Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, around the world, the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively through a representative of their choosing, with their employer, over wages and benefits and conditions of employment, is recognized as an important human right and as a hallmark of democratic societies. But in the United States those rights have been under assault by some politicians and by some employers who want to turn the clock back three-quarters of a century.

When workers want to join a union here and bargain collectively with their employer, too many employers intentionally delay and delay, abusing the legal system to deny their employees the rights that we scold developing nations for denying their workers.

I rise in support of the proposed National Labor Relations Board rule to streamline and modernize union election procedures, an important and overdue step to restore fairness to our inefficient and outdated system that has allowed too many abuses. The new NLRB rule would speed up union elections, giving employers less opportunity to interfere illegally with organizing drives. The rule also allows smaller groups of workers to form unions.

Under the current NLRB system, employers willing to break the law have many opportunities to delay a union election, stretching out the time period when they can intimidate and coerce workers, all in violation of the law. The effect of this rule is to help workers exercise their free choice to join and be represented by a union without illegal interference.

Streamlining NLRB elections is a long overdue and small step to ensure workers the right to speak with one voice to a representative of their choosing.

But, Mr. Speaker, in the last week we have heard that Brian Hayes, the only Republican member of the NLRB board, NLRB, is threatening to resign specifically to deny the board the quorum to act under the law, to deny the board the quorum to perform the duties that the law places upon them. Republicans in this Congress have now tried to defund the NLRB to take away the NLRB's ability to impose sanctions on employers who violate the law, and now they are trying to shut the board down altogether by abusing the other body's advice and consent powers to block any new appointments to the board and by having a Republican member resign specifically to deny the necessary quorum to act.

Today, we are considering the so-called Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act; and despite that Orwellian name, the bill is designed to do the exact opposite. It is intended to deny workers the right to unionize without delay and litigation, to deny those rights through delay and litigation and by allowing employers to decide which employees, which workers get to vote on whether there is a union or not to stuff the ballot box, under this bill, to add new workers to the unit that will decide whether to have a union or not.

Under the bill there would be a waiting period, if there is an election dispute, whether it's well grounded or frivolous, a waiting period for preelection hearing, a waiting period for unions to receive the better contact list; and the only goal for that, for those waiting periods, is delay. The arbitrary waiting periods ensure that election will be delayed, and nowhere is there any assurance the election will really be held.

My Republican colleagues blame frivolous lawsuits for many of the ills of our country; but this bill would reward frivolous lawsuits by providing more time for employers to find fault, real or fabricated, with the election process; and by blocking the NLRB's current rule that would allow elections to move ahead before the complaints are resolved, this bill would allow employers to use litigation, frivolous or legitimate, to block elections.

Finally, this bill would allow employers to stuff the ballot box with a radical rewrite of our labor law so that the employer would decide which employees, which workers get to vote. They can add employees who were never engaged in the organizing drive, and they can keep the list of voters of the workers eligible to vote from those supporting a union until just before the election.

American workers deserve the same rights that we urge around the world for workers, the right to form a union, the right to speak with one voice and bargain with their employer so that our workers can win better wages and better benefits and rebuild the American middle class.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Speaker, this amendment will require a disclosure that if there are going to be unregulated solicitations, unregulated advertisements asking for investments in these companies, at the very least, the advertisement or the solicitations should reveal if they are to disclose if there is a compensation agreement with the executives or a golden parachute severance package and what those are so that investors won't find that they are buying into a company that, if it does make a profit, there are already contracts in place that will make sure all those profits go to the executives who are there and not to the investors.

We've heard all manner of glowing praise for the kinds of small businesses that might benefit from this bill. I think the gentleman from Illinois referred to these as gazelle companies.

Mr. Speaker, there has been a bad history of flim-flams that have taken investors' money. The reason that we have investor protections is not just because of the self-aggrandizing ambitions of regulators. It is because there has been a history of abuse, and that abuse discourages capital from coming. No one is going to want to invest when there have been well publicized examples of investors who put their money into unregulated companies like these, like what this bill would create and lost their entire investment because it all was grabbed by a handful of executives.

And these disclosures are even more important because these companies will not be subject to the say-on-pay rules under the financial reform legislation passed and signed into law just last year. And we've already seen from the experience on say-on-pay that there remain real abuses of executive compensation. Even though many companies have changed their practices and have made them more transparent because they are worried about putting their pay practices to a vote of the shareholders, they fear disapproval, and they've changed their practices.

But even with that, about 2 percent--which is actually a pretty big number--get turned down. And they all get turned down for pretty much the same reasons. There is no connection between pay and performance. There are poor pay practices, like long-term benefits without any kind of a performance measure. There are bonuses that were way too easy to achieve, that the bar was set very, very low. There are performance measures that make no sense or simply that there was poor disclosure of what the compensation was, or the compensation was simply too much for the size of the company and what others in the industry are paying.

These companies will not have say-on-pay. They will not get a chance to vote on executive compensation, and they might find that they have bought into a company that has pay practices already in place, executive compensation contracts, golden parachute contracts that really ensures that even if the company does prove to be profitable, they won't get the benefit of the profits. It will all go to the executives who are selling them investments, who are encouraging them to invest in those companies.

These are obviously very, very helpful disclosures. This is important information for investors, and honest small businesses should not hesitate in the least to provide it.

State of North Carolina, Department of the Secretary of

State,

November 3, 2011.

Re H.R. 2930--``Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act of 2011''

Hon. Melvin Watt,

Rayburn HOB,

Washington, DC.

Dear Representative Watt: I am writing to express my

concern with H.R. 2930, the Entrepreneur Access to Capital

Act, which could be voted on by the House this week. This

legislation, intended to promote an internet-based

fundraising technique known as ``crowd-funding'' as a tool

for investment, will preempt state investor protection laws

and weaken important investor protections.

Crowdfunding is an online money-raising strategy that began

as a way for the public to donate small amounts of money,

often through social networking websites, to help artists,

musicians, filmmakers and other creative people finance their

projects. The concept has recently been suggested as a way of

assisting small businesses and start-ups looking for

investment capital to get their business ventures off the

ground.

Soliciting charitable donations from strangers online to

advance a goal or cause is one thing. Selling shares in a

business online to strangers who expect to realize a

potential return on their investment is something very

different.

H.R. 2930 contains a preemption provision that would

prohibit my agency from requiring the filing or disclosure of

information about these investment opportunities before they

are offered to the public in my state. I believe enacting

this preemption would be a serious mistake because, based on

our previous experience, many of the crowdfunding

opportunities will be targeted at Mom and Pop retail

investors. The authority to require filings is critical to my

office's ability to ``get under the hood'' of an offering to

make sure that it really is what it says it is.

