Floor Statements

I thank the ranking member for yielding.

I rise in opposition to H.R. 830. This bill is one of four separate anti-foreclosure programs aimed at helping troubled homeowners stay in their homes that the new House Republican majority is planning to end. What is very troubling is that they don't have any idea of what to put in its place. We know that we have 12 million mortgages that are underwater, that need help. They are in all of our States, but they are not coming forward with any ideas of how to help the economy or how to help the people.

Now, this particular program is just getting started. It is the FHA Short Refinance Program, and it is one of the foreclosure prevention programs that

would not only help the individual homeowners, but also help to stabilize the overall U.S. housing market, which is 25 percent of our economy. So it not only helps an individual. It helps a locality, it helps our country, it helps our economic strength.

The result of ending this program would be hundreds of thousands of additional foreclosures and steeper price declines in our housing. It is outrageous. It is shortsighted. It is mean, and it is wrong.

Now, in this program it would allow the borrowers to reduce the principal owed on their homes up to 10 percent so that their payments are lower, so that they can save money that they can't afford. And in return, the banks would get an FHA-insured loan that is subject to all of FHA's strict standards. So to get this loan, you will have to jump through hoops to be able to qualify.

And it is voluntary. Just last week, several major banks in America voluntarily walked forward to help out--Citibank, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America, to name a few. So the program is just getting started and the $50 million line of credit is like a line of credit you draw down on. Hopefully, we won't even have to tap into it. Hopefully, our economy improves and people are able to pay their mortgages.

The standards are very strict. The owners must be current on their payments. It must be their primary residence. They have to have full documentation to qualify. So it is a strict program.

I want to come back to an issue that is very important to me and, that is, this affects lives. This affects people.

In Congressman Frank's home State, there are over 222,000 residents whose mortgages are underwater that could qualify possibly if they could meet the criteria. It is part of a total package to help our economy move forward, and the opposition, the Republican majority, has no ideas of their own. It is just to come in and cut a good program that is just getting started.

They mentioned the 44 people that have been helped. They say that is not important. I would say it is very important to the 44 people who have been helped, and there could be 12 million who could be helped under this program.

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

Mr. Chairman, my amendment has the purpose of making very clear what we're doing today to the American people. This amendment makes clear that we are ending a program that has the potential to help hundreds of thousands of underwater borrowers.

H.R. 830, the FHA Refinance Program Termination Act, ignores the underwater borrowers of this country and does nothing to help families save their homes.

Very simply, the bill ends a program that has the potential to help hundreds of thousands of people whose mortgages now exceed the value of their home, and also help the communities and help the overall economy.

The majority crafted a so-called ``open rule'' in such a way that it's nearly impossible to offer any substantive amendments--a number were voted down on a party line in the committee debates--in response to this reality.

In an effort to highlight the true nature of this harmful bill, my amendment identifies the numbers in each State of the hundreds of thousands of underwater borrowers across the country and makes clear that the Republican majority has no solution to the problem, nor do they have any desire to find one.

Americans must be made aware of the intention of this majority. This program allows borrowers to write down at least 10 percent to reduce the debt burden. They are all paying. They are in financial difficulty. Banks then can get an insured FHA guarantee and move forward and people can keep living in their homes and can keep participating in the economy.

Because of this vote today, if the majority wins, homeowners across the country may not have the opportunity to take advantage of the program that has just begun, and which should be made, in my opinion, available to them.

Now what this does, it goes down all of the impacts across the country. It shows that in my home State of New York there are over 129,000 mortgages underwater that would not be able to apply for this program to allow people to stay in their homes. In Chairman Bachus' State, there are over 35,000 mortgages underwater. In Florida, there are more than 2 million mortgages underwater, and they have no alternative of any way to help these people. And these numbers are from an independent company's study.

If you go to California, our largest State, over 2 million homes are underwater. Nevada, 390,000 individuals are facing the loss of their homes. In Arizona, there are over 648,000 families that are underwater. Their home is not worth what they're paying for it, what the mortgage is.

So this program is one that I think is thoughtful, one that has only $50 million as sort of a line of credit that will be pulled down if there are defaults. But the banks participating have very strict standards, as does the FHA. It has to be their primary residence. They have to provide full documentation. No more of these ``no doc'' loans. They must be current on the mortgage. They must have a job. They have to have many, many levels that they have to meet before they get the loan. But at least it's a lifeline to these 12 million families whose homes are underwater.

