Floor Statements

The Third Amendment: ``No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.''

I'll be voting ``yes'' on the amendment, and if it fails, as I expect it will, I'll be voting ``yes'' on the bill. I'll vote ``yes'' on the amendment, because we ought to have a fair estate tax in this country. But, instead, Republicans insist that we increase the deficit $28 billion over the next 2 years in order to provide the lowest tax rates in 80 years on the richest few dozen families in each of our States.

We should care about the deficit. And to say that the tax rate included in the amendment is unfair is to say that every Republican voted for an unfair tax when they voted for the Bush tax law that was applicable to 2009.

Furthermore, another problem with the estate tax in the bill is that it provides a rate of tax for those deaths that occur in 2010 that is less than zero because the richest families can choose between a zero tax rate or huge write-offs on their income tax, which might be even lower, and they'll get the best possible tax advice.

Finally, under this bill you're going to have some people who realize that if the patriarch of the family dies this year, they save tens of millions of dollars over next year. I hope that no plugs are pulled.

I am going to vote for the bill only because of one question, Compared to what? If we do not send this bill to the President's desk this year, he will certainly sign a worse bill next year. It is not clear that House Democrats were at the table in the December negotiations, but it is clear that House Republicans will be at the table for the negotiations in January on this bill. The President and Democrats in the Senate have already agreed to this deal and I fear that they would agree to something a little bit worse. So it is with great reluctance that I will vote for this bill, should the amendment fail.

Republican Senators have held America hostage, held the American economy hostage, held hostage the middle class. And the President agreed to pay the ransom. Now that ransom can be paid this month with the consent not only of the President, but the Senators and this House. So we can stop the ransom from being paid until the end of the year. And at that point, the President will still be willing to pay the ransom, and the ransom will go up.

If the ransom is going to be paid, let us pay it before it goes up. Knowing that the President had agreed to the major and expensive changes that the Republican Senators demanded, I sought to amend this bill only in a modest way, only to the extent that we could do the deal by the end of the year. And I put forward an amendment that would not increase the cost of the bill by a penny or reduce the tax cuts that the Republicans have been asking for by a penny. I asked only that instead of the payroll tax holiday that needlessly involves the Social Security trust fund and comingles general funds with the Social Security trust fund, that we send out checks as soon as possible so that the money the Republicans have already agreed should go to working families would get to them perhaps in time to pay this year's Christmas bills.

Unfortunately, no effort was made at the highest levels to secure the support of even a couple of Republican Senators for that kind of minor tweaking. And so we stand today with only one choice: pay the ransom now, or pay more ransom later. This is not a place Democrats want to be. But, ultimately, it is better to pay the ransom today than to watch the President pay even more--and I think he'd be willing to pay a bit more--next month.

Therefore, we are going to have to swallow hard. We are going to see an estate tax law so bad that for the richest families where someone died in 2010, the tax rate is going to be less than zero. The family will be able to choose zero, or choose huge reductions in future income taxes. And they will be well advised, and they will pick whatever costs the Treasury the most money, and we will collect less than zero from those families. We will see those with an income--not mere millionaires but people with $1 million in annual income--get tax relief that they won't spend and don't particularly need.

The choice is to pay the ransom now, or to watch it go up next month.

Let me first correct the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Gohmert, when he says that this bill would make the Social Security trust fund less solvent. Every penny that the Social Security trust fund doesn't receive from payroll taxes it gets from the general fund.

But let me especially correct him when he says, oh, the other way to pay for this is by canceling the TARP bill. We canceled the TARP bill six months, seven months ago. He voted against the bill, but that bill passed, was enacted, and returned $225 billion to the Treasury. Having done that once, we can't make money by just doing it again.

The Republican Senators held this country hostage, they held the middle class tax cuts hostage, they held the American economy hostage. President Obama agreed to pay the ransom. Now the question before this House is, do we block that ransom payment?

