Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise to address the House this afternoon because, like so many Members of this body, I am engaged in a terribly important exercise of working to think through the next generation of regulation that will oversee the stability and health of our financial services sector. This is a terribly important and challenging thing that we do. We need to make sure that we do what is necessary to have a vibrant, innovative, thriving financial services sector that employs the people of Connecticut and the people of this Nation, that pays taxes in Connecticut and to this Nation, but that we toe the line in such a way that we never find ourselves in the position that we are in today of tens and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars being brought to the table to bail out a private industry that took too many risks.

And I rise this evening because I am concerned by the conclusion being drawn by some of the Members of this House, because our regulatory apparatus which, let's face it, was crafted in the 1930s, failed in many respects. And, boy, did it fail in some spectacular aspects. The conclusion seems to be drawn that government cannot regulate, that we should get out of the business, that we should leave the financial services sector entirely to its own devices, that somehow individual responsibility alone will create a stable and vibrant financial services sector.

And so I want to hearken back to the history of this body and this government crafting smart regulation. Think back 110, 120 years ago. American families ate rotten food. They bought snake oil in the guise of pharmaceuticals. They worked in factories that burned down and killed hundreds. They lived in cities that were unsanitary.

And over 120 years, 110 years, maybe starting with the fine Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, this Nation said we can do better. We can put in place smart regulation that protects our citizens and that adds to the quality of life of every American family. And, in fact, that is what happened, and we haven't gotten it quite right. There have been spectacular failures. But over that 120 years, the efforts of this government to craft smart, efficient regulation hasn't destroyed the economy.

The economic growth in this country over that period of time has been nothing short of spectacular. But it has protected American families. Very few families anymore buy snake oil, buy securities that would put Madoff's securities to shame, find themselves working in factories that burn down and nobody gets out because the doors are locked. 110 years, 120 years of success, not unadulterated success. There have been failures. But over time, the efforts of this country to put in place smart and efficient regulation have helped this economy and have helped the quality of life of American families.

And that is what we must do. We must not shrink from the task just because the SEC blew it on the Madoff case or because other regulators weren't watching new and dangerous markets closely enough. We must not shrink from the task of thinking through what new round of financial regulation allows that industry to thrive, allows that industry to provide credit to American families, to small businesses, to allow our economy to grow, but which never, ever puts us in the kind of risky position that we're working so hard to dig ourselves out of right now.

We can do this. There's a century-long tradition of our working constructively in that direction. So I know we can do this. The answer is smart, efficient, modern regulation for the benefit of everyone and the benefit of this economy.

Mr. Speaker, it is an honor for me to introduce today to the Congress of the United States, Pastor Anthony L. Bennett of the Mount Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Pastor Bennett is accompanied today by his wife, First Lady Bennett, and their young and energetic son, Ahmad.

The Mount Aery Baptist Church draws its name from the biblical Mount Ararat where Noah's ark is believed to have come to rest after the cataclysmic floods. This is an apt metaphor because Mount Aery is a beacon, a refuge, a house of good works in a very troubled city, one of the poorest in Connecticut, in fact, one of the poorest in the Nation.

But under Pastor Bennett's leadership, the Mount Aery Church has sponsored ministries for children, for teenagers, for those at risk of dependency or recovering from dependency. He has fostered educational outreach programs that have made a difference in a very, very troubled location.

One of the most personally moving things I have experienced in the last several years was when the Mount Aery Baptist Church raised up recent high school graduates of the city of Bridgeport at a time and in a place where half of the city's high school students do not graduate from high school.

Pastor Bennett is a leader, a minister, and a pastor; and I can't help but thinking this morning that if all of us strove to match his example, we would be a better country, indeed.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the Manager's Amendment to H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

According to the Department of Energy the building sector is responsible for 39 percent of total U.S. CO2 emissions. At long last, and due in part to the improvements contained in this amendment, Congress is acting to decrease the negative effect buildings have on our environment. Over the past year, members of the Financial Services Committee have met with a wide array of housing advocates, nonprofits and agency leaders to craft legislation that improves the energy efficiency of housing while creating sustainable and affordable communities for our citizens.

The result of this painstaking work is a bill known as the Green Resources for Energy Efficient Neighborhoods, or GREEN, Act, led by my esteemed colleague from Colorado Mr. Perlmutter and currently contained within the Manager's Amendment to H.R. 2454. Through a broad array of public and private incentives, it seeks to encourage energy efficiency and develop renewable energy sources for housing and commercial buildings in order to achieve the changes in the housing sector that will help build America's clean energy economy for the next century.

