Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, it's a very important day today.

Five hundred and nineteen years ago, Columbus discovered America. He was on a trade mission. But the problem is that today, instead of dealing with trade missions and all the rest, we ought to have the bill out here that the President presented on creating jobs for American workers.

Now, this Congress has been in session for 300-some-odd days. With the Republicans talking about all of the problems of this society and how the President's plan hasn't worked, they have yet to bring to this floor a presentation of a way to create jobs for American workers.

These trade agreements, they say, well, if we had a level playing field with Korea and all of these other places, suddenly we would have a lot of jobs here. There is a much better way and a much surer way to provide jobs here in this country. My predecessor here talked about manipulation by the Chinese of our currency, which has been estimated to cut out a million jobs. There are other things we ought to be doing today than these free trade agreements.

Mr. Speaker, we are all proud Members of the United States Congress. We consider this the preeminent legislative body in the world that sets the standard for how the world should create laws and how we should govern our country. We believe in the rule of law. We talk about it all the time. We're for the rule of law. Well, that is the nub of this argument about why so many of us will vote against the Colombian Free Trade Agreement.

Now, we all know the horrors. And we'll hear them repeated again and again. But the fact is that we forced the government of Colombia-- President Obama did--to sit down and write a Labor Action Plan in which they said what they would do. We had listened for a couple of years to the previous administration, the Uribe administration; promise, promise, promise--nothing happened. So this President said, I want it in writing. Write down a labor agreement. It set out the precise steps that Colombia had to take to address the particular problems faced in that country; for example, steps Colombia could take to detect sham subcontractors and punish employers for using them to suppress worker rights.

We went down to very specific things. Why was that? Well, many of us who have been here awhile were here when we passed NAFTA. And we thought we had read it and understood what it meant, but we didn't understand a lot of what happened because we agreed that we wouldn't put the labor into the agreement; we would write a side letter. And we wouldn't put the environment into the agreement; we would put it in a side letter. Maquiladoras would be taken care of; the Rio Grande would be cleaned up.

Nothing happened because it wasn't in the agreement. It did not have the force of law of the United States Congress behind it.

So when we came to this, we didn't seal the deal. We said to the President, we want that in there. The President talked to the Republicans, and back and forth it went. And the Republicans were absolutely implacably opposed to putting in any mention of the Colombian Action Plan. Now, if somebody says they're going to do something, you take them at face value--sure they're going to do it. Then write it down here; just let's put it right in there so there's never any confusion about what it was you said you were going to do. But the Republicans insisted that this be as wide open as the NAFTA agreement, that it not have built into it the one thing that makes this so difficult for us to deal with.

If we believe in workers' rights and if we believe in human rights in this place--and we talk about it all the time. We talk about it for every country in the world. But when we write a trade agreement for Colombia, we're unwilling to write in the demands for the Colombian workers. That's what's wrong with this, and that's why most of us will vote against it.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the Korean free trade agreement.

We should all be proud of Korea. We created Korea. Our troops went to Korea at the beginning of the Korean War and saved South Korea from becoming North Korea. That's how the Koreans look at it.

I took a trip with the Commerce Secretary, Gary Locke, who's now the Ambassador to China. And the Koreans said, we're very grateful and we want to have this relationship with you. And they have come--because we opened our markets to them, they are the most successful country in Asia in coming from nowhere to an average income of around $33,000 per person.

Now, making an agreement with them is making an agreement more with an equal. And when we went from Seattle, we know about our regional relationship with them, we are the third-largest State exporter to Korea. In 2010, Washington State exported more than $55 billion worth of goods; more than half of all that went to Asia. Hundreds of thousands of jobs in my State depend on this trade relationship. So this is not something where we're going to lose jobs.

I believe it's important to move ahead because I think it's equally important to move ahead right. And what

is amazing is how the Bush administration went into this thing and never figured out the biggest problem, that it was a one-way trading operation. We said to them, send us anything you want, and they did. And now we were going to go for an agreement where we were going to turn it around and say, we're going to send some things to you.

The Bush administration ignored that. Had it not been for Charlie Rangel and Sandy Levin and the Democrats, we would never have gotten them to sit down and renegotiate. They didn't want to reopen. They had actually passed it and felt badly, and kind of--they lost some face because we didn't respond. But we said, no, it's not good enough. So we brought this agreement back and got an agreement that is much fairer and much more equitably deals with our economy, particularly our automobile industry, but also beef and some other things.

