Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, consumer financial protection is not a punishment to business. It is a level playing field so that consumers and businesses who want to transact a fair deal can do so. Consumer financial protection, which is in the financial reform bill, will allow consumers and lenders who want to do a fair deal to get rid of the fine print, the hidden fees, the tricky terms that landed our economy in such an awful condition.

We're climbing out. We're addressing the issues that affect the American people, and we're doing it now. The fact is that we want to see good lenders stay good; lenders who want to have clear terms, well disclosed, underwritten to make sure the consumers can pay that money back, and what we want to see in this economy. And people who want to have fine terms, funny terms, tricky terms or hidden fees will not be able to do that. Our economy will be better for it. It will be stable, transparent, and clear, and we will see continued economic growth in the American economy once we pass consumer financial protection.

Madam Speaker, on May 19, 2010, I inadvertently missed rollcall No. 276, but had I been present I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. Speaker, I come to the House floor today to congratulate Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on their decision to start proximity talks. I believe the United States' national security interest is directly linked to the resolution of this long-standing conflict. I also believe that, like other seemingly intractable conflicts, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be resolved, especially with the active and even-handed leadership of the United States. Congratulations to President Obama and Envoy Mitchell, who got right to work on Middle East peace right after the President's inauguration and, despite huge hurdles, have both been persistent.

I hope the President continues to encourage all parties to negotiate seriously and in good faith and to move from proximity talks to direct negotiations to reach agreement on final and permanent status issues. The world needs a secure Israel and it needs an independent, viable Palestinian state. However, simply declaring support for one side or the other does not really help either side. Both sides benefit from peace. We need to build a constituency for peace, and that means support for each side to make the necessary concessions.

Mr. Speaker, I am claiming the time on behalf of the Progressive Caucus, which is that body within the Congress itself, that group of people who are dedicated to the ideals that have made America fairer, America more open, America more inclusive, and America more peaceful over the years. The Progressive Caucus, who believes that working people of America deserve fair wages, workers' rights, and things like that; who believe that our country should be at peace with the rest of the world, and who believe in diplomacy and who believe in talking it out and who believe war is rarely a good idea, and when it is, it should be executed with the most amount of care for our soldiers and our veterans, and who believe diplomacy is almost always the right answer.

The Progressive Caucus, who believe immigration reform should be humane and that we should put ideas of family reunification and a path towards citizenship up front. The Progressive Caucus, which believes that during this time of financial fragility and uncertainty that we need a robust, strong reform bill that will hold Wall Street accountable so that the money of the American people is cared for in a safe and proper way. This is the Progressive Caucus, and this is the progressive message where the Progressive Caucus comes to the House floor to talk about issues of and concern to the American people, to explain the position of the Progressive Caucus to the American people and to talk about things that really matter and to make sure, Mr. Speaker, that the American people know that there is a progressive voice in Congress. That voice is the Progressive Caucus, and this is the progressive message.

Mr. Speaker, today the topic for the progressive message is Wall Street reform and jobs. Wall Street reform and jobs. A lot of people think about this Wall Street reform package that is moving its way through Congress and they think, You know what? I know this has a lot to do with me, but I am not exactly sure what. People know it was tax money that was pulled together during September and October of 2008, and that the Troubled Asset Recovery program was pulled together and salvaged some American banks to stop the whole system from going down. The American people know that. It was unpopular, nobody wanted to do it, but people knew it had to do with them and their tax money. The American people also know it had something to do with credit-default swaps and it had something to do with mortgage-backed securities; but the fact is, Mr. Speaker, this stuff is a little confusing and it makes a lot of sense for us to talk about it. But it makes sense to talk about it from the standpoint of jobs and businesses, particularly small businesses, and it makes sense to talk about it from the point of view of the consumer. So we will be talking about that today over the course of the next hour.

But before we do, I want to dive into a few things about jobs, about the state of our economy. The fact is that it is good news that we have seen some positive job news. On May 7, just a few days ago, the Department of Labor reported that 290,000 jobs were created in April. This is a good thing, but I am quite certain if you look around the neighborhoods and the farms and the rural communities and the urban centers and in the suburbs of the United States, there are still a lot of people not working. Positive job growth, yes, because the Democratic Caucus, led by a progressive voice, helped to make that

happen. But the fact is that there are still a lot of people out of work.

Much has been done. Much needs to be done because this 290,000 jobs in April is good, but the fact is we need about 300,000 jobs added per month in order to keep up with population. If we do less than that, the unemployment rate will remain high, and that is something that is wrong and we should do something about.

But I do want the American people to know that we've seen 290,000 jobs added in April. Good sign. And then we saw 231,000 created in the private sector, and that's a lot of jobs, and that's good, most of that growth coming from the private sector.

Those 290,000 jobs, new American jobs added in April, larger than expected and the largest gain since March 2006, that goes to show that addressing health care, addressing the stimulus package and the American recovery package are things that really help the American economy and are getting our economy back on the road to health.

But the question is, Mr. Speaker, what does it mean for so many people, still out of work. We still need a jobs bill. We still need to do something about jobs. And we need something to stimulate job growth in our public sector and in our private sector. This is undone work, still needing to be done.

We want to celebrate the good news, but we want to also talk about what else needs to be done. The good news is that this is the fourth consecutive month of job growth with 537,000 jobs added since December. So this is nearly a half a million jobs added, 84 percent of which is in the private sector.

So some friends on the Republican side of the aisle have said, oh, well, yeah, you know, you spend a lot of money in the recovery package and, yeah, you're going to get positive job growth in the public sector. But these jobs, the growth has been in the private sector, which means that the stimulus bill worked, and the American people are benefiting from it right now.

Also, it's true that in March sales of new homes increased about 27 percent, to 411,000 at an annual rate, the strongest since last July, the biggest monthly increase in 47 years. The biggest monthly increase in 47 years.

Home prices in February rose 1.4 percent, posting the first year-to- year gain in more than 3 years.

The unemployment rate, as I mentioned before, unfortunately, increased to about 9.9 percent. It went down to 9.7 and dipped back up to 9.9, about 10 percent. But this is a result of over 805,000 people entering the workforce because people feel that this is a time they might be able to find a job again. These people need to find that job opportunity, and that's why the Congress needs to pass more job legislation.

Over the past 3 months, we've added an average of 187,000 jobs per month, in contrast to 727,000 average jobs lost per month during the last 3 months of the Bush administration. No one should ever forget that in the last month of the Bush administration, January 2009, January 2009, this economy lost 741,000 jobs. And that was about average for the last 3 months of the Bush administration.

Right now, we've seen a 290,000 job increase. The stimulus package worked. The Democratic Caucus is working, and we need more job growth in order to make sure that young people coming out of school in the next few weeks will have a job to do, and those folks who are still among the ranks of the unemployed can get work.

So since the Recovery Act, stocks have gone up across the board, the Dow has gone up over 70 percent, and the S&P 500 is up 80 percent, NASDAQ is up about 100 percent.

Last year, Americans' tax bills were at their lowest points in 60 years, since the Truman administration.

So just going on, Mr. Speaker, talking about the state of our economy, before we get to Wall Street reform, job growth seems to be moving up. We seem to be moving from this state of job loss to now job growth. Still we have 10 percent unemployment, and we've got to do something about it.

During the 111th Congress, this Congress, Democrats have taken a series of steps to make these positive job numbers a reality. I want to talk about those tonight, Mr. Speaker, because it's important that the American people know that, with the progressive vision, often led by the Progressive Caucus, that this Democratic Caucus has been doing the right thing for the American economy. For example, we passed the HIRE Act. This is a bipartisan bill to create 300,000 jobs with tax incentives for businesses that hire unemployed Americans. This is helping people out. And the HIRE Act is helping small business add people on their rolls so that they can work.

The American Workers State and Business Relief Act, this bill offers tax incentives, again, to spur business innovation and tax cuts for families with kids headed to college and disaster relief for States, combined with economy-boosting unemployment benefits and health care for Americans hit by the recession.

We also passed the Small Business and Infrastructure Jobs Act. This bill extends aid to States to provide subsidies to employers, including small businesses who hire unemployed workers that is on track to put over 160,000 Americans back to work. That's good news.

And then of course, last week, we passed the Home Star Bill, which will create much needed jobs in the manufacturing sector by--we passed the Home Star Bill, which gives tax incentives to renovate homes.

But also one bill that's been introduced is an important bill that will create much needed jobs in the manufacturing sector by providing tax rebates to homeowners who install energy-saving products. That's right. So that's the Home Star Bill.

Mr. Speaker, also, the Congress and the President have worked together to enact a whole array of broad tax cuts that working families and middle class families and small business owners can have, which ends the era of Republican tax breaks focused only on the wealthy.

It's important to point out, Mr. Speaker, that Democrats, even progressives, don't object to tax breaks. We just object to tax breaks for the people who don't need a tax break. American people working hard every day can use them, and we've been in favor of them.

All told, Congress has enacted more than 800 billion tax cuts with another 285 billion making their way through Congress in order to help spur innovation and employment for people who actually need it and can use it.

Congressional Republicans threaten to take us back to the failed policies that created the economic crisis. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I'm going to be talking about Wall Street reform, which actually is the kind of reform that we need to correct what the Republicans have created, which is a failed economy, which the Democrats, right now, are trying to pull the American people out of.

Congressional Republicans are trying to take us back to these old policies. They want to side with the special interests, with Wall Street banks, credit card companies, Big Oil, and insurance companies. This is wrong, Mr. Speaker. And we're here to do something about it.

These economic and fiscal policies created by the Bush administration created the Bush recession, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, with job losses of nearly 800,000 a month during the Bush administration, and nearly doubled our national debt.

It's amazing when you hear Republicans talking about spending, given all the spending that they did, putting our economy at risk.

Republicans have voted against every single piece of economic legislation, from the Recovery Act to the Wall Street reform, choosing the special interests over the American worker and families and small businesses.

So, Mr. Speaker, the Democrats, the Democrats in Congress will continue to take America in a new direction, working to create American jobs and a new strong foundation for our economy, protecting Main Street and the middle class, and getting results.

I'm going to talk about one of those major reforms in just a moment. But during the last 3 months of the Bush administration, we lost an average of 726,000 jobs, Mr. Speaker. In the last 3 months we've created 186,000 jobs. The current unemployment rate is 9.9 percent. So we're coming back. We're moving up. We've got much more to do,

but that then sets the stage, Mr. Speaker, for the Wall Street reform discussion we're going to have tonight.

Mr. Speaker, let me start out with a very simple proposition, a very simple proposition. Wall Street reform is good for Main Street. Very simple proposition. Wall Street reform is good for Main Street. Wall Street reform is good for Main Street because if Wall Street creates a situation where they've got to have massive bank bailouts, that's coming out of the taxpayer, which is represented by Main Street.

We've got to make sure that we pass financial reform legislation that stops the bailouts, that stops the tricky and fine print and the hidden terms and the nonunderstandable and indecipherable contracts for credits cards. Wall Street reform is good for Main Street.

We need to create a situation, Mr. Speaker, where people who want to, if you want to sell a loan or you want to sell a mortgage you've got to keep some skin in the game. You can't just sell that mortgage and now you don't care if it's well underwritten. You don't care if you've made sure somebody's going to pay that loan back, because you sold the paper that's all you need to know. That's something that's got to change. All those things represent Wall Street reform. Wall Street reform is good for Main Street.

Main Street, whether Main Street's in Minneapolis, which is my town, or in Los Angeles or in Peoria, Illinois or in Laverne, Minnesota or any small town across America, or any big town across America, or any suburb or anywhere, Wall Street reform is good for Main Street. It protects our tax dollar. It protects the consumer, and it makes sure that there are fair, clear rules for Wall Street to live by. Not unfair rules, not rules that are bad for Wall Street, but rules which allow good actors on Wall Street to remain good, and allows the unscrupulous actors to get some punishment for what they have done.

But you've got to understand that if we don't have clear rules, clear rules of the road, then some actors on Wall Street will think, you know, by not doing shady things, we're losing out, so we'd better go do them. We don't want that. We want to have clear, fair rules to keep good actors good and to keep bad actors out and accountable when they're not out.

