Floor Statements

Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, is it not the case that the vote did not overrule the Chair? Is it not the case that the Chair's ruling that the words were out of order was not challenged, and was it not the case that the motion was simply to restore the right of the gentleman from Mississippi to speak and in no way overruled the ruling of the Chair?

Point of order, Mr. Speaker. The gentleman has not stated a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, having as the manager of the bill seen the motion to recommit about 8 seconds ago, I reserve a point of order until we get a chance to know what is in it.

No, we object to that, because we just got it, and it would be inappropriate in 10 seconds to be able to read it.

I thank the gentleman.

Let me ask the gentleman from Louisiana, we have been reading it over, and I do regret the fact that we got this a couple of minutes ago. I am going to check with Valerie Plame, I don't think there was anything secret in here. I don't know why it had to be withheld so we couldn't have a sensible analysis, but maybe there is one possibility. Could the gentleman tell me what in here changes existing law?

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Lousiana.

Does this change existing law? The housing authority, by the way, so people can understand, the housing authority that we are directing here is otherwise known as HUD, because HUD controls this housing authority and has for some time since before the hurricane. But does this change existing law affecting housing authorities?

In what areas does it direct them? My understanding is that, for instance, the work requirement they have already got, the housing authority, that the restrictions on people with criminal backgrounds are already there. In what way does this recommit? Which I am sure the gentleman has seriously studied and is very familiar with it. He wouldn't legislate unseriously. Could he tell me what in this changes existing law?

I will yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.

The question is, in what area, since in the work requirement they don't have discretion. Check with whoever you have to check with. In what areas are you changing it from discretionary to mandatory?

I will yield to the gentleman from Lousiana again.

Well, the point that we are directing the housing authority to give preference to people who follow existing law; Mr. Speaker, I wish we had had this before, we might have been able to understand it better. It appears to me to be simply a restatement of existing law.

And apparently Members on the other side are afraid that HUD, which is the housing authority, won't follow existing law. And I do have my own doubts about this administration's predilection for following existing law.

No. I tried five times. I give up.

announcement by the speaker

Mr. Speaker, I just have got to comment that some of my friends on the other side appear more concerned about enforcing the rules strictly than at other times. I asked several times to get an answer. I don't think the answer is over there. I don't think this is very well considered. It does not appear to me to change existing law.

And to say that we are going to tell them that they have to follow existing law, it seems rather odd. If it is so important, you know, if this had been offered as an amendment, we argued successfully all the subsequent amendments would be in order. To the extent that it changes anything, it changes only for New Orleans. So this is only for people whose houses were washed away.

Now, I don't know how it makes any change. I will take on faith the gentleman's assertion that it makes changes, even though he couldn't tell me what they were. But I would then say, why would we say only if your house had been washed away would you be subject to some restriction?

Mr. Speaker, I will now yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Melancon).

The gentleman is probably trying to figure out what the amendment says, and that is a hard job.

I will then repeat what he said to me, which is, and read this, this I do know, ``it is for New Orleans only.'' Now, we could not amend it for the whole area. What about Mississippi? I mean, was the gentleman afraid that if he included Mississippi, the gentleman, Mr. Taylor, would challenge him to come to Mississippi? I think the gentleman from Louisiana has already been to Mississippi. He wouldn't have to change his travel plans the way the gentleman from Georgia would have.

Why should only people who have suffered this enormous trauma, who live in New Orleans, be subjected to a special set of rules? By the way, we will send the Members long lists of rules already on the books, statutory and regulatory, that prevent public housing authorities from allowing people with criminal records to come in. You have the ``one strike'' situation where they can be easily evicted.

So this does not add, as nearly as we can tell, to the restriction on letting people in. To the extent that it imposes a greater work requirement, we are talking about people whose homes were

destroyed, whose jobs may have been washed away, who may be trying to find additional housing.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for so has my patience.

I withdraw my parliamentary reservation. I reinforce my substantive ones.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the instructions of the House in the motion to recommit, I report the bill, H.R. 1227, back to the House with an amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

I thank the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, no, it is not a fully open rule. It is a far more open rule than any that the majority allowed in the previous Congress on major legislation from the Financial Services Committee. I tell you that as a fact.

First, the argument was made that people didn't have enough time to file amendments. This bill was voted out of committee on March 7. It is true that the actual report was delayed. It was delayed partly because staff on both sides held up the actual writing on the language, and we had a CBO scoring issue, and we were waiting for CBO. But the text of the bill was put forward publicly on March 7.

In fact, there are a number of amendments offered here; most of them are from members of the committee, some are from nonmembers of the committee.

So the notion that people didn't know until Friday what to put in the amendments on Monday is false. The fact is that this bill on March 7 was voted out of committee. In fact, the text of the bill was set on March 6. What we did on March 7 was come back and complete roll call. But as of noon on March 7, people knew what would be in this bill. It was not a secret that we were marking it up; it was not a secret that it would be coming up today.

So anybody who waited until Friday, who made the mistake, they have themselves to blame. In fact, we made a couple of accommodations. The gentleman from Georgia had an amendment which he filed which was misfiled, and his amendment as filed went to a section different than he wanted to affect.

Whether you realize that, we urged the Rules committee to allow him, after the deadline, to make an appropriate substitution. That was done so that his appropriate amendment is in order. To the extent that there was that technical glitch, we said, that's not right; let's allow the gentleman from Georgia's amendment to go forward, the one substantive to the bill.

The gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker) had an important amendment that was adopted in committee. CBO raised issues with it. We then asked the Rules Committee, after the deadline, to accommodate a change for Mr. Baker's amendment because we were accommodating the CBO scoring. So we did make two agreements after the deadline to accommodate these particular changes.

But I want to stress again, Members knew on March 7 what was going to be in this bill. So I don't know why anybody would have waited until Friday to do the amendments. It was a fairly public controversial process that we had. We had a number of rollcalls in the committee.

And I will say this: my view, I would have had a rule that was even more accommodating. But what this does is allow every amendment that the Parliamentarian's Office found to be germane to the bill and the substance of this program to be in order. There is some debate over one amendment from the gentleman from Georgia involving a kind of generic language about offsets. And that was not allowed. I would have voted to allow it; but it was not allowed. We considered it in committee. It was voted on, debated, defeated.

But every amendment that was offered and, again, the deadline for amendments was Monday. The bill had been voted out of committee on Wednesday, March 7. There was plenty of time for that bill to be looked at and for people to offer amendments. When I saw the amendments on Monday, I urged the Rules Committee to put in order everything that was germane. They have put in order a number of germane amendments with a lot of debate time.

Now, I understand that there are Members who would like it to have included a few more things. But every single one of them voted for rules far

more restrictive. So this bill, you know, I have always thought the question is, Is this a good rule? I have always thought the fount of all wisdom that we should be guided by was expounded by a philosopher named Henny Youngman, whom you, Madam Speaker, along with I certainly remember. And the wisdom was, asked, How is your wife, the answer was, Compared to what? And is this a good rule? Compared to what? Compared to every rule that affected the Committee on Financial Services during Republican leadership, it is a rule of great openness. Compared to an ideal of complete openness, not quite.

So it is a far better rule than any Republicans ever brought forward with regard to openness. It is not as good as I would like, but it does allow into debate every amendment germane to the substance of this bill, particularly to this bill, in terms of these programs, a number of amendments that change it one way or the other: some that would expand it, some that would retract it. And I believe the House will have a chance to work its will on this issue.

The only other thing I would say is this when we are talking about time: For people who haven't been remembering exactly, I do want to remind people, despite what you might think, it is not November of 2005. We are now here in March of 2007. I say that because people who saw the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in Mississippi and in Louisiana, to some extent in Texas, and who expected the Federal Government to respond, and looked at the things we are doing, which are called for by that dilemma that was created by the hurricanes, they would have assumed that their Federal Government would have done that within a couple of months after the hurricanes.

Unfortunately, about an 18-month freeze elapsed because the now- minority, then-majority, did not have the energy to deal with it. So we are doing a bill today that is 18 months overdue.

I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Yes, I do agree, but it was changed as of Friday, and so people could have looked at that on Friday and gotten it right. And I appreciate that. So, yeah, the section changed and as somebody even picked it up as of Friday, in the case of the gentleman from Louisiana, it was a different thing. We didn't get the CBO's scoring until too late, and then we had to work it out. The scoring came in. Part of the problem was CBO is very busy, and we passed the bill on March 7 and we didn't get their scoring until that Friday, and that was one of the reasons for the delay.

I thank the gentleman from the Rules Committee.

Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Well, first, the Parliamentarian ruled that the gentlewoman from Illinois' amendment which we debated in committee was not germane because it went far beyond the hurricane. So that was the reason for that.

The second thing is I want to concede one point to the gentleman. He has chided us because we have set ourselves too low a standard. We have set ourselves the standard of simply being better than they were last year. I acknowledge that is too low a bar. I think we have met it with ease, but I am inclined to do better. So I promise him, as far as I am concerned, I will try to have a higher standard.

Madam Speaker, I rise to correct myself.

The gentleman from Georgia asked me to acknowledge that his amendment was originally misfiled because of a change in the section that occurred last Friday. I acknowledged that, but incorrectly. In fact, the change happened during the markup. The section was renumbered during the markup. And the gentleman, of course, being a member of the committee, could have done that.

I want to stress again no change was made in the text of that bill from March 7 until today; so anybody who wanted to offer amendments knew that on March 7.

Secondly, as to the gentlewoman from Illinois, as I said, I guess I am coming here, Madam Speaker, confessing all day. I mean, I confess that I have not reached as high enough a standard as I should in parliamentary terms because I have taken simply being better than the Republicans as my standard, and I pledge to do better.

Similarly, I guess I should be scolded for being lax on the rules. The gentlewoman from Illinois offered her amendment in committee. We did not raise a point of order against it in committee. Now, I do want to point out the parliamentarian for our committee is the parliamentarian that was the parliamentarian under my predecessor. That is one of the first things I did after the election was to call the parliamentarian, Mr. Duncan, a former member of the Parliamentarian's Office, who had been hired by my predecessor, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Oxley), and asked him to stay on. I believe it should be totally nonpartisan, and I believe it has been. It was the Parliamentarian's Office that told the Rules Committee that the gentlewoman from Illinois' amendment was not germane.

Now, I acknowledge my excessive tolerance. I have learned I am more tolerant of a lot of things than a lot of people here, and I accept that. I perhaps should have been more strict with regard to the committee. We had that debated, and the rule is generally that you do not take something that is narrowly applied and make it broader. There is language in this bill that applies to how vouchers are allocated where there was a hurricane. The gentlewoman wanted to change something that had been in the CR. She said it shouldn't have been in the CR. And I will say this: We will in our committee be revisiting that. We will have a voucher bill. That will come before our committee going forward. But I do want to make it clear in defense of the Rules Committee that where I allowed the amendment without getting a ruling on it, the Rules Committee, when they restricted the gentlewoman's amendment from being offered, were following the ruling of the parliamentarian that it was not germane.

I will yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois.

I understand.

Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I acknowledge that I did not raise a point of order. I acknowledge that I was very tolerant and did not make a point of order that apparently would have been sustained by the parliamentarian. But it was the parliamentarian who said that.