I appreciate efforts by Congressman Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) to

work with the bill's sponsor to produce a bipartisan

amendment that would alleviate the states' concern with the

preemptive provisions of H.R. 2930. Unfortunately, the

Perlmutter-McHenry Amendment made in order by the Rules

Committee on November 2 does not achieve this goal. Indeed,

by simply clarifying that states ``retain jurisdiction . . .

to investigate and bring enforcement actions with respect to

fraud or deceit,'' the amendment essentially restates the

preemptive provisions as they existed in the original bill.

H.R. 2930 may he well intended. but I am concerned that it

could create serious enforcement challenges and potentially

open the door to the possibility of significant increases in

investment fraud. Small businesses are vital to job growth

and to improving the economy in our state, but by displacing

significant safeguards currently provided by the crucial role

of state securities regulators. Congress could enact policies

intended to strengthen the economy that have precisely the

opposite effect.

As North Carolina's top investor protection official, I

urge you not to support H.R. 2930 in its current form. I

understand the North American Securities Administrators

Association (NASAA), of which I am a member, is already hard

at work on a state level model rule on crowdfunding that

would preserve a state's ability to prevent scam artists from

using crowdfunding offerings as the latest method for ripping

off Main Street investors. I urge you to remove the state

preemption section from the bill.

Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

Please don't hesitate to contact me if I may be of any

assistance, or if you or your staff have questions regarding

the legislation in question.

Sincerely,

Elaine F. Marshall,

Secretary of State.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Madam Chair, exempting this funding source from SEC regulation is not all this bill does. It also prohibits the States from doing anything. This is not a case where the proponents of the bill are saying, let's not let the Federal Government do this; let's let the States do this. They say, no, the States can't touch it at all.

The people of the various States, using their right to vote, can't decide that in their State they want someone looking at what is being offered to mom-and-pop investors to make sure that they're not getting flim-flammed. That is a great deal of the investor protections that we've had in this country. It has been done at the State level, and this takes those cops off the beat altogether.

So if you think that the people of the States should be able to exercise their own judgment about whether they want their States looking at what is being offered to mom-and-pop investors, you should vote against this bill.

Will the gentleman yield?

Yes, that has to do with enforcement. But the bill prohibits the States from having up-front disclosure requirements so that a Secretary of State--who is typically the securities law enforcer in most States--can look at it, require disclosure, look at what the disclosures are, look at what is being offered is really what is there. Yes, the bill does, thanks to the gentleman from Colorado's good work----

If the gentleman will yield, did the gentleman not get a letter dated November 3, 2011, from Elaine Marshall saying what you just said isn't right?

Mr. Speaker, we have honored the Army's Buffalo Soldiers and the Army's Tuskegee Airmen. It's time to give the Montford Point Marines the honor that is their due.

The Montford Point Marines fought an enemy abroad and injustice at home. They served with great valor and distinction and loved their country more than their country loved them at the time. President Roosevelt ordered in 1941 that the Marine Corps be opened to African Americans, but the Marines considered themselves the most elite branch of our military and the most traditional, and many resented Roosevelt's order that African Americans be accepted.

The first African American marines were hardly welcomed with open arms. Their segregated unit was stationed at Montford Point, North Carolina. They were near Camp Lejeune, but the Montford Point Marines could not enter Camp Lejeune except in the company of a white officer. They were passed over for years for promotions that white marines achieved in weeks. When they trained with white marines, which was rare, they waited until white marines had eaten before they went through the chow lines.

The Montford Point Marines were sent to the Pacific theater to serve behind the lines, not in combat for which they were presumed to be unsuited. No one told the Japanese. The Montford Point Marines served in Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, three of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific. They came under intense fire and showed great courage, winning the praise of skeptical white officers.

President Truman fully integrated the Armed Forces in 1948, and African American marines served side by side with white marines in Korea and in every conflict since then. The distinguished service of the Montford Point Marines largely made that possible.

General Amos, the commandant of the Marines, said he wants every marine, from private to general, to know the history of the marines who fought an enemy overseas, and racism and segregation in their own country.

I want every marine and every American to know that history. Semper Fi.

I also disagree with the gentleman who just spoke. The reason that all of the Republicans want to talk about whether the commission ought to be five members on a commission or one director is that's the only part of the bill that really can be argued one way or the other. I mean, there are arguments one way or the other. I think it will be a much stronger agency if there is one director, but everything else in the bill really cripples this agency before it can even take hold.

And I also disagree with the argument that everybody here wants to protect consumers. No, they do not. We saw what happened in the last decade, we know who was doing it. It was the most powerful industry in America, and they were making a ton of money by cheating consumers, cheating consumers on credit cards, cheating consumers on mortgages, cheating consumers on overdraft fees, and on and on. And we've heard the same arguments about this that we heard a century ago. A century ago, when Theodore Roosevelt pushed for pure food laws, the meat packers said, do you want government to take away your right to buy meat? Do you want government to take away your freedom to buy beef from diseased animals or spoiled beef? And the American people said yeah, that's exactly what we want. We want to know what we're getting. And Americans want to know what they're getting in financial products too.

Do they want to lose the freedom to get a subprime loan when they qualify for a prime loan? Yes, they do. Do they want to have a credit card, to know what they are getting in a credit card? Yes, they do. Do they want to know what's really in their overdraft fees? Yes, they do. They want to know that there is somebody with their interests at heart who is reading all that fine print that the banks' lawyers wrote to be good for the banks, profitable for the banks, and let the consumer have no idea what's in that little print in the legalese. Yes, they want someone, a strong agency reading that fine print with their interests at heart and saying, no, you can't do that; you can't cheat consumers that way. That's what this agency does, and the American people want it.

Mr. Chairman, I know that the Republicans' political consultants have said that they need to argue because Americans really do like this agency that is huge and that has dictatorial powers and unchecked accountability. The problem with that argument is that it is completely untrue.

This agency has all of the oversight, more than every other agency has. Before they adopt a rule, they have to let everyone know they're thinking about adopting a rule; they have to take public comment; then they have to propose the rule; then they have to take more public comment. After all that, they can then be taken to court. If the rule is arbitrary and capricious and if there is no evidence to support it, it can be overturned by a court.

There is ample protection in the law already. We do not need the additional check of having the regulators, the supposed watchdogs who did such an abysmal job in the last decade, having a veto over everything they do. There are protections enough already.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, it is simply not true that we all here want to protect consumers; we just have an honest disagreement about the best way to do it.