So that's what the main message is for today, Mr. Speaker. Wall Street reform is good for Main Street. Very important.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to talk to you for a moment about what Wall Street reform means. Some people think, well, what does Wall Street reform mean? This is a lot of complex stuff. Are we talking credit default swaps? Are we talking about derivatives? Are we talking about resolution authority? What does all this stuff mean?

Well, you know what? It's not very complicated at all. It's actually pretty simple, Mr. Speaker. Wall Street reform means policing Wall Street, meaning have real regulators up there to actually hold some people accountable, no more Bernie Madoffs, no more folks who made off with the money.

Wall Street reform means ending bank bailouts. Everybody hated the bailout. In my opinion it was a necessary thing to do, but it was one of those kinds of things that we all hated to do. We need to end taxpayer-funded bailouts forever, and that's why we need resolution authority. And I'll talk about what that means.

And we need, also, Mr. Speaker, to stabilize the economy. We need to stop these wild bubbles. This bubble during the first decade of this century created a housing bubble which led to a, what, a bursting of the bubble, and we saw real, real pain: 2.8 million foreclosures last year alone, Mr. Speaker. We cannot revisit that kind of situation again.

And stop gambling with worker pensions. Some folks don't really realize how deeply involved Main Street is in Wall Street. But if you have a 401(k) or a pension or anything like that, Mr. Speaker, your retirement money is on Wall Street. We can't allow it to be gambled by people who are looking for no more than a quick return with very little accountability. That's what it means. Wall Street reform means policing Wall Street, ending bank bailouts, stabilizing the economy and stopping gambling with worker pensions.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I think it's important for people who are out there listening, Mr. Speaker, to understand what it is, who's on the side of the people and who isn't. Who's side are you on is what this bill, this board asks, Mr. Speaker. Who's side are you on?

And the question is, Democrats represent Main Street. And that's why Democrats support jobs bills, as I just talked about, support unemployment insurance. Democrats support curtailing excessive Wall Street bonuses. We'll talk about those in a minute.

Democrats represent creating new consumer protection agencies so that the fine print, the tricky terms, they say 9.9 percent on the credit card until it's not. When is it not? Whenever they say it's not. We've got to stop that kind of thing.

And Democrats support tax cuts for small businesses and worker families, just as I got through talking about, and Democrats support regulating Wall Street and preventing foreclosures. All these things are what the Democrats are all about. All these things help the American people.

Now, what are the Republicans talking about? Because they are complaining a lot, and they always have a lot of criticism for our side. But Republicans, they opposed the jobs bills and the unemployment insurance. You know, Mr. Speaker, I don't believe one of them, not even one of them, voted for the stimulus bill that helped to create that 290,000 job bump that we saw in April. None of them even supported the stimulus bill which has led us back to positive job growth. They were against it, even though they spent money on wars, spent money on Iraq, spent money on giving the richest people tax cuts. They oppose it when we are trying to get average working Americans some jobs and some unemployment insurance.

By the way, it's amazing, but they are against curtailing excessive Wall Street bonuses. They actually have the nerve to say stuff like, well, should we curtail the bonuses of professional athletes? Should we curtail bonuses of this person or that? Look, that's irrelevant. Those guys aren't asking for the American people to bail out their bank. This is about saying if a big Wall Street CEO wants to get a golden parachute after running the company into the ground like Stan O'Neal did Merrill Lynch, then maybe the American people should have something to say about it. If you want a bunch of money from the public trough, you shouldn't be flying around on jets just to come testify, getting excessive bonuses, stuff like that. It's just fair. So this is what we are talking about.

The Republicans opposed creating a new consumer protection agency. Wait a minute. You mean to tell me the American people haven't gone through 2.8 million foreclosures in 2009 alone all based on no doc loans, liar loans, loans where nobody even wants to figure out whether you can pay back the loan, where they just put pressure tactics on you to just sign, sign, sign, sign, sign. You mean to tell me you don't want somebody to watch and make sure that these loans are fair, that the terms of the loan are clear, that people understand what the interest rate is going to really be, that they really understand that the total amount you are going to have to pay for this house over the term of the loan, that you understand what negative amortization is, that this teaser rate is not going to stay at 700 bucks, it's going to jump to 1,100 bucks after the 2-year or 3-year period is over? You mean to tell me you don't want anybody to protect the American people from that kind of stuff? They say no. They say buyer beware, caveat emptor, that is their problem.

Democrats say you know what, if you have a fair product at a fair price that you are willing to disclose, go out there and use the American enterprise system to do it. But don't trick the people, don't sell somebody a horse that can't see and then when the person asks about it you tell them it sees just fine. Don't do that. Be honest. Be a good businessperson. That's what the Democrats are saying. The Republicans are saying buyer beware. They are saying we don't care. Just sell anything you want to whoever you want at whatever cost you want.

They oppose tax cuts for small businesses and working families. The

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Mr. Speaker, actually gave tax cuts to about 95 percent of the American people. The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act gave tax cuts to about 95 percent of the American people. How many votes did the Republicans give us to help the American people get some tax cuts as opposed to the rich Wall Street types? None. They didn't want to help on that one. They were busy. They were against it. They were all worried about other things when we were talking about helping the American people out.

So, they oppose regulating Wall Street and preventing foreclosures. They are not in favor of that. Let me tell you, Democrats, Mr. Speaker, were working on antipredatory lending legislation during 2005, during 2006, during 2007, but we were in the minority. During 2008, the Republican caucus blocked it every step of the way. And now that the Democrats are in charge, we are moving full steam ahead to pass bills that will prevent predatory lending and stop foreclosure. And we would like a little help, but so far, Mr. Speaker, we haven't gotten any.

I talked a moment ago, Mr. Speaker, about Wall Street's pay record. And I talked about how the Republican caucus was against bringing in these excessive bailouts and these excessive bonuses for Wall Street CEOs, who by the way get TARP money, the public money. Wall Street's record pay. After receiving trillions in taxpayer-funded bailouts, the top 38 financial firms gave record pay to their employees in 2009. They gave your money, Mr. Speaker. They gave them the taxpayers' money. We are trying to stop that. We are trying to make sure they don't do that. But we are not getting any help from the other side of the aisle.

So they gave record pay to their employees during 2009. During the great recession, Wall Street pay in the billions. 2007, their bonuses were $137 billion. 2008, $123.4 billion. 2009, $145 billion. That's incredible, particularly during a recession. But the Democrats are here to say no more. We will not allow you to do that.

Now, Mr. Speaker, as a result of Democrats working hard to pass jobs bills, to push on this issue of consumer protection, to passing the Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights, what we have seen is this downward trend in the economy during the Bush administration breaking sharply upward during the Obama administration. During the Bush administration, $15 trillion in wealth was destroyed between July 2007 and 2009 as home values plummeted during the foreclosure crisis. This is what happened during the Bush administration.

But when Obama comes in, the numbers start going all the way back up again. The road to recovery. U.S. household net worth going back up. And it's going back up every day. What we have got to do is stay the course and keep on building and strengthening our economy by holding Wall Street accountable, by passing job-promoting legislation, and by letting consumers keep some of their money and given a fair deal.

So Mr. Speaker, let me just talk a little bit about some of these issues about how Wall Street reform is good for working Americans. So I want to go back to my first board. So Wall Street reform is good for Americans.

Mr. Speaker, we are here today to talk about ending decades of failed policies that ultimately caused a near complete collapse of our entire economy. We are here today to talk about what brought us the greatest recession since the Great Depression. Wall Street reform is good for Main Street. The crisis is the product of reckless actions of massive private financial institutions coupled with deregulation and nonregulation and no oversight while the Congress was under the watch of the Republicans and the Bush White House. These policies have come with an enormous cost to the American middle class.

Mr. Speaker, do you realize that $14 trillion of net worth has been lost when we watched home values plummet during the Bush administration? Twenty-two percent in decline in net worth for individuals. Pensions fell. Pensions, Mr. Speaker, fell by $28.4 billion. Pensions, what Americans rely on to care for them during the golden years, the value dropped so that people have to work longer. People who are hoping to retire cannot do so. Last year alone 2.8 million homes lost to foreclosure in 2009. Twelve million Americans relying on payday loans just to get by. Thirty-three billion dollars in bonuses for Wall Street executives.

Mr. Speaker, when we pass financial reform, including the Consumer Financial Products Agency, those 12 million Americans relying on payday loans to get by will have a watchdog watching over them to make sure they are not abused by sharp practices, fine print, and tricky terms and conditions. So when you hear Republicans talking about financial reform and how we shouldn't do it, and they don't want this and they don't want that, just keep in mind those 2.8 million homeowners who lost their home in foreclosure or those 12 million Americans who are relying on payday loans just to get by, relying on credit cards just to get by.

Who is going to make sure those terms are fair, that they disclose those terms, that somebody is watching out for that consumer? It will be the Democratic caucus and the President who passed financial reform. I do hope we get at least one Republican to vote for it, but I am not holding my breath.

You know, it's important to point out, Mr. Speaker, that when you hear Republicans talking about cutting redtape or letting the market sort it out, actually that has very severe implications for the American people. Cutting redtape means getting rid of regulations. It's like calling the police officer on a beat redtape. It's like saying a regulator who makes sure that financial products are fair is redtape. It's not redtape. It's regulation that's necessary to make sure the American people are treated fairly.

Let's talk about what they really mean when they say cutting redtape and letting the market sort it out. It means no accountability and no responsibility for multinational corporations and Wall Street CEOs who gamble with our national well-being. And it means a basic assurance that if they have their way we will be back in bailoutville again. We will be back in this mess again. And that's why we've got to pass financial reform.

Since taking back control of the Congress we have seen the Democratic caucus take real action to help consumers. In December 2009, the House passed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The Senate is moving its bill forward now. The Senate is currently working on that bill, and it looks like it's going to come up soon. The House bill will protect consumers and investors and small businesses and put our broader financial system on more stable footing. The House bill will place badly needed regulation of things like derivatives, hedge funds, and credit rating agencies.

Mr. Speaker, let me just take a moment to help the American people understand what a derivative is. A derivative is kind of like a hedge. When the value of a particular security goes down, the derivative is supposed to cover that fall in value and make sure that you don't lose all altogether.

A form of derivative is a credit default swap. And basically what that is is that when you have a mortgage-backed security, that means a security that's traded but is backed up by mortgages, that if the value of that security falls down that credit default swap is supposed to pay. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, this instrument, this credit default swap, is like insurance, but it's one of those air quote ``like insurance.'' It is not really insurance, but it's like insurance. Because if it was insurance, it would be regulated by a State insurance commissioner who would make sure that that insurance company had the money to cover claims if there would have been a claim.

A regular insurance company says, you know what, if you are going to hold yourself out as an insurance company and you are going to write policies for people, you have to have enough money if there is an auto accident or a tornado or there is a loss of life or whatever we have insurance for. But when it comes to these credit default swaps, there was no such regulator. Nobody made sure that there was enough money to back the loss and pay the claims if those securities went down in value.

And because of that, when the mortgage-backed security market went

down because people were not paying on their mortgages because they were in foreclosure, and they began to make claims for those credit default swaps, there wasn't enough money to cover them. And the American people had to bail out AIG so they could pay those creditors. That's what a derivative is.

Derivatives are going to be regulated under the new financial reform. There will be that commissioner. There will be that regulator to make sure that this market works properly and that it doesn't cost catastrophic losses in our economy.

Hedge funds. Hedge funds are large funds generally held by wealthy individuals. They'll be regulated.

Credit rating agencies. These are agencies that issue ratings for bonds like a AAA rating or a AA rating or a BBB rating or other types of ratings that they can give. The fact is that these credit rating agencies, some of them, when they said that this security was AAA, it wasn't. Some of these assets that they said were good were not good. And when they went down in value, the people who relied on the credit rating agency were caught by surprise, and this is why these credit rating agencies are going to have reform. And it's a good thing, Mr. Speaker.

Now, let me just say the other thing that we're going to do in reform is--I mentioned mortgage-backed securities. A lot of people don't--it's like, well, what is that? Well, a mortgage-backed security is a security where--imagine that you have a house and you have a mortgage on that house, and then the bank is going to receive the money that the homeowner is paying on their mortgage. And imagine that the bank says, You know what? This homeowner owes me a stream of income. If you want it, I'll sell it to you. And the person says, Well, I'll buy it. And the person starts buying up a lot of mortgages, and then they take those mortgages and they bundle them up. That's a mortgage-backed security.