The problem is that if we do not make the ransom payment this month, President Obama will be willing to pay just a little bit more next month. So today we will do what we have to do.

I come here to address the House on economic issues facing us this month and next month. And I come here to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. First, the good.

The Federal Reserve Board is going to buy $600 billion worth of long- term bonds, quantitative easing. This will increase America's share of the American market for manufacturers' goods. That's why it has been condemned by China, Germany and Japan, because they know it means moving jobs from Germany, Japan and China to the United States.

This is an effective tool that is reversible. We can expand the money supply now, and then the Federal Reserve

Board can reverse its action when the economy improves. Therefore, it involves no increase in the money supply that is permanent and, of course, involves no increase in our national debt.

The unemployment rate is over 9.6 percent. We need to act to bring down that unemployment rate. And the Fed is to be commended. This does not mean that its decision is risk free. Just, given all the risk that we're confronted with, this is a good move. And the fact that the countries that are running giant trade surpluses with it have condemned us gives it an additional advantage.

Second, the bad. The tax proposals, and I focus here only on the tax proposals of the Simpson-Bowles proposal, they have offered three different versions of their tax proposal and I will address what they call the Wyden-Gregg approach. There are two other approaches, the zero plan, which is even worse than the one I'm going to describe, and a third option of basically doing nothing except inviting the Ways and Means Committee to earn their salary and to look at our tax law.

Now, I was anxious to embrace this proposal because we need to see shared sacrifice. We all are looking for a way to pay down the debt, and I, for one, was willing to embrace a program of shared sacrifice and austerity. But Messrs. Bowles and Simpson have given sacrifice a bad name by using our desire for shared sacrifice to disguise a giant tax cut for large corporations.

In the name of austerity and shared sacrifice we are told that the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans needs to be cut to 35%--roughly a 12% cut in their tax rate. And we are told that the corporate tax rate needs to be cut by a quarter. This in the name of increasing revenue. This in the name of austerity and shared sacrifice. No. This in the name of using the debt crisis as an opportunity to shift wealth and power and income from the middle class to corporate elites and the very wealthy.

Now, it is true that they talk about reducing certain corporate tax expenditures, but only in vague terms, only to a small degree. It is basically a dramatic decline in corporate tax, in the revenue of the corporate income tax.

Now, finally on to the ugly. We have been told by our Republican colleagues on so many occasions that the worst thing we could do is increase taxes in the middle of a recession; yet the Republican proposals, all of them, involve a dramatic increase for working families going into effect this next year, namely by allowing the Making Work Pay Tax Credit, the so-called Obama tax cuts, $800 for every working couple, $400 for every working single, expire at the end of this year. I urge my colleagues to join with me in cosponsoring our colleague Scott Murphy's bill to extend this $800/$400 tax credit.

With all the talk of extending the Bush tax cuts, with all the talk for those who make more than a quarter million dollars a year, we should not forget that the Obama tax cuts expire at the end of this year, and for well more than half of all American families, the Obama tax cuts are more important than the Bush tax cuts.

Now, why is nobody even talking about extending the Obama tax cuts? Because no one with an income of over $150,000 a year gets any of that benefit. So when we have a tax cut that is targeted at working families that is more important than the Bush tax cuts to over half of American families, we see this tax cut about to expire without any discussion from those who tell us that the worst possible thing would be to increase anyone's taxes in the middle of a recession. I do not want to hear about spending $700 billion over the next 10 years to provide tax relief to the top 1 percent. I do not want to hear that from those who are talking about increasing taxes on more than half of America's working families. It is time to extend the Obama tax cut.

I look forward to working in a bipartisan way to provide tax relief to get this economy moving again and then to shift to fiscal austerity, but allowing the Obama tax cuts to expire and then cutting corporate income tax by one quarter is not the way to go.

I come here to address the House on economic issues facing us this month and next month. And I come here to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. First, the good.