And this is an agreement between equals. This is not going out looking for cheap labor. They were that once. Back in the mid-1950s, when we said send us anything, they made all the textiles. They were the textile bunch. But they don't make textiles anymore. That's not what they're doing. They're dealing with high-end exports. And we have to have an agreement with them that makes it possible for us to have a level playing field.

This agreement does it, and from that point of view, I think this is one that everybody can support. I urge my colleagues to support this free trade agreement with the People's Republic of Korea.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Madam Speaker, in a letter to the president of the Committee to Support

U.S. Trade Laws, the Ambassador of the Trade Representative, Mr. Kirk, said there is nothing in the trade treatment that will weaken the international rules or U.S. laws to address unfairly traded imports that injure U.S. industry and workers. The specific trade remedies provisions you raise are carefully crafted by our negotiators to mean that they will not adversely affect the efficacy of relief under U.S. anti-dumping and countervailing duty laws.

Executive Office of the President, The United States

Trade Representative,

Washington, DC, April 13, 2011.

Gilbert B. Kaplan,

President, Committee to Support U.S. Trade Laws, c/o King &

Spalding, LLP, Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Kaplan: Thank you for your recent letter regarding

certain provisions in the trade remedies chapter of the U.S.-

Korea trade agreement (KORUS). Let me assure you that the

Administration is committed to maintaining strong and

effective trade remedy laws. There is nothing in KORUS that

will weaken the international rules or U.S. laws to address

unfairly traded imports that injure U.S. industries and

workers.

The specific trade remedies provisions you raise in your

letter were carefully crafted by U.S. negotiators to ensure

that they would not adversely affect the efficacy of relief

under U.S. antidumping and countervailing duty laws, and

would not impinge upon the rights of U.S. petitioners to seek

and obtain relief from unfairly traded imports. None of the

provisions mentioned in your letter--relating to

undertakings, pre-initiation notification and consultation,

and the committee on trade remedies--will require any change

in current U.S. laws or regulations or any substantive change

to current U.S. practice. Furthermore, the dispute settlement

provisions of the agreement do not apply to the antidumping

and countervailing duty provisions of the trade remedies

chapter.

With regard to undertakings, which are currently permitted

under U.S. law, KORUS does not require that any special

consideration be given to requests for undertakings from

Korean exporters or the Korean government or otherwise

obligate the U.S. Department of Commerce to enter into

undertakings. The only requirement in KORUS that does not

already exist in current practice involves the provision of

written information on the procedures for requesting an

undertaking, as well as the timeframes for offering and

concluding such an undertaking. This information is readily

available in U.S. law and regulations. The requirement to

provide a copy of this information at the time an

investigation is initiated will in no way affect our ability

to enforce our trade remedy laws.

With respect to the pre-initiation notification and

consultation provisions in KORUS, these are procedural

provisions that will not require any changes to U.S. law,

Under current law and practice, the Commerce Department

notifies the government of the exporting country when an

antidumping or countervailing duty petition is filed. Pre-

initiation consultations are already required under U.S.

countervailing duty law, In the antidumping duty context, the

agreement clearly states that the provisions are to be

applied consistent with U.S. law. Accordingly, these

provisions do not alter current laws or regulations in any

way.

As you note in your letter, KORUS establishes a Committee

on Trade Remedies, the purpose of which is to exchange

information and discuss issues related to trade remedies;

enhance each country's knowledge and understanding of the

other country's trade remedy laws and practices; and improve

cooperation on trade remedy matters. This forum will allow

U.S. trade law administrators and experts an opportunity to

exchange information and views with their Korean

counterparts, and could provide us a basis to address matters

of common concern and better advocate on behalf of the

commercial interests of U.S. exporters, manufacturers and

workers. Moreover, the United States succeeded in obtaining a

commitment from Korea to use this Committee as a forum to

discuss industrial subsidies, which will enhance our ability

to obtain information on Korean government subsidy practices

to the benefit of U.S. companies and workers.

Thank you again for sharing your views on these important

issues. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any

additional concerns.

Sincerely,

Ambassador Ron Kirk.