This bill really cripples the ability of the CFPB to be an effective watchdog for consumers. And the way that it does it, probably the most harmful part of the bill, is the veto power, the greater veto power it gives the Financial Services Oversight Council and the way that that council has to exercise that veto.

Here is what the CFPB has to do to pass a rule in the first place. First of all, they cannot require any financial institution to do anything. They can't say, You have to give people this mortgage or this credit card contract. They can just forbid. They can say, You can't use this contract, this mortgage, this credit card contract because this cheats people. They cannot require; they can only forbid.

And before they forbid, before they pass a rule that says, You can't do that because it cheats people, it abuses people, they have got to consider all the benefits to the consumers that might come from that, as well as to the financial institutions that offer it. They've got to consider whether it really reduces the ability of consumers to get credit, and they've got to consider the effect on the financial institutions, and they've got to consult with all the other regulators whose business it is to make sure that the financial institutions don't go broke. And then they've got to publish it. They've got to let people comment. They've got to build evidence. And if they don't have support for the rule, it can be turned over by a court.

But even before it goes to a court, it goes to this panel, this Financial Stability Oversight Council, and it can be vetoed if they decide that it threatens the stability of the financial system or the safety and soundness of the banking system.

This bill changes it and says, not just that they can overturn it, but they have to overturn if it threatens the safety and the soundness of financial institutions; in other words, if it would make specific banks go broke.

Some banks, I agree with what the gentleman from Wisconsin has said repeatedly, most small banks, most credit unions have had honest business practices. But there are some sleazy ones out there, and we saw what they did in the last decade.

Under the bill, as it is written, if one of those banks comes forward and says, Unless we can do this sleazy thing, we're going to go out of business, the Financial Stability Oversight Council has to disallow it if it would put them out of business.

Mr. Chairman, some of those banks, some of those sleazy, scuzzy banks need to be out of business. If the only way they can stay in business is by cheating consumers, they should be out of business. But this bill would not allow that to happen. A consumer protection rule could not go into effect if it put specific banks out of business. That's an enormous change, and it cripples the ability of the CFPB to be an effective watchdog for consumers.

What this amendment does is, if any one of those prudential regulators, those watchdogs that are supposed to make sure the banks don't go broke is going to challenge any rule of the CFPB, they have got to say exactly how they think it would threaten the safety and soundness of the financial institutions, make a bank go broke, and they've got to say who they are, who is this rule going to put out of business. Because the American people are entitled to know if this agency, this FSOC, the Financial Stability Oversight Council, is acting on behalf of the American people and on behalf of the consumers or if they are protecting sleazy banks that stay in business whose whole business model is cheating consumers.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, one of the changes that doesn't sound like it does much but really does is when you change the word ``may'' to ``shall.'' Not only can this FSOC overturn a rule when they think it might affect the safety and soundness of the system, they have to overturn it. They have to overturn it if they think it's going to put a specific bank out of business. That's not a small change. That's not a high standard. That is a very low standard, and it is one that completely cripples the bill.

I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I claim time in opposition.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Himes).

Sometimes it really is helpful, when you want to amend the law, to read the law. This amendment is almost completely redundant, and where it is not redundant, it is annoyingly pointless.

This is what the law already requires:

Before the CFPB can adopt a rule, it has to consider the potential benefits and costs to consumers and to the financial industry. It has to consider the impact of the rule. It has to consider whether it constricts credit, whether it makes it harder for small businesses or individuals--households--to get credit. All this amendment would require is already in the bill.

The CFPB's rulemaking requires that they give notice that they're going to consider a rule, and then they've got to take comment. Then they've got to propose a rule, and then they've got to take comment again. They know that, if anybody is against it, they've got to be prepared to defend it in court, and they've got to show that they developed the evidence that supports the rule and supports what the benefits are and what the costs are and whether it keeps people from getting credit.

What this amendment would also do is to make the CFPB prepare this report when nobody is against it, when everybody is perfectly fine with it, when it doesn't hurt anybody, when it doesn't bother anybody. It's minor. It's procedural. It would still require this silly, pointless report for a rule that nobody is against.

I understand that most Members do not want to make government unwieldy and filled with red tape. This amendment would just make government more unwieldy and filled with more red tape. So I oppose the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is similar to others that we have heard today.

This amendment would reduce the Fossil Energy Research and Development account by $24.018 million, and will put as much of that money as our rules will allow into the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment.

The bill now is $5.9 billion less than the administration's request and is more than $1 billion less than last year's funding. Fossil energy is a glaring exception to the austerity visited upon every other kind of energy research, but the Fossil Energy program gets an increase of $24 million above what the administration requested and $32 million more than last year's levels.

This amendment would reduce that account, Fossil Energy, to the level of the administration's request, and will put as much money as possible back into energy efficiency and renewable energy research, which now gets a $331 million cut, or more than 25 percent, more than a quarter.

Mr. Chairman, I agree that we need to be doing fossil energy research. It is more than 70 percent of our energy now, and it will be the bulk of our energy supply for the foreseeable future. We do need an abundant and clean supply of fossil energy, but it's hard to look at the spending levels in this bill and not see some hypocrisy at work.

I am the ranking Democrat on the Energy and Environment Subcommittee, and I have heard again and again in committee hearing after committee hearing and in subcommittee hearing after subcommittee hearing the same stale talking point that it is not the place of the Federal Government to pick energy winners and losers and that taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize the development of alternative fuels.

Just last week, in a hearing in the committee, one of my Republican colleagues on the committee said we should promote an all-of-the-above approach--oil, nuclear, coal, natural gas. Heck, I'm okay with wind, solar, water, biofuels and everything else you can think of as long as it isn't subsidized by the American taxpayer. And we've heard that same talking point again and again today.

The subsidy, the help with funding for research that the alternative energy now gets, is tiny in comparison to what traditional energy sources--fossil fuel and nuclear--have gotten for a long time. And if Republicans are now pushing alternative energy and energy efficiency technologies away from the public trough, it is so they can make more room for fossil fuels and nuclear.

Of course those traditional industries have been subsidized right along, and they continue to be subsidized in this bill today. Taxpayers subsidize it, in addition to this little bit of research funding, with very significant tax incentives--the subject of discussions over at Blair House the last few weeks, and we've heard there is no budging on that. And we know that those industries fully expect, if disaster strikes, if there is a massive oil spill or, God forbid, a nuclear accident, they won't really have to pay the cost. They will get help with that; they will get bailed out.