And then they take that mortgage-backed security and they bundle those up, and that's called a collateral debt obligation. Imagine a mortgage is an M&M, a bag of M&Ms is a mortgage-backed security, and a box of bags of M&Ms is a collateral debt obligation.

Now, imagine all of a sudden that somebody were to take that box of bags of M&Ms and kind of slice them up and sell them off. What it might look like is something like this. You might have--these things are called tranches. A tranche is nothing but a French word that means slice, and a slice is something that you have if you look at this mortgage-backed security.

This top tranche, mortgage-backed security, is made up of these tranches, each rated a little risker than the next. So this top tranche is a AAA tranche. That's the one that the rating agencies tell us is a AAA tranche, and we rely on them and expect that they are being honest and have done a good job in rating the risk of that top-rated tranche.

But then the next tranche might be one down here. This is a B--AA tranche, and one of the riskier tranches, so maybe down here, maybe you have BBB here.

So these things, you get it in a document. It's usually a document, and you can buy this mortgage-backed security or you can buy a piece of it and you can have an interest in it, and it will entitle you to a stream of income. But how valuable is it? How safe is it? How sound is it? It all depends upon how well the rating agency has rated risks for each tranche.

So if you look at this particular mortgage-backed security, this tranche's performance is referenced by multiple unrelated investment vehicles in 2006 and 2007. So if you have one of these things and you look at it, it will say that this is an index call, the ABX.HE, BBB rating, 0.06-2. Here it is. Then you have Mezzanine Fund, Hudson Mezzanine Fund. That means it has a lower rating for risk.

And you have these down here. Abacus. You have this one. And they're all down here. So these are all down the line and these are all high.

So this is what a mortgage-backed security could well look like as you look at the various tranches that descend in order of risk. The problem with this is that when they were--the risk was not properly assessed and evaluated, and when they began to decline in value, you began to have real trouble in our market. And it's because of a lack of regulation, which is going to be taken care of as Congress moves through financial reform.

Now, what does all of this mean? And we'll return to this in a moment. What does all this mean for working families? Working families might think, you know what? I don't know what a tranche is. I don't know what a credit default swap is. I don't know what a mortgage-backed security is. All that's true. But perhaps the portfolio manager of your pension or your 401(k) knows what it is and, therefore, it affects you directly.

Well, what this means, what it means is that financial reform is going to mean that bank loans, mortgages, and credit cards are going to be fairer, more affordable, more understandable, and more transparent. Financial reform is going to mean that there's going to have to be real disclosure and that the government is going to take some real responsibility to make sure that these credit rating agencies are properly assessing risk, are making sure that the companies that do it are properly assessing risk, are going to make sure that consumers are treated fairly, are going to prevent bailouts, and are going to make sure our economy has a more stable footing.

Financial reform is going to mean that it's going to ensure that consumers get the information that they need in a clear, precise format regarding banks, mortgage services, and credit card companies.

Financial reform is going to prevent the financial industry from offering predatory loans to people who can't afford the repayment and that these loans are going to be properly underwritten so that people don't get in over their head.

Financial reform is going to put in place commonsense regulations to stop abuses by the financial services industry as payday lending and exorbitant overdraft fees. Overdraft fees. That's when you swipe your card, if you're 30 cents over, you may still have to pay $39 for that overdraft fee even if you went out and asked for a debit card so that if you did go over by mistake the charge would be denied. And you might have to solve that problem some other way, but at least you wouldn't be deep into your account and have a negative balance.

Financial reform is protections against reckless Wall Street financial schemes, bad home mortgages for short-term profit, bad credit cards with hidden penalties for the average consumers, and it means protecting workers' life savings, pensions, and stopping Wall Street casinos. It means it guards against massive unemployment rates due to the near total collapse in our economy back in October 2008.

Financial reform also, Mr. Speaker, means putting into ``too big to fail'' financial firms. Too big to fail means too small to save. Too big to fail means reckless behavior by firms that are so large that no matter what they do, they know that we've got to bail them out, because if we don't, it will have real harm to all of us.

And that's what we're talking about. We're talking about doing something to stabilize our economy, defend our economy, protect our economy, and to make sure that the average American is not at risk and their financial future is secure.

So let me just go through some of the highlights of financial reform. Before I do, I just want to talk about some of the root causes again. And to do that, I want to get this mortgage-backed security back up here.

If you want to talk about what happened and, therefore, what we should do to fix it, you have to start at the fact that way back in the 1930s, Mr. Speaker, our economy went through a catastrophic drop known as the Great Depression. And during that time, forward-thinking politicians put things in place to try to help protect our economy, things like Glass-Steagall, which said that if you're a financial firm, you have to do what your core competence is; meaning, if you're a depository bank, you go do that; if you're an investment bank, you focus on that; if you're an insurance company, you focus on that.

And it went along that way very well, Mr. Speaker, right up until the mid-1990s, when Travelers Insurance

and Citibank came together--an insurance company and depository bank coming together. They wanted to do it. There was a big court case about it, and a lot of people at the time thought, You know what? That old Glass-Steagall stuff is so yesterday. Let's do something new and innovative and really unleash innovation. That's what they said.

It so happened that Glass-Steagall was not such a bad idea as we look back, but at that time they wanted to pass a bill called Gramm-Leach- Bliley. This is a bill that would basically allow firms to basically go out of their area of core competence, and so you'd have a Citibank purchasing an insurance company or you'd have a depository bank purchasing a brokerage house or an investment bank, and you just had kind of everybody doing everything.

What happened is you had bigger firms. They kind of dabbled in various areas. But as the business reality was changed because they were deregulated, Congress did not see fit to put in the kind of regulation that was required to make sure that the system was still essentially safe and essentially sound.

Reckless schemes began to emerge. We began to see more deregulation. In fact, in 1999, when we passed regulatory reform in the financial world, we also said that things like credit default swaps would not be regulated. They would just be out there on the market, because they figured the people who deal in these things are arm's length and they are sophisticated investors and they know what they're doing and what they do won't harm the rest of us. I guess we were wrong about that.

But what began to happen is that in the mortgage markets, we began to see people being--who wanted to buy a home, going into the mortgage market and they were beginning to be sold things that were called predatory loans. Now, this is what we call them. That's what they are. But what they were called is adjustable rate mortgages, ARMs. They were given ARMs, and sometimes they were given mortgages where they would get--for 2 years they'd pay a low rate, and after 2 years you'd have a balloon payment that would go up. Or after 3 years you'd pay a low payment, and then it would balloon upward.

Now, the mortgage market, the housing market is a market that had consistently gone up, it had kept increasing. So even if that happened, when you got to your balloon payment, perhaps you could go back to a lender and you could simply refinance your mortgage. How many Americans try to do that? Let me tell you. A lot.

But we assumed the housing market would always go up. But what if it flattened out or went down like it did over the course of the last decade?

The fact is that it was in the mid-1990s when Congress passed the law that told the Fed that they could regulate the mortgage market to make sure that when people got into loans that were not good for them, that they could regulate.

Some of these 2/28s and 3/27s I mentioned had terms like ``prepayment penalties.'' If you wanted to pay off the loan early, you couldn't really do it, or if you did, you had to pay an extra penalty.

They had things like yield spread premium, meaning that if you sold-- if you were a mortgage broker and were able to channel somebody into a higher-cost loan, then you, as the person who brokered that loan, might be able to get the spread of the difference between the lower-cost loan that they were qualified for and the higher-cost loan that you got them to bite on. So you incentivize people, pushing people to get into loans that were not as good as the ones that they actually qualified for.

Over time, we also had something called securitization, which meant that, as I said before, once that mortgage was inked and somebody bought the house and got the loan, that the paper on that mortgage could be sold and then pulled together into a mortgage-backed security. And we didn't require that the original lender keep any part of the risk of that loan, so they could just sell it off and it wouldn't make any difference to them if that loan was never paid off or no not. So, therefore, their responsibility for underwriting that loan carefully, making sure the person could pay that loan began to go down because they weren't going to keep it on their books anyway.

So what began to happen over time, Mr. Speaker, is that we saw these instruments like mortgage-backed securities I mentioned before, mortgages being sold to somebody who packaged them together and then packaged them in an even bigger box and then set them up in these tiered investment vehicles, with the highest being supposedly the most safe investment, all the way down to the bottom, with the most risky investment being sold and then people buying parts of it; and then these instruments being hedged with things like credit default swaps, which didn't have anything to back them up if people made claims when these instruments lost value.

What began to happen is that credit began to get cheaper, low interest loans for long periods of time. As money was cheaper, people bought more houses. As people bought more houses, the price of them went up, obviously, and we began to experience a bubble in the housing market. And you began to see, like now, housing prices have dropped quite a bit. The problem is that people who bought at bubble prices now are underwater, meaning the loan on their house is higher than the amount of value that is in the house, which is a problem. Negative equity.

But what began to happen, Mr. Speaker, is that these mortgage-backed securities, as people began to lose jobs, as the economy started to flatten out, as the housing market started to flatten out, people began to not be able to pay, and the people who probably never should have qualified for a loan couldn't pay, and the value of these mortgage- backed securities began to decline.

As that happened, people started to get in really difficult situations, because what began to happen is that in neighborhoods all over America, houses began to get abandoned, people began to be foreclosed on. Either they had a house that they never really could afford but they bought it on a teaser rate, and so when it ballooned they couldn't keep the house; or when people could not afford it when they would lose their jobs, and then the foreclosures began to seriously mount. They began to get really big.

And then, as that began to happen to the housing market, people who wanted to go back and refinance their house didn't have any equity or had negative equity, and then the bank said: We just can't refinance you because there is no value in the home or maybe there is actually negative value in the home. At that point, we got to a crisis, Mr. Speaker.

What happened? The fact is, is that we began to have a real catastrophe. Very little oversight from government, government allowing people just to do--to let the market just go on. As I said before, caveat emptor. And real pain began to happen as the foreclosures mounted, as the failures continued on, as unemployment began to slump, because housing is a huge part of our economy. And if the housing market isn't moving, then a lot of people aren't working, which began to increase the cycle of the bust.

So, Mr. Speaker, what we see now is a real need to do something about the situation that we are in, a real need to take real affirmative action, to take real control over our economy.

So let's talk about what we are going to do to solve this problem. We are going to talk about reforming the financial sector of our economy. We are going to talk about adding greater oversight. We are going to talk about what it is that we need to do to make sure that we don't find ourselves in a very difficult situation yet again.

What we are going to do, Mr. Speaker, is we are going to do something about that predatory lending that I have talked about. We are going to stop predatory, irresponsible mortgage lending. Tough new rules on the riskiest financial practices; rules to stop excess speculation in derivatives and growing use of unregulated credit default swaps.

We are going to require investment advisers to act for the benefit of their client under the law, exercising the highest standard of care. We are going to empower investors with greater say

in electing the company board members, some of these companies that urged, urged, urged their employees to sell as many mortgages as they possibly could. Stories like from Countrywide, which was a huge predatory mortgage lender, which ended up having so many of the houses that they lended money for going into foreclosure.

We're going to stop the shadow banking system of small predatory institutions such as payday lenders, check cashers, mortgage loan originators, and many others who have disappeared as quickly as they arrived on the scene, and we are going to start regulating the unregulated.

We are going to stop ``too big to fail,'' Mr. Speaker. We are going to stop ``too big to fail'' by saying we are going to have a fund that these big firms have to pay into based on the riskiness of their activity, so that if one of them goes down, that the people who will pay their creditors will be from that fund, not from the American taxpayer. It is kind of like FDIC insurance. Banks pay into a fund so that if a bank goes down, depositors are covered. And that is the money that goes to make sure depositors are covered.

This, what we call ex-ante, which means before the fall, fund would be paid, and it would make a lot of sense to do this, because the people who are in business who are doing these risky practices are the ones who should pay.

Now some people say we need a fund after a company goes down. If that made sense, Mr. Speaker, that would mean that the one who engaged in the risky behavior would be gone after everybody else had to pick up the pieces. That's not good economics, Mr. Speaker. We oppose that idea. We are talking about the Consumer Financial Products Agency, and the CFPA would have the power to stop unfair, deceptive, and abusive consumer financial products.