With declining home values, borrowers are caught in mortgages they no longer can afford because their rates have reset or because their interest-only payments have not allowed them to grow any equity in their homes. They are making their payments, but just barely. And so this one is there to help them. And it simply adds findings to the bill with the number of underwater mortgages in each State that we've secured the data for so that it becomes very clear to the American people how many homeowners in each State we are not helping if we do what the majority wants, to terminate this program.

And I might say this program is one of four that the Obama administration has put forward to help homeowners stay in their homes and to help stabilize our economy, which is still fragile and is still recovering. Housing is 25 percent of our economy, according to many economists. So the strength of housing is important to the overall health of our Nation's economic future.

So I urge my colleagues to support the amendment, to make it clear by the vote on this bill how many Americans across this country will not be helped if the majority gets their passage of their bill that would terminate a program that has the potential of helping literally millions in America.

I urge a ``yes'' vote on my amendment.

Point of Order

The amendment is germane, Mr. Chairman.

This program has the potential to help underwater mortgages across our great country, which is germane to the bill we're debating today, because the bill terminates the potential of this help. You have no findings in this bill that you're rushing to the floor.

It is germane to talk about the hundreds of thousands of homeowners that are out there that possibly could lose their home because this program is being terminated. This is germane, in my opinion, to the underlying bill.

Yes, I do.

As a point of information, there are very strict criteria from the FHA and from the individual banks that are voluntarily participating, and one of those criteria is that you must be current on your payments. You must be current. What the gentleman said was inaccurate, that they could be behind on their payments or not making their payments. They're having difficulty making it because their home value is not equal to what the mortgage is. And so it's difficult. But they must all be current on their payments.

I move to strike the last word.

I'm distressed with this ruling because I think it is germane that people will lose their homes, that they are eliminating a program that is just starting that is thoughtful, that would give FHA financing and guarantees to help people stay in their homes, and that people in Nevada, over 390,000, could be affected by this; California, over 2 million people's homes are underwater; in Florida, over 2 million homes are underwater; Arizona, 648.

And in my own State, over 129,000 people will not have the access to this program that allows them to adjust their mortgages so that they reflect the true value of their homes, make their payments on that value so that they can move forward and be part of the community, keep these homes from becoming blight and emptied in an area.

We all have stories in our districts and across the Nation where people cannot make their mortgage payments because they have lost values in their home. They are deserting them. They are leaving them. In some States, they are literally bulldozing the homes underground because no one can afford to live in them. This is an answer to some of the challenges.

And my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk about the cost. Well, I would say that the cost--not only to the individual homeowner, but to the overall economy--will be greater by terminating the four efforts, the four antiforeclosure efforts from the Obama administration to help with the housing crisis.

And we know that the subprime crisis was a scandal. Many people were not--got into homes they couldn't afford under misinformation.

We have helped other areas of our economy. We certainly should help the homeowners, the working Americans to help them through this economic crisis, too.

And we have to remember that although we are digging our way out of this Great Recession, the recovery has been slow. We are still in a fragile recovery. The economists testified before the Financial Services Committee that housing was 25 percent of our economy.

So, helping people stay in their homes, I would say that our overall economy has a stake in it.

Now, some people said, well, the banks will run in and do this. Banks are not going to do this unless they think that the loan is going to be paid and they're not going to be hurt with it. And the standards from FHA are very high. You have to be current. You have to have a job. You have to live in your home. You have to have a proven track record. You have to have good credit before you can be approved. So that is why only 50 million is the line of credit that will be drawn down if there are foreclosures.

Hopefully the economy improves, people keep their jobs. Hopefully the banks do a good job and do not hand out loans unless people can actually repay them. And this will be a tool to move forward not only to help people, but to help the overall economy.

Now, what I find very troubling about this is that my friends on the other side of the aisle want to terminate four antiforeclosure programs, but they have no alternative. It's sort of like their approach to jobs. They have not come forward with any program to help create jobs. They have not come forward with any program to help people stay in their homes. It's part of the ``so be it'' attitude. You're on your own. We're not going to help you.