We are not talking about basic early-stage research here; that's somewhere else in the bill. This is all late-stage applied research. But in the case of alternative energies, we have fledgling industries, economically vulnerable industries that have some ways to go to get to the marketplace before they can turn a profit. And on the other hand, we've got an industry that is 70 percent of our current energy supply. They're up and running, they're in good shape, they're fabulously profitable.

The top five oil and gas companies made $32 billion in profits in the first quarter--the first quarter, $32 billion, 3 months. To that industry Republicans say, belly on up to the public trough, boys; we'll make room for you.

The energy research that we're talking about in the EER&E is wind, solar, biomass, water--on and on. You know what they are. We need to make some of those technologies work, or we are not going to have enough energy in the future. And in the shorter term, they promised healthy competition for the fossil fuel industry to bring down the cost of energy for Americans.

It's hard, in fact, to look at the hostility of Republicans to those industries, to those emerging energy technologies and think a big part of their hostility is not at the bidding of the fossil fuel industry to smother that competition in the crib.

I urge adoption of this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

I am, in its current form.

The consideration of this bill has been bipartisan to this point, and that certainly does not need to change now. This motion to recommit does not really send it back to committee. It certainly doesn't kill it. It is consistent with the spirit of the bill. This is simply the last amendment and should be considered in the same bipartisan way all the other amendments have been considered.

Mr. Speaker, our future prosperity does depend upon our being the most innovative country in the world, the most innovative economy in the world. American scientists and American engineers are doing great work. We are doing some of the most advanced, sophisticated research in the world. For instance, we lead the world in solar cell research. We are making some of the greatest breakthroughs in that technology. Much of it is funded by the Department of Energy or by other Federal research programs. But 80 percent of the manufacturing of solar cells is being done in Asia, mostly in China.

What is happening is that firms are getting Federal funds to do research to improve solar cell technology. They're developing advanced technology, but when the time comes to manufacture a product coming out of that research, those firms are contracting with Chinese manufacturers to make the products. That is just one example of companies that are doing research here but manufacturing somewhere else when American workers need good manufacturing jobs.

Mr. Speaker, the benefit of innovation should not just be higher profits for American corporations. The benefit should be good jobs for American workers. Under this motion to recommit, those companies will still get their patents, but they don't go to the front of the line. The people who go to the front of the line are those who will pledge that they will do their manufacturing here in the United States, creating good jobs for American workers.

Second, we all know that there are countries in the world that don't really respect American patent rights and that don't treat American inventors fairly when they try to get patents in those countries. This motion to recommit will still allow those inventors, people from those countries, to get patents. We will treat them better than their countries treat American inventors. But they go to the back of the line. They do not get priority when it comes time to have their patents considered.

Help American workers share in the prosperity that comes from American innovation from our research, from our innovation. Support this motion to recommit.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

I rise to oppose the nonsensical pending amendment and the underlying bill, although the underlying bill doesn't really do all that, but most of all to disagree with the remarks of the gentleman from Kentucky just now, and from other remarks like that, that what the Republicans have done is not going to affect the people on Medicare now or the people who are older than 55, 55 and older.

What it does, in fact, is shift more and more of the cost of health care to people who cannot afford it so that the richest Americans will not have to pay taxes. They will cut taxes for the richest Americans by even more, and they will protect insurance company profits and the profits of everyone else in the health care field who are making vulgar profits that are causing American health care to be twice as expensive as health care anywhere else in the developed world.

The arguments and what the Republican Congress has done in these last few months have made very clear how cynically dishonest everything Republicans said about health care in the last 2 years really was, especially about Medicare.

When Democrats really did find a way to get control of costs without affecting the quality, the availability of care, the access to care, the quality of care, all Republicans would say, even when it was specifically and narrowly targeted at fraud, they said that we were cutting Medicare. Now we see what they really think about Medicare. Now we see how little they really do understand how important Medicare is to the financial security of older Americans, of Americans in retirement.

They say it will not affect you if you are over 55; if you are 55 or older. Well, I just turned 58. It is nice to know that Republicans care that much about me; but let me tell you, that is not the way it is going to work.

Well, when I turn 65, I'll qualify for Medicare. Presumably, I'll get Medicare. My 96-year-old mother, who I also did visit this weekend, will get Medicare. I feel pretty confident she'll get Medicare for the rest of her life and that, when I turn 65, I'll get Medicare. For the guy who is 53 now, which is just 5 years younger than I am, at 60 he'll be paying taxes for my Medicare, and he won't be getting it. He'll never get it. What he will get instead is a coupon, a voucher. He'll get an allowance to go buy private insurance, and private insurance is simply not going to pay for what Medicare pays for. It's going to be far more expensive.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that in just 10 years those folks will have to pay 60 percent of their own health care costs if this plan goes through, what they call a ``path to prosperity,'' which should be called the ``path to insurance company profits.'' In 20 years, it will be two-thirds of their health care costs. They'll be paying for it. They'll also be paying taxes. Working Americans, people who are still in the workforce, will be paying taxes so that I get Medicare, and they know that's not the deal they're getting. The deal they'll be getting is that little voucher, that puny little voucher, that puts them at the mercy of insurance companies.

Now, Republicans thrive on resentment. All of Republican politics seems to be built around resentment. I don't want to have a Nation so filled with resentment between generations. Ms. Edwards spoke just a moment ago about the contract between generations, that just as our parents took care of us in our childhoods, we will take care of our parents and their generation when they retire. We'll take care of them with our Social Security taxes and our Medicare taxes. They will get those benefits. Yet under the Republican plan, the path to insurance company profits, they won't get Medicare. They'll get that little voucher.

How long is that going to go on before that resentment builds up? How long is that going to go on before the people who are paying the taxes for it and who know they'll never get it are going to say, No, no more of this. We have got to change this?

Madam Chair, what we want is for all Americans to get the same deal. We want the people who are 65 and the people who are 96 to get the same deal, the people who are 70 to get the same deal, the people who are 58 to get the same deal, the people who are 50 and 30 to get the same deal. If this Congress is willing to control costs, even though that means limiting the profits of some of the people who are getting really rich from our dysfunctional health care system, we can do that.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose this bill, but I do so with mixed feelings because I have been one of the critics of the HAMP program.

The members of the majority have pointed out correctly that this program has been widely criticized for more than 2 years. It has been criticized by the congressional oversight panel, by the SIGTARP (Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program), by La Raza, by Elizabeth Warren, and, yes, by me. But I have not criticized it for the reasons that the gentleman from Alabama gave. If this bill is keeping a promise, it is not a promise made in open to the American people, it is keeping a promise made in secret to the banks, because the costs of this program are not going to come out of the pockets of the American people. This comes out of the TARP program. That legislation said that any money not recovered by 2013 has to be recovered from the financial industry, and whoever's present in 2013 has to propose to Congress exactly how it is we're going to get that money back.