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

I rise to express my strong support for H.R. 2832, which is extending what have been historically two programs that have received strong bipartisan support. Beginning in 1962, the TAA bill was originally put in under the Kennedy administration, and it has been extended for all these years. And the Generalized System of Preferences has also been there for a long time. Our importers and exporters have been using it as ways of getting things into the United States that have made real differences not only for our people but for people in developing countries.

Now, TAA provides critically needed assistance to workers who lose their jobs as a result of trade. It would be hard to find anybody on the floor of the House who wouldn't say that trade causes displacement of workers. There are jobs that move here, move there, and this is a recognition of that and a statement that we care about what happens to workers and that we give them some kind of help. It provides them with support, education, and training so that they can obtain new jobs in growth sectors. In my State, we used to do log exports. Logging was a big issue. Then it went away. Well, you have to retrain people, and community colleges have trained a lot of people in this kind of thing.

In 2009 Congress made some much-needed reforms in TAA, many of which addressed past criticisms of the program. These reforms included extending TAA to cover service workers and more manufacturing workers, offering long-term training and increasing training funds, and increasing the health care coverage tax credit.

This was probably the most important of the reforms. When people lose their job, they have no health care. And everything that you have in your life can be wiped out by an illness or an injury. So the idea that you can get COBRA is a nice idea, but you've got to have money to do that. Most of the unemployment checks in this country don't make it possible for people to take advantage of the COBRA. So when we had this increase in support from the Federal Government for workers, we were really looking at the real problems that people face.

Now, unfortunately, last winter the House leadership let the 2009 reforms lapse, leaving a lot of workers just hanging out there. The Generalized System of Preferences was also permitted to expire, which harmed businesses that rely on the program both in developing countries and in the United States. While it's long overdue, I'm pleased to see we're finally moving the legislation to expand both of these programs.

I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 2832, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith).

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin).

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

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker and Members of the House, I think it's important that we are passing this TAA today. But it is just the tip of the iceberg of the problems faced by workers in this country. I think that we are picking one group and saying, well, if you can qualify for having lost your job because of international trade adjustment of one sort or another, you're eligible for some benefits. But I think that in the much larger sense the House faces a problem. We're seeing it in the streets. We're seeing it on Wall Street. We're seeing it on my Central Plaza. We're seeing it here in Washington, DC. We're seeing it in Atlanta. The workers of this country are very upset, and there's a long agenda that is sort of dealt with here for one small group of workers that ought to be available for all workers.

Now, we're going to have to extend unemployment benefits at the end of this year unless, like last year, at Christmastime, we'll be saying to people, You know what? We don't care about you; you're done. We haven't extended unemployment benefits. We ought to be doing it right now. It will be caught in the crush of all what happens at the end of the year, but it needs to happen.

Foreclosure relief. We continue to have foreclosures in this country with no way out for the workers of this country, including these. We didn't do anything for foreclosure problems for somebody who's lost their job because of trade. We make no adjustment. We don't say that you can lower the amount of your loan or the banks must negotiate. We don't do anything for people who are struggling with foreclosures in this country.

Health care. Health care in this bill makes it possible for people to get health care coverage. But there are thousands and thousands and thousands of workers, 14 million of them walking around in this country, with no health care, and we have done nothing this session to implement the Affordable Care Act.

Finally, I would just say there is one last issue that needs to be thought about. What happens to a worker who, training or not, exhausts all their unemployment benefits, and they have a family and they have a house? Now in the 1930s what people did was backed the car up to the house, put the furniture up on top, and drove off and got a job in California. You have got millions of people today who are tied to a house in Flint, Michigan, or Toledo, Ohio, or a thousand places. They can't drive off to Florida and get a job, or to California. They're stuck. And so they find themselves with no access to any kind of way to pay their mortgage. They're going to get foreclosed. Then they can leave, of course.

Or we've got to find some way to make it possible for workers in this economy as it recovers to somehow get by. If we don't care, if we just care about the workers who are lost because of trade--that's nice and we ought to do that. We're doing the right thing, but we ought to be thinking much broader than that if we're serious about coming out of the problems we have in this economy.

I urge everyone to vote for this bill and begin the drumbeat for the unemployment insurance extension and a couple of other things.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, in my district, one out of three or maybe one out of four people make their job some way in relationship to foreign trade, either directly through the seaport or through the companies that operate in my district, or the agricultural sector of eastern Washington. Now, all of us in Seattle know that trade is not bad if it's done right, and that's really the issue that we're debating here tonight under this rule which I support.