But this is a program that helps people help themselves adjust to the reality of what their homes are actually worth. And I think that it's important that this information of how many people, the 12 million people and where they live in America, is important information that should be part of this bill.

And that's why I am now respectfully requesting unanimous consent to place into the Record the listing of where these 12 million people live so people will know these are the people we are saying ``no,'' ``so be it,'' ``we're not going to be there to help you.''

And let me tell you, my follow colleagues. I would be cautious about voting for this, because you're voting against your economy. You're voting against your State. You are voting against your own colleagues, your own residents and neighbors who may need this. We know the trouble that's in this economy. Practically every family in America has some relative who's lost a job or is unemployed. So this is some way to help with this economic recovery. It is thoughtful. It is a good program.

And I urge my colleagues to vote against the ``so be it'' bill the Republicans have before us today and to really work with, in a bipartisan way, the Obama administration to help working Americans, struggling Americans stay in their home.

It's the least that we can do as a caring Nation, absolutely the least we can do as a caring Nation. So I urge my colleagues, and I would be very cautious in your vote, because I believe your constituents are going to remember this vote if this program is terminated and their lifeline, their ability to stay in their homes, is terminated because of your vote today.

Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I would just like to point out to Congressman Fitzpatrick from the great State of Pennsylvania that there are over 132,000 homes that are underwater now that could benefit from this program, and urge my colleagues to support the program.

I move to strike the last word.

Congresswoman Biggert, do you know how many underwater mortgages there are in your home State?

Reclaiming my time, there are 431,000 mortgages that are underwater in the great State of Illinois where the residents would be eligible to participate in this program that the Republican majority is voting to terminate.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I move to strike the last word.

Congressman Paulsen----

I would like to inquire from Congressman Paulsen if he is aware of how many mortgages are underwater in his home State, the great State of Minnesota.

I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Reclaiming my time, I would like to point out to the gentleman from Minnesota that there are over 90,000 homes, 90,000 homeowners who are underwater in the great State of Minnesota and that could benefit if they meet the criteria in this important program that the Republican majority is urging to be eliminated today.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and in support of the FHA refinancing bill that is one of four bills that will be on the floor coming out of the Financial Services Committee on which I serve that is terminating programs that will literally help people stay in their homes and help in the economic recovery.

My Republican colleagues are proposing to terminate these programs, but they are not putting forward any alternative to help these people stay in their homes. There are nearly 11 million homes that are underwater now, meaning that the value of the home is less than the loan the homeowner has taken out to pay for it. Seven million homes have been foreclosed on so far, and another 3 million are expected to be foreclosed on through 2012.

This vote will be on continuing the refinancing of FHA loans that will keep people in these homes, keep these homes filled so that they're not eyesores or pulling down the economy in certain areas.

Last week, Citibank, Wells and GMAC voluntarily came forward and said they intend to participate in this program. It's a voluntary program. These are three of the largest mortgage companies in the country, and their participation will certainly broaden the reach to help more people.

The program allows borrowers to write down at least 10 percent to reduce the debt burden. Then standard FHA loan terms will apply. As with all FHA-insured loans, the property must be the homeowner's primary residence, and the borrower must meet the FHA's full documentation. And they must be current on their mortgage.

With declining home values, borrowers are caught in mortgages that they can no longer afford because their rates have reset or because their interest-only payments have not allowed them to grow any equity in their homes. They are making their payments--but barely. This is an important program.

States across the country have this challenge. As I said, almost 11 million mortgages are underwater, or 22 percent of all outstanding mortgages. By passing this bill, we are saying that we have no solutions for these homeowners. It is not good for the homeowner, not good for the economy, and certainly not good for our country.

President Obama has issued a statement that he will oppose the termination of this program and indicated that he will veto it when it gets to his desk. But I urge my colleagues to join me in vetoing this rule and vetoing the underlying bill in order to help our economy and to help homeowners stay in their homes.

Offered By: Mrs. Maloney

Amendment No. 9: After section 1, insert the following new

section:

Mr. Speaker, today, along with Representatives Baldwin, Hirono, Moore, and Stark, I am reintroducing comprehensive legislation to both prevent new obstetric fistulas and treat existing ones. The ``Fistula Prevention, Treatment, Hope and Dignity Restoration Act'' will bring new hope and opportunities to finally end this preventable condition. On the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, this is a fitting bill that will help millions of women achieve their maximum potential.