The Federal Reserve Board is going to buy $600 billion worth of long- term bonds, quantitative easing. This will increase America's share of the American market for manufacturers' goods. That's why it has been condemned by China, Germany and Japan, because they know it means moving jobs from Germany, Japan and China to the United States.

This is an effective tool that is reversible. We can expand the money supply now, and then the Federal Reserve Board can reverse its action when the economy improves. Therefore, it involves no increase in the money supply that is permanent and, of course, involves no increase in our national debt.

The unemployment rate is over 9.6 percent. We need to act to bring down that unemployment rate. And the Fed is to be commended. This does not mean that its decision is risk free. Just, given all the risk that we're confronted with, this is a good move. And the fact that the countries that are running giant trade surpluses with it have condemned us gives it an additional advantage.

Second, the bad. The tax proposals, and I focus here only on the tax proposals of the Simpson-Bowles proposal, they have offered three different versions of their tax proposal and I will address what they call the Wyden-Gregg approach. There are two other approaches, the zero plan, which is even worse than the one I'm going to describe, and a third option of basically doing nothing except inviting the Ways and Means Committee to earn their salary and to look at our tax law.

Now, I was anxious to embrace this proposal because we need to see shared sacrifice. We all are looking for a way to pay down the debt, and I, for one, was willing to embrace a program of shared sacrifice and austerity. But Messrs. Bowles and Simpson have given sacrifice a bad name by using our desire for shared sacrifice to disguise a giant tax cut for large corporations.

It needs to be cut by a quarter. This in the name of increasing revenue. This in the name of austerity and shared sacrifice. No. This in the name of using the debt crisis as an opportunity to shift wealth and power and income

from the middle class to corporate elites and the very wealthy.

Now, it is true that they talk about reducing certain corporate tax expenditures, but only in vague terms, only to a small degree. It is basically a dramatic decline in corporate tax, in the revenue of the corporate income tax.

Now, finally on to the other. We have been told by our Republican colleagues on so many occasions that the worst thing we could do is increase taxes in the middle of a recession; yet the Republican proposals, all of them, involve a dramatic increase for working families going into effect this next year, namely by allowing the Making Work Pay Tax Credit, the so-called Obama tax cuts, $800 for every working couple, $400 for every working single, expire at the end of this year. I urge my colleagues to join with me in cosponsoring our colleague Scott Murphy's bill to extend this $800/$400 tax credit.

With all the talk of extending the Bush tax cuts, with all the talk for those who make more than a quarter million dollars a year, we should not forget that the Obama tax cuts expire at the end of this year, and for well more than half of all American families, the Obama tax cuts are more important than the Bush tax cuts.

Now, why is nobody even talking about extending the Obama tax cuts? Because no one with an income of over $150,000 a year gets any of that benefit. So when we have a tax cut that is targeted at working families that is more important than the Bush tax cuts to over half of American families, we see this tax cut about to expire without any discussion from those who tell us that the worst possible thing would be to increase anyone's taxes in the middle of a recession. I do not want to hear about spending $700 billion over the next 10 years to provide tax relief to the top 1 percent. I do not want to hear that from those who are talking about increasing taxes on more than half of America's working families. It is time to extend the Obama tax cut.

I look forward to working in a bipartisan way to provide tax relief to get this economy moving again and then to shift to fiscal austerity, but allowing the Obama tax cuts to expire and then cutting corporate income tax by one quarter is not the way to go.

Madam Speaker, I wish to clarify that when I cosponsor a bill, it does not necessarily mean that I agree with every part of it. At a minimum, my cosponsorship indicates that I support moving the bill forward through the legislative process, including being marked up in committee, and if sent to the floor by the relevant committee(s), then subject to consideration and amendment on the floor.

Madam Speaker, I rise today out of concern for the people of Pakistan who have been affected by the catastrophic flooding this monsoon season. As reports continue to emerge detailing ever- increasing numbers of displaced families and deaths, I want to express my deepest sympathy for the victims of this tragedy.