Two of the agreements that we have before us, Korea and Panama, are examples of doing it right. The Bush administration went in and signed agreements that were flawed, and, in fact, were held up, and then were renegotiated and are, in my opinion, a good place for the trade issue for these two countries. We rejected those flawed agreements because we wanted to do it right.

Now with these new rewritten agreements, we have some real change. In Panama's case, it is no longer a tax haven. It was the best tax haven on the face of the Earth before. Now we have a trade agreement, we have an implemented tax agreement that will make it transparent and no longer will that happen.

Unfortunately, Colombia is a glass that you could hold up and say, is it half full or half empty? There clearly have been problems, for many of us who have been resistant to this for a long time, and I will resist that particular one tonight because, and most importantly, Colombia has moved. They've made beautiful speeches. Speeches don't change anything. My old friend, Ronald Reagan, who I admired greatly, said ``trust but verify.'' And when the Republicans refused to put into this trade agreement that the work action plan would be included, they sent the message ``we're not serious.'' And that's why you're going to get so much opposition.

I urge the adoption of the rule, and we'll debate the issues later.

Madam Speaker, tonight the fat is in the fire. We're starting with the tough one up front, and I rise in opposition to the Colombia free trade agreement.

I believe that trade can have transformative effects on a society and its economy. I've seen it firsthand in Seattle, where one out of three or one out of four people make their living directly from trade. I've seen it in southern Africa. I helped write the AGOA Act, and I've seen the effects that it has had there. When trade is done right, it creates opportunities, it generates jobs, and it lifts people up the economic ladder--if it is done right.

Now, I don't come to this with any kind of ideological knee jerk. I am one who believes that you need to go and look. And I've been to Colombia on several different occasions, once with Commerce Secretary Gutierrez. We went out to community meetings. We sat down and listened to people talk. President Uribe had a community meeting, and we saw what was going on. I've been to Medellin, which was one of the most dangerous cities in Central America--in fact, in the world. And one day when one of the drug lords was taken out, the people of Medellin said, No mas, no more. We don't want anymore.

Colombia has come a long way from the image that people have of that country, but there still are problems--too many remaining--and the efforts to address them have not been really activated. Now, the labor problems are really grave. Last year, more union leaders were killed in Colombia than the rest of the world combined. Nearly every murder has been gotten away with. No one has been arrested, no prosecution, nothing.

Now, effective organizing would save lives in Colombia just like it has in the rest of the world, but Colombian laws compound this culture of impunity by making it easy to deny workers their basic rights. Imagine what it does to a worker thinking about joining a union to improve his lot or her lot. No wonder only 4.4 percent of Colombia's labor force dares to unionize.

Democrats have been clear from the very start that this situation needs to be addressed--for the sake of the working people in Colombia, for the safety of Colombian workers and their families, and for the working people here in the United States, because the working community around the world is all one, really. What happens to workers in one area has an effect in other areas. And if we allow people to take jobs where the cheapest labor is or where there are no rules or no anything, we then damage our own workers. And that's part of the problem in this whole issue as we discuss it here tonight.

Now, to be sure, we've made some important victories in trying to renegotiate this agreement. After the Bush administration had written these agreements, we said no. And then we took over in the House, and Mr. Rangel and Mr. Levin negotiated the ``May 10'' agreement with the President of the United States. That included minimum internationally recognized labor standards, and it was a crucial step.

The renegotiation of the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement has also a produced a Labor Action Plan, which was another part of the development of what was going on with Colombia.

I will save a little of this for tomorrow because we're going to debate on this again tomorrow.

Madam Speaker, I agree with the last gentleman. We ought to be talking about the jobs bill. The President put a bill out here. We can't get the Republican leadership to even bring it up. But we will bring up the Panama free trade agreement. Now, this is a break from trade policies in the past. It reflects the hard work of many of us to change U.S. trade policy.

There are five reasons to support this agreement:

First, it has strong enforceable labor and environmental obligations. Many of us fought for years to get these commitments into our trade agreements. We lost those battles in 1995. I was here when NAFTA passed and the debate over CAFTA 6 years ago, which is why in that agreement 15 Democrats voted for it--because it wouldn't take care of workers. Now, that all changed in 2007 when the Democrats took over the House. The last administration finally accepted our demands on labor, the environment, and other issues, such as access to medicine. This agreement includes all of those.