We would also have a board called the Financial Services Oversight Council, Mr. Speaker, who could study potential risks to our financial system and identify financial risks before it caused great harm to the economy.

And so, Mr. Speaker, that is the basic heart of financial reform. We need the American people to embrace it. It is good: policing Wall Street, ending bank bailouts, stabilizing the economy, and stopping gambling with pensions.

Now in the last few minutes, Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about a subject that I think every American should know about, and that is the effort by Wall Street leaders to stop reform of Wall Street. There is a lot of money being spent, Mr. Speaker, to stop financial reform, a lot of money being spent to make sure that things like regulating derivatives, regulating of the credit rating agencies, regulating credit card companies, payday lenders, and making sure there is an ex- ante fund to resolve failing firms so that the American people don't have to fork it over. They are spending a lot of money, Mr. Speaker. Wall Street is spending billions to kill reform.

In 2009, the financial industry spent $465 million in lobbying Washington, $1.4 million a day in lobbying Congress, $1.1 million per Member of Congress. Actually, more than that. Actually, more than $1 million. That's a rounding down; $3.9 billion in the last decade, and employed 1,726 Washington lobbyists just to try to persuade Congress Members to not make changes to Wall Street.

Now the American people ought to know what they are up against. But let me just tell you, a well-motivated constituent always trumps a lobbyist. So, Mr. Speaker, it wouldn't be a bad thing at all if people let their Member of Congress know how they felt about the importance of regulating Wall Street.

The top eight banks, Mr. Speaker, spent about $30 million in 2009 just on lobbying. JP Morgan Chase spent $6.2 million lobbying last year, all to try to make sure that whatever comes out of Congress looks good for them.

During the first quarter of 2010, this year, the top 25 banks spent $11 million, which is an increase of 5 percent from the same time last year.

What is going on during the first three months of 2010 that wasn't going on the same time last year? Financial reform, Mr. Speaker. That's why they increased their spending.

I would like to hear Members of the Republican Caucus defend Wall Street's spending to kill financial reform. I hope they do say, Well, it's okay for Wall Street to spend all this money stopping reform, because--I don't know what they're going to say, but I would love to hear it.

During the first quarter of 2010, the top 25 banks spent $11 million total, which is an increase of 5 percent. And the fact is, is that of that $11 million that the top 25 banking firms spent on lobbying, the top six of them, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, CitiGroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley spent $6.9 million on lobbying in the first quarter of this year. That's a lot of money. That marked a 4 percent increase from late last year, a jump of about one- third from the first 3 months in 2009.

But what is going on now that wasn't going on as intensely then? Wall Street reform. So they're putting more money in and they're trying to slow reform.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I am going to yield back, and just say it has been a pleasure coming to the special order on behalf of the Progressive Caucus.

Madam Speaker, my name is Keith Ellison, and I'm here to claim this hour on behalf of the Progressive Caucus to deliver what we call the ``progressive message.''

The Congressional Progressive Caucus is a group of Members of this United States Congress who believe in the essentials of America, ideas like fairness and equality. We are the people who stand up consistently for civil rights and human rights. We believe that issues like color, national origin, and gender should not be a barrier for people to fully participate in the American Dream.

The Progressive Caucus consistently stands up for the rights of the working class, the people who labor every day to make this country run. We're talking about economic justice. We're talking about true health care reform. Many of our members were on the universal single-payer health care bill and advocated for the public option as the health care debate carried forward.

The Progressive Caucus, this is the group that's consistently arguing to say that humanity, and as a matter of fact as Americans, we can live in harmony with the Earth, we can respect the environment. So when you think about the Progressive Caucus, Madam Speaker, the idea is that there is a body of folks in the Congress who believe in fairness, who believe in equality, who believe in equal opportunity, who believe in equal justice, who believe in peace, and believe that the United States should put its diplomatic foot first and its development foot first and should always, always, always seek to be a force for peace in the word.

Members of the Progressive Caucus made up the large bulk of the people who called for the United States to get out of Iraq and identified Iraq as not the right policy for the United States from the very beginning. Many of us continue to make the demand for peace and say that the proportion of development aid should outweigh the military footprint in Afghanistan and not the reverse.

This is the Progressive Caucus. I'm proud to be a vice chair of the Progressive Caucus and to present the ideas of the progressive message tonight. The progressive message is when we come down to the House floor and we talk about the values of the Progressive Caucus, what we're working on, what we're doing, what we think is important, so, Madam Speaker, that the people who watch C-SPAN and who tune into us know the ideas and thoughts of the Progressive Caucus and know that there is a progressive voice within the caucus. Very, very important.

Tonight, our topic is the economy. What else? The economy. It's what people are focused on nowadays with the dramatic unemployment rates, high unemployment rates, hovering in the neighborhood of 10 percent in many places around this country, about 9.7 percent, as we're seeing some States with dramatically higher and even some with lower; but everybody is concerned about jobs for the American people.

Today we're talking about Wall Street reform which is good for Main Street, meaning that many folks will be thinking, well, what does Wall Street have to do with me? I mean, I own a barber shop on Main Street, I own a mechanic shop on Main Street, I work for the factory down at the other side of the community. I'm not a player on Wall Street; I don't trade in stocks. That doesn't have anything to do with me. Why am I worried about it? The reason is, the progressive message tonight is that people who live on Main Street--people who are the teachers, the firefighters, the police officers, the small business owners--people who work hard every day and make this country function need to plug into what's happening with this Wall Street reform because it's going on now in the Congress and the interests of us all are at stake.

So this idea of Wall Street reform will be the topic tonight, and the main idea is Wall Street reform is good for Main Street. Main Street needs to be plugged into what's happening. And who can blame people, Madam Speaker, for not really knowing what's going on with this Wall Street reform. I mean, weird terms like ``credit default swaps'' and ``derivatives'' and ``collateral debt obligations'' and things like that, ``rating agencies,'' ``too big to fail,'' all this kind of stuff are things that the American people are trying to get all this stuff clear because folks who don't watch this stuff every day, folks who are not C-SPAN junkies, they're busy, they're raising their kids, they're going to work, they're doing what people normally do, may not know that they really need to plug into this issue of Wall Street reform because it has a lot to do with how people's lives are going to be led, and it has a lot to do with people's well-being, their economic opportunity, and things like that.

So we're going to talk about that tonight, Madam Speaker. And we really want to let you know that we're going to be focusing hard on this issue of Wall Street reform and being good for Main Street. We want folks to absorb this message, and so we're going to be talking about it tonight.

Now, the fact is that if you have any doubt about whether Wall Street reform is important, maybe you thought to yourself, well, you know, I'm not sure it's something that I really need to be concerned about, let me just say that you can sometimes know how important a topic is by how vigorously other people are fighting against it. You may not know the ins and outs of health care reform; but when you find out that some people were spending $14 million a day with lobbyists to stop health care reform, you know that there are some people with some big bucks and some big stakes in the game who thought the status quo was good for them even if reform was good for the rest of us.

Now, what's interesting is this same scenario is being played out right now

with financial reform. I want to start our dialogue tonight about Wall Street reform, not by talking about the intricacies of the bill-- because I'm going to talk about the bill--and not by talking about what led us to this crisis, because I'm going to talk about that too, but first by talking about what the people of America are up against and who it is and how it is that people are trying to stop it.

Wall Street is spending billions to kill reform. Look it up. In 2009, the financial industry spent $465 million lobbying Washington. How much was spent lobbying Washington for school lunches for poor kids? How much was spent on trying to get America out of Iraq and Afghanistan? How much was spent on trying to make sure that college kids could get into college and have an affordable college education for themselves and their family? How much was spent on these things?

$465 million for lobbying Washington? Now, that's really something, folks. That's putting down a pretty penny to make sure that the interests of the industry are put up first and foremost before Members of Congress. $1.4 million a day lobbying Congress, not as much as health care reform, but a substantial pretty penny to be per day lobbying Congress; $1 million per Member of Congress. So in 2009, if $465 million was spent lobbying Washington, there are about 435 of us, there's actually more than $1 million spent lobbying each Member of Congress if you just divide it by the number of people in Congress.

So what is the point of this chart? The point of this chart is to say that folks who don't want real reform in the area of financial services are putting their money down to try to stop it. They're deploying, literally, an army of lobbyists to try to convince Members of Congress that their interests are the ones that need to be first, not those of the American people: $3.9 billion in the last decade, that's a lot of money, and nearly 2,000 lobbyists, 1,726 Washington lobbyists.

Now, this may sound like I'm hard on lobbyists; I'm not hard on lobbyists. I think it's an honorable profession. They help Members of Congress understand issues. But the fact is that every Member of Congress can tell you a lobbyist does not come in to try to persuade you to do something other than their interests, the people who pay them. They're paid to do a certain thing, to convince Members of Congress to do a certain thing. It's not always a bad thing, but it's usually a thing that's going to serve the interests of the people who are sending them there, and sometimes that's not right in line with what the American people want.

So it's important for the American people to know that when we're standing up for consumer protection, that when we're trying to stop bailouts ever again, that when we're trying to make sure that there is real justice and accountability when it comes to too-big-to-fail firms, that there are a lot of folks who want to have it stay their way; but we're trying to push for reform, and the American people need to know that. The American people need to be aware that if they don't pay attention to this debate, they may be sorry that they didn't. And so we're encouraging people, Madam Speaker, to just stay on top and stay focused on what's really going on.

Now, let me just talk about what financial reform actually means. What does it actually mean? Wall Street reform means policing Wall Street, making sure that Wall Street abides by the rules. Now, Wall Street does a lot of good for this economy. What it basically does is it takes people who have money to invest and unites it with people who need money to capitalize their companies. It takes people who want to invest with companies that have new ideas and some old ideas so they can get together and fund and finance their company. It's a good idea, it's fine, but sometimes it gets out of control. Look, I have knives in my house, and they're very useful for cutting vegetables. But you know what? They still can be dangerous. We need rules about how we deal with these things because they have very, very powerful consequences on people.

So Wall Street reform means policing Wall Street. It means ending bank bailouts. President Obama stood right in this very room not too long ago when he did his state of the Union speech and he said, One thing is for sure, whether you voted for the bailout or not, everybody hated the bailout. I can say he was right on the money. I will tell you that I believed that our economy was in ruin. I thought we were on the brink of disaster back in September, October 2008, and I voted for the bailout. But I will say this about it, I didn't want to, I had to be convinced that it was necessary to do. You should know that much of the money has been recouped and is being recouped every day. And the President is proposing a tax on some of these large financial firms to make sure the American people get all of their money back.

But this is one of those things that you didn't want to have to do, but you had to do. It's like if a friend says I need you to drive me home because I drank too much. You know what? You don't want to have to do that because you would wish that people would be more responsible, but you have to do it. It's something that you don't want to do, but you have to because you're put in that difficult situation.

We want to end the bank bailouts with Wall Street reform. We want to stabilize the economy. This economy, because of this financial trouble created by a lack of deregulation, by tax cuts for the wealthy, by not minding the store, we want to create stability in this economy so people can plan, so they can invest, so they can pursue careers, and so that we can have real economic growth sustained over the long term.

So it's about stabilizing the economy. It's about saying, you know what? The economy is going to be stable, so you know what? You might be able to make retirement plans. The economy is going to be stable and strong, so you should put some money away because you will be able to afford college for your kids. It's talking about stabilizing the economy--yes, you should start that business because I'm telling you that there will be a stable economy for you to participate in. So that's what stabilizing the economy is all about.

And then, also, we've got to stop gambling with worker pensions. Workers work hard. Workers work their whole lives working hard to make goods and services for people in the United States. They work hard and they put money into their pensions year after year after year. When they get 65 years old, they shouldn't have to worry that people who were gambling with their money on Wall Street have somehow gambled it away. And so this Wall Street reform is about stopping gambling with worker pensions. It's about worker pensions, people who one day want to retire, people who have worked hard and earned the privilege to retire, people who have literally blazed a trail for all of us younger people; and when they get 65, they ought to be able to go and take their retirement.

This is what Wall Street reform is all about. This is what we're trying to do. This is what the purpose is. It has nothing to do with trying to punish the average person. We want to see the economy grow; we want to see businesses invest. We want to see them grow, be competitive and successful; but there's got to be rules of the road so that everybody can be careful.