I am sorry the woman spent over an hour in the Rules Committee. Sometimes that is fun; sometimes it is not, but that is part of the job. But the fact is that the decision to exclude her particular amendment was made on the ruling of the parliamentarian that it was not germane.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 1227 and include therein extraneous material.

Mr. Chairman, I begin by yielding myself 1 minute, and then yield to the main author of this bill, the gentlewoman from California.

This is a bill which comes to this House about 18 months late. It is in response to the problems of the hurricane in the gulf. It is the result of very diligent work.

One week after the committee was organized, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), who is the Chair of the Housing Subcommittee, and I began to work on this. We had a very long all-day hearing in Washington.

During the February break, the gentlewoman from California took her subcommittee to Louisiana and Mississippi and had very extensive hearings. As a result of these very extensive hearings and consultations, we have brought forward a bill of which she is the primary author, which we believe does as much as can be done to respond to the needs of the people in that area that have sadly been, in some ways, neglected since the hurricane.

I am very pleased to be able to yield to the gentlewoman from California, who is the moving spirit behind this bill, as much time as she consumes as we describe our very belated, but still very necessary efforts to respond to these human needs.

Mr. Chairman, first for 1 minute I would like to recognize myself to acknowledge the spirit in which this happened. I think this bill is a very good blend of partisanship and bipartisanship, and they are equally important. Partisanship, there has never been a democracy in the history of the world where you did not have political parties. People who are on trying to govern themselves cannot do that as a kind of a random mass. And there are general philosophical differences. The key is not to allow those legitimate differences of ideology and partisanship to poison the ability to work together. I think this bill shows that.

And I am very grateful to the gentlewoman from Illinois, the gentleman from Texas, the gentleman from Alabama. We worked together on this. There were some strong disagreements. We had a number of rollcall votes. Some of them were close; some of them weren't. We have managed to reproduce through the rule most of those, not all I acknowledge, but most of those substantive disagreements about this bill, they are in here in the rule to the extent that people wanted to redebate them. And that is important.

But I acknowledge the fact that while we had some differences, that did not prevent us from coming together on some commonality. There was never in this bill any effort to delay or divert. We managed to talk seriously. And, yes, there are differences between the parties. There is on our side, I believe, a greater willingness to provide some funding for some of these things. Those will be legitimately debated.

Mr. Chairman, let me now yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), who is the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who has been very helpful, because the lives of FEMA and HUD are deeply intertwined, and trying to legislate here requires treading this. And the gentleman from Minnesota is an example to others not to allow turf consciousness and jurisdictional hypersensitivity to get in the way of good

public policy. So I thank the gentleman. I yield him such time as he will consume.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds.

We agree on all the things the gentleman from Alabama said we should do. Nothing in this bill stops them from doing it.

All we say is this: please don't tear down the houses that people now live in before you replace them. We are not in any way opposed to that; but if you don't think the housing the people live in now is great, and neither do I, understand that they are only there because they can't get anything better, and that is the only point of difference. We are saying do not displace them before that nice, new stuff is ready.

And as for one-for-one, we aren't saying it has to be one-for-one right on-site. If you get a one-for-one replacement that is in mixed housing, that will be fine; but just don't displace people.

Mr. Chairman, I now yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds to say I agree with the gentleman that we should not be spending a lot more money where it has been badly spent. Also, I did not think we were going to be talking about Iraq until later in the week.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Baca).

(Mr. BACA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds to thank the gentleman for his work on this and to say that one of the things the gentleman talked about last year when I worked with him and we decided whoever would be in the majority, we need to straighten out going forward the FEMA-HUD relationship with regard to housing. Part of the problem is, in fairness to FEMA, they should not still be in the housing business. That was not their expertise.

I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana.

Mr. Chairman, we will work that out.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

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

Will the gentlewoman yield?

I would join my colleague in supporting this particular amendment.

Will the gentlewoman yield?

In my experience the gentlewoman, someone who is not on the committee and not from the district, has really made herself an expert and an advocate. I would say this: If as this goes forward there are delays in the legislative process, yes, of course, it would be sensible to deal with the deadlines. That is, we should think of the deadlines almost conceptually as based on a certain timeline of legislation. If the basic decisions by the government slip, then the deadline should be adjusted accordingly.

Some of it I am, and some of it I am not. I am not an expert on it, but go ahead.

Well, I would say this, if the gentlewoman would yield to me: It is our hope, and the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker) was very active in this, and we listened to the others, the two gentlemen from Louisiana, Mr. Melancon and Mr. Jefferson, we believe we have responded to some of the issues. There was, for instance, a debate between FEMA. FEMA didn't like some aspects of the Road Home regarding whether or not you got a penalty for not staying in the State and whether or not elderly people were done. That was pulled. We have in this bill said to FEMA, please, leave that one alone. So we hope we have sped it up. No one I know of thinks that the rate of spendout of the Road Home has been sufficient to date. We hope this bill makes it better, but I don't have all the details.

If the gentlewoman would yield, there is one other aspect that was resolved. In the committee we adopted an amendment offered by the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker) which went in the other direction and nullified one set of offsets when the gentleman from Louisiana mentioned that we had a scoring problem with CBO. There was an offset procedure for certain tax things, and frankly we felt that was not only somewhat unfair, but it was also one thing that held up the speed because we tried to offset that on the other hand.

Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Chairman, who has the right to close?

Well, in that case, since I am our last speaker, I would ask the other side to use up their time.

Mr. Chairman, the amendment offered by the gentlewoman from Illinois is absolutely irrelevant to whether or not people ought to be occupying existing units. That is not what is involved here.

First of all, let me say the gentleman from Alabama and others said they have these plans to build these great new places. Who is stopping them? The hurricane was in September of 2005. It is now March of 2007. Have they started this? Have I stopped them? Have the tenants stopped them? Has the gentlewoman from California stopped them? Nobody has stopped them.

And the New Orleans Housing Authority, by the way, is HUD in drag. So nobody here has prevented them.

Here is what we are saying. What is amended is this: if you plan to tear down units that are now habitable, you cannot do that until you have met with the tenants, talked about this and replaced them.

This is an issue not about whether you live in the existing units. This isn't about rehabbing existing units. This is as to what is the obligation to replace the units.

The fact is that, according to HUD's own figures, more than half of the rental units in New Orleans were destroyed by the hurricane. People talk about job problems. That is because they have nowhere to live.

The gentlewoman's amendment would reduce by 2,000 the number of units they would be obligated to build before tearing down things that now exist. And you know, it is very nice. We have been doing this for years. We have promised the poor people all kinds of things, and those promises don't always materialize.

All we are saying is do whatever destruction you want after you have found places to live. And let me make it clear: we are talking about people who don't live here, who live in Texas and elsewhere and they want to come back. And it is not simply former residents of public housing. There were a lot of people who were displaced from New Orleans. We don't think we are in danger of running out of people who want to come back.

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

That is simply not the case. Here is the problem with the gentleman's view. They have this view that you can only build new units for poor people after you have torn down what they had. No one has enjoined them from building new units, except the budget that the people on the other side have voted for. We have got to get this clear. Nobody has prevented, there have been no plans by HUD, also known as the Housing Authority of New Orleans, to build new units. Nobody has stopped them except, yes, people have said you can't tear down what we have as the pre-condition for building. But if HUD had wanted to go forward and build, no one would have prevented that. The wonderful housing that the gentleman from Alabama talked about, the mixed-use housing, what has stopped them from building it? I will tell what you has stopped them from building it, the budgets that have been voted for by my friends on the other side that didn't have any money for new housing construction.

I will tell you what we are going to do. We are going to pass the GSE bill that is going to have the housing affordability fund so they can build these things.

So we are simply saying do not destruct before you replace and do the poor people the favor of tearing down the bad housing they live in so they have nothing left at all.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I appreciate the kind remarks of the gentleman from Alabama. He is right, we accepted a number of amendments, and there is a great deal that joins us together. But there are some differences,

and I think in the spirit of democracy, we should debate these differences.

In the amendment offered by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) and this amendment as we debate it, there seems to be this view, as my friend from North Carolina said, that these are people who need to be jolted out of this welfare way of life. The gentleman from Texas wanted to subject these people to a 20-hour work requirement where no work needed to be done.

Here we are objecting to these people staying on section 8 because we want, as my other friend from Texas said, we are going to have some tough love.

Let's remember who we are talking about. These are people who were working overwhelmingly. They were working at lousy jobs for low pay. These were people who were doing work in the service industry. They were living in not great circumstances, and their homes and their jobs were washed away. They were driven out of their homes to strange places. Some of those places have been very welcoming, and I was pleased to see the Kennedy family give the mayor of Houston a Profile in Courage Award for the generosity that he has shown in welcoming people. But that is who we are talking about.

People had said, well, we want to improve the quality of their life. Do Members think, Mr. Chairman, that poor people are so dumb that they are voluntarily living in worse places than would otherwise be available to them? They are not living in great circumstances, but they are the best they can find and afford. When you displace them from what they have without providing them alternatives, you are likely to make them worse off.

Now, I understand there is a problem that some people might not fully deserve what they get, but overwhelmingly here is what we are talking about: people who had jobs and homes in New Orleans and maybe some other parts of Louisiana whose homes and jobs were washed away. And they are now living in emergency conditions provided by FEMA, and they haven't yet been able to fix it.

People ask, Why don't they go back to New Orleans? Well, we have a chicken-and-an-egg problem. We have a problem where there are no jobs because there is no place for the people to live.

In Mississippi along the gulf, the Oreck vacuum cleaner company opened up a plant after the hurricane and then closed it because they couldn't get workers because there wasn't housing. We are trying to build housing.

Vouchers in New Orleans is the problem. According to HUD's own figures, more than half of the rental housing units in New Orleans were destroyed by the storm. How do you expect these people to go back?

Now we have a bill that I am very proud of. The gentlewoman from California has worked very hard on this. We got organized on January 30. A week later we had our first hearing. A month later we had our markup. We are now on the floor. This has been a very high priority for us, to try to break this cycle of no job and no housing and no way to get back and no way to live and no decent life. And, yes, we are trying to build housing and we hope that the housing brings jobs.

Will there be some problems? Yes. But I have to say, if we are going to err, can we not err on the side of people who are poor in many cases to begin with and whose hard jobs, and in some cases meager homes were destroyed, and they were driven out of those homes by a force of nature and they are living in Texas and they are living in Atlanta, and they are being told tough love. We don't think the quality of your life is good enough.

We don't think you are trying hard enough. Is that what Members think?

These are among the toughest people around that they are still integrated and they are still with their families given what they have been through, the physical and emotional horrors of that hurricane and the lack of any action afterwards. Can we not resolve together to say to these people, look, we are going to work to try to help rebuild New Orleans. Until then, we will assure you can live in these places.

These vouchers people will get are what we call disappearing vouchers. They are not permanent additions to the voucher stock. They are for the people who were displaced from New Orleans, and as the gentleman from Texas pointed out, as long as they are economically eligible.