We, secondly, have used the leverage of this agreement to eliminate a tax haven. No one denies that Panama was a great tax haven. But they have ratified the Tax Information Agreement with us, which The Wall Street Journal says is ``the most significant step to date on the road to ending four decades of virtually watertight banking secrecy laws in Panama.''

Third, we worked with Panama to bring its labor rights up to standard.

Fourth, the investment provisions of this agreement do more to protect the governments' rights to regulate those found in past agreements, such as chapter 11 of NAFTA. For example, this agreement clarifies that the environmental regulations generally are not ``expropriations'' and that foreign investors do not have greater rights than U.S. investors under U.S. law.

Finally, the United States has consistently maintained a trade surplus with Panama for 20 years, and this agreement expects to increase that.

I support the agreement. Panama has done what they have asked, and they should enjoy the benefits of a free trade agreement. But make no mistake, we need to do more to improve our U.S. trade policy. We have to get the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate to admit that we're going to have to have a jobs bill.

We've been in session for 300 days after an election in which all we heard was the Democrats didn't get jobs, jobs, jobs. And now, 300 days--silence. Silence on the Republican side. Not one single bill. When is it coming, folks? That ought to be the next bill that comes up to the floor.

I urge my colleagues to vote for this.

Mr. Speaker, finally we come to the most important of the bills that we're going to deal with tonight. This should have been the first bill. This should have been dealt with a long time ago--back in February when it expired--because this is a bill that extends two programs that have had strong bipartisan support in the past, the Trade Adjustment Assistance program and the Generalized System of Preferences program.

When the leadership in the Senate decided that the only thing that they were going to do was stop President Obama from having a second term, they recognized this trade issue was a very sensitive one, and the most sensitive issue was what does it do to American workers. Do we help people that are displaced when jobs go overseas or just disappear generally? Then are we going to help our workers? And the Democrats said we've got to do that. If we don't do that, nothing else is going to happen. Finally, the Republican leadership in the Senate said, well, okay. Because we want something, we'll finally give a little something to the workers. You've heard the reductions that have been made.

This bill started in 1962 under John Kennedy, and it was done to help workers who were laid off because of increased competition in trade. In 2009, we finally had a reform with bipartisan support. The Congress made significant changes in TAA, many of which were made to deal with past criticisms of the bill. It wasn't enough; it didn't help people. It needed health care benefits. There were a lot of things that were problematic since 1962.

When the Recovery Act became the vehicle in 2009, TAA was put on it. There was never any expectation that it would just disappear in 2011. Senator Grassley, a nice conservative, solid Republican Senator from Iowa said: ``Today's achievement is the culmination of years of effort, and I'm confident the result will serve to benefit American workers in Iowa and across the United States for years to come.'' Not ending in 2011--for years to come. Don't forget those words. And yet the House leadership made the unfortunate choice to let those critical reforms expire last winter.

Washington State workers benefited immensely from those 2009 reforms. In fact, in the past couple of years, 35 percent of all of the workers certified for TAA in Washington State were certified under the new eligibility criteria, including the expansion of work programs to cover service workers. Today's bill protects and preserves the integrity of the TAA program and the 2009 reforms and provides trade-impacted workers with the support they need to get back on their feet.

Now when you lose a job, it used to be unemployment was sort of set up, if your construction job went away because it was wintertime, you went on unemployment insurance. And springtime came back and the job came back, and away you went. In this economy, the jobs go away, and they don't come back. So you have to learn some new skill to make a living for your family. Now that concept is one we should have for all workers in this country, not just for those affected by trade.

Workers in Washington and all across the country have suffered because of the delay in the implementation of this bill.

This bill also extends the General Systems of Preferences program, which is the oldest of the U.S. assistance programs for our businesspeople in this country. It's played an important role in our Nation's trade and development efforts for decades.

Sometimes I ask myself if anybody on the Republican side ever had anything to do with a business. I'm not a

businessman, but I know that the most important thing for a businessman or businesswoman is to be able to plan, to know that the program is going to be there and that you can quote a price to somebody because you know it will be there. But the GSP program, which has been important to a lot of our small businesses, has simply been unreliable because the Republican leadership couldn't seem to figure out how to extend something that has been bipartisan for years.