Pregnancy shouldn't leave a woman with a disability and ostracized from her community. Congress should ensure investments for the more than two million women worldwide that have obstetric fistula and we do what we can to prevent new cases. Fistula results from prolonged labor without medical attention due to the pressure created internally from obstructed delivery, which kills tissue where a hole between the woman's vagina and rectum develops, leaving her without control of her bladder and/or bowels for the rest of her life if she goes untreated. It often results in the death of the infant. Many women with obstetric fistula are abandoned by their husbands and families because they are considered ``unclean'' due to leaking excrement. Left without support, the women are forced to beg or turn to sex work to survive.

Fistula was once common throughout the world, but over the last century has been eradicated in Europe and North America through medical care. For example, New York's hospital for fistula patients, now the site of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, closed in 1895 due to diminishing cases. But still in 2011, from Bangladesh to Botswana, women continue to face these challenging deliveries and the complications associated with them, including obstetric fistulas.

Fortunately, multilateral organizations such as UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, and its partners in the Campaign to End Fistula, as well as bilateral organizations such as USAID are working with partners on a global campaign to prevent and treat fistula with the goal of making the condition as rare in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia as it is in the United States. Being able to repair a fistula is life changing--and it will have a direct impact on a woman and her family if she is able to stay in her community, rather than to be shunned. At this point, the global community can do just that for about $300 for each repair.

This bill authorizes the President to provide assistance to prevent and treat fistula. This legislation allows for a comprehensive, three pronged approach of prevention, treatment and reintegration which includes: increasing access to prenatal care, emergency obstetric care, postnatal care, and voluntary family planning; building local capacity and improving national health systems; addressing underlying social and economic inequities such as reducing the incidence of child marriage and increasing access to formal and informal education; and supporting reintegration and training programs to help women who have undergone treatment return to full and productive lives. These essential investments create a multiplier effect of benefits in the lives of women and their communities. The legislation also supports coordination among the community working to prevent and treat obstetric fistula through the International Obstetric Fistula Working Group. Support for monitoring, evaluation, and research to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of such programs throughout their planning and implementation phases will ensure the most efficient and effective use of U.S. foreign assistance dollars.

I urge my colleagues to support this important, meaningful legislation.

Mr. Speaker, today, I am pleased to introduce the Access to Books for Children Act. This bill would amend the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 to provide a $5 voucher to mothers for the purchase of educational books for infants and children participating in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, WIC.

As a lifelong advocate for reading and early education, I am introducing this bill to help provide nourishment for both the body and the mind to children who need it most. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommend daily reading to a child beginning when the child is 6 months old. The Access to Books for Children Act will make it easier for children in the WIC program to develop literacy skills by placing books in the hands of children who may not otherwise have their own books in the home. Children who are exposed to books and reading before they start school are much more likely to graduate from high school than those who are not. I urge you to support this bill to invest in early education by instilling the love of reading in all children during the formative years that matter the most.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express concern about the treatment of Baha'is in Iran. Recent reports suggest that the seven Baha'i leaders convicted last August have been transferred to more dangerous areas of the prison in which they are being held. Additionally, a series of arrests of Baha'i adherents began in Isfahan on February 13th. The fate of those individuals is currently unknown, but these arrests suggest that the Iranian government is continuing its persecution of members of the Baha'i faith.

Freedom of religion is a basic human right. The United States has always been committed to defending religious freedom around the globe. The world must be vocal in its condemnation of the mistreatment of the Baha'i people at the hands of a brutal government.

I urge the Iranian government to release all those whom it has imprisoned solely because of their religious beliefs, and to treat all of its religious minorities with tolerance.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to Ruth Gruber, an extraordinary woman whose life's work has made her an icon and a role model. Over the course of her long and active life, she has been a ground-breaking journalist and photographer, a brilliant scholar, an exceptional writer and a compassionate government official. Most of all, she is a humanitarian whose leadership and intellect helped save thousands of lives.

Ms. Gruber received the American Spirit Award from The Common Good (TCG) on February 3, 2011. In addition, TCG will be screening Ahead of Time, a 2009 documentary about Ms. Gruber's life. Under the leadership of the dynamic Patricia Duff, TCG is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that strives to inspire broad participation in our democracy through the free exchange of ideas and civil dialogue.