They can afford it. Thirty percent of all corporate profits are in the financial sector. They can more than afford it.

The gentleman from Alabama frequently says that he hates visiting debt on his grandchildren, and I believe him when he says it, but I have good news for him. Unless his grandchildren take a job on Wall Street in the next 2 years, they are not going to have to pay this debt. This debt, if Congress does keep its promise to the American people, will not come from the American people. It will come from Wall Street. It will come from the people who created the mess that we are now trying to clean up.

But I have criticized this program because it is not as effective as it should be. It has gone on for 2 years. It is not what we need. The problem, however, has not been what government has made banks do. This program has been run by the banks. It has not been run by the government. It has been run by the banks. Every horror story about a homeowner's being abused is being abused by a bank, the bank handling the mortgage, not by the Department of the Treasury, not by the Federal Government.

So, of course, when they come to see a Republican Member of Congress, the Republican Member of Congress says, ``Oh, isn't it terrible what the Federal Government made that poor bank do to you.'' No, the Federal Government didn't make the banks do that.

My criticism of this program and my criticism of the Obama administration in how they have run this program is not that they've made banks do what they've done, but they have let banks do what they've done. This program can work if there are some tough rules that are really enforced, tough on the banks.

The gentleman from Massachusetts mentioned earlier the bankruptcy proposal 3 years ago. I introduced that bill. I have been trying to put rules, requirements, on the banks that they let people out, that they try to begin to let people out in a very orderly, logical, fair way, through judges, through a judicial process, to begin to get control of the collapse of the housing market.

Something has got to happen to stop the continuing fall of housing values. Something has got to happen to end the cycle of foreclosures and diminished home values and more foreclosures. Republicans have offered nothing to do that. We know something can work. We know that we can design a program that will work, because it has been done before.

In the New Deal, one of the most successful programs in the New Deal was the Home Owners' Loan Corporation which bought mortgages, modified them, worked with homeowners, tailored the mortgages to something the homeowner could buy for those homeowners who really could afford a house, the house that they were in but not the mortgage that they had, and most historians say that program saved the housing market in the Great Depression and saved the middle class.

We have got to make something work. There are rules on the horizon. There is now a pending settlement negotiation for the violations of law by the banks in how they've managed mortgages. It is with States attorneys general and it is with the Federal regulatory agencies. Some on the Republican side have publicly pressured the Federal agencies to lay off the banks. I really cannot tell much difference between what they are doing in the pressure they are putting on banks and the regulatory agents in an enforcement matter and what happened a generation ago with the Keating Five. But they're doing it. They're saying, ``Lay off our buddies the banks. Don't come down too hard on them.'' But there is a real possibility the result of that settlement will be some tough rules, and there is now rule-making authority. There is now a cop on the block. The CFPB has the authority to develop rules for banks in how they manage mortgages.

But something has to work. This has not been working. It can be fixed. It has to be fixed. Something has to work.

Mr. Chair, I seek to offer the amendment as the designee of Mr. Inslee of Washington.

Mr. Chairman, first I want to assure the gentleman from Texas that if he's worried about the debt burden that children being born today face, with respect to this program, unless one of those children takes a job on Wall Street within the next two years, like the talking baby in the ETrade ads, they really are not going to have to pay for this program. This program is going to come from the financial sector. That was a promise made in the TARP legislation; and unless they plan to break that promise, and I'm beginning to get the feeling that they are, this is not going to be a cost borne by innocent taxpayers, but by the industry that created the mess.

Now, many people have criticized the TARP program, including me. The Congressional Oversight Panel has; the Special Investigator, Inspector General for the TARP program; yes, a lot of people have criticized the program.

Unlike Republicans, a lot of us have been trying to figure out a way to make it work. I have offered several suggestions.

I have criticized it continuously for 2 years and said what we should be doing instead, and on what we should be doing instead there has been a deafening silence from Republicans.

We know we can do something. We know we have to do something. The foreclosures and the drop in home values are grinding down the middle class. The value they have in their home, the equity they have in their home is the bulk of their life savings. So when their home goes down in value, their life savings go away. We have got to get control of this. We know we can make something work because we have the tool. One of the most successful programs in the New Deal got control of the foreclosure crisis then, and the Federal Government made a profit from the program.

And there is reason to think that there will be real rules, real enforceable rules soon. There are settlement talks pending on enforcement action by States Attorney Generals and by the Federal agencies for the violations of law by the biggest banks that handled most of these mortgages, which Republicans have opposed; and there are rules in the offing from the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which they have also proposed, something that really will make this work.

Mr. Inslee's amendment is much the same. It requires a pullback, a hard look at the program and what will make it work, what are the guidelines that need to make it work, what are the standards that need to make it work, and requires that those suggested changes be implemented in the program.

I urge adoption of the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I want to reassure Americans that it is not true that no problem ever gets fixed in Washington. Ten years ago, the debate here in Congress was what to do with the surplus. In fact, we paid off $400 billion of the debt; and Alan Greenspan, who was then the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, worried that we would pay off the national debt too quickly and it might be unsettling to the economy. Mr. Chairman, if there is one problem that got solved in the past decade, it is that problem: the problem of paying off the national debt too quickly.

My party can claim none of the credit for that. It was a Republican President and a Republican Congress. I must admit that I don't like what they did to solve that problem of paying off the national debt too quickly. They gave tax cuts to America's top one-tenth of 1 percent, Americans making more than $2,340,000, and we saw just a couple of months ago that that was one thing that was absolutely nonnegotiable for them. They would give up everything before they would let those Americans have to pay any more in taxes.

When there was a proposal to expand Medicare to take care of prescription drugs, something I supported generally, Republicans in Congress passed a bill that was not paid for, as other programs like that had been paid for, and was a giveaway to the insurance industry and to the prescription drug industry. So when they are giving tax cuts to the very, very richest Americans, the richest of the rich, when they are giving away taxpayer money to the insurance companies and to the prescription drug industry, the drug industry, they don't worry about deficits at all. It is only when Democrats take the Presidency, and particularly in the last 2 years when we have been dealing with the worst recession since the Great Depression and have been trying to pull the country out of a nosedive, that they have suddenly become worried about the deficits and criticized everything that we have done to try to save the country from the disaster that we inherited.