U.S. workers as well as businesses have relied on GSP. About 65 to 70 percent of U.S. imports under GSP are imports used to support U.S. manufacturing. We're getting things from outside to bring into this country. As a result of the delay in extending GSP in the U.S. and in developing countries that rely on these preferences, the business deals have ended. There have been all kinds of problems. We hear about them in our office from our little businesses in our district.

Now we are finally considering this important legislation. I urge my colleagues to pass it. I understand that the Senate is, tomorrow, going to pass; it at exactly the same time as we pass it in here. It will be a historic moment that we extend a program that started as bipartisan in 1962. It is essential that we as a Congress think about our workers and their jobs. We're not worried about the rest of the world.

A big problem in this country is that we haven't paid attention to our workers and what happens to them when they lose their jobs. They have unemployment maybe for 99 weeks. We haven't extended unemployment benefits either. That's another issue hanging around here that's going to ultimately hurt our workers. The leadership on the other side knows it. Why do they sit there and dangle our workers that way? Why do you want to make them angry and upset and uncertain?

You watch the Tea Party in the street, you watch what's going on down on Wall Street, you've got to say to yourself, There's something brewing out there. And if you don't deal with unemployment insurance and what happens to workers, we are going to have a very turbulent year in the next year.

I urge all Members to vote for this.

Mr. Speaker, at any given time more than 1 million youth are homeless in America. In the midst of a recession where Federal, State, and local government budgets are being cut, needed services for these youth have all but disappeared.

Low Income Housing Tax Credits have helped fill this void and create private-public partnerships to build affordable low income housing. This housing has been invaluable in providing much needed shelter for those hit hardest by the recession. Unfortunately, a quirk in the law prohibits full time students, who were previously homeless from living in these units. A homeless youth, who wishes to pursue full time education, must choose between education and remaining homeless. This is not a choice our youth should make, nor is this a policy America has ever supported.

Education has always been the cornerstone of American excellence and ingenuity. Even more, an education remains the best hope for homeless youth to escape poverty as adults. It is critical that we fix this defect in the law, and ensure that our youth are given every opportunity to reach their educational goals.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the SSI Extension for Elderly and Disabled Refugees Act of 2011. I introduced a similar bill on August 1. This modified version would grant a one-year extension of current law, which passed unanimously in both chambers of Congress in 2008 and was signed into law by President Bush (P.L. 110- 328). Under this law, elderly and disabled refugees and certain humanitarian immigrants who are very low income may receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for up to 9 years before becoming citizens, to allow time for naturalization. The Senate unanimously passed this bill today.

Unfortunately, the current law expired on September 30, 2011. Without immediate passage of this bill, thousands of refugees will face serious hardship. This legislation will be completely paid for by collecting a $30 fee on diversity visas through October 1, 2013. Excess funds would go to the Department of Treasury. Congressional Budget Office estimates that this bill would result in $24 million in deficit reduction.

Mr. Speaker, this is a common sense bill that continues an existing law. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Madam Speaker, I'm taking the floor today to talk about foreclosures.

The problem of housing foreclosures in this country continues to be one of the central reasons our economy is not moving forward. While a lot of this economic wreckage is avoidable, this Congress continues to fiddle while the American housing market burns. Families across this country are being tossed out in the street, and many of them don't need to be--and we can help them. We can help fix the housing market so that millions of American families can stay in their homes and others can have a smooth transition into renting. We could help, but this Congress is doing nothing.

Millions of homeowners are suffering through the worst recession in 100 years, and the Republican majority is not doing one single thing to help them. Just look at this map next to me. This is a snapshot of foreclosures across this country. The dark red areas are where the worst places are, but you see it covers everybody in the country.

Now, there isn't a district that isn't affected by this crisis. The housing market doesn't care about your politics. Three years after the Wall Street meltdown, millions of Americans are still facing foreclosure. One in four homeowners in this country is underwater, and home prices continue to drop.

While the housing market continues to steadily destruct and millions of Americans are needlessly pushed into poverty, this Congress isn't doing anything to stop it. Instead of fixing the economy, today we're going to debate a bill--a Republican bill--that attacks public health and children. The Republican priority is not foreclosures. It is to make sure that every American is breathing more mercury and toxins.