Born in Brooklyn in 1911, Ruth Gruber studied at the University of Cologne in Germany where, at the age of twenty, she received her Ph.D. Her dissertation on Virginia Woolf made her the youngest Ph.D. in the world, earning her international headlines and a movie star's welcome when she returned to the United States.

Ms. Gruber returned to the United States where she became a journalist. In 1935, she won a fellowship to write a study of women under fascism, communism, and democracy. The first journalist to enter the Soviet Arctic, she published her experiences in the book, I Went to the Soviet Arctic. In 1941, after reading her book, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes sent Ms. Gruber as his field representative to make a social and economic study of Alaska. Her reports were forwarded to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and played a major role in shaping American policies in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, which were then on the frontlines of World War II. Among other things, her reports documented the strong work ethic of African-American soldiers.

When Ms. Gruber returned to Washington, Ickes appointed her his special assistant, a position she held for five years. When President Roosevelt decided to accept a thousand European immigrants in the midst of World War II and the Holocaust, Secretary Harold Ickes asked her to escort the refugees to the United States. Largely but not entirely Jewish, the 984 refugees who were chosen to make the journey came from all over Europe. The refugees were permitted into the country with the idea that they would return home following the war's end. Following their arrival in New York harbor on August 3, 1944, they were kept segregated on an old army base in Oswego, New York. Ms. Gruber served as their liaison with the outside world. When the end of the war came, Ms. Gruber lobbied the President and Congress, with the help of Catholic, Jewish and Protestant clergy and other advocates, and convinced them to allow the refugees to stay in America.

Following the war, Ms. Gruber became a foreign correspondent for the Herald Tribune. In 1947, the New York Post asked her to cover the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine, which was formed to consider what to do with the Jewish Holocaust survivors who could not return home. She traveled to the displaced persons camps, covered the Nuremberg trials, and met with Zionist leaders in the Middle East. In 1947, while covering the Middle East for the Herald Tribune, she learned of the British refusal to allow the Exodus, a former cruise ship crammed with 4,500 refugees, to land in Haifa. The British loaded the survivors onto several boats and sent them first to Marseilles and then to Germany. Ms. Gruber was permitted to travel with the refugees from Marseilles to Germany as the pool reporter. Her dispatches, later collected in the book, Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched a Nation, introduced the world to desperation and determination of the survivors. Her iconic photograph of refugees on board the ship under a flag bearing the British Union Jack overlaid with a Nazi swastika became Life Magazine's photo of the week and was reproduced around the world.

Ms. Gruber continued to work as a foreign correspondent until 1966, and has continued to write books up to the present day. In 1985, Ms. Gruber witnessed another exodus--she traveled to isolated Jewish villages to aid in the rescue of the Ethiopian Jews. She chronicled her experiences in Rescue: The Exodus of the Ethiopian Jews. In 1998, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from her peers in the American Society of Journalists and Authors as ``a pioneering journalist and author whose books chronicle the most important events of the twentieth century.'' When asked the secret of her success, she said: ``Have dreams, have visions and let no obstacle stop you.''

Ms. Gruber was married twice, first to Philip H. Michaels and, after his death, to Henry Rosner. In 1952, at age forty-one, she gave birth to her first child, Celia; her son, David, was born in 1954.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my distinguished colleagues to join me in recognizing the remarkable career and achievements of Ruth Gruber, an indefatigable journalist, activist and humanitarian.

I thank the gentleman.

I rise in tribute to Representative Steve Horn. He was a thoughtful, dedicated, honorable man who built his record on bipartisan cooperation and commitment to good government.

He was a legislator's legislator. He was deeply committed to doing the right thing, writing the right bill, getting it passed. And he was also a very good friend of mine. He came with his wife and visited me in my home in New York. I went to visit him in his district, the district that he loved and was totally dedicated to.

During his 10 years of service here in the House of Representatives we worked together on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He chaired the Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology for 6 years, and I was the ranking member with him. So not only was he dedicated to running government better, saving taxpayers money, but he also legislated and passed many important bills.

He helped me pass a bill that I authored, the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, which we worked on together for roughly 7 years--it took us that long to pass it. A book has been written about that process and the bill, and what it has done to help in problem-solving now as we confront delicate issues going forward.