It is only the programs that help working and middle class families that seem to give them a problem, like this one. Now, we have been on the case of subprime lending and its effects for a long time. I introduced legislation in 2004 to rein in subprime lending, not a bit of help from Republicans. Mr. Watt and I introduced that bill. It was Miller-Watt. Two years later, it became Miller-Watt-Frank. We have been on this case.

The gentleman from Alabama said in committee the other day, Show me a way to deal with this problem that doesn't cost taxpayer money. I did that in 2007. I introduced a bill that bankruptcy lawyers and judges have said was one way to deal with the problem, let bankruptcy judges modify mortgages in bankruptcy the same way they modify all other kinds of secured debt; no support from Republicans at all, and the opposition Republicans killed that.

I urged the Federal agencies that set rules for the banks to require they treat people better than they have been treating them when they manage their mortgages, no help from Republicans at all. Just yesterday, the Federal agencies in charge of the banks' conduct and the States' attorneys general have been pushing them, the banks, to impose fines for violating the law in how they handle foreclosures.

Several Republicans sent a letter yesterday to the Secretary of the Treasury protesting that Federal agencies were being too mean to the banks.

I thought most politicians learned during the Keating Five that your office does not give you the right to give your political buddies, your contributors, a get-out-of-jail-free card, but that appears to be what they're willing to do when it's the banking industry that is complaining about it. It is not true that this problem of foreclosures is just affecting a handful of Americans.

We are in a cycle of foreclosures leading to the reduced value of homes, more Americans underwater, and when people are underwater, they've seen their life savings disappear. More Americans underwater, more foreclosures, and on and on.

We have got to put a bottom on the housing market. We know this can work. This program is very similar to a program in the New Deal that did work, the Homeowners Loan Corporation. It turned a profit--a slight profit, but a profit--saved the middle class, and saved the housing industry. We need to do something. Republicans have offered nothing.

Thank you, and thank you for organizing this Special Order tonight to talk about an issue that we should not turn our attention from because we need to remember how we got here if we're going to figure out how to get out and how to make sure we don't get here again. This has been the worst economy since the Great Depression, and we need to make sure that the mistakes that got us here are mistakes we avoid in the future.

Our colleagues across the aisle have said the great issue in American politics now is between those who want big government and those who want small government.

The real issue is which side government is on; and for too long, government has not been on the side of working and middle class families who are trying to make an honest living, who are trying to support themselves, support their families, do the right thing, do something useful with their lives. Government has been on the side of people who were trying to make a killing by getting themselves into a position where they can take advantage of the economy, where they can extract money, they can loot the economy, is what economists called rent-seeking, doing nothing particularly useful, but just taking a piece of other people's productive work.

There has been a lot of gloating in the last little bit about how successful the financial rescue has been, and by many measures it has been. The banks have not actually collapsed; the financial system didn't collapse. We did not have a Great Depression, as painful as this has been, but the financial collapse and the rescue profoundly offended Americans' sense of justice, and it offended my sense of justice.

What led to the financial collapse was not some perfect storm of unforeseeable macroeconomic forces and this weird combination of events that no one could possibly have seen. It really was the result, as the FCIC report concluded, it was not just preventable; it was the result of blame-worthy conduct that we should never have allowed to happen.

I first got involved in this issue, not knowing it would result eventually in a financial crisis, through working on the issue of mortgages, knowing that the mortgages were terrible for consumers, for homeowners. And the way that they had been portrayed, as a good-faith effort by the financial system to try to make home ownership available to people who could not otherwise afford it, was completely different from what was really going on with subprime mortgages.

There was an explosive growth of subprime mortgages. They grew from 8 percent of all mortgages in 2003 to 28 percent in 2006. That is enormous growth in just 3 short years. And they certainly were not about helping people buy homes who otherwise could not have afforded home ownership.

In fact, every study that has looked at it has concluded the great majority of people who got subprime loans qualified for prime loans. They got cheated. They got steered into loans that obviously were not in their interest. They weren't about helping people into home ownership.

In fact, subprime was almost entirely a creature of refinances. Seventy percent, even during that 2003 to 2006 period, 70 percent were refinances. People already owned their homes, but they needed to borrow money. Some of them lived beyond their means, there is no doubt about it. Some of them were using the equity in their home as an ATM machine. But the fact is for the last generation the means of middle class families have not been enough. Americans, as the economy has grown, as the Nation has prospered, that prosperity has not been widely shared as it has been in the past.

And so when Americans got into trouble, when they needed to borrow money from somewhere, when someone in the family got sick, when someone lost their job, when they went through a divorce, when they needed to borrow

money, the only way they could borrow money was to borrow it against their home, to refinance their home. Seventy percent of subprime loans were refinances. And again, the great majority, The Wall Street Journal estimated 55 percent, most of the other estimates have been more than that, were people who qualified for prime mortgages.

Ninety percent were not fixed rate, 30-year mortgages. They had a quick reset after just 2 or 3 years. So they were 2/28s or 3/27s. Most people who got those loans did not even know that. They did not know that the initial mortgage payment that they had to make, monthly payment, was going to be subject to a very quick increase. And the increase after just a couple of years was generally 30 to 50 percent a month. To get out of the mortgage, the great, great majority had to pay a prepayment penalty, usually like 3 percent of the outstanding balance of the mortgage.

Now, those were not mortgages that were designed to help middle class families. Those were mortgages designed to take the equity in their home, to strip them of the equity of their home as house prices were going up. There was never any thought that they really would be able to pay off those mortgages over the course of 30 years and then invite their friends and family over to have a ceremony where they would burn their mortgages, as earlier generations of Americans had done. They were mortgages that had the effect of trapping people in debt and taking from them the equity in their home and making sure that that ended up in the pockets of the financial sector, not in the pockets of the middle class families.

Other practices in that last decade that should never have happened, overdraft fees. Now, overdraft fees serve a useful purpose. In another generation, we used the criminal laws to prosecute people who wrote bad checks. There are a lot of perfectly honest folks who got themselves in just a little bit of trouble, or didn't balance their checkbooks, who ended up with prosecutions for writing bad checks. But overdraft fees became a source of profit for banks. A typical overdraft fee would be 40 bucks. The biggest banks actually developed what was called ``fee harvesting software.''

If you had an overdraft agreement, and you had one unless you specifically asked not to have one, and you went to an ATM machine and you asked for your balance, it wouldn't actually tell how much you had in your account. It would say ``funds available.'' That meant how much your balance was plus what they would allow in overdraft fees.