A provision I contributed to the GREEN Act provides incentives to lenders and financial institutions to help consumers who build, buy or remodel their homes and businesses to improve their energy efficiency-- lowering their energy bills, curbing waste and reducing carbon emissions all at once. I strongly encourage my colleagues to support these priorities by passage of the amendment and of the underlying legislation.

While I support many of the changes in the Manager's Amendment, I do have concerns about provisions in the Amendment which address over-the- counter derivatives, a matter which falls properly within the jurisdiction of the Financial Services Committee, and which I believe would best be addressed in that setting.

These reservations notwithstanding, I strongly encourage the passage of the Manager's Amendment and of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which marks a historic step toward innovation and energy independence for our Nation.

Mr. Speaker, the U.S. is facing a fiscal crisis which we must soon begin to address. This will not be easy, but there are two clear things that we know we must do.

First, we know we must fix the spiraling cost of our health care system, and those who would point to our Federal deficits ignore the much larger numbers associated with the promises that we have made through Medicare and Social Security that we are going to have trouble keeping if we don't take a hard look at those things.

Secondly, as the economy recovers, this House must put the brakes on government spending. That's why I am delighted that, tomorrow, this House will take up pay-as-you-go legislation that would simply say: You pay for what you spend. You either have the guts to ask the citizenry to pay for it via taxation or you choose other things that you don't want to spend it on. We've seen PAYGO rules in place before, in the 1990s, when the government ran surpluses and when we saw unrivaled prosperity.

So we need to look back at that and have the discipline to pass that legislation so that we restore confidence in our fiscal probity and in the prosperity to our economy.

Madam Speaker, I want to state for the record that on June 11, 2009, I was attending the funeral of my father-in-law who recently passed away, and I therefore missed the six rollcall votes of the day.

Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall vote number 329, on the Motion to Instruct Conferees on H.R. 2346, the Supplemental Appropriations Act.

Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall vote number 330, on H.R. 1687, a bill to designate the Federal building and United States courthouse located at McKinley Avenue and Third Street, SW, Canton, OH, as the ``Ralph Regula Federal Building and United States Courthouse.''

Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall vote number 331, the Ros-Lehtinen substitute amendment to H.R. 1886, the Pakistan Enduring Assistance and Cooperation Enhancement Act of 2009.

Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall vote number 332, the Motion to Recommit H.R. 1886, the Pakistan Enduring Assistance and Cooperation Act of 2009.

Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall vote number 333, final passage of H.R. 1886, the Pakistan Enduring Assistance and Cooperation Act of 2009.

Lastly, had I been present, I would have voted ``aye'' on rollcall vote number 334, on H. Res. 529, condemning the violent attack on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on June 10, 2009, and honoring the bravery and dedication of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum employees and security personnel.

Mr. Speaker, it has become amply clear to all Americans, North, South, Republican, Democrat, rich, poor, that our health care system is not just a moral embarrassment to the greatest country on Earth, but a severe economic liability.

Our auto companies and our corporations stagger under cost increases. Our small businesses choose between covering their employees or taking a step towards insolvency. And of course, health care costs are the leading cause of bankruptcy for American families.

We cannot fix this economy without reforming our health care system. We cannot be fiscally responsible without addressing the stunning economic liabilities that we have associated with Medicare and other promises we have made.

The reforms that we are offering will offer a real choice of plans to small businesses in America. It will provide tax credits to small businesses, and it will end the practice of insurance companies denying coverage to Americans who need it. Most importantly, it will emphasize prevention, wellness, and patient-centered care.

The bottom line, reforming health care to contain rising costs is the most effective action we can take to return our Nation's budget to balance and make our workers the most competitive in the world.

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

Mr. Chair, I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

Entrepreneurship in low-income areas is hindered not just by a lack of capital but by a lack of skills and training. Business skills training in low-income communities works. A recent Center For Employment Training study of 5,000 workers showed an average income boost of $7,500 to $26,000 for individuals receiving 28 weeks of business training. My amendment directs the SBA to invest in 10 Microenterprise Training Centers to provide training and resources to individuals seeking to start new small businesses, including expert-led classes, group workshops and one-on-one instruction. It authorizes no specific amount of new funds. We will look to make a small addition to the SBA operating budget later in the appropriations process.

This amendment is about spurring job creation in low-income communities, those communities that need jobs, that need small businesses most. These are the communities that are hardest hit by economic downturns, the last to recover and, in many instances, the communities that, absent jobs, draw on the public purse for the kind of public support that they need. So in the spirit of this bill, and with the support of the Small Business Committee, I urge my colleagues' positive consideration of this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield to the gentlelady from New York.