The first hearing on the Debbie Smith bill, which has been called the most important anti-rape bill in the history of our country, was in his committee where Debbie Smith testified about her rape, the fact that no one was reacting to it. And this whole effort, including that hearing that he chaired, was made into a movie called ``A Life Interrupted'' and how DNA has been used to put rapists behind bars.

He was a dedicated, wonderful person. He also chaired the Arts Caucus and worked hard for its funding.

In a time when we talk about bipartisanship, Steve Horn was the real deal: a bipartisan problem-solver. He wanted to get the problems solved. He wanted to help this country, help his community. He was devoted to his wife and two children and grandchild. He was just a great guy.

Mr. Chair, this week, the House is debating a Continuing Resolution (H.R. 1) that includes the dangerous elimination of funding to a key organization, UNFPA, that provides life-saving services to women, children and families around the world in over 150 countries--more than any other organization in the world.

The work UNFPA does recognizes that there is a direct connection between a woman's ability to plan her family, space her pregnancies, and give birth safely and her ability to get an education, work outside the home, support her family, and participate fully in her community. UNFPA knows that when we ignore the health of women, there is a measurable cost in terms of lost productivity, lost resources, and lost lives. The CR works against these efforts which is why I urge you to vote against it.

Recent natural disasters remind us that the needs of women must not be forgotten in times of emergency. The devastating earthquake in Haiti did not stop the need for access to good maternal health care. Haiti already had the highest rate of maternal death in the Western Hemisphere before the earthquake, with the lifetime risk of dying in childbirth equaling 1 in 47.

Since the earthquake, UNFPA has delivered reproductive health supplies, including clean delivery kits and other maternal and neonatal health care products.

UNFPA helps to ensure women and their health care needs are not ignored in the wake of a disaster. But we can't wait until times of emergency to act. Each year more than 536,000 women die due to complications developed during pregnancy and childbirth, and another 10 million suffer debilitating illnesses and lifelong disabilities and UNFPA works to help prevent these deaths and complications.

Every step of the way, UNFPA is working to help women, prevent death, and support healthy families. This bill will cut funding to the basic work UNFPA does as well as the work in does in times of emergency, including Haiti, the Southeast Asia tsunami in 2004, and Afghanistan in 2001, among other times.

For this, and scores of other reasons, I encourage you to vote ``no'' on H.R. 1.

Mr. Chair, I rise in strong support of the Lowey amendment which restores lifesaving medical services to millions of young and low-income women and men who receive their basic health care through the 4,400 clinics nationwide receiving Title X funds. Let's be very clear about what services Title X family planning programs do and do not provide. First off and very importantly, federal law prohibits any Title X money from being used for abortion care. Plain and simple.

Instead, these monies go toward breast and cervical cancer screenings, hypertension and blood pressure measurement, prenatal, post-partum and well-baby care, birth control and abstinence education.

The statistics speak for themselves: contraceptive services at Title X centers annually prevent 973,000 unintended pregnancies, which would result in 433,000 unplanned births, 406,000 abortions, and 134,000 miscarriages. Slashing this funding actually has the opposite effect of the so-called ``pro-life'' majority. Not only would the number of abortions rise by 40% if these funds are cut, defunding Title X jeopardizes the millions of women and their babies who benefit from these clinics.

Given the objective benefits of this program which include annual savings of $3.4 billion, it is unclear how the anti-choice, Republican majority concludes that attacking and eliminating women's basic health care will improve our economy, erase our deficit, or create one single job. Once again, the message this majority is sending to women across this country is clear: They do not trust you to make your own decisions about your own body and will cut or eliminate programs that help you do so.

Mr. Chair, this bipartisan amendment places a reasonable limit on the Government's ability to spy on American citizens using Patriot Act powers, by narrowly targeting the Patriot Act provision which allows the Government to seize library or bookstore records to determine what Americans are reading and thinking. Protection against this type of intrusion into our thoughts and minds is at the heart of our most fundamental freedoms and what it means to be an American. For these reasons, I vote in favor of the Nadler/ Conyers amendment.

Madam Chair, I inadvertently voted against Amendment No. 524 which would protect our libraries and booksellers from Patriot Act searches and seizures. I change my vote to a ``yea,'' as I did in 2005 when I voted in favor of this very amendment.