And they would run the bills through in a way that would maximize your overdraft fees. So if you were like a lot of people and you got to the end of the month and there was more month than there was paycheck, and you went to the ATM, and you had a hundred bucks in your account, and you went to the ATM machine and you took out 20, and then you took out another 20, and then you made a $20 purchase, and then another $20 purchase with your debit card, and then maybe a $15 purchase, and then you wrote a $100 check or a $105 check, the banks would put the $105 check through first, putting you over your limit, charging you a $40 overdraft fee on that and the 20, the 20, the 20, the 20, and the 15. Now, that's just crooked. And that was legal.

Ms. Speier, my colleague from California, has pointed out the lack of prosecutions. But perhaps the greatest scandal of this financial crisis is what was legal; not that illegality was blinked at, but what was legal in all of this.

We have now passed legislation that should reform much of this, but we have to stick to it to make sure that those reforms are enforced, they are given meaning, and that the regulators do not fall into that tendency to be controlled by the people they are supposed to be looking after. They are supposed to be the cop on the block, and they have to exercise independent judgment on behalf of the American people.

We need to make sure these reforms work because we cannot allow what happened in the last decade. It truly offended Americans' sense of justice, that the people who caused it have come out unscathed. Not only have they not been criminally prosecuted, but they are now back to making the same kind of bonuses they made before. And the people who have suffered, suffered the most, are the working and middle class families who got trapped in those mortgages, or who lost their jobs, or even people who had good mortgages have now seen the value of their homes collapse. And with the loss of the value of their home, one in four people with mortgages now are underwater, owe more on their home than their home is worth.

With that, they have seen the loss of their life savings. That is the life savings for most middle class families, the equity in their home. So of course people have a knot in their stomach. They have a knot in their stomach about whether they're going to keep their jobs. They have a knot in their stomach over what they really own in the world when they have seen the value of their home collapse in the way that it has.

So I thank the gentlelady from California for organizing this Special Order so that we can call attention again to the kind of misconduct, the kind of corrupt, rent-seeking looting of the economy that we have seen in the last decade that got us to where we are.

I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Will Rogers, who is responsible for many of my favorite quotes, that in the New Deal, even after the financial collapse, even after the stock market collapse and the revelation of all of the conduct that had led to that stock market collapse, the securities industry fought tooth and nail. Wall Street fought tooth and nail the regulation of the securities markets, the stock markets.

Will Rogers said, ``The boys on Wall Street don't want a cop on their block.'' Well, they still don't. They still do not want someone standing between them and the kinds of profits that they made in the last decade.

Thank you very much. I think we all struggle with what phrase to use to describe the people that have been hurt by this. I think we use the words, the phrase working and middle class families, sometimes we say ordinary people. Sometimes we say regular people. But the phrase that keeps coming to me is people who are trying to make an honest living.

And I think my model for that was my own parents. I am a child of the middle class. My father worked for the post office. He managed, at the end of his life, he worked for the post office almost all of his life, almost all of his working life. He died in 1965. At the end of his life, when I was 12, he was a manager of a neighborhood branch of the post office.

After that I saw my mother support me on her own as a widow, when I was 12 forward. I remember my law school graduation, my mother trembling. I thought that she was overcome with pride since my generation was the first in our family to go to college. She later admitted to my sister that she had actually, after my father died, prayed that if her youngest, me, could just get through school, He could take her at any time. So she was expecting to be struck down at any moment and was trying to negotiate a new deal with God.

I am deeply offended by the suggestion that my parents, both of whom were public employees, my father worked for the post office, my mother was a bookkeeper for the local school system, were not making a contribution to society, that they were taking, that they were takers and not givers. I saw how hard they worked to do right by me and to do right by the people who were paying their salaries.

I am deeply offended by the arguments that public employees are people who are taking from our society and not giving back. The idea that they are takers, and the people who came up with this stuff, are the ones doing something useful to society, that they are the ones who are making a valuable contribution, offends me deeply.

I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chair, I want to congratulate the gentlelady from Missouri for an acrobatic defense of the continuing resolution's treatment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is not about whether government should be big or small. It's about which side government should be on.

The CR, the continuing resolution, does not save a penny from the deficit because the money for the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, comes from a separate source of funding. This is really about hobbling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to keep it from getting up and running and doing its job.

The CFPB is to put government on the side of Americans who are trying to make an honest living so they don't have to worry every time they sign a financial contract that they're going to

get gouged, they're going to get cheated out of their income and their life savings by some trick or trap, some dishonest little clause hidden in the fine print of the legalese written by the banks' lawyers.

The CFPB will set rules to make sure those contracts are honest, and it will enforce those rules. And it has not started yet, so it's a little early to criticize them for not getting the job done.

The CR, by cutting funding by half, or a little more than half, is really about putting government or continuing to have government, as it has been for most of the last decade, on the side of the financial predators who are not trying to make an honest living but who are trying to make a killing and succeeding in making a killing by cheating ordinary Americans with the fine print. And they cheated them on mortgages, on credit cards, on overdraft fees, and on and on, and every American knows it because just about every American has experienced it.

Now, in talking about the FCC earlier, Ms. Waters and Mr. Green both used the term ``cop on Wall Street.'' They didn't attribute that phrase, but it's from Will Rogers.

Back in the Great Depression, even after we learned of all the corruption and the fraud that had led to the collapse, the stock market crash, when Congress was considering legislation, a bill, a law that would have set rules for Wall Street and given the Securities and Exchange Commission the power to enforce it, the securities industry fought it fiercely because, as Will Rogers said, the boys on Wall Street don't want a cop on their block. Of course they don't want a cop on their block. They will make less money. They don't want a cop on their block now either. They don't want a CFPB now either, because if their contracts have to be honest, they will make less money.

Vote to put government on the side of the Americans trying to make an honest living. Vote to put a cop on the Wall Street block. Vote for this amendment.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Missouri.

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

I yield back.

Madam Chairman, I have heard Mr. Price's arguments before. So I've talked to a lot of people about whether they really valued the freedom to be cheated on credit cards, to be cheated on mortgages, to be cheated on overdraft fees, and I found that that was not really a freedom that they valued; and, in fact, they didn't really believe that was the reason the financial industry was opposing consumer protection legislation. They thought that the reason the financial industry was opposing the legislation was so they could make more money and keep up by cheating people, which was not something they wanted any more than Americans a hundred years ago really valued the right to buy rancid beef, as the meatpackers argued a century ago. They were opposing pure food legislation so they could protect the right of people to buy rancid beef. Americans don't believe it.