I thank the gentlelady from New York for her statement and for her terrific leadership on this bill.

I would just note to my colleague from Missouri that he is absolutely right to be concerned about safeguarding taxpayer dollars and avoiding duplicative efforts. However, I would point out that this amendment creates a program targeted and tailored to low-income and unemployed individuals and, therefore, doesn't duplicate the SBA's currently existing programs, which are largely tied to the lending that is often not extended to lower income and unemployed individuals. In fact, there are very few Federal resources available for lower income individuals seeking to start a business. The Microloan Program that the gentleman refers to is built around loans and actually in previous budgets has been zeroed out. So I believe and feel this personally, having spent a year helping microbusinesses in the Bronx and seeing personally how very economically powerful small businesses can be in distressed communities, that we can find our way to support this amendment and make it part of a very good and useful bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about the FAA's redesign of the airspace over Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. Plans for this redesign have moved forward, certainly in my district, without proper and appropriate input from the stakeholders and from my constituents affected by this move.

Planes are being rerouted to fly over southwestern Connecticut upon descent into New York's airports, and my constituents have been subjected to unnecessary and unprecedented levels of noise in their homes and places of business. A day does not go by that I don't hear this concern from my constituents.

Later this week I will be submitting an amendment along with my colleagues Congressman Sestak and Congressman Engel during floor consideration of H.R. 915, the FAA reauthorization bill. This amendment will call simply for a cost-benefit analysis to be performed before the redesign proceeds any further.

The amendment will require the cost-benefit analysis to take into account direct costs as well as the indirect costs of alleviating the noise that so affects my constituents.

I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense amendment to the FAA reauthorization bill.

Mr. Speaker, the passage of the American Recovery Act made a down payment on a new clean energy economy, with $39 billion worth of investment in smart grid technology, energy efficiency, and our renewable energy sector, all of which will lower energy costs and create good-paying, permanent American jobs.

Congress must match this reform and this investment with meaningful investments in our fiscal year 2010 budget.

To my friends on the other side of the aisle, let me say that I fiercely defend the power of the free market. But for decades the energy markets have increased our reliance on foreign oil, quashed American innovation, and eroded our national security. It is time, way past time, for us as elected representatives to lead and take those steps necessary in this budget to finally move our energy sector to a clean American sustainable economy.

Thank you to my colleague from Ohio for organizing this on this very, very important topic.

At one level what we're discussing is really very simple. Like every one of my colleagues standing here today, I have deep respect and appreciation for the power of the free market. It is the free market that has created the wealthiest society in the history of humankind. However, a free market requires smart regulation. We regulate dangerous things. We regulate tobacco, we regulate alcohol, we regulate firearms because we understand that used responsibly, they can enhance one's quality of life, but used irresponsibly, they can be devastating. And if there is one lesson that we have learned from this economic crisis, it is that an excess of debt can be devastating, devastating to individuals, to families, and, as we have learned much to our peril, to our country as a whole.

We have a long record, as my colleague from Ohio has pointed out, of attempts, failed attempts, to put in place over Congress after Congress, Republican-controlled Congress after Republican-controlled Congress, attempts to regulate the more excessive and predatory aspects of consumer lending that never saw the light of day.

But now we have an opportunity, a really terrific opportunity to pass commonsense legislation, which in many ways mirrors the very commonsensical legislation that we saw passed in strong bipartisan fashion last week around credit cards with respect to predatory lending.

H.R. 728 is a bill that will bring about a reform of the most predatory of practices. And it's hard, as you dive into this bill, to disagree with what is in there. The bill establishes a simple Federal standard for all home loans that simply says that lending institutions must ensure that borrowers can repay the loans they are sold. Now, in a free market, the market would bring that discipline to bear. But there are oddities within the housing market, subsidies, other incentives that mean, and we are all suffering from this today, that all too often mortgages are

extended to families where the lender knows or perhaps doesn't know but didn't do the work but knows that the individual, the family cannot repay that mortgage. So how hard is it to conceive of a regulation that simply says that a lender must do the work to assure us and to assure the borrower and themselves as a lender that they can repay the loan?

Lenders would be required and mortgage brokers would be required, if a family qualifies for a prime mortgage, to not sell them a subprime mortgage. And this is a particularly pernicious aspect of the mortgage industry. We see it particularly in our minority communities where minority families who might qualify for the low rates associated with the prime mortgage instead are sold a subprime mortgage and therefore are paying hundreds, in some cases thousands, of dollars every month that they don't need to pay. Again, this bill would just assure that mortgage brokers and lenders are not financially incented to put people into mortgages that they don't need to be into. Good, commonsensical regulation.