When the Democrats were in charge, it was different. We thought you should be able to write down mortgage principal in bankruptcy and modify mortgages more easily and get lenders to the bargaining table to avoid foreclosure. But the last Congress, Republican Senators stopped all that. And in this Congress, the Republicans in the House want to make sure we don't do anything. Instead, they cut programs for foreclosures and cut affordable housing. Instead of taking actions, Republicans say the market will fix it. In the market we trust. Not in God we trust, but in the market we trust that everything will be better.

But we're losing. We're long past a healthy correction. The damage being done is completely unavoidable. Make no mistake, Republican economic philosophy is pushing millions of Americans into the street, middle class Americans.

It's important to remember it was the banks that caused this crisis. Well, we bailed out the banks, and how did they thank the American people for the bailout? The banks went into foreclosure overdrive. They robo-signed foreclosures and filed fraudulent documents as fast as they could.

FDR once said, ``take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But by all means, try something.'' And we can act. By just reducing the principal on all underwater homes to fair market value, $71 billion would be injected into the economy. Every homeowner would save about $6,500 a year in payments, and millions of new jobs would be created.

Banks are still sitting on $1 trillion in cash. By using 7 percent of that money, there would be millions of people kept out of poverty. The banks can afford it and it would be something we seem to have lost all sight of in Congress--it would be fair. We can restart the economy by helping homeowners. We can come out of this economic crisis by putting responsible homeowners on solid ground. The map says it all. Homeowners are struggling in every district of every Member of this Congress.

We can fix this foreclosure disaster. We can help American families who play by the rules. We could start action today and help the middle class. But, no, what are we going to do? We are going to fool around out here about the rules of the EPA that protect people against toxins and mercury.

This Congress has lost its way and it needs a change. And it's going to come, because all those people who are in foreclosure in this country when the next election comes are going to ask, ``What did the Republicans in the House do?'' And the answer is, ``Nothing.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the Duwamish Tribal Recognition Act, legislation to grant federal recognition to the Duwamish Tribe of the Seattle, Washington area.

The Duwamish people were the first indigenous people of the Greater Seattle area and lived in the area for more than a thousand years before the first European-Americans arrived in 1851. In 1855, the Duwamish Tribe, represented by Chief Si'ahl (Seattle), signed the Treaty of Point Elliott, which guaranteed fishing rights and federal recognition to all Tribes represented by the Native signers. However, despite ratification by the U.S. Congress in 1859, the promises made by the United States in the treaty were never fulfilled.

Since then, it has been a struggle spanning more than 150 years for the Duwamish people to attain the recognition that was promised to them in the Treaty of Point Elliott. Most recently, in the waning hours of the Clinton Administration, the Tribe was granted federal recognition by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs. However, the Bush Administration reversed this decision, questioning the administrative procedures utilized by the Clinton Administration.

Mr. Speaker, for far too long the Duwamish people have waited for federal recognition, which will provide those enrolled in the Tribe access to federal finances for tribal government, as well as cultural, education, health care, and housing programs. Now is the time to recognize the Duwamish people. I encourage my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise as a very proud honorary member

of the Nisei vets, the group that you are honoring today and in support of this resolution.

Seattle was the site of a roundup of thousands of Americans. Ordinary Americans, had businesses, had truck farms, kids were going to high school and were going to college. One of them, a young man named William Nakamura, was an 18-year-old kid at Garfield High School who was rounded up and taken out to the middle of Idaho to a camp out there. And then the government said, if you'd like to come back and join the military and serve, you can.

There was lots of debate among the people in the camps about whether they should come back or not. And as you heard, 10,000 came back and were the most decorated unit in the history of the United States military. They distinguished themselves beyond any group that has ever served for this country.

William Nakamura took out two machine gun nests and was himself killed, and the courthouse in Seattle is now named after him as a memorial to what this country really stands for. The Japanese Americans, the Nisei vets, set an example for this country we must never forget.

As we look at our Muslim brothers, and we sometimes can't distinguish just exactly--you hear ugly talk that's reminiscent of what went on in this country in the early 1940s. We must never let us act again as we did against these Japanese Americans. They proved that an American is an American, no matter what his face looks like or her face looks like, they are Americans. They deserve that respect and they deserve the due process of law. They lost all their property in Seattle, unless they could give it to someone and say, would you take care of this? Some people did get it back at the end because other, Caucasian Americans, took it and held it for them and gave it back after the war. They did not receive due process of law. There were all kinds of violations of their civil rights. And that's why this memorial is important for us to remind ourselves of how real Americans act, no matter where they came from, and how much they're willing to give to make this country the strong place that it is.