Amendment No. 466 Offered by Mr. Poe of Texas

Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

I rise in strong support of accountability and oversight, and I rise in strong support of the Frank amendment, which would help give tools to the SEC so that they could better enforce the laws of this country.

Madam Chair, our Republican colleagues have proposed that the SEC's budget should be cut back to roughly 2008 levels; but I can hardly imagine that anyone in this body on either side of the aisle is pleased at the level of oversight that was performed by the SEC in 2008, the year the economy cratered under the Bush administration.

According to the SEC Inspector General, the Republican proposal would force the agency to let go 600 staff right when we need more activity by the SEC in oversight. Just as our colleagues across the aisle are calling for more accountability, they would cripple one of the key agencies that holds people in a key sector accountable.

The SEC's budget for all of 2010 is equal to just a small fraction of the bonus pool for just one major investment bank or hedge fund in the financial sector that they are charged with overseeing. It is a small fraction of what they are charged to oversee.

The total loss of household wealth as a result of this Great Recession has been estimated at approximately $14 trillion. It was a financial disaster that did not have to happen. A lack of adequate oversight and regulation were major contributing factors. We heard that from the Angelides committee report yesterday. So the Republicans' new proposal to cut the badly needed oversight of our financial system brings to mind one of the oldest sayings in our country: ``They are being penny wise--and pound foolish.''

The majority party is basically resisting any increase in the funding for the cops, the major cops on the financial beat. They apparently can look back on the carnage of the past years, look at the way the middle class has been brutalized, look at how people have had their dreams stolen in this recession, look at how their hopes were crushed, and declare that the status quo is ``just fine, thank you.'' We're not even going to fund it at the status quo at the time that we had the great debacle and crash of our financial system. They want to de-fund it even more.

I really do not agree. I feel strongly about it. This is a huge mistake. They would deny the needed relatively modest funding that is required to begin supervising over-the-counter derivatives trading. Let's take a look at some of the numbers.

The over-the-counter derivatives market is valued at about $600 trillion. In 2010, the GDP of the entire world was just over $74 trillion. The infamous ``flash crash'' on May 6 temporarily wiped out of our economy $1 trillion. In 2010, the budget for the entire CFTC was just $169 million.

So the number of new staffers that the SEC is saying it would like to hire will understand this new type of trading--the algorithmic trading, the kind of high-frequency trading that tends to dominate today's marketplace. It is trying to hire five new oversight professionals; but the number of such specialists the opposing party seems willing to fund is absolutely zero so that there will be no one looking over this new type of trading. Zero is the level of effort that the Republicans seem willing to make to see to it that we don't suffer through another great recession and to make sure that a Bernie Madoff doesn't happen again.

This is not the way to proceed. We should fund the SEC appropriately so that it can oversee the new Dodd-Frank bill, which requires many new studies and new rules, and so that it can give this country the protection it needs from risky trading. How can we know that the capital markets and the leverage rules that we are putting in place are enforced? We can't do that unless the SEC is properly funded.

This is an important amendment. I think it is one of the most important before this Congress. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support the Frank amendment so that we can oversee the financial markets, so that we can make sure that the rules are enforced, and so that we can make sure that the American investor, the American public, is protected.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I, too, rise in support of the Holt amendment and will place in the Record an eight-page document from the Americans for Financial Reform. This has eight pages of State, local, and city organizations in support of an independent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

I must say that the Republicans are chipping away at the independence of this very important bureau. We put it in the Fed to have financial independence for regulation. They're putting it back under the appropriations system and cutting it dramatically.

Dodd-Frank did a lot of good things, and one of them was to try to level the playing field for the consumer with the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. For far too long in our financial system and its products, any concerns about consumer protection came in a distant second, a third, or not at all. Now, any American who opens a checking or savings account,

anyone who takes out a student loan or a mortgage, anyone who opens a credit card or takes out a payday loan will have a Federal agency on their side to protect them. For the first time, consumer protection authority will be housed in one place, and the Democrats funded it. The Republicans are taking away that funding and that independence.

This is a critically important amendment for the financial independence, security, and well-being of the consumer in our country and for the financial system. We are suffering through the Great Recession because there was no oversight. The Democrats have put in oversight, accountability. And the Republicans lose the vote on the floor, we pass it, but they're trying to win by cutting away the funding so they can't function, so they can't do their job, taking away their independence. It is outrageous. It is wrong. It is an insult to the American people.