This bill will also ask that our securitizers, and we know now that one of the aspects of the housing market that was a bit pernicious was that risk was just passed from one hand to another, sliced and diced, and the person who made the decision to take the risk by extending the mortgage a week later had no exposure to that risk. So we are asking that along the chain of custody of a mortgage, whether it's the broker, the lender, the securitizer, that people just do the very basic work to look at this stuff, to look at this stuff and to convince themselves that the law has been followed, that the policies are in place to make sure that you're not putting toxic paper into securities unknowingly, bringing some responsibility to a process which has been all too irresponsible for far, far too long.

This is commonsensical legislation, and I hope and expect that it will draw the same kind of bipartisan support that we saw for the Credit Cardholder's Bill of Rights last week.

Thank you for the opportunity. I want to highlight one other practice that would be prohibited by the antipredatory lending bill that is to come before the floor this week.

I spent many years as a vice president of the Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit affordable housing group and saw up close and personal the devastation that can be wreaked by a process, a product, if you will, known as asset stripping.

Asset stripping involves the extension of debt, either a mortgage or a home equity line, often to the elderly, often to minority populations, where the lender knows, the lender knows that there is no likelihood that either the senior citizen or the borrower, whoever that borrower may be, can repay that loan.

And it's very deliberate, because as a result of the loan, the lender knows they will come into possession of the home involved. They will take the equity in the home.

Now, in this world of declining real estate values, it's a little hard to understand that business model. But the reality is that ordinarily, when housing prices are rising steadily or less than steadily or more than steadily, as we saw in the last 10 years ago, that can be a very profitable business model based on the expectation that the borrower will fail. That is not the kind of product that anyone on either side of the aisle thinks should be out there victimizing, particularly the high concentration of the elderly and the minority borrowers who get caught up in this thing.

Asset stripping is a pernicious thing that would be forbidden by this antipredatory lending bill, and I think we should take great pride should that occur should this legislation pass.

Good morning, Madam Speaker.

I rise this morning to address the importance of clean government and to urge my colleagues to support a number of measures that will come before this House to help assure that clean government.

Citizens deserve and expect to know that their elected representatives are acting purely in their best interests and they, particularly in this moment of crisis, should know that we act exclusively without conflicts of interest.

I am proud to cosponsor legislation that would prohibit Representatives in this House from taking campaign contributions from those for whom they have made appropriations requests. And I am proud to cosponsor a bill introduced by my good friend and fellow Connecticut Representative John Larson. The gentleman's bill will make huge strides in removing the money that so sullies our politics. The American people deserve no less, and I urge my colleagues to support these bills as they approach the floor of this House.

Thank you, Mr. Blumenauer. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am deeply honored to be standing on this floor where, for over a century and a half, our predecessors have taken the tough decisions, made the hard choices to set the American economy up for greatness. I'm talking about the investment in the highway system. I'm talking about the investment in the Internet, which has opened up vast new swaths of our economy. And we have that kind of opportunity now. In fact, we have that challenge right now. And the question is, will we find the will to rise to that challenge?

And I want to confine my remarks tonight to a very, very important topic, which is the fact that we have a renewable energy resource that is clean, cheap, abundant and available right now, by which of course I refer to the energy that we don't use because we conserve it, because we take advantage of the ugly fact that we are far too inefficient in our use of energy.

There is a history to this. We would simply be accelerating something that has been true now for decades. The Alliance to Save Energy estimates that without the efficiency gains that we were forced to make starting in 1973, when foreign nations decided to force us to make these efficiency gains, that we would use 50 percent more energy than we used to. And there's a lesson here. There is a lesson here that we can continue, not because a foreign country forces us to do it, but that we can choose to affirmatively capture this readily available energy resource.

Let me comment on a couple of ideas and areas that I happen to know well, having worked on the rehabilitation of this country's affordable housing stock for many years. The fact is that roughly 40 percent of the energy that we use in this country is used in our built environment, in our homes, our building, our commercial facilities, and we operate far less efficiently than we might.

At Enterprise Community Partners, we would do a rehabilitation of a 100-year-old tenement, 5-, 6-story tenement in New York City, built at a time when coal was pennies per ton and, therefore, builders and architects didn't think about efficiency. We would rehabilitate that structure and take 60 or 70 percent of the energy usage out of that building, 60 to 70 percent out a building which represents collectively 40 percent of the this country's energy usage.