I don't think they all want to stay there and live in these temporary quarters. As they do find alternative ways to live, the voucher will disappear. So that is what we are talking about: thousands of our fellow human beings who were subjected to physical terrors and emotional troubles far greater than most of us, fortunately for us, will ever have to go through. Their homes and their jobs were destroyed. Their children were uprooted from schools. They were driven away from where they used to live. And they have then been put under the tender mercies of FEMA. And as my friend from Texas said, every so often they were told, you know what, there hasn't been enough trauma in your life, the flood, the deaths, all that, that's not enough. Now we are going to threaten you with eviction. Now you won't know where you're going to live.

What we are saying is let's say to these remaining people, while we are trying to rebuild New Orleans, we give you assurance that you will be able to live in the circumstances in which you are now living as long as you meet the guidelines. I don't understand the opposition to that. I don't understand why that brings Members to say tough love, we are going to improve the quality of their life.

Let's let these people at least have what they now have: a home that was something they were able to put together after that great trauma. And the alternative is people say they shouldn't worry, the President will extend it.

What do you say to your 8-year-old and 12-year-old when they ask: Where am I going to school next year? Oh, don't worry, the President will extend it.

Frankly, there are a lot of people here who wouldn't feel a great comfort in that, let alone an 8-year-old.

We are dealing with totally innocent people, hardworking people whose lives were already tough, were destroyed by a hurricane and they were forced physically out of their homes. We are saying instead of them continuing to live under the fear that they may be evicted, that they may have no further support in terms of their basic living, that we as a compassionate Nation will continue to make sure that they at least have a place to live while everything else goes forward. I hope the House will accept the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the Rules Committee's complying with our preference for this rule, which allows any amendments to be offered that are germane.

And I just want to touch a little bit on a discussion we had in the Rules Committee yesterday about whether or not it makes any sense to have an open rule. There were a couple Members, one in particular, who said, This is no big deal because, after all, this bill passed last year overwhelmingly and it could have been done on suspension. And the argument that it is an equivalent to pass a bill on a suspension and to give it an open rule if it is likely to pass by an overwhelming majority is deeply flawed and misunderstands the legislative process, and I want to make sure that people have addressed this.

The important question on a bill may not be ``yes'' or ``no.'' There is a large number of bills that are going to pass. There are bills that are going to pass because politically they are perceived as impossible to oppose. There are bills

that achieve a purpose that everyone is for. In many cases, and it would appear to be the case with this bill, the important question is not whether or not it passes but in what form. That is, the amending process has a relevance and an importance, whether or not the bill is ultimately going to pass. And when you rely, as it was suggested yesterday that we should, on a suspension, as long as we know the bill is going to pass because, as Members understand, a suspension does not allow for the amendment process, then you are constricting the ability of Members to legislate sensibly.

The question is not just ``yes'' or ``no.'' That, as I said, is a denigration of the legislative process. And having an open rule, as opposed to a suspension, means a number of amendments are offered. I am opposing many of the amendments, as are my colleagues on the other side. I am not opposing all of the amendments. Even where an amendment is defeated, remember, our purpose is not simply to stamp out an end result. It is to participate in the democratic process of discussion and debate. The process is diminished when a bill that is important is given only 40 minutes with no amendments because it is noncontroversial. We will talk for more than 40 minutes today. We will have some amendments.

So I hope this will stand, this process today, as a repudiation of the notion that it is an equivalent to pass a bill under suspension of the rules, with no amendments and only 40 minutes of debate, and to go through this process of an open rule. Even though I expect this bill to pass overwhelmingly, as it passed last year, this House, this country, this democratic process benefit. And, of course, it is just one bill.

As a general rule, I would hope that we would not use the suspension process for bills that are complex where Members might have some difference of view not as to whether or not the bill should pass, but in what form it should pass. This process today, I think, will show the superiority of the choice we are making under the current leadership of the Congress to go ahead with a more open debate than last year when the question was simply can we get the votes to pass, and if so, let's shut down the debate and shut down the amendment process. That is ill- served democracy. Today is a much better way, and I thank the Rules Committee for it.

Mr. Speaker, I want to make clear the flaws in the reasoning we have just heard.

Equating a suspension of the rules procedure which allows only 40 minutes of debate and no amendments with an open rule simply because the final bill will get a large vote misunderstands, indeed, denigrates the democratic process.

The gentleman says this belongs on the suspension calendar. There are amendments offered, some I will support and will improve the bill; others that will not. But for one thing, why only 20 minutes of debate on each side on an important issue. When the gentleman says noncontroversial bills belong on the suspension calendar, he undervalues the process of debate and amendment. Very often the questions are not whether the bill will pass ultimately or not, but in what form. And let us be very clear, the suspension calendar eliminates amendments.

To say because a bill can ultimately pass with a large majority Members should not be given a chance on the floor to alter it or amend it seems to me to denigrate the process.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

I am reclaiming my time because the gentleman is evading the point he made. He is the one who said this should be suspension. He is the one who said suspension is where, if it is going to pass by a lot in the end, you don't need an open rule you can have suspension. He said we should put these noncontroversial bills back on the suspension calendar.

There are two separate sets of bills. There are bills that are going to be controversial in the end that you have to debate, and there are also bills that are controversial in part.

As far as the committee I chair is concerned, unlike the practice under the gentleman's chairmanship of the Rules Committee, we will be bringing out the bills from our committee that are controversial in all aspects open to amendment if I have anything to say about it, and I will fight for that. But that doesn't mean that you go for suspension and no amendments.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

I would just say to the gentleman that I intend to make the same request for openness this year from our committee that I did last year when he was in the majority. I am hoping for a better result this time.

If the gentleman would continue to yield, I am talking about the last year when the gentleman was on the Rules Committee and when the committee I was on brought forward amendments to the Rules Committee and offered amendments, the Rules Committee wouldn't allow us to vote on them on the floor.

Well, I am hoping for votes, not outrage.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that

all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 556, and insert into the Record extraneous material.

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

Last year the Bush administration made a grave error. A proposal came from the country of Dubai to buy a company that ran our ports. The response from the administration, and there was an intergovernmental committee called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. which Members will hear us abbreviating as CFIUS, should have said to Dubai, you know, we have found you to be a reasonable group of people, but you are in an area of the world where there is great tension, where there are violent, armed people who wish us ill. You will be subjected to great pressures. There will be efforts to infiltrate and there will be assaults on your integrity, and that makes us nervous about your controlling something as sensitive to security as ports. We have been worrying about the possibility of the shipping ports being entry ports for harmful activity.

So the people of Dubai should have been told, look, we mean you no ill, but we think it is a mistake for you to buy these ports. There are, I would have thought, many other investments I think they could have made.

Instead, incredibly, a series of people from the White House's various offices, from the Departments, did not see this coming; and in consequence, they gave an approval which led to an entirely predictable outcry in the country.

Our job, Mr. Chairman, is to prevent this great lapse in judgment by the Bush administration over the Dubai situation from leading to bad public policy that would extend to restricting and discouraging foreign direct investment in general.

Members should be very clear when we talk about foreign direct investment. All three words are important. We are not talking about buying equities and we are not talking about foreign countries holding our debt, which can be problematic. We are talking about foreign investors, mostly, in some cases government, but mostly private investors, taking money and investing it in real economic activity in the U.S. That is what direct investment means.

And that inevitably, not inevitably, that, in fact, will produce more economic activity here. It is very much in our interest as a Nation to have people investing in real economic activity. That creates jobs and that creates taxation for local governments and that creates the kind of economic activity that we thrive on.

The fear again was that others in other parts of the world, seeing the reaction to Dubai would say, you know what, we better not invest there.

One of the great assets America has economically is we are about as stable a place as there is in the world to invest your money. This is a problem. It is a problem for Russia. Russia is suffering I believe legitimately because of concern from people that if they invest in Russia their investments will not be as fully protected as they should be. The security legally and in every other way of money invested in the U.S. in direct ways is an asset for us. We do not want the political fallout from the Dubai mistake to discourage this.

What we then decided to do together, and while there was an earlier reference to this being a Republican bill, which I regret because this has been a genuinely bipartisan bill and that sort of partisanship doesn't help, the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney) who was then the ranking member on the relevant committee; the gentlewoman from Ohio, who is with us now who was Chair of that subcommittee; the minority whip, then the majority whip; myself; the former chairman of the committee, Mr. Oxley of Ohio, we all worked together to say, look, let us give a set of rules and procedures so that people with money in other countries who want to invest it in the U.S. in ways that will be beneficial to us can get some assurance that they can make that investment and not be buffeted politically.

People say, Look what happened to Dubai. First they got approval, and then it was withdrawn. We want to have a good process so that people can invest with assurance. People who are investing money need stability and certainty.

They also need a certain amount of privacy before the fact. One of the things that we jointly did was to reject efforts to expose potential investments to wide publicity and the political process at too early a stage. There is no point in scaring these things off.

Now it should be noted that entirely independent of this bill authority exists in the President of the United States, delegated as he chooses, to reject investments that would jeopardize our national security. There are also separate statutes that limit investment in particular parts of the economy. Some of those, I think, go too far. None of those are altered. In other words, this bill does not weaken any existing statutory protection against investment that might undermine our security.

What it says is that the great bulk of investments not only do not undermine our security, but add to our prosperity by providing more resources here within the country for good, beneficial, economic activity. We will have a process which gives you some assurance that you can go ahead with that investment. That is what this bill does.

There are some questions about it. There will be some amendments, but that is the core of the bill. It is in the interest of our economy. It protects national security even more than currently because it does have some procedures to require a kind of inspection that would have prevented, we believe, the Dubai mistake.

I should say that this bill is widely supported. We have worked closely with the administration. The Treasury has been very helpful, and they do not like everything in this bill, but on the other hand, I do not like everything in the Treasury. In fact, if you look at the great bulk of it, we are together on this, and this is a bill which the Treasury, I am pleased to say, and you can see in the statement of administration policy, regards this as an advance. They would like some changes, but they clearly regard this bill as an advance. A broad swath of the business community is in favor of it, and all should be in favor of it.

While there are controversial aspects of international policy, this is one that should not be controversial. This is one which welcomes foreign investors who want to take money and engage in real, beneficial, safe economic activity in the United States.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 6 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney), who was one of the major authors of this bill and has been a strong proponent of it to this time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute just to say, before I yield back, that there has been a debate about whether or not an open rule was controversial or not. I know in today's Wall Street Journal, there is an editorial grudgingly giving us some credit for moving on this. Essentially they are surprised that, given that we are Congress, we didn't do a lot worse.

But I will note that in the Wall Street Journal editorial this morning, there are two negative references to an open rule. It is clear from this that they are among those that did not want an open rule because they said they were afraid that protectionists in the House would ruin the bill.

So I do, again, want to note the idea that the open rule was somehow something of no particular consequence. This contradicted the Wall Street Journal in its editorial today, and I urge Members to read it. I am not going to put the whole thing in the Record because it takes some shots at some Members that I think are unfair. But I urge Members who think that this was some sort of a slam dunk to read the Wall Street Journal.

I am submitting the following jurisdictional correspondence on H.R. 566:

Committee on Foreign Affairs,

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC, February 23, 2007.