Estimates indicate that over 20 million people are affected by the flooding and over 1,600 have died. In addition, almost 900,000 homes have been destroyed or damaged. According to the UN, millions of people went unaided in the days and weeks after the flooding began. We must also remember that even after the waters recede, the lack of shelter, food, and clean water may bring ongoing suffering. And as croplands and farming equipment are destroyed, the threat of future famine looms.

The devastation these floods have wrought is widespread and affects people in multiple Pakistani provinces. In the Sindh province alone, estimates from August 10th indicate that 1.4 million people and 2,534 villages have been affected by the floods, and as of August 18th new flood warnings continue to be issued. Through communications with the Sindhi-American community over the past year, I have learned of the challenges that the Sindh and other provinces face. These floods have exacerbated the situation. We must ensure that our relief efforts reach all affected people and do not inadvertently neglect the individual regions.

The U.S. has responded rapidly trying to provide relief assistance, and it is my hope that our efforts will continue to ensure that the death and disease tolls do not rise as winter approaches. Through September 14th, total U.S. government assistance reached over $300 million. Much of the assistance provided by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development has been distributed in partnership with several international agencies including the United Nations and the Red Cross.

While the U.S. continues to play a leadership role in the global effort to assist the people of Pakistan in this difficult time, it is my sincere hope that our efforts reach all those affected by this tragedy. I raise this concern in light of troubling reports that followed the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir. Even one year after that devastating event, Oxfam reported that administrative bottlenecks and corruption had stymied progress toward reconstruction. We must ensure that such an occurrence is not repeated.

Last year, Congress passed The Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009 which is now public law. Title III of this legislation was written to ensure that U.S. assistance reaches all the people of Pakistan fairly and equitably. I wish to reiterate the concerns that prompted this title and to urge the agencies spearheading our relief efforts to follow appropriate protocols for monitoring the assistance related to the recent floods.

Madam Speaker, I should note that I sometimes submit amendments to committees so that they are available for discussion. I do not necessarily support any amendment drafted by myself and my staff unless I formally offer the amendment. Accordingly, no conclusion can be drawn from the process of simply providing the text of a possible amendment to the clerk of any committee.

Madam Speaker, I wish to speak today about an injustice that has been taking place in Cyprus for the last 36 years.

In 1974, when hostilities broke out on the small island, Turkey began its military occupation of more than one-third of Cypriot land.

Nearly ten years later, the Turks declared this land to be the ``Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus''. To this day, the only country to recognize this declaration is Turkey, which still illegally occupies the northern part of Cyprus.

Currently there are about 36,000 Turkish troops occupying the North of Cyprus. They stand as a physical manifestation of the barrier Turkey is putting up against Cypriot reunification.

Turkey has made other efforts to discourage reunification. According to the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, Turkey has deliberately and continuously modified the demographics of the island, and they have enacted a system of ``naturalization'' that encourages mainland Turks to move to Cyprus.

This occupation is made all the more tragic by its needlessness. Thirteen million Turkish-Cypriots and Greek-Cypriots have crossed into each others communities without incident. They seek to live together as neighbors in countries to which they have emigrated. There is no reason for these peoples to be divided.

We have reason to be hopeful--Turkish and Greek Cypriot leaders have been engaged in UN-sponsored negotiations since September 2008 to reunify the island.

The United States has an important role to play in the reunification of Cyprus. We must ensure that we are doing all we can to make the island unified once more by working with the European Union, Turkey, and all citizens of Cyprus toward a peaceful and fair resolution of this decades-old conflict.

Mr. Speaker, today, many of us are honoring Mr. Ron Gettelfinger whose second term as president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) is coming to a close. I would like to add my thanks to Mr. Gettelfinger for his service to this important American institution.