Cars. Two thousand pounds of steel going fast can hurt you; everybody knows that. They're very useful, but we still have to have rules, which is why we have to have State troopers out there. And in the same sense, Wall Street reform means policing Wall Street, ending bank bailouts, stabilizing the economy, and stop gambling with worker pensions. So that's what Wall Street reform is all about.

I'm going to return to this board in a moment, but before I do, Madam Speaker, I'd like to get up here and put this document that I led off with because I want to elaborate on it again.

Again Wall Street reform, Wall Street is spending billions to kill reform, to stifle reform, to shape reform to their interest, and it is a big deal. But I would like to say just a few specifics.

The fact is there are a lot of people who are former Members of Congress who are here. At least 70 former Members of Congress employed by the financial services industry, at least 70

former Members of Congress here to try to convince their former colleagues what the industry's perspective is on Wall Street reform, nearly half of the 150 former Members that reported lobbying in 2009.

Let me say about 150 former Members who might be working on anything from energy to forestry, about half of them are working on Wall Street reform. That is a big deal and people should know that. In total, about 125 former aides and lawmakers are now working for financial firms. And so it is not just former Members of Congress, their aides are working on this stuff, too. They are employed and hired to try to convince their former colleagues to do what Wall Street wants to do. Of the industry's revolving door lobbyists, 19 are former Members who served on the Senate Banking or House Financial Services Committees. So they are getting people who are on the committee who know the most about this stuff to persuade their colleagues about what the interest of the industry is, not the American people.

At least 33 additional lobbyists were staffers, as I mentioned before. And you should know, in Congress, some of the most influential people around are staffers. People know the Member of Congress, their name is on the lawn sign and they have commercials during the campaign season with themselves featured in the commercials and sometimes local communities know who the Members of Congress are. You may not know the staffer, but I guarantee you one thing, staffers who are devoted to working on a subject to help a Member of Congress often know more about that topic than the Member of Congress. That's a fact. Many of them, former aides and staffers, are hired to work on this as well.

One of the former Members is former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert who is working for the industry. Another is Senate majority leader and GOP Presidential nominee Bob Dole. Another one is former Senate majority leader Trent Lott. Another is former House majority leaders Dick Armey and Dick Gephardt. Another is former Appropriations chairman Bob Livingston and former Ways and Means chair Bill Thomas. So they don't have the lightweights and the people who are only here for a few weeks, they have the big heavy hitters here to try to persuade Members of Congress with their former colleagues that the bill needs to reflect what Wall Street wants.

Madam Speaker, that is why we are here tonight talking about Wall Street reform, who is involved, whose interests are at stake. Mostly the American people's interests are at stake, and they need to get well versed on what this bill is all about. I am going to talk about that in a moment.

The fact is that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent about $3 million on advertising, including commercials slamming the creation of a Federal Consumer Protection Agency. That is unfortunate. Why would any good lender who is trying to offer a good product at a fair price be attacking consumer protection? I thought the customer was always right and you wanted to make sure that the customer was always happy so you would get return business. Why would anybody be afraid of a consumer protection agency that is going to look out for consumers? In fact, I would think industry would be happy about that. The fact is, though, a lot of mishandling of consumers happened. I will talk about that in a moment as well. That is why we need a consumer protection agency. It is very, very interesting that some of these folks want to stop that.

The National Automobile Dealers Association, and I am a big fan of automobile dealers, but the fact is that they contributed $3 million to Federal candidates in the 2008 election cycle, encouraging dealers to make hundreds of telephone calls to House Members and secure an exemption from the CFPA.

The hedge fund lobby, which calls itself the Managed Funds Association, doubled its spending during the last few months of 2009, according to data recently released by the Federal Election Commission. So the Managed Funds Association, which is the hedge fund lobby, strategically sprinkled more than a million around Washington in the fourth quarter, compared to just $520,000, a little more than half, spent during the same period in 2008. The fact is $25 million has been spent on TV ads about Wall Street and financial reform since January. You probably saw some of them yourself.

So with that, we know what we are up against. We know what we are dealing with. Wall Street reform is necessary. Wall Street itself is galvanized and fighting back hard to try to protect its interests, not the American public's interests. So it is important to talk to the American people at this point about what really is in financial reform. What does financial reform contain? What is it about? What's in there? That is the question. The answer is simply this: Wall Street reform is a simple solution to a complex problem and it simply addresses the worst problems associated with the financial breakdown of the last few years.

Let me just talk about the bill, what it is about and some of the key features that we will see with financial reform. Financial reform quite simply addresses certain elements of the financial system and addresses them to make sure that they don't go haywire and harm consumers.

The first thing I want to talk about is the Consumer Financial Products Agency. The Consumer Financial Products Agency, Madam Speaker. One more time. The Consumer Financial Products Agency is what I want to talk about right now.

What this is is an agency which collects the power of seven other agencies and concentrates it into one agency and says to that one agency: It is your job to protect the American consumer from dangerous financial products like predatory loans and like predatory credit cards and predatory payday lenders and people who would basically rob you of your middle class life-style. That is their job.

They have basically three things that they work on. The Consumer Financial Products Agency has three powers that they can exert, and it is not passed yet, but many of us are working hard on it.

One power it has, it has the power to do examinations, to say to a financial firm, hey, we want to look over what you're doing to make sure you're doing it fairly. They have that power to knock on the door and say, Are you doing the right thing? And if you're doing the right thing, you have little to worry about. But if you're selling financial products that are dangerous to consumers, you might have to worry.

Another power they have is enforcement. Whether it is rules, truth in lending, or some other law or act that is designed to protect consumers, this agency has the power to go in and say, You are selling a product where the terms and conditions are tricky and confusing and you cannot do that any more.

Let me give you an example. Let's just say I went and got a credit card and I had a 30-page contract associated with that credit card. And in that contract, you know, I can't read it, it's all legalese. It's too difficult to understand. I can tell you, I am a lawyer by trade. I practiced law for 16 years before I got this job. I have looked through some of these credit card contracts and can't make heads or tails of them. I know a lot of people who get credit cards, they are trusting that somebody somewhere is making sure that they are getting a fair product. Well, that someone, if we pass this bill, will be the Consumer Financial Products Agency.

Rather than taking the real information that you need, which is the real interest rate you are going to pay, the time you have to pay, the fees that might be associated if you have a default, meaning you are late on your credit card, and putting them way in the back of the credit card application, hidden up behind a bunch of legalese so they can say, ``Well, we told them.'' Because sometimes it is not that they don't tell you, it is they simply drown you with so much information you can't make heads or tails of this thing. The Consumer Financial Products Agency would have the power to say, You have to state the terms and conditions on one page in a clear way so people can make a decision whether they want your product or not, and they know exactly what they are getting themselves into. So that is the enforcement power.

Another power they have will be something called rulemaking. When Congress passes laws, sometimes there

is a lot of space between the laws. What I mean by that is the law will say generally make sure that interest rates are reasonable; make sure that the date on which a payment is due is clearly stated.

Well, the Federal agency may have the power to say exactly what is required, and so the rules are important and the Financial Products Agency will have rulemaking ability, too. So they will be able to enforce the laws as they exist, promulgate rules to protect consumers, and do examinations to make sure that people are doing what they are supposed to do.

Now some people may say examinations, that might be kind of intrusive. Well, let me ask you this question: if somebody was doing an examination on Bernie Madoff, wouldn't that have been a good thing? If somebody said Bernie, open up the books and let me see what is going on.

Let me tell you, today's too-intrusive examination may be tomorrow's salvation of the financial system. So it is a good thing. The Consumer Financial Products Agency, it will be the agency that is there to look out after consumers. Right now we have it all spread out. The Fed has a little bit of responsibility. The Office of Thrift Supervision has a little bit of responsibility. The Comptroller of the Currency has a little bit of responsibility. The FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, has a little bit of responsibility. And it is all kind of spread out.

So what happens when Mom says to her five kids, clean the kitchen? And then she comes back from where she has been and the kitchen is still dirty. All of them say: I thought the other one was going to do it. That is how these things work. When you have dispersed responsibility, you also have dispersed action. So the best thing to do is to say, I want you to do it on this date. Then you have accountability. So we are going to take all of this responsibility for consumer protection and take it from all of these agencies and put it into one agency.

Some people will say, Keith, don't you think that consumer protection should remain under the Federal Reserve Bank? That is where most of it is now; and you know what, they didn't do a good job. They were late on everything. They were slow on everything. In fact, in 1994--and I bet some people watching this broadcast right now, Madam Speaker, were not even born in 1994--the Congress passed a law that said, Federal Reserve Bank, you can enforce the law and protect consumers from tricky terms and conditions in mortgage lending. You can do something about tricky terms and conditions in mortgage lending. And you know exactly what the Fed did about it: Nothing. They didn't do anything. They did almost nothing.

They did almost nothing. As a matter of fact, it was 2006 and 2007 when they issued guidance on mortgage lending and the terms and conditions that we now know as predatory lending. It was even after that that they came with some guidance on the issue of credit cards.

So the Federal Reserve was given the power. They didn't use it, and we should take it from them. In my view, it's important to focus on this issue because the Federal Reserve already has its hands full dealing with monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank has a few important things they have to do. They have to control the money supply and make sure that the economy has enough liquidity so that people can get loans and gain capital for their businesses and so forth, and it also has the responsibility to make sure that the economy doesn't overheat and have inflation. So that's enough for them to deal with.

I don't think it's the right idea to say, Oh, also do consumer protection, because when consumer protection is shoved in there, too, what ends up being the last thing looked at? Well, consumer protection. So consumer protection is important all on its own, and there should be somebody whose job it is to focus on consumer protection. So that is one of the key features and one of the most important things that the financial services bill will protect.

Let me also move on to talk about another key feature of the financial reform bill, and that is putting an end to too-big-to-fail firms. Now, if a bank or a financial firm or a bank holding company is too big to fail, and if they get themselves in trouble, then all of us have to dig into the taxpayers' money to, what, bill them out. So any firm that is too big to fail is too big to exist. Any firm that is too big to fail and too big to have to deal with what happens when you make bad decisions in the marketplace shouldn't be around.

But sometimes we have to--we had to bail out these firms. Why? Because if they fail, they have all kinds of creditors, banks to whom they owe money. And then if they can't pay those folks, then those people who may have borrowed money can't pay the people who they owe. And if we had just allowed these banks to fail, it would have set off a ripple effect throughout the economy that could be in the proportions of the Great Depression. So it wouldn't have been responsible to let banks fail.

We know that the one bank that did fail, Lehman Brothers, caused serious and catastrophic losses throughout the whole world, not just the United States. Even my own State of Minnesota, their board of investment, their investment board lost about $58 million from Lehman Brothers' failing.

So the fact is that if we have a too-big-to-fail system, what that means is that the big banks can engage in hazardous, risky behavior, because they know at the end of the day, the American taxpayer is going to ride in to the rescue for them. And this is bad for our economy, bad for everybody else.

But the other thing wrong with too big to fail is it's not fair to smaller players in the market who provide choice, who provide competition, and who live by the decisions that they make. Because if some firms are too big to fail, then some other firms are too small to save. Is that fair?

So, for example, if I'm a huge bank like Citibank and I make some decisions that are poor ones and I start suffering the consequences of those decisions, then I'm going to get saved because I'm big. But if X, Y, Z community bank in Minneapolis makes bad decisions, they get dissolved. That is what FDIC is for, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

So we can't be in this situation. If we're going to have a mixed economy where we have government regulation and a free market together, we can't have a system where being big and making improper decisions and making risky decisions which costs your business its solvency, you're going to get bailed out, but the smaller ones, they just have to go suffer and deal with what sometimes is referred to as ``market discipline,'' meaning out of business.

So this too-big-to-fail thing, we have to do something about it. And what we do and what financial reform does is to say, Okay, we're going to have what's called a resolution fund, a resolution fund. What is a resolution fund? Well, a resolution fund is to resolve, is to close down, shut down, chop up, sell off, and end a firm that is systemically connected--a too-big-to-fail firm but has done things that are risky, and if they were to fall, they wouldn't be able to meet their creditor obligations, and their creditors would not be able to meet their obligations, and those folks wouldn't be able to make their obligations, and we would have a collapse in the system. So what we say is, look, these big firms have to pay into a fund on the front end, which then, if one of them fails, that fund would be the one to pay creditors so that the whole market doesn't fall, not the American taxpayer.