I want to say just a few words about this. Obviously, I support the extension of the TANF. But I think that there is a real need--and we've been extending it 1 year at a time, 1 year at a time, 1 year at a time for some time--there really is a need to re-look at the whole concept of what this safety net really needs to be.

We wiped out welfare as we know it, as was the phrase in 1996, at a time when the economy in this country was going straight up. Anybody could find a job if they looked for one. And it was very clear that there were efforts in that bill to push people off the rolls and out into the work market. Now, it was possible to do that.

Today, however, you have a situation where there are four people that are looking for every job that's out there. You have many middle class families who have exhausted 99 weeks of unemployment and have nothing in this country except food stamps.

Now, it sort of depends on whether or not we're going to have a middle class in this country when we have a downturn like this and we decide whether we're going to help the middle class make it. We've got foreclosures that won't quit. And we've had no proposals out of the House to do anything about foreclosure prevention.

So you have middle class people who've lost their job, their unemployment is gone, they are now having their house foreclosed, and they look to their government for a safety net and find nothing but food stamps.

In my belief, there is a time when we should help the middle class in this country be able to go through what may be another year or two, we're not quite sure how long it will be, but it should not be that there is no program available to help middle class people who have fallen on very difficult times.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this bill to renew the Nation's child welfare programs. I'm glad to see this happening as it has in the past by unanimous consent, and it's important not just to keep these programs funded and renewed. With more than one in five children in the country living in poverty and with so many odds stacked against foster kids, we need to do more. We need to make progress. That's why I'm so supportive of this bill, because it is not just an extension of the program; it has some important and targeted innovations.

Some States, especially my home State of Washington, have some truly new ideas about how they can do more to prevent children being put into foster care even in tough economic times. One of the real innovations of this bill is to give States waivers for some governmental funding restrictions so that they can test these innovative interventions in their child welfare programs. If the States can maintain their current quality and if the innovations they want to try meet solid criteria, the Federal Government should be a partner in making real progress. That's what these new waivers do.

Washington State is one of the leaders in innovating child welfare policy, and it has some things it has been eager to try out. Right now, the law doesn't allow for this kind of experimentation, but this bill gives States a way to begin. Washington State is not alone. There is room for 10 States to have these kinds of programs. There are some States already ready to make these moves.

Now, the Department of Health and Human Services allowed this kind of thing in the past, but it was allowed to lapse. This is really an extension of something we've had before. HHS was allowed to give out a number of waivers in the past, and some progress was made in a number of States. This bill restores that limited waiver authority and sets out criteria to keep the integrity and level of effort they need to have. We need to allow these States to do it.

In addition to extending the program and making more room for innovation, the bill does something else that's really important. In 2008, we passed the Fostering Connections and Increasing Adoptions law. This Fostering Connections law did a lot of good in helping foster kids have a better chance of truly making it in this country. Among other things, it addressed the health concerns of foster children who moved from home to home and from health care setting to health care setting, and it required States to develop health coordination plans for these kids so that they had some continuity of care. These plans had to include oversight of prescription medications, including psychotropic drugs.

As a psychiatrist who has worked with children in child welfare and the juvenile justice system, I am very concerned about the use of psychotropic drugs. It has bothered me for a long time. In the fostering care population, it is a particularly vulnerable group because of this question of continuity of care. You want somebody to be monitoring what's happening as they move from home to home to home. We need

to do more. We need to get a clearer picture of what is happening with these kinds of medications in the foster kids, and we need to make sure they are being used properly and are not overly prescribed.

One of the parts about this whole law that's crazy is that when a kid gets to 18 they could be on a medication. When they hit 18, they're done. Their Medicaid ends. They have no continuity of the drugs. They go off cold turkey. So there's some real questions that we need to answer here.

This bill takes the 2008 requirements another step forward and it requires States to adopt protocols for using and monitoring psychotropic medications among foster children.

Mr. Speaker, I speak strongly in favor of the bill and urge my colleagues to say ``yea.''