Rising through the ranks from local UAW leadership to president, Mr. Gettelfinger has stood at the helm of the UAW during one of our nation's most tumultuous economic periods. Mr. Gettelfinger first joined the UAW as a chassis line repairman in Louisville, Kentucky, and, over his 44 years with the organization, he has seen many changes in the American automobile industry.

Still now, as when it began, the United Auto Workers continues its nearly 80 year fight on behalf of this nation's workers. The UAW seeks to ensure that all of America's workers are rewarded for their contribution to our country's economy and continue to live their lives in dignity.

I commend Mr. Gettelfinger for his contribution to the UAW's important work.

At best, we have a fragile recovery from a massive recession caused by a precipitous decline in home prices. Now, I know the gentleman is well-intentioned, but nothing is more likely to cause a double dip in this recession than the second precipitous drop in home prices that would be caused by pulling FHA and, as the gentleman argues, Fannie and Freddie out of the home lending market.

Right now, FHA is 30 percent of the home purchase finance market, about over half of that market for African Americans, 45 percent for Hispanics. Are we going to tell one-third of American home buyers, almost half or over half Hispanics and African Americans seeking to buy homes, that they are not going to be able to buy those homes? Because, if they can't get FHA financing, the private sector may be there, but at much higher rates. And there is no way that these individuals will be able to afford to buy those homes.

With fewer buyers, you will see a precipitous decline in prices. That devastates communities further, devastates the American economy further.

FHA is actuarially sound. It charges fees for the services and the guarantees that it provides. And to cut its role in the market by a third as part of an overall policy designed to take FHA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac out of the market ignores the fact that, in these troubled times, those three entities--FHA, Fannie, and Freddie--account for almost all of the home mortgages obtained by middle-class and working families.

So we should defeat the gentleman's amendment. And I want to point out it is opposed by the National Association of Realtors, the National Association of Home Builders, and the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Gary G. Miller).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

A quick inquiry: Do I have the right to close, or does the gentleman from Ohio have the right to close?

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself the remainder of the time.

Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman's definition of ``risk'' and his arithmetic are a bit faulty. To say that $1 billion of smaller loans carries less risk than $1 billion of larger loans is not something one can determine except by looking at the performance of those loans.

As the gentleman from California (Mr. Gary G. Miller) pointed out, those larger loans perform better. The FHA, therefore, has less insurance risk and, actually, usually, makes a profit on those loans. So to say that loans in Los Angeles take away from loans in Ohio and expose the Federal Government to more risk than loans in Ohio is simply false.

I will yield to the gentleman from California.

The gentleman is correct. This is not an anti-Ohio stance that the two gentlemen from California are taking.

The fact is there is this image that some have from other parts of the country that, if a home sells for more than $500,000, the people in it must be rich. That is not how things work in the 122 counties that are affected by this amendment. In my area, if a police officer is married to a teacher, they're in a home of over $500,000. Now, that's very difficult for them to afford. That ends up tying up their retirement money for better or for worse, but that is how expensive it is to live in some parts of this country.

To say that, because people are buying a home of over $500,000 that they are rich and do not deserve the same kind of help the gentleman from Ohio thinks middle class families in his district deserve, it is the same kind of help that middle class families in my district deserve.

Now, this amendment is opposed by the Mortgage Bankers Association, by the National Association of Home Builders and by the National Association of Realtors, not just the California divisions of those entities but entities that represent the entire country. I don't think that the Ohio Realtors would be here supporting this amendment. I don't think the Nebraska Realtors would be. And I don't think the National Association of Realtors would be here opposing this amendment if the amendment were going to help major swaths of this country.

The fact is that the FHA's current program helps California without hurting those other States. It helps the Washington area, the New York area, much of Virginia, et cetera. The worst thing we could do for this economy is to cause a precipitous decline in the price of homes in the major metropolitan areas of this country. Our recovery is fragile. The program, the way it works now, allows middle class families in both Los Angeles and in Ohio to be able to finance homes, and we ought to vote down this amendment.