It's very similar to how the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation works right now. I think the FDIC, if you have a deposit--money in a bank--you're insured up to about $250,000 of your money. You know that if this bank goes down, you're not because there's the FDIC.

Now, the FDIC says, if a bank goes down, the citizens--the depositor's not going to go down because we have the FDIC. But what if a big bank goes down and they owe money all around and, if they can't pay the people who they owe, then those people can't pay the people who they owe, and the next thing you know, the whole economy's going down? No, these people will be paid out of a fund which will then chop them up and will pay the creditors, and then they will be done and over with.

Now, some people argue that there should be a fund after the bank has

failed, after there's been a too big to fail fall. In my opinion, that's not a good idea because, if a huge systemically large bank fails, it is going to have an impact on the market. It will drive the market down, and we'll be trying to collect money from people who didn't mess up after they have less money. And I think that's a huge mistake, but that is another point of view people have been sharing.

The fact is we need to have an antibailout fund, which is a fund that calls for a resolution of these systemically large firms when they make big mistakes and don't do the right thing that they should do for their depositors, for their shareholders, or for anybody else.

So we've talked a little bit about too big to fail. Now let's talk about mortgage reform and predatory lending. Many of you would like to know, Where did this whole problem start? It started in the consumer sector, and the consumer sector is where we need to address our energy. The mortgage reform and antipredatory lending section of this bill is to stop predatory and irresponsible mortgage loan practices.

It might shock Americans to know that, despite 2.8 million foreclosures last year, Congress has yet to pass an antipredatory lending bill. Many States have. My State of Minnesota has. But Congress has not yet passed such a bill. That will be part of financial reform as well.

There will be tough new rules on risky practices, practices like, if you buy a mortgage, no-doc and low-doc loans. That means that they don't try to find out whether you can pay the loan before you have to pay it back. They just loan you the money and may not even get documentation and may not even get proper information before they loan you money.

Now, these days, credit is tight, and people can't even hardly remember when money was flowing so freely. You may think to yourself, Why would somebody lend money unless they knew somebody was going to be able to pay it back? The reason is they would take that mortgage, which is documentation, paper, and they would sell that paper, and that would be securitized on the secondary market. So if I know that I can sell you a mortgage today and then take that stream of income that's supposed to come my way because I have loaned you that money and then sell it to somebody else, I don't really have to worry. It's almost like, as long as you're not the guy who is without a chair when the music stops, you just keep on going around in that game of musical chairs.

So we're going to have some rules to stop this practice to make sure that these risky practices don't continue. We're going to have rules in this bill, Wall Street reform, to curtail excessive speculation and derivatives and growing use of unregulated credit default swaps. And I want to talk about what a credit default swap is in a little while, but now I just want to talk about mortgage reform. We're going to require investment advisers to act for the benefit of the client under the law, exercising the highest care involved.

I have been joined by my friend from Florida, Alan Grayson, who I think is here for another hour but is always welcome to join in on the conversation with me. So I yield to the gentleman.

That's fine. Come on down.

Okay. Let me reclaim my time now.

Let me just add that the gentleman's presentation is not a part of the Progressive hour. I thought we were going to talk about financial reform. I'm not going to yield back to the gentleman right now, but I thank the gentleman for his presentation. I thought it was informative. Certainly, it is part and parcel of this whole dialogue, of this national debate we're having about financial reform. Certainly, getting to the bottom of our financial situation in America is important. We need to find out all we can about what happens with our banking system, and the Federal Reserve is also extremely important.

So I was talking about the importance of the bill. First, I talked about the Consumer Financial Products Agency. I moved on to discuss further the regulations that would take place in mortgages, so we would focus on making sure that mortgages which are poorly underwritten and which are then sold into the secondary market will be something financial reform will stop. We'll bring that to a close.

Let me now move on to another element of the financial meltdown which will be addressed by this important financial reform: irresponsible compensation practices. The fact is that one of the things we have seen in this whole financial meltdown is that not only have Americans been losing their homes--2.8 million foreclosures last year--but we've been seeing some of the most outrageous compensation from the financial services industry itself, with much of the compensation emerging from the very firms that the American people came together to bail out in the first place.

The financial reform bill addresses perverse pay practices that encourage executives to take excessive risks. If an executive can engage in a practice that is risky and bad for the firm and then can get paid a lot for it and can end up making money, they get the money. Yet, if they don't make any money and drive a firm into the ground and hurt the depositors and creditors in the process, they still make a lot of money. This is not a good practice. So financial reform talks about executive compensation. It discourages executives who take excessive risks at the expense of their companies, of their shareholders, of their employees, and ultimately, of the American taxpayers.

For the first time ever, shareholders of publicly traded companies will have an annual, nonbinding say-on-pay vote on compensation packages and on golden parachutes for top executives. If you look at the history of Merrill Lynch, this is a company that basically careened into the ground and ended up being in such a financial state of affairs that it was either going to go under or it was going to be bought. It ended up being bought by Bank of America, but the CEO who was guiding that company ended up leaving with $150 million of compensation. This is not only an affront to the hardworking American people, but it also sets up perverse incentives, the wrong incentives, for people who are at the head of these firms so that they can't make good decisions and do the right thing by American companies.

The bill also requires financial firms with at least $1 billion in assets to disclose to Federal regulators any incentive-based compensation structures. Federal regulators will then be authorized to ban any inappropriate or risky compensation practices that pose a

threat to the financial system and to the broader economy. The legislation also comes in response to a broad consensus among many leading financial experts, including Paul Volcker and others, who believe that compensation structures played a role in the financial crisis of last year.

I also want to talk about investor safeguards. One of the things that financial reform will bring forward are safeguards for people who invest. Now, some people might say, you know, I don't trade stocks, but if you have a 401(k) or if you have a pension, you actually do so indirectly. As a matter of fact, recent events, such as the massive $65 billion--with a ``b''--Madoff Ponzi scheme and the $8 billion Stanford financial investment fraud, highlight the need for comprehensive reforms of the regulatory system that failed so many investors.

To better safeguard investors in the future, the bill will enhance the SEC's enforcement powers and funding by doubling its authorized funding over 5 years. That means it is going to have more people to do the job--more policing, more cops on the beat. This will enable the SEC to obtain the tools needed to better protect investors and police today's markets.

The financial reform bill will also create a whistleblower bounty program with incentives to identify wrongdoing in our securities markets and with rewards for individuals whose tips lead to successful enforcement actions. With a bounty program, we will effectively have more cops on the beat for security regulation. The failure to detect the Madoff and the Stanford financial frauds demonstrate deep deficiencies in our existing securities regulatory structure. The bill also calls for an independent, comprehensive study of the entire securities industry to identify reforms and to force the SEC and other entities to improve investor protection.

The Madoff fraud also revealed that the public company accounting oversight board lacked the powers it needed to examine the auditors of brokers and dealers. In addition, it exposed the fault of the Security Investor Protection Act, SIPA, and the law that returns money to customers of insolvent, fraudulent broker-dealers. The bill closes these loopholes, and it fixes these shortcomings. So investor protection is an important part of financial regulatory reform-- reforming Wall Street.

So whether we're dealing with too big to fail, whether we're dealing with exploitive and abusive predatory lending practices, whether we're addressing issues with regard to investors or whether we're addressing other markets and consumer protection in general, this financial reform bill is important. It is important for people to know what good it is going to do them and the difficulties that it will present in the future for people who want to keep the status quo.

As for the people who want to keep the status quo, we have already talked about them. There are massive amounts of money being spent to stop regulatory reform. What we need is real reform, consumer protection and financial stability. We need a dissolution authority for too-big-to-fail banks. We need executive compensation reform, say-on- pay. We need investor protections, and we need something called ``regulation of derivatives.''

Now, when AIG first hit the news, a lot of people were asking, What is a ``derivative''? AIG, American Insurance Group, is a huge insurance company. A unit of this huge insurance company actually was issuing these derivatives known as credit default swaps. In simple language, a ``credit default swap'' is like insurance. It's not insurance, but it's kind of like it. What it means is that you can buy it as sort of like an insurance policy if the value of interest you expected to receive or the value of the bond is not coming back to you in the way that you thought. So you could buy credit default swaps. If the value of this mortgage-backed security drops, then I am going to collect on an insurance policy that can cover me if this happens.

The only problem is that I say it's like insurance, but it's not. If it were insurance, you would have an insurance regulator who would require that the company would have to have enough capital in its books to cover losses and claims based on losses.

But in this particular situation, that kind of reform was not in place. That kind of regulatory control was not in place. So when mortgage-backed securities began to decline and people who bought credit default swaps to hedge the risk against them, those people came to make claims, and AIG did not have the money to meet those obligations, which then put the United States taxpayer on the hook, and now we own essentially AIG as well.

This is not a good thing. The market is not supposed to operate like that. And derivative reform is an important part of what we need. Derivatives are an important financial instrument. They will be traded on an open market; and whenever they are not or are not amenable to be traded on an open exchange, they will be required to be reported to the authorities so that there is some transparency and some real information about what is going on in the derivatives market.

Mr. Speaker, right now, our unemployment rate in the United States hovers around 10 percent. It's a little bit lower than that, but when you think about all of the people who are unemployed in some sectors, it is twice that. In some parts of our country, it is much more than that.

The fact is that we need a jobs bill, a real jobs bill that will put Americans to work. I propose that we support a local jobs bill that will help provide not only jobs for working Americans but will also provide vitally needed services to our cities. All over America, we have districts that are looking at laying off teachers and that are looking at laying off firefighters, police officers, and public works officials. We need these vital services to keep our cities moving properly.

Local officials around this country know that the Federal Government should be responding to these difficult shortfalls and cuts that are resulting in service cuts all over this Nation. We have work that needs to be done, and we have people who are ready to do it. It is time for Congress to step forward with a real local jobs bill.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. I also thank the gentleman for holding down this Special Order tonight. It is very important to talk about the American economy, so let me dive right in, as there are a few facts the American people may want to consider.

Barack Obama took office on January 20. George Bush was the President that whole month. There were 741,000 jobs lost to the American economy. There were 741,000 jobs lost under the Republicans when they had the Presidency, even back when they had majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

I think this board is very revealing. On the vertical axis, it demonstrates Time, which is months during the year--'07 all the way to March 2010. On this vertical axis are Job Changes.

Here we see, in January 2008, Bush begins to lose jobs, and they very clearly go down to hit the very bottom when we see December 2008- January 2009.

What we see during the Obama administration is a steady climb back up from the abyss. Very recently, we have even seen positive job growth for a few months.

This is an important fact to point out in the very beginning because, as we talk about who ran the economy into the ditch, it is very clear that our Republican colleagues managed that on their own and that it is the Democrats who steered the American economy back to a point of safety.

Let me also say this: When it comes to financial deregulation--and of course, tonight, we're going to be talking about the Wall Street Reform Act and about accountability. The fact is it was during the Bush administration that the climb on foreclosures began and that we saw 2.8 million people face foreclosure. In the last year, we saw foreclosures begin, and we have yet to see an antipredatory lending bill passed under any Republican regime. While the Republicans were in the majority, they did not do anything about foreclosures. They did not do anything about predatory lending. They did not

do anything about yield spread premiums. They did not do anything about 2/28 mortgages and 3/27s. This is when people were being encouraged and persuaded to sign these fine-print, no-doc, low-doc mortgages. At the end of their teaser rate periods, they would see these mortgages explode, and they would find themselves in foreclosure.

The fact is the Democrats have taken the bull by the horns, and we have begun to right our ship of state to bring the American economy back to health. We have seen increases in the gross domestic product. Under the Democrats, we have seen increases in the number of jobs and decreases in the rate of unemployment. Thank goodness, we are here on the verge, hopefully, to pass Wall Street reform in order to really put the American economy back in the shape it deserves to be in.

I yield back to the gentleman.

Yes. If the gentleman would yield, I want to just say that this is an excellent list and really helps listeners to sort of zero in on some of the key features that we will elaborate on right now.

Let me just give my own take on consumer protection. There are about seven different agencies that had some responsibility for consumer protection. The Federal Reserve Bank, for one, has some responsibility. Actually, it was in 1995 that Congress passed a law that said that the Fed could regulate in the area of mortgage lending, and they didn't do so.