Hon. Barney Frank,

Chairman, Committee on Financial Services, Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Frank: I am writing to you concerning the

bill, H.R. 556, the National Security Foreign Investment

Reform and Strengthened Transparency Act of 2007. There are

certain provisions in the legislation which fall within the

Rule X jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Affairs,

including provisions relating to the Defense Production Act

of 1950, as it pertains to the Committee on Foreign

Investment in the United States.

In the interest of permitting your Committee to proceed

expeditiously to Floor consideration of this important bill,

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 bill, which fall within its

Rule X jurisdiction. I request that you urge the Speaker to

appoint Members of this Committee to any conference committee

which is named to consider any such provisions.

Please place this letter into the Committee report on H.R.

556 and into the Congressional Record during consideration of

the measure on the House Floor. Thank you for the cooperative

spirit in which you have worked regarding this matter and

others between our respective committees.

Cordially,

Tom Lantos,

Chairman.

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

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be printed in the Record and open to amendment at any point.

Mr. Chairman, I offer the manager's amendment to the bill.

Mr. Chairman, this is a compendium of amendments that came from some of our sister and fellow committees. The Chair and ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, the gentleman from Missouri, the gentleman from California, collaborated on some language. They, for instance, have noted that when we say periodic reports, that means not less than every 6 months. It also clarifies that CFIUS will report to any committee having jurisdiction over any aspect of the transaction, not just the named committees. And at the insistence of the gentleman from Missouri, which we agreed with, it says that if there are risk analysis performed by mitigation agreement, they will be performed by CFIUS.

The gentleman from Michigan, the Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, correctly pointed out that the bill had stricken a report from the Inspector General during our markup. He believed, and his committee believed this is important to reinsert, we agree, and it is reinserted. The gentleman from California, the chairman of the IR Foreign Affairs Committee, moved that we make the one-time report on how people deal with the Israel boycott an annual report, and that has been done. So these are seven amendments that we have incorporated, all of them recommended by three other committees of jurisdiction. They are supported on both sides. We believe they enhance the bill. And I hope they are adopted en banc as one amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, sometimes people get up in the legislative body and say, Mr. Chairman, I am opposed to this amendment because it is unnecessary.

It has been my experience that no one who says that is ever telling the truth. That is, no one opposes an amendment simply because it is unnecessary or superfluous or redundant.

Many us are lawyers. We are in the most redundancy-prone profession in the world. We rarely use one word where we can use two, lewd and lascivious, although I do not suggest that this amendment is either.

I say that because I do not think this amendment is necessary. I don't think it adds a great deal, and I support it. That is, it does not detract.

The reason I say that is I do not think that an administration that was cognizant of these elements would have excluded them. The only reason I rise to say that is this, and I hope we will adopt the amendment, but I wouldn't want us to set a precedent that if a factor was not specifically enumerated, it was not to be taken into account.

This enumerates factors that clearly should be taken into account, and I will therefore be supportive. I just want to make clear there is a Latin maxim, and my English does not always translate well over this microphone, so I won't try Latin, but it is when you specify one, you exclude the others. I just want to make clear that this is not a precedent for that.

The fact that we are specifically here singling these out, I am sure the gentleman from Iowa agrees, does not, in any way, denigrate the importance of other factors not mentioned.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. And I think what the gentleman from Georgia has offered is very constructive. He called this to my attention. I have discussed this with the ranking member. I certainly believe it improves the bill. He pointed out an instance where he as a Member in whose district an important transaction took place had taken initiative and come up with some information that was directly relevant that should have been shared. I regard Members as useful input sources here.

Now, again, let's understand. The way this is drafted and the gentleman agreed to offer it, no one can say that this is the kind of amendment that might jeopardize the investment. Nothing in here would in any way lead to an investment not going forward. This is postapproval. If there is disapproval, then the issue doesn't arise.

What this does is, and we have all agreed that it is important to be able to monitor these arrangements, it lets the Member of Congress in whose district a transaction took place join in the monitoring.

Frankly, I guess as the chairman of the committee, I get a lot of these reports. I want to tell the Members that the extent to which I am personally going to travel around to these areas and monitor this, I hope no one is relying heavily on that.

On the other hand, knowing that the Members in whose districts these are happening are available and then come and talk to me, talk to the ranking member and talk to others, I think that improves what we had in there. So I hope the amendment is adopted.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment and its siblings which are apparently to follow.

I gather, I guess, an open rule, we have had so few of them, people can't resist the temptation to take advantage of them, even on matters that are not relevant to the bill.

Now, there is a different between relevance and germaneness. You can make a bill germane with a certain amount of ingenuity, or an amendment. But ingenuity does not affect logic. It only affects parliamentary rules.

This is a requirement that the administration do a report about taxation as it affects business. It says, to be germane to this bill, that it should see how it affects the foreign businesses. But, in fact, no one thinks that foreign direct investment or foreign-owned businesses are differentially affected than others. This is a call for an annual report on the effective taxation on business.

Apparently the gentleman may think that the Council of Economic Advisors annual report doesn't do a very good job. It is the kind of subject that they are supposed to be talking about. It is an effort, I think, to introduce an ideological debate, which is an entirely legitimate one, into a bill that it really does not pertain to.

I can say we have worked closely with the administration. The Treasury, on behalf of the administration, is not supporting this. They have, in fact, been saying, please keep this to national security.

Now, national security, in the CFIUS context, is meant to be clearly defined. It is possible, of course, to say that everything is national security. Health is a matter of national security. Farm policy, agricultural policy is a matter of national security. But if you try to do everything, you often wind up not doing anything very well.

This is a narrowly targeted bill to talk about the extent to which foreign direct investment does or doesn't affect national security in a very specific definition of national security.

This amendment, and the following amendments, say, let's require the administration to do general reports on the effect of regulation, taxation, and something else, I don't remember what it was, on the economy. And it sort of bootstraps it into here.

It is not useful. It is a diversion. If Members think such a report ought to be done, then there are other fora in which to do it. To burden the CFIUS process with this would be a mistake, and I, therefore, hope that the amendment is defeated.

Will the gentlewoman yield to me for 30 seconds?

I would just say to the gentleman from Texas, yes, everything is connected to everything. Everything that rises must converge. But that does not mean that you don't try to deal with it before it has risen and converged.

The fact is that if you define everything as national security, you really can't do the piece by piece that you want to. And an inability to make those distinctions gets in the way of good public policy. This grew out the Dubai Ports situation. It grew out of a fear that things that were generally good for us economically might have an element that compromised national security narrowly defined, that they

might lead to physical or other kind of problems, espionage, terrorism. And it is an effort to try and harmonize those. It doesn't mean that taxation and health care and a whole range of other things, elementary and secondary education, aren't ultimately related to national security. It does mean that trying to use this specific bill, in which we try to make sure that what is our national economic interest doesn't impinge on national security, but trying to load everything into that gets in the way of the committee that is charged with it, which is why the Treasury doesn't support it, among others.

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

The gentleman said he is unable to differentiate. I agree. He asked why don't I want this information. Mr. Chairman, I want lunch too, but I am

not asking CFIUS to bring it to me. The question is not what I want. An intelligent, mature adult has a whole set of wants but differentiates, to use a word with which the gentleman said he had difficulty, in where and how you get them.

Yes, it is important to know what the effect of taxation is on the economy, and the Ways and Means Committee should be doing a lot of work on that. It is important to know about regulation. And our committee deals with regulation. Energy and Commerce deals with regulation. Other committees deal with regulation. The point is not that these things are not at some point useful, but whether a specific governmental entity, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which is being created for a very specific purpose, ought to be given the burden of doing all that.

We have a Council of Economic Advisers. It is charged with many of these duties. We have the Federal Reserve system. They, under the Humphrey-Hawkins bill, make a monetary report twice a year. It is not that you don't have the information.

Here is, again, the situation. As a result of the Dubai Ports, there was a fear that that reaction would discourage people, foreigners, from investing in the U.S. This has a very specific purpose: to create a system in which people can be reassured that foreign direct investment has no negative effect on national security. In the sense that the gentleman is talking about that, that is not relevant to this bill. No one thinks foreign direct investment unfairly affects the tax system or the regulatory system. The concern is that we might have foreign direct investment that would put foreigners not loyal to this country, perhaps even inimical to this country, in positions where they could do us damage, through espionage, through sabotage, through the planting of bombs. That is what this bill is about.

The gentleman said, Isn't taxation important? Of course it is. Climate change is important. Should they report on climate change? Nutrition is important. Education in the sciences is important. There are a whole lot of important issues. Burdening this particular intergovernmental committee, which has a very specific focus, with all of these other problems doesn't make any sense. That is why, as I said, it is not supported by administration. It is opposed by the business community. The business community would share many of the gentleman's views, many of them, on the specifics of taxation and regulation, but they don't want to dilute the mission of this very specific committee.

Now, in this particular bill, frankly, even in its own terms I have trouble understanding what the gentleman is getting at. He says we ``shall include a detailed discussion of factors . . . including trend information on the number of jobs'' that affect the filing. Now, unemployment, it is hard for me to understand how that affects the filing. Does the gentleman mean that if unemployment goes too low, foreign investors won't come to America because wage rates may go up? I mean, this is an important datum to have. We have this problem. We have annual reports, monthly reports on jobs.

The point we are making is that you should not, for whatever purpose, ideological or whatever else, inject this into this very specific, very important function. We want these people to thoroughly vet whether or not there is a purchase by foreign investors in America that could lead to national security issues in the narrow definition. That doesn't mean that there are not broader factors, such as, as I said, education and the environment and agricultural production, that affect national security. But this is not a bill on national security in general. It is a bill to say that we want very careful vetting of foreign direct investment to make sure that that in itself doesn't do negative things to national security.

There is broad agreement within the administration, within the business community, within our committee that that is an important function. The gentleman has broader purposes. I wish the jurisdiction of the committee encompassed that. We don't have jurisdiction over taxation.

I will yield.

Excuse me. Under the rules, I reclaim my time.

Mr. Chairman, I reclaim my time.

Mr. Chairman, I would say this. He is now focused on the issue. This is not about a bill about national security in general, and it is not a bill about anything that might discourage foreign investment. That is precisely the point. We want to focus on the extent to which the fear of the Dubai situation would discourage foreign investment.

There are other issues that might affect foreign investment. Currency. The gentleman didn't mention currency exchange rates. There are a whole number of things, environmental policies and other things, that might affect foreign investment. The gentleman has stated this is not a bill about whatever might affect foreign investment. We wouldn't have the jurisdiction and nobody in the administration wants to do that particularly. They want to focus specifically on national security. And what the gentleman would do would be to the move the focus on sabotage, espionage, terrorism, those very specific issues that call that forward.

There is room for honest disagreement, but to suggest that I in any way said jobs aren't important is simply silly. Of course jobs are important. A lot of things are important. The war in Iraq is important. Global warming is important. They don't all go in the same bill. The gentleman's inability to distinguish between what is important and what you try to accomplish in a specific piece of legislation is disappointing, although it does not quite reach the level of a threat to national security.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in opposition to the recommittal.