You can't always achieve 60 or 70 percent. In our homes we achieve something; when we weatherize we achieve something like 30 percent energy savings. And I'm delighted and proud that the Recovery Act that passed on this floor made available $1 billion for weatherization around this country.

I was holding a caulk gun a mere 36 hours ago helping to weatherize a home in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where not only would we reduce the energy used in that home, but we would create a healthier home for the individual. And as it happened, these programs target low-income individuals, and so we would cut their energy bill substantially. And in this particular home, this woman was struggling to pay her bills. And if we could take 30 percent off of her utility bills, that would make all the difference between the kind of food she could buy, whether she could take some time off, whether she might educate her children. We can do this. And I'm delighted to say that as part of this much broader effort to rise to the generational challenge of our day, we will be submitting legislation very soon that will require the use of green building standards in HUD-subsidized housing; that will provide financing mechanisms which bridge a gap which has existed for far too long, a guarantee which recognizes the fact that you can spend a little bit of extra money, not a lot, a little bit of extra money to build green, but that you quickly get that money back in reduced utility and power bills in 2, 3 and 4 years.

This mechanism would simply guarantee lending associated with that small increment of additional capital that will very rapidly be repaid through reduced operating costs.

This bill, we hope will drop this week and, hopefully, will take a very big step towards addressing what is 40 percent of the energy usage in this country. So I'm just as excited as possible to stand here with my colleagues to say that we will rise to the generational challenge of our era.

My colleagues on the other side of this floor often are fond of asking us what sorts of burdens are we placing on our children and our grandchildren. The reality is that the energy consumption and use that this country does right now places a tremendous burden in health, in costs for remediation, in pollution, in further subservience to foreign energy sources on to our children. We have done this for too long. We are presented with a generational challenge that, on this floor, for 150 years, has been met by wise men and women who stood up and said we will take the hard decisions.

Change is never easy. But we will take the hard decisions because our children deserve and should expect nothing less from us.

Well, I just reiterate. We see a tremendous commitment on this floor at this late hour to what I really believe is the legacy that we will leave for those who follow in our footsteps. I really believe that this is the generational challenge of our time. And we will be truthful about it; we will explain it to the American people. And we will act or we will fall prey to the misinformation, to the fear, to the anxiety that is rooted in the desire for political gain, but also in the natural fear that many people have of change.

So I would just close with the notion that we need to stand united and go forward with this terribly important initiative.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of H.R. 1664. This is a commonsense measure to protect American taxpayers by making sure that their hard-earned dollars are used carefully and wisely in our efforts to stabilize our financial institutions. Let us be very clear about one thing: No one is happy that the TARP was necessary. We have far better uses for our money than stabilizing the very institutions that helped drive this economy into a ditch, but into a ditch it went, and we need to pull it out.

President Bush, Secretary Paulson and this very House decided in October of last year that we would pump billions of dollars into these firms. Now, like it or not, the dollars are there. So the only question that matters is: Should we look after those dollars? Should we, as the Representatives of the American people, look after their dollars to make sure that they are used wisely? The answer to that question must be ``yes.''

H.R. 1664 says one thing to TARP recipients: Pay your people, but do so reasonably and according to their performance. Pay reasonably and according to performance. The bill asks the Secretary of the Treasury to develop guidelines for those things. It does not ask the 435 Members of Congress but, rather, Treasury.

I expect that compensation committees and boards of directors around this country will be very interested in those guidelines because they know that it is their job to craft reasonable, performance-based compensation for their companies and for their shareholders. They have a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders. Like it or not, the American people are now shareholders, and we, as their Representatives have a clear fiduciary obligation to the American taxpayer. We have a clear interest in aligning the interests of the employees in the banks we now own with the interests of the American taxpayers. You do that through performance-based compensation. You do that by supporting this bill that aligns pay with performance.

Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon for 1 minute, 60 seconds, during which this great Nation will send $200,000 abroad to pay for foreign oil, each of those dollars hard earned in one of our factories, small businesses, or offices.

My colleagues, we have failed to act on energy for far too long, we, who represent a Nation who has always taken the hard choices and done the right thing to invest in our future.

Much is said in this House about our children. Now the eyes of those children are on us, and they have one question, and that question is: When all the work, when all the world, and when all of us stood waiting for you to do the right thing to act on our behalf, to change the way we use and get energy, did you act? Did you act for us, or did you just kick the can down the road one more time?

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to have my name removed as a cosponsor from H.R. 1427. My name was added as a result of an administrative error.