What this Consumer Protection Agency would do is to say, you know what? We're not going to spread the responsibility so that everybody says, well, I thought somebody else was going to do it. What we do is we concentrate it and say we hold this agency responsible for consumer protection. The Fed, as you know, is responsible for monetary policy and responsible for unemployment, keeping the economy going for employment. It also has responsibility historically for consumer protection. What we're saying is that it makes sense for an agency which will have the responsibility for rulemaking with regard to consumer protection, enforcement of consumer protection rules, and examination of companies that have a responsibility to comply, to make sure that if you are going to sell a product, a financial product, a loan, that the terms are clear, that people understand the terms, that people know what they are getting into, that there's transparency, that there is real information that a person could make a good decision on. And then also there might be some products that are just completely and patently unfair that consumers ought to be able to not have to be part of.

Let me just say there's something going on here when we do financial transactions known as information asymmetry. Let's just face it, folks. Look, I'm a 46-year-old man. I bought only one house in my life. I have been at a closing once and only once. I went to college. I even went to law school. I was a State legislator. I am no match, no match at all, for somebody who wants to sell me a mortgage that maybe I don't want. The terms and conditions are just too opaque. It's too much information. If you've ever been to housing selling, you're just signing documents, one right after another. People don't get it. We need a Consumer Protection Agency that will say, look, this has got to be a fair transaction, this has got to be disclosed, it needs to be clear, and that way we may be able to have some good decisionmaking and better decisionmaking on behalf of consumers.

Could I ask the gentleman a question?

And I will ask both gentlemen a question.

Now, if the Consumer Protection Agency is going to actually provide regulation to nonbank lenders, most of whom generated these subprime and predatory loans, will that help community banks by taking away the competitive advantage some of those unregulated lenders had?

Well, the gentleman, I'm glad, talks about this issue of too big to fail. If either the gentleman from Ohio or California want to elaborate, I'd just like to pose to both of you gentlemen a question, and that is: If some banks are too big to fail, are there then other banks that are too small to save?

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Congressman Keith Ellison here from the State of Minnesota, and it is very timely that we are here to talk about immigration. The fact of the matter is that it is a symptom of the Congress' failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform that we get these draconian pieces of legislation such as were signed into law in Arizona on April 23, 2010, just a few days ago. If the United States Government would take hold of this immigration debate and pass comprehensive immigration reform, States would not have to resort

to these extreme measures--unconstitutional in my view--that Arizona has taken.

Let me just point out a few things. The law says that police officers can stop and detain people who are suspected of being illegal aliens and demand that they provide proof that they are U.S. citizens. The fact of the matter is that this--some people have said, Well, you know, Keith, this could make people who may have a brown complexion and dark hair, who sort of have a typical Mexican appearance, that might subject them to unfair and illegal stops. My response is, That's true. It may stop Latinos, but it will stop anybody, because there's no certain way that a Latino person looks. There is a wide diversity all throughout the community, a wide diversity, no color, no language, no culture. People look all kinds of ways. The most Anglo-looking person in Arizona could be stopped and demanded to show their proof of citizenship, and if they don't have it, they could be carted off.

The fact is that I am making this argument because I don't want Americans of any background to think that they are going to be somehow safe from a law as sweeping and unfair as this one. No one is safe when the Constitution is offended in such a dramatic way as it has been by this Arizona law. But at the same time I have no sympathy for this Arizona law, I will say that it is a symptom of the Congress' failure to deal with comprehensive immigration reform.

I want to say that the argument has been made that somehow this is about addressing issues of crime and law enforcement. You know, if that were true, why would the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police oppose a law for fiscal and public safety reasons, noting that the fear of government officials would diminish the public's willingness to cooperate with the police in criminal investigations, and it will negatively affect the ability of law enforcement agencies across the State to fulfill their many responsibilities in a timely manner?

The fact is that law enforcement officials who know something about law enforcement don't like this law. They are right. And the fact is this law is offensive to our Constitution. But again, it calls into question what we are doing here in Congress on comprehensive immigration reform, which is nothing much. The fact is we need to get busy on immigration reform. The American people want it. It is popular. It is something that the American people have asked for, and the Congress should step forward and do something about it right away.

So let me yield back to the gentleman from the great State of Colorado and just point out that comprehensive immigration reform is something that I believe we need.

There are just a few principles that I want to mention before I yield back, and that is that the progressive immigration reform agenda passed by the Progressive Caucus believes in keeping families together, creating a path towards citizenship and employment verification. Because as much as we talk about securing the border--and we should secure the border--you can't always secure the border at the border. We need the cooperation of all employers to make sure that they are doing employment verification so that we can make sure that the border is being secured. So yes, at the border, but also at the point of employment which people are drawn to.

There is more to be said about this, but I yield back to the gentleman.

Let me thank the gentleman from Colorado for really raising these issues.

The fact is, I do just want to say that the Progressive Caucus has some essential principles that we believe are essential to have in any immigration bill. We know that a version was dropped in the Senate; there was another dropped in the House earlier.

What we say is we think that we've got to keep families together. We have to create a path to earn citizenship. This isn't handing out citizenship to anybody. People have to take care of the business that the gentleman from Colorado already mentioned--paying all taxes, going through courses in English and citizenship, making sure that they do everything that they have to do, but at least they're allowed to be on a path that will lead them to citizenship and that there would be employment verification.

But there are other important values that I think we should talk about as well. The fact is that one of those values is respect, another value is identifying the fact that young people studying hard every single day, graduating from an American high school, brought to this country by their parents, in my view, should be able to go to a college in their State and pay in-state tuition. So that's another value I think is very important. It enhances education, values and achievement, and it indicates that young people who have lived their lives here and grown up here and who came here through no fault or through no choice of their own can have a future.

The fact is that there are some basic principles that I think we should pursue. The thing that does concern me, though, is that sometimes we hear people, Madam Speaker, say things like, well, you know, this bill is dead on arrival, or that bill is not going to go anywhere; they just declare bills to be not in motion sometimes.

But I believe, Madam Speaker, that whether comprehensive immigration reform moves or not is up to the people of America if they demand that it move. The same way that health care reform moved because people wouldn't let it die, immigration reform can move because the people are demanding it. The same way financial reform is moving, immigration can move because if people say we've got to have this, we need it, no more of our fellow neighbors living in the shadows, we need to have a legitimate path towards citizenship--it's not amnesty--that does involve real accountability, but at the same time allows people to come out of the shadows and have some status that they can have so that they can do what they need to do for themselves and their families. The fact is that this is the decent thing to do, it's the right thing to do.

By the way, I will point out, Madam Speaker, that there is a growing and strengthening coalition for immigration reform. In my own State of Minnesota, we used to have immigrant groups, people who are directly affected by immigration policy from new American groups, whether they're Latino or east African or Southeast Asian, or whatever community, a lot of times they would be at the forefront of this question of immigration reform.

But then we began to see labor come into the conversation. Labor does not want an exploitable, abusable group of people who are in the shadows that can undercut their wage rate. They want everybody aboveboard and walking through the front door to have a status so that they can organize them so that they can have some stability. Even the chamber of commerce in my city has said, look, we're for comprehensive immigration reform as well. I'm not speaking for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, but I can tell you that there are many local chambers of commerce around this country who know that immigration reform is the right policy.

So the fact is we have a growing coalition; we have a coalition that's coming together, that's deepening and coming together to demand this. So I guess my message, Madam Speaker, is to say, never say that we can't get comprehensive immigration in 2010; it can happen with a strong will and with a committed champion, and with people who demand it of their leaders who are charged with the responsibility of representing them in Congress.

I yield back to the gentleman.

I just want to go back to an important point that the gentleman from Colorado made just a moment ago. Congressman Polis, Madam Speaker, made the point that people are in detention for months and

months as they await their immigration proceedings and the decision. These are not people who have robbed or hurt anyone or sold dope or anything like that. These are folks who are awaiting a decision in their immigration case. They are not criminals; they're awaiting immigration proceedings, decisions. These folks, these people in immigrant detention are just languishing, rotting.

There have been, since 2003, 107 people who have died in custody because they were in detention. If they were out, could they have gotten the medical attention that they needed? I'm sure in many cases they could have. The fact is that these are folks who are not serving criminal sentences. They haven't been convicted of hurting anyone or stealing people's property or doing anything wrong. They're just awaiting proceedings.

In fact, Madam Speaker, I was at an eighth grade graduation only a few days ago; and my daughter, who I was so proud of, was there with her friends and they were all abuzz--you know how kids that age can be. And I talked to another adult who I had known for a number of years because my older children went to school with her children and one of her children was in my daughter's class. And she said to me, you know, I want you to know it's good to see you. I was in detention. I recently got out of immigration detention. This is what this lady said to me. And it shocked me because my son, who is now 22 years old, was buddies with her son, who is now 22 years old, but they were running around my house when they were both seven and eight and nine years old and now here she is--I haven't seen her in a while--and she just told me that she had been there herself. I didn't even ask her how she got out--I was glad she was out--but the fact is that she had been in ICE detention herself. This is a woman who is a bright lady, smart, capable, raising children on her own, doing the best she can, happens to find her roots in Mexico. I didn't ask her about the details of her life, but I was concerned that she found herself in that awful situation.

I connected her with my office to do everything we could for her; but the fact is there is a human toll being taken on people every single day, people around us, people we know, people we don't even know what they're going through, but they have their own immigration nightmare that they're struggling through every single day.

Her children, I know the younger ones were born in the United States and I know the older ones came here at a very early age, they're my kids' close friends. But the fact is that it kind of struck me right across the face like a cold bucket of water that here is this lady who I know. I couldn't exactly call her a friend, but I can say that this is a person who I know, who I respect, and who was living her own private nightmare with regard to immigration.

It seems to me that the rules ought to be clearer, they ought to be fairer, they ought to be predictable. It seems to me that the children who come here at an early age ought to be able to pursue their education in an institution in their State and not have to pay exorbitant out-of-state tuition just to do that. It seems to me that we ought to try to unite families. As Americans, we value families, and we ought to do something about that.

The fact is that people in immigrant detention, these folks are often some of the most abused folks in our community, Madam Speaker. I will just refer again to what the Congressman from Colorado mentioned a moment ago, detention, people are there for months, but these folks, some of them have been through tremendous ordeals; some are torture victims, some are victims of trafficking, some are from other vulnerable groups and are detained for months and even years, further aggravating their isolation, depression, and sometimes mental health problems.

The fact is that this situation is not right. These people are not criminals. They should not be held this way. And they're held at our expense--we're the ones who fork it over--but it's no picnic for them either. The fact is that we have to do something about it.

Over 30,000 people are held in immigrant detention on any given day at an average cost of more than $100, $120 per day. This has resulted in over 380,000 people held in detention in fiscal year 2009. Think about it: that's an incredible expense that we are paying because our immigration system has not been corrected, has not been addressed, and the fact is that we have to do something about it.

Since 2005, ICE has increased the number of detention beds by 78 percent. Taxpayers are paying the price of DHS's skyrocketing use of immigration detention, and DHS spends about $1.7 billion on ICE custody operations.

So the fact is that a human toll is being taken. The broken immigration system offends our sense of fairness, and it offends our sense of being a humanitarian country. We've got to do something about it right away.

I yield back to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I was just in my district about a week ago at a little church called Sagrado Corazon de Jesus. It's right there in south Minneapolis where a lot of folks gathered from the faith community. They were Catholic; they were Protestant; they were Jewish; they were Christian; they were Muslim; they were Hindu; they were of the Hmong spiritual tradition; and they were of no faith at all. Yet they came together to make an appeal to the American people for comprehensive immigration reform.

I think it's important to understand that the faith community has done a tremendous job in making sure this issue is at the forefront. The faith community has done such a great job because the faith community understands one essential thing, which is that all human beings are endowed with an inherent dignity which we, as fellow human beings, must respect if we are going to be in accordance with that faith tradition.

I want to thank them for their advocacy, and I want to let them know that I respect and appreciate their work.

Because I would like to see our anchor tonight be able to take the last 5 minutes to wrap it all up, let me also just mention in our waning minutes of our presentation that, as I've been sitting here, I've been checking my Twitter account, and I know that some people are happy that we're talking about comprehensive immigration and that some people are not.