Mr. Speaker, this is fourth effort by the minority to get exactly the same thing voted on. Apparently, this strategy has become if at first you don't succeed, try, try, again and again and again.

I am disappointed at the poverty of their ability to obstruct. Now, here is where we are. We have a bill that is strongly supported by the administration and by the business community, their erstwhile allies.

We were asked by some on the Republican side and in the business community to get a closed rule, because they were afraid of irresponsible and silly amendments.

I rejected that request, and now I see, frankly, some people who asked me to support a closed rule voting for the amendments that came forward because we had an open rule. Apparently the motto of some of my Republican colleagues, when it comes to rules is, stop me before I obstruct again.

I don't intend to do that. I don't intend to protect you from your own worst impulses. After all, no one has protected me from mine.

We have a bill which says we do not want foreign investment which is good for this country, which is job producing and economically stimulative prevented by fears that unnecessary security interests will be raised. So we set up a policy, we set up a committee to vet proposals for foreign investment to make sure that there is no threat to national security and its very specific definition of terrorism, of espionage, of a transfer of information that might hurt us. This is to undo the damage that might have come from Dubai.

Apparently, the minority is dissatisfied because we are not somehow conforming to this stereotype of us. We have brought forward a responsible and balanced bill. We worked with Treasury. We worked with the business community.

They have decided now to expand the scope. What they have asked for, frankly, here, is a report from the committee that is charged with dealing with this very specific set of issues. Does a particular foreign direct investment impinge on national security?

They want to burden that committee over the objection of the Treasury Department, which does not like this recommit and did not like the amendment before that, the amendment before that, which all said the same thing.

They are trying to dilute the work of the committee by doing what? By asking for a report, for example, on hedge funds. Look at page 2. Let's have a report on the stability of the financial markets.

So instead of focusing their energies on whether or not a particular investment is a national security threat, this committee is supposed to give us a report on hedge funds and on derivatives, the stability of the financial markets. They are supposed to talk about nondiscriminatory treatment of entrepreneurs and the deleterious effect of burdensome regulation.

Of course, that is the right-wing premise that regulation is necessarily burdensome. There might, of course, be a conflict if you are going to talk about the deleterious effect of burdensome legislation, that might be in conflict with your ability to promote the stability to promote financial markets.

They don't belong in this bill. It is an effort to bring in right- wing ideological precepts into a bill that plays an important role. Now, I guess I regret their frustration that we haven't given them a better target to shoot at. But this proposal to take the Committee on Foreign Investments in the U.S. and turn it into the Federal Reserve Board and the Council of Economic Advisers, and God knows what else, will detract from the mission of that committee, make it harder for them to focus on national security, and serves no other purpose.

I would ask the Members for the fourth time to vote against the same issue. I would say to my Republican friends, I know you are not going to be worried about our time, I know you are not going to be worried about civility and comity, but could you take boredom into account.

The next time you are being obstructive, could you be a little creative, could you think of at least a couple of variations and could you not ask for the same vote four times. I have Members asleep over here because they are so bored for what you are doing.

I ask Members to rally themselves for one more ``no'' vote for the fourth time. I don't think there is any other means by which you can do it again, and let's then pass this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1066) to increase community development investments by depository institutions, and for other purposes.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1066.

It does occur to me on reflection that we should have asked the gentleman from Florida and the gentleman from Washington, Mr. Hastings and Mr. Hastings, to join in supporting this bill given its number. But in their absence, I will note that this is a bill that passed the House last year unanimously as part of a larger regulatory relief bill that came out of the Committee on Financial Services. It went to the Senate, and the Senate passed much of what we sent them but not all of it.

The Senate deleted some provisions. We, in the interest of getting some legislation through, accepted the Senate's proposal, and so much of what we sent originally did become law. Some pieces did not.

This is a piece that provides more flexibility for banks that are engaging in what is called, and it is a particular legal term here, public welfare investments. Banks are allowed to spend, invest up to 15 percent of their capital in what are called public welfare investments. This would allow that very good policy some more flexibility.

I would note, that, for instance, the Association of Affordable Housing Lenders, people who build subsidized housing, are in favor of this change. What it does is it broadens the definition. It doesn't change the 15 percent, but it gives more flexibility.

We have this situation where we do want these investments to be for the benefit of low and moderate income people. But it is one thing to say that they should generally be for the benefit of low and moderate income people, and another to strictly confine them to areas that have this direct benefit. What you do is you lose the flexibility we would like.

Mr. Speaker, I will include in the record at this point letters from John Reich, the Director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, and John Dugan, the Comptroller of the Currency.

Office of Thrift Supervision,

Department of the Treasury,

Washington, DC, February 23, 2007.

Hon. Barney Frank,

Chairman, Committee on Financial Services,

House of Representatives, Washington, D.C.

Hon. Spencer Bachus,

Ranking Member, Committee on Financial Services, House of

Representatives, Washington, D.C.

Dear Chairman Frank and Ranking Member Bachus: I am writing

to provide my support for H.R. 1066, the ``Depository

Institution Community Development Investment Enhancements

Act,'' legislation that you recently introduced and that I

understand will soon be considered by the House. H.R. 1066

will enhance the ability of savings associations to support

important public welfare initiatives. I encourage Congress to

take swift action on this bill.

Similar to Section 202 of H.R. 3505, the ``Financial

Services Regulatory Relief Act of 2005,'' which passed on a

bipartisan basis in the full House of Representatives and

H.R. 6062, the ``Community Development Investment

Enhancements Act of 2006,'' which also passed on a voice vote

by the full House, H.R. 1066 will enable savings associations

to support important community development programs.

Specifically, H.R. 1066 will increase the ability of

federal savings associations to make investments primarily

designed to promote the public welfare of low- and moderate-

income communities and families through the provision of

housing, services, and jobs. Your bill accomplishes this by

raising the limits on the ability of federal thrifts to

invest in entities primarily engaged in making these public

welfare investments.

Thank you for your leadership in sponsoring this important

legislation and your continued interest is this issue. I

applaud your efforts to remove barriers to the growth and

stability of low- and moderate-income communities and urge

immediate consideration of H.R. 1066. If you have any

questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or

Kevin Petrasic, Managing Director of External Affairs, at

2012-906-6452.

Respectifully yours,

John M. Reich,

Director.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 644) to facilitate the provision of assistance by the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the cleanup and economic redevelopment of brownfields.

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

Mr. Speaker, this is a bill to give more flexibility to our municipalities. They are allowed to use Community Development Block Grant funds for cleaning up brownfields.

By the way, I do want to comment for a minute on brownfields. We hear a great deal about public sector-private sector, and I believe that people have unwisely seen this as if there was an opposition. In fact, we need to cooperate, and I particularly here want to call attention to an aspect of this bill that is relevant to those who tend to see the private sector as the fountain of all benefits and the public sector as somehow a source of negative activity.

What we are doing here is giving local governments the right to use Federal money to clean up messes that were left behind by the private sector. Brownfields overwhelmingly are the result of industrial activity that was once profitable and no longer is. That doesn't mean that the people that did it were bad people, necessarily. It does mean given the change in economics, private sector entities walked away in many cases and left the public sector responsible for these cleanups.

What we are doing here is giving more flexibility to local communities so that they don't have to take out a section 108 loan, which can tie up their Community Development Block Grant funds for a long time. It does give in to local judgment.

I do want to note one very important point that the gentleman from Michigan, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, has stressed, and a point on which I am in complete agreement with him, namely that the funding flexibility here should be for brownfields, not for Superfund sites.

In the Superfund situation, we have provisions for those who polluted to have to pay in to cleaning up the messes they left behind. We do not want the brownfields money here to be used in any way to diminish that liability.

So I very much agree with the point that was made by the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell). In fact, when we sent this bill previously to the Senate, they removed the restriction that we had put in there that would have prevented this from happening, and we then would not pass the bill. We will send this again to the Senate and we hope they will accept that this is for brownfields, it is not for Superfund. It should be used in this very strict way so as to not become a substitute for private contributions that ought to be coming.

If we limit this to CDBG money for the brownfields situation, we will be doing it right. This bill is entitled the Brownfields Redevelopment Enhancement Act. We want moneys that are freed up here to be used only for that purpose.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), the chair of the Housing Subcommittee, from which this bill came.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to make any comments for the Record that they wish, and also to include extraneous material on H.R. 644 and H.R. 1066.

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

Madam Speaker, In accordance with clause 2(a)(2) of Rule XI of the Rules of the House of Representatives, I am reporting that the Committee on Financial Services adopted the following rules for the 110th Congress on January 31, 2007, and as amended on February 13, 2007, in open session, a quorum being present, and submit those rules for publication in the Congressional Record:

Rules of the Committee on Financial Services,

U.S. House of Representatives,

110th Congress,

First Session

Rule 1--General Provisions

(a) The rules of the House are the rules of the Committee

on Financial Services (hereinafter in these rules referred to

as the ``Committee'') and its subcommittees so far as

applicable, except that a motion to recess from day to day,

and a motion to dispense with the first reading (in full) of

a bill or resolution, if printed copies are available, are

privileged motions in the Committee and shall be considered

without debate. A proposed investigative or oversight report

shall be considered as read if it has been available to the

members of the Committee for at least 24 hours (excluding

Saturdays, Sundays, or legal holidays except when the House

is in session on such day).

(b) Each subcommittee is a part of the Committee, and is

subject to the authority and direction of the Committee and

to its rules so far as applicable.

(c) The provisions of clause 2 of rule XI of the Rules of

the House are incorporated by reference as the rules of the

Committee to the extent applicable.

Rule 2--Meetings

Calling of Meetings

(a)(l) The Committee shall regularly meet on the first

Tuesday of each month when the House is in session.

(2) A regular meeting of the Committee may be dispensed

with if, in the judgment of the Chairman of the Committee

(hereinafter in these rules referred to as the ``Chair''),

there is no need for the meeting.

(3) Additional regular meetings and hearings of the

Committee may be called by the Chair, in accordance with

clause 2(g)(3) of rule XI of the rules of the House.

(4) Special meetings shall be called and convened by the

Chair as provided in clause 2(c)(2) of rule XI of the Rules

of the House.

Notice for Meetings

(b)(l) The Chair shall notify each member of the Committee

of the agenda of each regular meeting of the Committee at

least two calendar days before the time of the meeting.

(2) The Chair shall provide to each member of the

Committee, at least two calendar days before the time of each

regular meeting for each measure or matter on the agenda a

copy of--

(A) the measure or materials relating to the matter in

question; and

(B) an explanation of the measure or matter to be

considered, which, in the case of an explanation of a bill,

resolution, or similar measure, shall include a summary of

the major provisions of the legislation, an explanation of

the relationship of the measure to present law, and a summary

of the need for the legislation.

(3) The agenda and materials required under this subsection

shall be provided to each member of the Committee at least

three calendar days before the time of the meeting where the

measure or matter to be considered was not approved for full

Committee consideration by a subcommittee of jurisdiction.

(4) The provisions of this subsection may be waived by a

two-thirds vote of the Committee, or by the Chair with the

concurrence of the ranking minority member.