So please join with Chairman Frank, with Chairwoman Waters, with the National Association of Realtors, Home Builders, and Mortgage Bankers in urging a ``no'' vote.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to comment on the regulatory reform bill pending before the Senate.

Senator Dodd has brought a bill that will provide for consumer protection, higher capital requirements, and the regulation of derivatives. We need all that. But we have to ask the question, does the Senate draft increase or decrease the statutory authority of the executive branch to bail out Wall Street giants and their creditors and counterparties?

Unfortunately, the current draft of the Senate bill increases bailout authority. It provides, first, in Section 210, for the use of taxpayer money when an insolvent institution is to be liquidated in order to protect the counterparties and the creditors of that institution.

Now, Senator McConnell has gone even further in the pro-bailout direction. He has criticized the fact that the Senate bill has a $50 billion advance fund collected from Wall Street which would be used before any amounts would be borrowed from the taxpayer. So Mr. McConnell says do away with the fund but he barely comments on the taxpayer borrowing. The results will be that the Federal Government, when it liquidates one of these Wall Street giants, will be borrowing the first dollar from the taxpayer.

We certainly don't need a circumstance where we are lending money in order to bail out the creditors and counterparties of giant and improvident financial institutions and we haven't even collected any of that money in advance. The House bill provides strict dollar limits on the amount that can be borrowed from the Treasury and sunsets this borrowing authority in 2013.

Section 1155 of the Senate bill allows the executive branch to put unlimited taxpayer dollars at risk in order to guarantee the obligations of solvent banks. Now, the Senate bill does say that you can have this resolution of disapproval come before the Congress, but a resolution of disapproval is a phony device designed to give the illusion of congressional control. What it says is that in order to stop a hundred billion dollar transfer of our taxpayer money to Wall Street, you would need a vote in the House and a vote in the Senate; then it would be vetoed by the executive branch; then even if you had an overwhelming vote in the House, as long as 34 Senators were in favor of the

bailout, the bailout would go forward. A resolution of disapproval is the illusion of congressional control. Instead, we should follow the House approach by putting a dollar limit on this emergency financial stabilization, and we should sunset all authority under it in the year 2013.

Just as important is the existing Section 13-3 of the Federal Reserve Act. Since 1935, the Federal Reserve has had the power, and this is enormous, to lend any amount of money to just about anybody so long as they think they have adequate security.

Now, the Fed has already used this statutory authority to lend upwards of $2 trillion. So if we're against bailouts, we've got to ask, what limits does the Senate bill place on Section 13-3 authority? It provides only some minimal limits, requiring that that authority be used not to bail out just one company on Wall Street, but to be systemwide.

Instead, the Senate can learn from the House bill to put dollar restrictions on this authority, and to provide that the security must be so good that we have a 99 percent likelihood of repayment.

Even better yet, we ought to simply repeal Section 13-3.

Finally, ``too big to fail'' is too big to exist. In the House bill, we authorize the regulators to break up institutions that are too big to fail. The Senate, I believe, has basically ignored this House provision. They should not only embrace it, they should go much further. They should require the break-up of any institutions whose liabilities to American persons exceeds 1 percent of the U.S. GDP.

There is no reason that a bank has to be over $140 billion in size. And if they are, they ought to be at least as smart as an amoeba. When an amoeba gets too big, it divides itself into two separate cells. Banks can do the same.

In conclusion, the people of this country want to give the executive branch the power to nail Wall Street firms, to require regulations of derivatives, higher capital requirements, and to liquidate them when they get themselves into trouble and pose a risk to the entire economy.

But the American people don't want to bail. So let's provide nail authority without bail authority.

Madam Speaker, on Tuesday, April 13th and Wednesday, April 14th I was unavoidably absent from the House Chamber. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall votes 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202 and 203.

Madam Speaker, on Monday, February 22 I was unavoidably absent from the House Chamber. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall votes 49 and 50.