And my friends on both sides of the aisle should join Congressman Holt in support of his important amendment. It is important to the financial independence and security of the American public, and I urge everyone to support it.

House GOP Targets Consumer Protection Bureau With CR

(By Tim Fernholz)

When Democrats in Congress crafted last year's Dodd-Frank

financial regulatory overhaul, they went out of their way to

protect the fledgling Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

from the financial sector and Republicans who opposed it.

They did so by crafting a dedicated funding stream from the

Federal Reserve to protect the agency's independence from the

whims of appropriators--or so they thought.

A provision in the continuing resolution being debated on

the House floor this week would limit the CFPB's funding,

which could be as much as $700 million a year, to only $80

million for the rest of this fiscal year.

``They found a way around it,'' said Financial Services

Committee ranking member Barney Frank, D-Mass., the law's

namesake who managed its progress in the House. The measure

created several regulatory agencies and strengthened existing

ones while proposing restrictions on bank borrowing and

pernicious business practices.

House Republicans had promised to use the appropriations

process to limit funding for the agencies implementing the

new law, which they believe imposes burdensome costs on

consumers and the private sector while failing to prevent

future crises.

The CR includes no money for the Securities and Exchange

Commission or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to

implement key provisions in the law; similar restrictions are

already in the bill being debated on the floor.

With the bulk of the funding for the CFPB under the Fed's

discretion--the agency can request a further $200 million

from Congress if the director so chooses--Democrats thought

the CFPB would be safe from the whims of appropriators, but

language in the CR would amend the Dodd-Frank law itself.

``We don't normally tinker around with the Federal Reserve;

however, the Dodd-Frank bill did, and it opened the door,'' a

GOP aide said. Frank doesn't disagree: ``In fairness to

[Republicans], the Fed didn't independently decide to fund

the CFPB; we told them to.''

Frank was skeptical about the provision's chances in the

Senate or in negotiations with the White House, which has

made the agency a priority, but worried that the issue might

get lost in the complex funding battle.

``I don't think the tea party's victory was a mandate for

the re-deregulation of the American financial system,'' Frank

said, arguing that voters are behind restrictions on the

financial sector. ``On all those issues, as they become

public, we win.''

Among the amendments that have been proposed to the CR, one

would eliminate the salary of the CFPB's interim head,

Elizabeth Warren, and another would defund the agency

entirely. Warren pushed back at the agency's critics in a

speech on Tuesday.

``Politicizing the funding of bank supervision would be a

dangerous precedent, and it would deprive the CFPB of the

predictable funding it will need to examine large and

powerful banks consistently and to provide a level playing

field with their nonbank competitors,'' she said, pointing

out that IndyMac, a bank that failed during the 2008 crisis,

cost the government nearly 20 times the maximum yearly

funding of the CFPB.

I move to strike the last word.

I rise in strong opposition to the Pence amendment, which will eliminate all funding for the many services provided by Planned Parenthood. That's the amendment that is before us, not the other items that other people are talking about.

This amendment is not merely anti-choice. It is also anti-health, anti-woman, and anti-poor, and is a thinly veiled attack on birth control. This amendment will not do anything to grow our economy or create any new jobs to help us out of this great recession. It will only turn this Nation backwards.

Planned Parenthood is the Nation's largest provider of family planning services; and for roughly 60 percent of their patients, they serve as the primary care physicians, as 90 percent of the health care they provide every day is primary and preventive.

This is not about abortion. The Hyde amendment is alive and well, and it prevents and restricts any use of Federal funds for abortion. This is about primary and preventive health care. This anti-woman amendment will restrict millions of women from access to family planning, HIV testing and counseling, and breast and cervical cancer screening, leaving them with nowhere else to turn.

The other side's vision of smaller government would expand the government's power over women's choices. It is wrong, it is shortsighted, and it is unjust. Instead of getting between a woman and her doctor, instead of allowing women to have control over their own health care, instead of forcing personal beliefs on half the population, let's turn to the business of creating jobs and economic opportunity and away from the business of ruling other people's lives.

I urge a ``no'' vote on the Pence amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.