Rule 3--Meeting and Hearing Procedures

In General

(a)(l) Meetings and hearings of the Committee shall be

called to order and presided over by the Chair or, in the

Chair's absence, by the member designated by the Chair as the

Vice Chair of the Committee, or by the ranking majority

member of the Committee present as Acting Chair.

(2) Meetings and hearings of the committee shall be open to

the public unless closed in accordance with clause 2(g) of

rule XI of the Rules of the House.

(3) Any meeting or hearing of the Committee that is open to

the public shall be open to coverage by television broadcast,

radio broadcast, and still photography in accordance with the

provisions of clause 4 of rule XI of the Rules of the House

(which are incorporated by reference as part of these rules).

Operation and use of any Committee operated broadcast system

shall be fair and nonpartisan and in accordance with clause

4(b) of rule XI and all other applicable rules of the

Committee and the House.

(4) Opening statements by members at the beginning of any

hearing or meeting of the Committee shall be limited to 5

minutes each for the Chair or ranking minority member, or

their respective designee, and 3 minutes each for all other

members.

(5) No person, other than a Member of Congress, Committee

staff, or an employee of a Member when that Member has an

amendment under consideration, may stand in or be seated at

the rostrum area of the Committee rooms unless the Chair

determines otherwise.

Quorum

(b)(l) For the purpose of taking testimony and receiving

evidence, two members of the Committee shall constitute a

quorum.

(2) A majority of the members of the Committee shall

constitute a quorum for the purposes of reporting any measure

or matter, of authorizing a subpoena, of closing a meeting or

hearing pursuant to clause 2(g) of rule XI of the rules of

the House (except as provided in clause 2(g)(2)(A) and (B))

or of releasing executive session material pursuant to clause

2(k)(7) of rule XI of the rules of the House.

(3) For the purpose of taking any action other than those

specified in paragraph (2) one-third of the members of the

Committee shall constitute a quorum.

Voting

(c)(l) No vote may be conducted on any measure or matter

pending before the Committee unless the requisite number of

members of the Committee is actually present for such

purpose.

(2) A record vote of the Committee shall be provided on any

question before the Committee upon the request of one-fifth

of the members present.

(3) No vote by any member of the Committee on any measure

or matter may be cast by proxy.

(4) In accordance with clause 2(e)(1)(B) of rule XI, a

record of the vote of each member of the Committee on each

record vote on any measure or matter before the Committee

shall be available for public inspection at the offices of

the Committee, and, with respect to any record vote on any

motion to report or on any amendment, shall be included in

the report of the Committee showing the total number of votes

cast for and against and the names of those members voting

for and against.

(5) Postponed record votes.--(A) Subject to subparagraph

(B), the Chairman may postpone further proceedings when a

record vote is ordered on the question of approving any

measure or matter or adopting an amendment. The Chairman may

resume proceedings on a postponed request at any time, but no

later than the next meeting day.

(B) In exercising postponement authority under subparagraph

(A), the Chairman shall take all reasonable steps necessary

to notify members on the resumption of proceedings on any

postponed record vote;

(C) When proceedings resume on a postponed question,

notwithstanding any intervening order for the previous

question, an underlying proposition shall remain subject to

further debate or amendment to the same extent as when the

question was postponed.

Hearing Procedures

(d)(1)(A) The Chair shall make public announcement of the

date, place, and subject matter of any committee hearing at

least one week before the commencement of the hearing, unless

the Chair, with the concurrence of the ranking minority

member, or the Committee by majority vote with a quorum

present for the transaction of business, determines there is

good cause to begin the hearing sooner, in which case the

Chair shall make the announcement at the earliest possible

date.

(B) Not less than three days before the commencement of a

hearing announced under this paragraph, the Chair shall

provide to the members of the Committee a concise summary of

the subject of the hearing, or, in the case of a hearing on a

measure or matter, a copy of the measure or materials

relating to the matter in question and a concise explanation

of the measure or matter to be considered.

(2) To the greatest extent practicable--

(A) each witness who is to appear before the Committee

shall file with the Committee two business days in advance of

the appearance sufficient copies (including a copy in

electronic form), as determined by the Chair, of a written

statement of proposed testimony and shall limit the oral

presentation to the Committee to brief summary thereof; and

(B) each witness appearing in a non-governmental capacity

shall include with the written statement of proposed

testimony a curriculum vitae and a disclosure of the amount

and source (by agency and program) of any Federal grant (or

subgrant thereof) or contract (or subcontract thereof)

received during the current fiscal year or either of the two

preceding fiscal years.

(3) The requirements of paragraph (2)(A) may be modified or

waived by the Chair when the Chair determines it to be in the

best interest of the Committee.

(4) The five-minute rule shall be observed in the

interrogation of witnesses before the Committee until each

member of the Committee has had an opportunity to question

the witnesses. No member shall be recognized for a second

period of 5 minutes to interrogate witnesses until each

member of the Committee present has been recognized once for

that purpose.

(5) Whenever any hearing is conducted by the Committee on

any measure or matter, the minority party members of the

Committee shall be entitled, upon the request of

a majority of them before the completion of the hearing, to

call witnesses with respect to that measure or matter during

at least one day of hearing thereon.

Subpoenas and Oaths

(e)(l) Pursuant to clause 2(m) of rule XI of the Rules of

the House, a subpoena may be authorized and issued by the

Committee or a subcommittee in the conduct of any

investigation or series of investigations or activities, only

when authorized by a majority of the members voting, a

majority being present, or pursuant to paragraph (2).

(2) The Chair, with the concurrence of the ranking minority

member, may authorize and issue subpoenas under such clause

during any period for which the House has adjourned for a

period in excess of 3 days when, in the opinion of the Chair,

authorization and issuance of the subpoena is necessary to

obtain the material or testimony set forth in the subpoena.

The Chair shall report to the members of the Committee on the

authorization and issuance of a subpoena during the recess

period as soon as practicable, but in no event later than one

week after service of such subpoena.

(3) Authorized subpoenas shall be signed by the Chair or by

any member designated by the Committee, and may be served by

any person designated by the Chair or such member.

(4) The Chair, or any member of the Committee designated by

the Chair, may administer oaths to witnesses before the

Committee.

Special Procedures

(f)(l)(A) Commemorative medals and coins.--It shall not be

in order for the Subcommittee on Domestic and International

Monetary Policy, Trade, and Technology to hold a hearing on

any commemorative medal or commemorative coin legislation

unless the legislation is cosponsored by at least two-thirds

of the members of the House.

(B) It shall not be in order for the subcommittee to

approve a bill or measure authorizing commemorative coins for

consideration by the full Committee which does not conform

with the mintage restrictions established by section 5112 of

title 31, United States Code.

(C) In considering legislation authorizing Congressional

gold medals, the subcommittee shall apply the following

standards--

(i) the recipient shall be a natural person;

(ii) the recipient shall have performed an achievement that

has an impact on American history and culture that is likely

to be recognized as a major achievement in the recipient's

field long after the achievement;

(iii) the recipient shall not have received a medal

previously for the same or substantially the same

achievement;

(iv) the recipient shall be living or, if deceased, shall

have been deceased for not less than 5 years and not more

than 25 years;

(v) the achievements were performed in the recipient's

field of endeavor, and represent either a lifetime of

continuous superior achievements or a single achievement so

significant that the recipient is recognized and acclaimed by

others in the same field, as evidenced by the recipient

having received the highest honors in the field.

(2) Testimony of certain officials.--

(A) Notwithstanding subsection (a)(4), when the Chair

announces a hearing of the Committee for the purpose of

receiving--

(i) testimony from the Chairman of the Federal Reserve

Board pursuant to section 2B of the Federal Reserve Act (12

U.S.C. 221 et seq.), or

(ii) testimony from the Chairman of the Federal Reserve

Board or a member of the President's cabinet at the

invitation of the Chair, the Chair may, in consultation with

the ranking minority member, limit the number and duration of

opening statements to be delivered at such hearing. The

limitation shall be included in the announcement made

pursuant to subsection (d)(l)(A), and shall provide that the

opening statements of all members of the Committee shall be

made a part of the hearing record.

(B) Notwithstanding subsection (a)(4), at any hearing of

the Committee for the purpose of receiving testimony (other

than testimony described in clause (i) or (ii) of

subparagraph (A)), the Chair may, in consultation with the

ranking minority member, limit the duration of opening

statements to ten minutes, to be divided between the Chair

and Chair of the pertinent subcommittee, or the Chair's

designee, and ten minutes, to be controlled by the ranking

minority member, or his designee. Following such time, the

duration for opening statements may be extended by either the

Chair or ranking minority member for an additional ten

minutes each, to be divided at the discretion of the Chair or

ranking minority member. The Chair shall provide that the

opening statements for all members of the Committee shall be

made a part of the hearing record.

(C) At any hearing of a subcommittee, the Chair of the

subcommittee may, in consultation with the ranking minority

member of the subcommittee, limit the duration of opening

statements to ten minutes, to be divided between the majority

and minority. Following such time, the duration for opening

statements may be extended by either the Chair of the

subcommittee or ranking minority member of the subcommittee

for an additional ten minutes each, to be divided at the

discretion of the Chair of the subcommittee or ranking

minority member of the subcommittee. The Chair of the

subcommittee shall ensure that opening statements for all

members be made part of the hearing record.

(D) If the Chair and ranking minority member acting jointly

determine that extraordinary circumstances exist

necessitating allowing members to make opening statements,

subparagraphs (B) or (C), as the case may be, shall not apply

to such hearing.

Rule 4--Procedures for Reporting Measures or Matters

(a) No measure or matter shall be reported from the

Committee unless a majority of the Committee is actually

present.

(b) The Chair of the Committee shall report or cause to be

reported promptly to the House any measure approved by the

Committee and take necessary steps to bring a matter to a

vote.

(c) The report of the Committee on a measure which has been

approved by the Committee shall be filed within seven

calendar days (exclusive of days on which the House is not in

session) after the day on which there has been flied with the

clerk of the Committee a written request, signed by a

majority of the members of the Committee, for the reporting

of that measure pursuant to the provisions of clause 2(b)(2)

of rule XIII of the Rules of the House.

(d) All reports printed by the Committee pursuant to a

legislative study or investigation and not approved by a

majority vote of the Committee shall contain the following

disclaimer on the cover of such report: ``This report has not

been officially adopted by the Committee on Financial

Services and may not necessarily reflect the views of its

Members.''

(e) The Chair is directed to offer a motion under clause 1

of rule XXII of the Rules of the House whenever the Chair

considers it appropriate.

Rule 5--Subcommittees

Establishment and Responsibilities of Subcommittees

(a)(1) There shall be 5 subcommittees of the Committee as

follows:

(A) Subcommittee on capital markets, insurance, and

government sponsored enterprises.--The jurisdiction of the

Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government

Sponsored Enterprises includes--

(i) securities, exchanges, and finance;

(ii) capital markets activities, including business capital

formation and venture capital;

(iii) activities involving futures, forwards, options, and

other types of derivative instruments;

(iv) the Securities and Exchange Commission;

(v) secondary market organizations for home mortgages,

including the Federal National Mortgage Association, the

Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, and the Federal

Agricultural Mortgage Corporation;

(vi) the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight;

(vii) the Federal Home Loan Banks;

(viii) the Federal Housing Finance Board;

(ix) terrorism risk insurance; and

(x) insurance generally.