I asked the president of the American Bankers Association in committee if he could give me the names of some of the people who qualified for prime mortgages but got a subprime mortgage, or someone who really wanted to have a credit card contract that required them to continue to pay interest on a balance even after they had paid off the balance. He said that was a rhetorical question and he didn't have to answer it; it was just a rhetorical question.

But I mean it. If somebody can tell me someone who qualified for a prime mortgage and instead asked for, wanted, chose a subprime mortgage, introduce them to me. If there's someone who actually wanted a credit card contract that required them to pay interest on the balance even after they paid off the balance, introduce them to me. I want to understand that consumer choice, because I have been assuming all along the reason they entered those contracts that were so hideous to them is they got cheated.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose this bill and the priorities and the values it represents.

Republicans repeat like robots the same talking points we have heard again and again tonight, that to get our debt under control, middle class families are going to have to suck it up. We face tough choices, harsh choices; but really there is no choice. We are going to have to cut public education drastically, along with Head Start for the children who otherwise would start kindergarten too far behind to ever catch up; job training for workers who have lost their jobs; Pell Grants so middle class kids can afford a college education; research at the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy, and on and on.

Mr. Chairman, we do have choices. We have this deficit because of choices we have made. Just a decade ago, the debate here was what to do with the surplus. Alan Greenspan, who was then the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, worried that it might unsettle the economy if we paid off the national debt too quickly. President Clinton urged that we use the surplus to shore up Social Security and Medicare so that my generation could live in dignity when we retire.

A Republican President and a Republican Congress decided instead to cut taxes sharply for the richest of the rich. The deficit we face now is because of that choice, and we saw just 2 months ago that protecting those tax cuts for the richest of the rich, even Americans making more than $1 million a year, was their first priority. So despite all of the weeping and wailing, the gnashing of teeth, the rending of garments about the deficit now, just 2 months ago they said not a word about the deficit when they were voting to cut taxes, to explode the deficit by cutting taxes on the very richest Americans.

So now Congress is voting to kick 200,000 kids out of Head Start so that Americans who worked and strived to be conceived to the right parents will pay little in inheritance taxes.

Now Congress is voting to fire 17,000 teachers and special educators so Americans making more than $1 million a year will not have to pay the income taxes that they paid in the nineties, which was hardly a confiscatory rate.

And much of the bill obviously has nothing to do with saving money or whether the government is too big or too small. It is about whose side the government is on. This bill cuts drastically the funding needed to protect middle class families from the gouging that has lurked in the legalese, the fine

print of financial contracts, the tricks and the traps written by banks' lawyers. That cut has nothing to do with saving money. It is all about putting government on the side of financial predators, not on the side of hardworking honest Americans trying to make an honest living.

We have seen clusters of rare cancers and birth defects that we know are the result of an environmental exposure to something, and this bill devastates environmental protection. Middle class children are facing life with lower IQs because of unchecked environmental exposure so polluters can have bigger profits and CEOs can reward themselves with bigger bonuses.

Many of my colleagues have argued that this bill is penny wise and pound foolish, it is shortsighted and will hurt the economy. All of that is true. But I am most disturbed that this bill represents values that are incompatible with values that I learned at my mother's knee, the values of generations of Americans, the values of the faith traditions of most Americans, including me, the values that have been the glue that has held our country together in tough times. I will vote ``no.''

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak against this bill.

Even before the recession, my State of North Carolina was losing one wave of jobs after another in our traditional industries, and we have needed the energy and the job creation that comes from small business-- from people leaving jobs, whether they jump or are pushed, and starting their own businesses. Half the American economy, our gross domestic product, is generated by small business. Even more importantly, small businesses create 75 percent of new jobs.

By providing access to State high-risk pools and an insurance market for individuals, the health care reform bill passed last year will make it possible for American workers to start their own businesses without worrying they are going to lose health care for themselves or for their families.

I do know firsthand what it is like as a small business owner to buy health insurance for employees. It is one of the greatest frustrations--trying to find something affordable and trying to figure out what you really bought, and you're not going to know until one of your employees gets sick or gets hurt.

This bill, the bill passed last year--this legislation--will make it affordable. It will provide tax credits of 35 percent for small businesses to provide health insurance, and that is going to go up to 50 percent. That will increase health care coverage by more than 12 percent amongst small business owners. Even more importantly, they're going to know what they've got. It is going to be insurance that really covers what it ought to cover. It is not going to be filled with small- print exceptions of one kind of care after another, one condition after another. Employees are going to get the care they need.

Reform has freed people who want to start a business to do it without worrying about what kind of shape it's going to leave them in and their family members in.

I urge my colleagues to vote against this bill, which will put those small businesses back into uncertain land.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6191) to amend the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 to include certain construction and land development loans in the definition of small business lending.

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

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, this bill amends the Small Business Lending Fund legislation that the President signed just yesterday. The bill is identical to a House amendment that passed 418-3 but was left out of the other body's version of the legislation for reasons that surpass understanding.

This bill, like the amendment, adds land acquisition and construction loans to the loans that qualify for the Small Business Lending Fund. The sad truth is that in many--really, most--parts of the country this bill will not have a lot of effect right away. Under the SBLF, community banks are on the hook if they make loans that don't get paid back, and they're going to steer clear of acquisition, development, and construction loans for home building until the demand for new housing improves.

Around the country, there is an enormous inventory of existing homes, on or off the market. Because so much of the foolishness that led to the financial crisis was connected to housing, the housing sector of our economy remains very sick and won't get well right away. There are millions of foreclosed homes and homes destined for foreclosure. Mr. Speaker, I wish everyone in Washington felt the urgency that I feel about fixing that problem.

But there are markets now that have a demand for new homes and home builders cannot get credit, ordinary loans, because of pressure from regulators on the smaller banks not to make real estate loans, not to make dirt loans.

That indiscriminate refusal to lend for residential construction is killing jobs. We've lost 3 million jobs in the last 5 years in home construction and related industries. The jobs we've lost

are jobs for the working man and woman: carpenters, plumbers, electricians, masons, painters, roofers, landscapers, and on and on. We've got to get as many of those working men and women back to work as soon as we can.

And as the economy recovers, there will be an enormous pent-up demand for new housing. Catching up with that demand can be part of the virtuous cycle of recovery coming out of a recession as it has been in the past. Home construction now is probably about a third of the natural demand for new housing that's created by new household formation, replacement of obsolete housing, and second home purchases.

As the economy recovers, young adults are going to move out of their parents' home or out of the apartment they're sharing with three or four roommates, and dilapidated housing will be torn down and replaced by new construction. We need to make sure that home builders can get credit to meet that pent-up demand and put more men and women back to work, and that's what this bill does.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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