman Cox in caricaturing him as saying ``we don't know.''

What he said when asked what it would cost is very straightforward: ``We don't know yet.'' He said we are in the process of finding out because what the chairman said is we are downsizing Sarbanes-Oxley. We are downsizing it for everybody. We will know better after we see what the new requirements are for larger businesses, how much there will be saved for smaller businesses.

The fact is that the gentleman from New Jersey quite graphically misrepresented what the SEC said. The SEC did not say ``we don't know,'' the SEC said ``we will tell you after we have had some experience.''

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

The answer is ``yes'' for a variety of reasons, but I want to make this point. It has nothing to do with this amendment. The gentleman has proven my point. Small businesses don't do IPOs. It is not in the small business area where the decline has happened. So

what we see here is small business has been taken hostage by people who never liked Sarbanes-Oxley because the argument the gentleman makes has nothing to do with the specifics of the gentleman's amendment.

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

Again, the gentleman from Florida has made a general assault on Sarbanes-Oxley. He is now attacking Speaker Hastert. The number of people who are in trouble on the Republican side by this group grows and grows and grows. It is the Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Illinois, the former Speaker, who apparently acquiesced, inappropriately, according to the gentleman. Take it up with him, I would say to the gentleman.

Briefly.

Because I was not the chairman, I do remember discussion of it during the conference report. But reclaiming my time.

It is my time.

Regular order, Mr. Chairman.

The fact is that I will not allow my time to be diverted by internecine Republican warfare. You don't like George Bush's bill that he signed. You don't think that Oxley did a very good job. You are upset at your own leadership procedurally. You think Chris Cox doesn't know what he is doing. You disagree with Paulson.

Mr. Chairman, they can fight it out. I would like to discuss substance. I'm not here to get even for past grievances that Republicans have with other Republicans.

Again, the gentleman from Florida's assault has nothing to do with this amendment, but it is relevant in this sense: It shows that what we have here is the beginning of an attack on Sarbanes-Oxley.

The IPOs, small business don't do IPOs. Small business hasn't left America to go to England. That is the clear indication of what is up.

Now to get back to the substance, Chairman Cox and the other members of the commission said we agree it went too far in the regulation. We are scaling it back. We are scaling it back first for the big businesses who will be affected by it, and we will learn from that scaling back how much it will help smaller businesses.

Again, the gentleman from New Jersey quite unfairly mischaracterized what the commissioners said. The commissioners didn't say ``we don't know,'' period. They said we don't know now because we expect to get experience from the reductions in the scaling back we have already ordered, and that will tell us how that will help small business.

I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

The gentleman is simply wrong. He made it very clear. I am quoting him almost verbatim when I say they said: We will find out from scaling back in general how much it will save, and then we will be able to tell you how much the savings will be.

No, I am not yielding any more because this is just not a debatable issue. The five commissioners didn't say simply ``we don't know.'' They said, ``We don't know as of now, but we will know better once we have had this experience.''

I want to go back and respond, the gentleman from Florida said the SEC is fiddling while capital markets burn. I don't think Chris Cox is fiddling.

Let me make the substantive argument here.

Law enforcement in America is not totalitarian. It is not authoritarian. It requires a buy-in by those regulators. And that's why this amendment would do so much damage. There is, of course, a disconnect between the amendment which hides behind small business and the broader attack on Sarbanes-Oxley that we have heard from the two speakers.

But here's where the connection comes in. The SEC, with the full backing of Secretary Paulson, all these Republican nominees, Secretary Paulson from Goldman Sachs, Chris Cox and the others, they understand that Sarbanes-Oxley was overwritten in the regulatory phase. They are writing it down, but they don't want people to just think this is chaos. They have asked us explicitly, the Secretary of the Treasury and the SEC, the Republican appointees, to let them work this out. They agree that it needs to be reduced.

But if you start now with Congress piecemeal amending it, the degree of consensus they are trying to reach in the business community will erode. If people think, oh, we got one amendment through, we got this piece out, then there will be others who want another piece, people who have always resented it. And Mr. Cox has been very careful to try to get, for instance, unanimity in the commission because he wants people not to think this is a chance he's saying, it's going one way, it's going the other. And to begin now to whittle away at his authority, when he is in the process of doing exactly what critics of Sarbanes- Oxley as it now stands say they want to do, undermines his ability to reform this in an orderly way.

First of all, does the gentleman not understand that his question, as virtually all of his debate, has zero to do with the amendment he purports to be supporting?

The fact is that the problems, yes, in China they have decided to do it in Shanghai. I think there are a lot of reasons why there has been a shifting and we're no longer overall in the world. But it has nothing to do with this amendment because it's not about small business. We haven't lost the share of small business. But the gentleman has reinforced my point. I mentioned Shanghai. Shanghai is appropriate, because this amendment is an attempt to shanghai small business into the cause of undermining Sarbanes-Oxley and undercutting the effort by the SEC, supported by the Secretary of the Treasury--and I assume the Bush administration--to allow the process of scaling back Sarbanes- Oxley to be done in an orderly, reasonable fashion.