(B) Subcommittee on domestic and international monetary

policy, trade, and technology.--The jurisdiction of the

Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy,

Trade, and Technology includes--

(i) financial aid to all sectors and elements within the

economy;

(ii) economic growth and stabilization;

(iii) defense production matters as contained in the

Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended;

(iv) domestic monetary policy, and agencies which directly

or indirectly affect domestic monetary policy, including the

effect of such policy and other financial actions on interest

rates, the allocation of credit, and the structure and

functioning of domestic financial institutions;

(v) coins, coinage, currency, and medals, including

commemorative coins and medals, proof and mint sets and other

special coins, the Coinage Act of 1965, gold and silver,

including the coinage thereof (but not the par value of

gold), gold medals, counterfeiting, currency denominations

and design. the distribution of coins, and the operations of

the Bureau of the Mint and the Bureau of Engraving and

Printing;

(vi) development of new or alternative forms of currency;

(vii) multilateral development lending institutions,

including activities of the National Advisory Council on

International Monetary and Financial Policies as related

thereto, and monetary and financial developments as they

relate to the activities and objectives of such institutions;

(viii) international trade, including but not limited to

the activities of the Export-Import Bank;

(ix) the International Monetary Fund, its permanent and

temporary agencies, and all matters related thereto; and

(x) international investment policies, both as they relate

to United States investments for trade purposes by citizens

of the United States and investments made by all foreign

entities in the United States.

(C) Subcommittee on financial institutions and consumer

credit.--The jurisdiction of the Subcommittee on Financial

Institutions and Consumer Credit includes--

(i) all agencies, including the Office of the Comptroller

of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation,

the Board of

Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal

Reserve System, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the

National Credit Union Administration, which directly or

indirectly exercise supervisory or regulatory authority in

connection with, or provide deposit insurance for, financial

institutions, and the establishment of interest rate ceilings

on deposits;

(ii) the chartering, branching, merger, acquisition,

consolidation, or conversion of financial institutions;

(iii) consumer credit, including the provision of consumer

credit by insurance companies, and further including those

matters in the Consumer Credit Protection Act dealing with

truth in lending, extortionate credit transactions,

restrictions on garnishments, fair credit reporting and the

use of credit information by credit bureaus and credit

providers, equal credit opportunity, debt collection

practices, and electronic funds transfers;

(iv) creditor remedies and debtor defenses, Federal aspects

of the Uniform Consumer Credit Code, credit and debit cards,

and the preemption of State usury laws;

(v) consumer access to financial services, including the

Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and the Community Reinvestment

Act;

(vi) the terms and rules of disclosure of financial

services, including the advertisement, promotion and pricing

of financial services, and availability of government check

cashing services;

(vii) deposit insurance; and

(viii) consumer access to savings accounts and checking

accounts in financial institutions, including lifeline

banking and other consumer accounts.

(D) Subcommittee on housing and community opportunity.--The

jurisdiction of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community

Opportunity includes--

(i) housing (except programs administered by the Department

of Veterans Affairs), including mortgage and loan insurance

pursuant to the National Housing Act; rural housing; housing

and homeless assistance programs; all activities of the

Government National Mortgage Association; private mortgage

insurance; housing construction and design and safety

standards; housing-related energy conservation; housing

research and demonstration programs; financial and technical

assistance for nonprofit housing sponsors; housing counseling

and technical assistance; regulation of the housing industry

(including landlord/tenant relations); and real estate

lending including regulation of settlement procedures;

(ii) community development and community and neighborhood

planning, training and research; national urban growth

policies; urban/rural research and technologies; and

regulation of interstate land sales;

(iii) government sponsored insurance programs, including

those offering protection against crime, fire, flood (and

related land use controls), earthquake and other natural

hazards, but not including terrorism risk insurance; and

(iv) the qualifications for and designation of Empowerment

Zones and Enterprise Communities (other than matters relating

to tax benefits).

(E) Subcommittee on oversight and investigations.--The

jurisdiction of the Subcommittee on Oversight and

Investigations includes--

(i) the oversight of all agencies, departments, programs,

and matters within the jurisdiction of the Committee,

including the development of recommendations with regard to

the necessity or desirability of enacting, changing, or

repealing any legislation within the jurisdiction of the

Committee, and for conducting investigations within such

jurisdiction; and

(ii) research and analysis regarding matters within the

jurisdiction of the Committee, including the impact or

probable impact of tax policies affecting matters within the

jurisdiction of the Committee.

(2) In addition, each such subcommittee shall have specific

responsibility for such other measures or matters as the

Chair refers to it.

(3) Each subcommittee of the Committee shall review and

study, on a continuing basis, the application,

administration, execution, and effectiveness of those laws,

or parts of laws, the subject matter of which is within its

general responsibility.

Referral of Measures and Matters to Subcommittees

(b)(l) The Chair shall regularly refer to one or more

subcommittees such measures and matters as the Chair deems

appropriate given its jurisdiction and responsibilities. In

making such a referral, the Chair may designate a

subcommittee of primary jurisdiction and subcommittees of

additional or sequential jurisdiction.

(2) All other measures or matters shall be subject to

consideration by the full Committee.

(3) In referring any measure or matter to a subcommittee,

the Chair may specify a date by which the subcommittee shall

report thereon to the Committee.

(4) The Committee by motion may discharge a subcommittee

from consideration of any measure or matter referred to a

subcommittee of the Committee.

Composition of Subcommittees

(c)(l) Members shall be elected to each subcommittee and to

the positions of chair and ranking minority member thereof,

in accordance with the rules of the respective party

caucuses. The Chair of the Committee shall designate a member

of the majority party on each subcommittee as its vice chair.

(2) The Chair and ranking minority member of the Committee

shall be ex officio members with voting privileges of each

subcommittee of which they are not assigned as members and

may be counted for purposes of establishing a quorum in such

subcommittees.

(3) The subcommittees shall be comprised as follows:

(A) The Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and

Government Sponsored Enterprises shall be comprised of 49

members, 26 elected by the majority caucus and 23 elected by

the minority caucus.

(B) The Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary

Policy, Trade, and Technology shall be comprised of 26

members, 14 elected by the majority caucus and 12 elected by

the minority caucus.

(C) The Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer

Credit shall be comprised of 47 members, 25 elected by the

majority caucus and 22 elected by the minority caucus.

(D) The Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity

shall be comprised of 26 members, 14 elected by the majority

caucus and 12 elected by the minority caucus.

(E) The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations shall

be comprised of 20 members, 11 elected by the majority caucus

and 9 elected by the minority caucus.

Subcommittee Meetings and Hearings

(d)(l) Each subcommittee of the Committee is authorized to

meet, hold hearings, receive testimony, mark up legislation,

and report to the full Committee on any measure or matter

referred to it, consistent with subsection (a).

(2) No subcommittee of the Committee may meet or hold a

hearing at the same time as a meeting or hearing of the

Committee.

(3) The chair of each subcommittee shall set hearing and

meeting dates only with the approval of the Chair with a view

toward assuring the availability of meeting rooms and

avoiding simultaneous scheduling of Committee and

subcommittee meetings or hearings.

Effect of a Vacancy

(e) Any vacancy in the membership of a subcommittee shall

not affect the power of the remaining members to execute the

functions of the subcommittee as long as the required quorum

is present.

Records

(f) Each subcommittee of the Committee shall provide the

full Committee with copies of such records of votes taken in

the subcommittee and such other records with respect to the

subcommittee as the Chair deems necessary for the Committee

to comply with all rules and regulations of the House.

Rule 6--Staff

In General

(a) (1) Except as provided in paragraph (2), the

professional and other staff of the Committee shall be

appointed, and may be removed by the Chair, and shall work

under the general supervision and direction of the Chair.

(2) All professional and other staff provided to the

minority party members of the Committee shall be appointed,

and may be removed, by the ranking minority member of the

Committee, and shall work under the general supervision and

direction of such member.

(3) It is intended that the skills and experience of all

members of the Committee staff be available to all members of

the Committee.

Subcommittee Staff

(b) From funds made available for the appointment of staff,

the Chair of the Committee shall, pursuant to clause 6(d) of

rule X of the Rules of the House, ensure that sufficient

staff is made available so that each subcommittee can carry

out its responsibilities under the rules of the Committee and

that the minority party is treated fairly in the appointment

of such staff.

Compensation of Staff

(c)(l) Except as provided in paragraph (2), the Chair shall

fix the compensation of all professional and other staff of

the Committee.

(2) The ranking minority member shall fix the compensation

of all professional and other staff provided to the minority

party members of the Committee.

Rule 7--Budget and Travel

Budget

(a)(l) The Chair, in consultation with other members of the

Committee, shall prepare for each Congress a budget providing

amounts for staff, necessary travel, investigation, and other

expenses of the Committee and its subcommittees.

(2) From the amount provided to the Committee in the

primary expense resolution adopted by the House of

Representatives, the Chair, after consultation with the

ranking minority member, shall designate an amount to be

under the direction of the ranking minority member for the

compensation of the minority staff, travel expenses of

minority members and staff, and minority office expenses. All

expenses of minority members and staff shall be paid for out

of the amount so set aside.

Travel

(b)(l) The Chair may authorize travel for any member and

any staff member of the Committee in connection with

activities or

subject matters under the general jurisdiction of the

Committee. Before such authorization is granted, there shall

be submitted to the Chair in writing the following:

(A) The purpose of the travel.

(B) The dates during which the travel is to occur.

(C) The names of the States or countries to be visited and

the length of time to be spent in each.

(D) The names of members and staff of the Committee for

whom the authorization is sought.

(2) Members and staff of the Committee shall make a written

report to the Chair on any travel they have conducted under

this subsection, including a description of their itinerary,

expenses, and activities, and of pertinent information gained

as a result of such travel.

(3) Members and staff of the Committee performing

authorized travel on official business shall be governed by

applicable laws, resolutions, and regulations of the House

and of the Committee on House Administration.

Rule 8--Committee Administration

Records

(a) (1) There shall be a transcript made of each regular

meeting and hearing of the Committee, and the transcript may

be printed if the Chair decides it is appropriate or if a

majority of the members of the Committee requests such

printing. Any such transcripts shall be a substantially

verbatim account of remarks actually made during the

proceedings, subject only to technical, grammatical, and

typographical corrections authorized by the person making the

remarks. Nothing in this paragraph shall be construed to

require that all such transcripts be subject to correction

and publication.

(2) The Committee shall keep a record of all actions of the

Committee and of its subcommittees. The record shall contain

all information required by clause 2(e)(1) of rule XI of the

Rules of the House and shall be available for public

inspection at reasonable times in the offices of the

Committee.

(3) All Committee hearings, records, data, charts, and

files shall be kept separate and distinct from the

congressional office records of the Chair, shall be the

property of the House, and all Members of the House shall

have access thereto as provided in clause 2(e)(2) of rule XI

of the Rules of the House.

(4) The records of the Committee at the National Archives

and Records Administration shall be made available for public

use in accordance with rule VII of the Rules of the House of

Representatives. The Chair shall notify the ranking minority

member of any decision, pursuant to clause 3(b)(3) or clause

4(b) of the rule, to withhold a record otherwise available,

and the matter shall be presented to the Committee for a

determination on written request of any member of the

Committee.

Committee Publications on the Internet

(b) To the maximum extent feasible, the Committee shall

make its publications available in electronic form.

Offered by Mr. Frank of Massachusetts

Amendment No. 3: Page 20, line 12, insert ``, conducted by

the Committee,'' after ``analysis''.

Page 22, line 17, strike ``provide periodic reports'' and

insert ``report, as appropriate but not less than once in

each 6-month period,''.

Page 23, line 23, strike the closing quotation marks and

the 2nd period.

Page 23, after line 23, insert the following new clause:

``(iii) Compliance.--The Committee shall develop and agree

upon methods for evaluating compliance with any agreement

entered into or condition imposed with respect to a covered

transaction that will allow the Committee to adequately

assure compliance without--

``(I) unnecessarily diverting Committee resources from

assessing any new covered transaction for which a written

notice has been filed pursuant to subsection (b)(1)(C), and

if necessary reaching a mitigation agreement with or imposing

a condition on a party to such covered transaction or any

covered transaction for which a review has been reopened for

any reason; or

``(II) placing unnecessary burdens on a party to a covered

transaction.''.

Page 25, line 6, insert ``, at a minimum,'' after

``including''.

Page 25, line 12, insert ``, or on compliance with a

mitigation agreement or condition imposed with respect to

such transaction,'' after ``covered transaction''.

Page 26, beginning on line 5, strike ``the Committee on

International Relations'' and insert ``, at a minimum, the

Committee on Foreign Affairs''.

Page 27, beginning on line 10, strike ``the Committee on

International Relations'' and insert ``, at a minimum, the

Committee on Foreign Affairs''.

Page 28, line 23, insert ``, including a discussion of the

methods the Committee and any lead departments or agencies

designated under subsection (l) are using to determine

compliance with such arrangements or conditions'' before the

period.

Page 30, line 21, insert ``and annually thereafter'' after

``of this Act''.

Page 31, line 13, strike ``completion of the study'' and

insert ``completion of each study''.

Page 31, line 21, insert ``described in paragraph (1)''

after ``to the study''.

Page 31, after line 24, insert the following new

subsection:

(d) Investigation by Inspector General.--

(1) In general.--The Inspector General of the Department of

the Treasury shall conduct an independent investigation to

determine all of the facts and circumstances concerning each

failure of the Department of the Treasury to make any report

to the Congress that was required under section 721(k) of the

Defense Production Act of 1950 (as in effect before the date

of the enactment of this Act).

(2) Report to the congress.--Before the end of the 270-day

period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act,

the Inspector General of the Department of the Treasury shall

submit a report to the chairman and ranking member of each

committee of the House of Representatives and the Senate with

jurisdiction over any aspect of the report, including, at a

minimum, the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Committee on

Financial Services, and the Committee on Energy and Commerce

of the House of Representatives, on the investigation under

paragraph (1) containing the findings and conclusions of the

Inspector General.

Mr. Speaker, we have just heard a great example of an important form of political debate. The Republicans specialize in this. It is kind of political necrophilia. There is this love of dead Democrats among many Republicans. Democrats who, when they were alive were trashed by the right wing, once they are dead and safely no longer possibly candidates for office, get lionized. Nothing of course shows that better than with Harry Truman, but it is John Kennedy, and it is others.

The assertion that the Democrats who are supporting this resolution, and the unspoken Republicans who will be joining with us, that we somehow oppose the use of force is terrible history. It is wrong. In fact, the most recent entirely successful use of military force by the United States came from a Democratic President, Bill Clinton--he's still alive, so don't say good things about him--and supported by Democrats in Congress, and it was opposed by many of the Republicans, including many of the current Republican leadership.

Under Bill Clinton, American military forces were used quite successfully; and the result is not perfection but a much better situation in the former Yugoslavia than we had before. And the Republicans brought forth, guess what, nonbinding resolutions.

Now, they pretend to be upset about nonbinding resolutions. Frankly, I was a little encouraged when I heard the Bush administration criticize nonbinding resolutions, because, up till now, I had thought that Bush and Cheney thought that everything we did was nonbinding with regard to national security. So they were at least implicitly conceding that some things can be binding.

But the fact is that the Democrats strongly supported--I didn't mean to make it partisan, they did--the effort in Yugoslavia over Republican opposition.

And then let's talk about terrorists. We were attacked in 9/11 from Afghanistan and overwhelmingly, with only one exception, Democrats in the House and Senate supported the war in Afghanistan. We are continuing to support that war in Afghanistan.

I am critical of an administration which has diverted military resources and energy and political resources from Afghanistan. They are weakening the number one fight against terrorism, which is in Afghanistan. And that is one of the reasons for opposing this war in Iraq.

Now, the war in Iraq has been, in my judgment, the greatest national security disaster in America history. And it isn't one in which we got sucked in and had to defend ourselves. It was an entirely voluntary error. This administration unwisely went into Iraq on inaccurate grounds; and not only did they make the wrong war, they have been disastrously wrong in virtually every decision. So the question now is, are we doing more good than harm to the causes we care about?

I believe, in fact, that fighting terrorism, fighting extremism, fighting that particularly radical fundamentalist form of Islam, not all Islam, obviously, by all means, that that is

weakened by our being in Iraq. It has clearly weakened our effort in Afghanistan. The commanders in Afghanistan beg for more troops, and instead they go uselessly to Iraq, uselessly not because of the lack of capacity of the fighting people but because they are condemned to fight in a very mistaken strategy.

It has emboldened radicals elsewhere. This administration predicted that our overthrowing Saddam Hussein would strengthen the forces of moderation. In fact, it has weakened them.

Let's remember that when America invaded Afghanistan with the overwhelming support of both parties and the united support of this country, we were popular in the world. We mobilized the world. And since that time came the invasion of Iraq. And because of the mistaken decision and the poor way in which it is carried out, I do not think there has been a time in recent history when America has been less able to accomplish in the world the things we want to accomplish.

So then the question is, okay, but isn't this escalation going to change that?

There is zero reason to think that. First, we are told this is what the administration says. If ever any group of people forfeited their right to be listened to, it is the collection of people who have shown an aggressive incompetence with regard to Iraq. Can anyone think of a single decision from the invasion forward that has been correct, that has been borne out by events?

So why do you take people who have been wrong about everything, wrong about the politics, wrong about the military situation, wrong about the economy, and then you say, oh, but this time we think they got it right. Maybe it is the theory of random occurrences, that people, having been wrong so often and so consistently, they are owed one. But that is not a basis on which we ought to be making a decision.

This war in Iraq continues to hurt rather than help our efforts overall. If I thought we were doing some good there, then it would be a different story. But the causes of the disaster, in addition to the rampant incompetence of this administration at virtually all levels, the cause of the disaster is internal, it is ethnic and political and a whole range of other things within Iraq. It is not a lack of American firepower.

So to try to resolve this disaster by taking the advice of people who created the disaster and have been wrong about it would be a terrible error, and I hope the resolution passes.

Will the gentleman yield to me 15 seconds to respond?

If the gentleman from California wants to claim Iraq as a success, he is entitled to do that. I must say that the initial victory was a very deceptive one, because it led to the current situation. But the biggest difference between us, I guess, is when he cites Lebanon as one of the successful ripples, as he says. In fact, the terrible tragedy that went on in Lebanon that was initially something that was promising, we have had that war with Hezbollah in control in Israel, I think Lebanon is a further sad example of the extent to which this misguided and badly run operation in Iraq has sadly strengthened the most radical and anti-American forces in the Middle East, not weaken them.

Does the gentleman consider Lebanon or Syria free today?

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Financial Services have until midnight on Friday, February 23, 2007 to file a report on H.R. 556.

Madam. Speaker, in the February 14 edition of Roll Call, one of the most accomplished authorities on the workings of Congress pays a heartfelt and well-deserved tribute to another authority on our workings--Nelson Polsby. Sadly, Nelson Polsby died recently. He was an extraordinary intellect, who paid this institution the enormous compliment of taking it very seriously and helping both the general public and those of us who serve here understand our workings. Norman Ornstein was a colleague of Nelson Polsby in this important work, and in today's edition of Roll Call, in a few short paragraphs, he does a great deal to capture the essence of Nelson Polsby and to help people understand why so many of us will miss him. Madam Speaker, self knowledge is always important, and I ask that Mr. Ornstein's words be inserted here, both in tribute to one of the great scholars of our time, and in the hope that Members of Congress will, if they have not already done so, discover the works of Nelson Polsby and learn from them.

A Friend Lost

Three topics of discussion this week beginning with this:

Congress lost a true friend and one of the all-time great

scholars of its history and dynamics last week with the death

of Nelson Polsby.

Polsby was a larger-than-life figure in every respect (The

Times in London, in its wonderful obituary, described him as

``a mountain of a man; he looked like an American footballer

gone to seed.'') His imposing physical presence was matched

by an even more imposing intellect. His tongue, and pen,

could be withering, but legions of students and colleagues,

me included, could not have a better friend and mentor.

Polsby's scholarship spanned many areas, but Congress was his

true love and the subject of his best work.

His article ``The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of

Representatives'' is among the most cited scholarly pieces

ever published in the American Political Science Review. His

last book, ``How Congress Evolves: Social Bases of

Institutional Change,'' is typically elegant and deep, a huge

contribution to the scholarly literature but written so that

a nonprofessional reader can learn mightily from its

insights. It is a must-read for every Member of Congress who

wants to understand his or her institution in a historical

and political context--which should be every Member of

Congress.

Madam Speaker, last week, several of my colleagues and I memorialized the life and record of the late Father Robert Drinan, one of the most distinguished people to have served in this body. Father Drinan's political career began in 1970 when he ran for Congress as an opponent of American participation in the Vietnam War. He was a consistent fighter for peace throughout his life. When I returned to my district last weekend, I received from Father Drinan's sister-in-law, Helen Drinan, a woman who played a very important role in nurturing his political career, a copy of a letter she had received that meant a great deal to her and the Drinan family.

The letter is from the Vietnamese Ambassador to the United States, hailing Father Drinan ``as a tenacious advocate for social justice and a resilient fighter for peace.'' Madam Speaker, I ask that this letter from the Government of Vietnam to the Drinan family be printed here.

Embassy of Vietnam,

Washington, DC, January 31, 2007.

Mrs. Helen Drinan,

Newton, MA.

Dear Mrs. Drinan, On behalf of the people and Government of

Vietnam, I would like to extend the most profound condolences

to you and to your family on the passing of your brother-in-

law, Father and Congressman Robert F. Drinan.

Father Robert F. Drinan will be always remembered by many

as a tenacious advocate for social justice and a resilient

fighter for peace. For the Vietnamese people, he will remain

a staunch fighter who made significant contribution to ending

to the Vietnam War in the 1970s, thus bringing peace to the

country after so many decades of wars.

May your family overcome this most difficult time.

Respectfully,

Nguyen Tam Chien,

Ambassador.