Madam Speaker, I just want to say, to those folks who are happy about it, keep on working hard. We can do this thing. To the folks who aren't happy about this discussion topic tonight, I just want to say, Madam Speaker, that I know people are not happy with the current system. The status quo isn't working. Madam Speaker, people can say that they don't like this part of a bill or that part of a bill, but can we get together as Americans and discuss what we are going to do? Because the fact is that simply saying ``no'' is not an option.

I'll also submit to you that we are not going to get 12 to 20 million people on a bus and send them back home. That's not realistic. Many people who emigrate here without proper documentation don't even cross a border. They come in on airplanes. These are folks whose visas have run out and things like that. So just thinking that this is an ``other side of the border'' issue is missing much of the complexity that is going on here.

You're also not going to incarcerate 12 to 20 million people. You know, Madam Speaker, I had somebody say the crimes that the undocumented immigrants are committing are, one, being here and, the other, taking jobs from Americans. Let me just say, if you think what they're doing is a crime, Madam Speaker, what you're saying is that we're going to have to have 12 million to 20 million more jail cells to put people in. That's not practical.

We need a solution that makes sense, that is a pathway toward citizenship. We need a solution which does involve border security but which also involves employer verification so that people will not think that they can emigrate to the United States without proper documentation and just find jobs. That's one of the things that attracts folks.

I will say one more thing, which is not in the progressive principles but which, I think, we do need to talk about. We need to talk about how poverty in other parts of the world, particularly in our own hemisphere, attracts people to the United States. Therefore, we should take a real look at our policies--at our trade policies, at our ag policies--and see if we are actually incentivizing people to come to the United States.

If we dump cheap corn into Latin America, what happens to the corn farmer in Latin America? I think we need to ask that question.

It needs to be part of the conversation, because I can't imagine most people who are undocumented really want to leave their homes, their languages, their families, or their friends in order to come to a country they don't know, where they don't necessarily speak the language and where they don't necessarily know anyone just to try to make lives. They probably would rather stay home, but there is something that is drawing them here, and it probably has something to do with the great economy of the United States. It probably also has something to do with trade and agriculture policies, which have put a lot of pressure on economies in this hemisphere.

So, with that, Madam Speaker, I am going to yield back to Congressman Polis for the closing. He has really been a champion on this issue, and he has really kept the fire burning on it. I think, Madam Speaker, that we all owe him a debt of gratitude, along with other champions like Luis Gutierrez and many, many others.

So I yield back to the gentleman, and I thank him for his work.

Mr. Speaker, this week we witnessed the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel. It is an occasion to celebrate the achievements of a country that, like the United States, aspires to be a land of peace, prosperity and the pursuit of happiness.

The United States and Israel are bound by a common history forged by those who dared to dream of democracy and freedom; of civil and human rights; of laws and not wishes. President Harry Truman was the first world leader to recognize the Israeli declaration of independence in 1948. Other countries soon followed. In this way, with the United States at its side, Israel entered the community of nations.

We continue to share that sacred bond born in 1948. The bond carries with it a burden that all such undeniable relationships bring--the responsibility to celebrate our successes, and to address our challenges. We are both stronger nations because of this. To do otherwise would be to diminish that special bond.

An anniversary is also an opportunity to think about the future and therefore this is a time for us to renew our commitment to work for peace. As former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said, ``We must think differently, look at things in a different way. Peace requires a world of new concepts, new definitions.'' As a friend and ally of Israel, I look forward to the work of nurturing the seeds of peace that will sustain and protect Israel.

Madam Speaker, I'll claim the time for the Progressive Caucus tonight. I have some boards that

are going to assist me in the presentation, so we'll just take a very brief moment to get set up here.

Madam Speaker, my name is Keith Ellison, and I am here yet again on behalf of the Progressive Caucus to talk about a progressive message, a progressive message, the idea of which, Madam Speaker, is to help convey to the American people that there is a body of Members of this United States Congress who care about making America fairer, more inclusive, greater respect for due process of law, promoting peace around the world. There is a Progressive Caucus in the United States Congress. Many Members are a part of it, over 80; and we are advocating policies that would make America at peace with its neighbors, promoting peace around the world, being a force for bringing nations together.

We here are talking about immigration reform. And I'm joined today by one of our very best speakers and a freshman leader here in the Congress who has distinguished himself very early on in many areas, Mr. Jared Polis, who I'm going to yield to in just a moment.

But tonight, Madam Speaker, we're going to be talking about taxes because today is tax day. We're going to be talking about taxes from a progressive point of view. The point is that the United States Congress has been doing some tax cutting on behalf of the American people--but not from the perspective of the people who've been most blessed among us--from the perspective of the hardworking folks who have to put it down every day to make it; those folks who can use a small tax cut to make sure that they can meet their needs, groceries, things they need around the house.

As a matter of fact, Madam Speaker, you pay fewer taxes under President Obama than under President Bush. This may not apply to the most wealthy Americans, but it applies to the vast majority of Americans. And so it's in this spirit today that we're going to be talking about a progressive message as we discuss progressive taxation, which are the dues that we pay in a civilized society to make our society function properly.

And so I'd just like to yield to the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Jared Polis, who's joined me tonight. I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

Well, I thank the gentleman for yielding back. I got a little misty there. Listening to the gentleman from Colorado, I think he just made an excellent statement about the importance of paying taxes in our society.

None of us wants to fork it over on tax day. We all kind of do it feeling like, gee whiz, I wish I could keep this dough. But the fact of the matter is that if you like great roads, if you want EMS service, if you want the United States military to protect the borders of this country, if you want police, if you want fire, if you want public schools, if you want Head Start, if you want Medicare, if you want TRICARE, if you want Social Security, if you want things like bridges and infrastructure and many other important public services, taxes are what we have to pay.

Now, I agree with the gentleman. You know, there are things that my tax dollars go to that I wish they didn't go to. But you know what? The fact is that we live in a representative democracy, and that's just the way it is. That's why we get out and we engage in the public debate to argue how and where our tax dollars are allocated. But never forget, not even for a moment, that taxes are the dues that we pay to live in a civilized society.

The fact is, though, that Democrats have been, and progressives have been, pretty good at cutting taxes for Americans. The fact is, here's a quote from somebody who was an adviser to Ronald Reagan. And I know my friends in the Republican Caucus love to brag about Ronald Reagan.

Here's what this gentleman, Mr. Bruce Bartlett, had to say about this

issue: Federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became President.

Now, you would think the way they bang on President Obama that he's just a tax-and-spend liberal. That's what they like to tell you, but it's not true.

The fact is, taxes targeted to working-class people can help stimulate the economy. What we're opposed to from the Progressive Caucus is giving tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, which create deficits which all the rest of us have to bear.

But the Obama administration and the Democratic Caucus in Congress have helped to lower the burden on Americans so that Americans can take care and pay for the things that they need.

As I said before, here's an important board I'd like to draw folks' attention to. You pay fewer taxes under President Obama than under President Bush. Note, this may not apply to the wealthiest Americans. But if you're working hard every day, if you're putting it down every day, if you're working hard for a living and you're part of the great middle class, you pay lower taxes than under George W. Bush, and that is an important thing to bear in mind.

Every congressional Republican voted against a tax cut for 95 percent of America. Let me say it one more time: every congressional Republican voted against a tax cut for 95 percent of American families. So we're not talking about who's for tax cuts and who's against them. We're talking about who's for tax cuts for the middle class people and who's for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

I just want to be clear: I have friends who have been very blessed and have economic wealth, and I think that's just fine. I'm not against that at all. But I do say that to whom much is given, much is expected. And that goes to taxes as well. And so I'm not in favor of cutting the taxes of the wealthiest Americans. I'm in favor of cutting the taxes of Americans who are struggling hard every day to put food on the table for their family. That's who I think needs the tax cut. And I'm going to just tell you one more thing about that.

When very, very, very, very well-to-do people get a tax cut, they don't need the money. It can sit up in an account somewhere. But when working-class people get a tax cut, working-class people put that money back into the economy. And that means that if they're using their little tax cut to go out and purchase an item that they need to help their family--whether it's electronic goods or whether it's a new washing machine, whatever it is--they're putting that money into the economy.

Let's say they build a new washing machine. Then somebody at some local retailer who sells washing machines is going to make a sale. And if that sale is made, then they're going to have revenue for their retail outlet, which means they're going to be able to keep my nephew and yours on the payroll at that particular retail outlet. And then the manufacturer may be able to stay in business as well.

So the fact is that when working people get a tax cut, it actually has a stimulative effect for the economy; whereas, if the very well-to- do get a tax cut, like the Republicans like to do, that really doesn't help the economy very much because the very definition of being rich is you don't need the money. So you might spend it and you may not. Who knows. But working-class people use those tax cuts.

And so when every congressional Republican voted against a tax cut for 95 percent of Americans--as I said, when every congressional Republican voted against a tax cut for 95 percent of American families, I think the American people ought to know that, because the people who claim to be the big tax cutters really are not very good at cutting taxes for people who could actually use a tax cut. They're just good at cutting taxes for people who really don't need one and who have plenty of money anyway.

So let me just go through a few things.

Since coming to Congress and assuming the Presidency, the Democratic agenda has made historic progress through creating jobs, cutting taxes for working Americans, and investing in the future prosperity of our country. This year, millions of American working families are paying fewer taxes and getting record refunds. This is not a coincidence. This is because of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, also known as the stimulus bill, but quite separate from the bailout which happened under George Bush's watch.

Over one-third of the Recovery Act is tax cuts for the middle class. Very important. Over one-third of the Recovery Act is tax cuts for the middle class. The Recovery Act has already provided about $160 billion in tax cuts to American families and businesses. Nearly $100 billion, nearly 100 billion, nearly $100 billion of that has gone directly into the pockets of working families. And this year's average refund is about $3,000, about a 10 percent increase over last year. That's a good thing for families who need money to keep on moving.

Federal taxes--as I just read a moment ago, a former Republican adviser to President Ronald Reagan said, Federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became President, and yet the Republican caucus bangs on President Obama relentlessly, mercilessly all the time. But the fact is he is better at lowering taxes for working-class people than George Bush was. This is by their own expert Bruce Bartlett. I wonder how they're going to try to misrepresent that.

Since last year, this Democratic Congress and President Obama have enacted more than $800 billion for working families and small businesses. The Making Work Pay tax cut. That gives 95 percent of working families an immediate and sustained tax relief. Now, that's a big deal. Making Work Pay.

The fact is, the well-to-do in our country, they get tax cuts all the time. But what about people who are working hard every day? This tax cut where 95 percent of American working families got immediate and sustained tax relief was an important thing. It was about $400 for the individual, $800 for joint filings. That is very important.

Here's another tax credit. Child tax credit cuts taxes for families and more than 16 million children by reducing the minimum amount of earned income used to calculate the tax credit from $3,000 to about $12,000.

The earned income tax credit. Very important antipoverty program. Earned income tax credit expands the credit increasing it for families with three or more children. This is also very important. The earned income tax credit, an active, antipoverty program which helps working people and even low-income people. It's a good thing.

The American opportunity tax credit. Up to $2,500 in tax credits to help an additional 4 million students attend college. Now, the university doors and the college doors have to stay open to the American middle class and the poor, but if you allow the other caucus, the Republican caucus to stay in charge, those doors are slowly going to be shut. But under the Democratic majority and under the progressive leadership of President Obama, we've seen the American opportunity tax credit, up to $2,500 in tax credit, to help an additional 4 million students attend college. This is a progressive thing. It's a good thing brought to you by the Democrats.

The alternative minimum tax relief. Now, this protects 26 million middle class Americans from being hit by the AMT. In the 1970s, Members of Congress said, You know what? There are some people, some folks who aren't paying any taxes at all, so we're going to have something called the alternative minimum tax to make sure everybody pays something. But because it wasn't indexed over the years, inflation made it so that people who were in the middle class were getting hit by this tax. The Democrats, under the leadership of President Obama and Nancy Pelosi, helped to protect 26 million middle class Americans being hit by the AMT. Very, very important.

First-time home buyer tax credit increases existing credit to $8,000 and removes the repayment requirement.

All totaled, the Democratic-led 111th Congress has enacted more than $800 billion in tax credits with another $285 billion making their way through Congress, such as permanent estate tax relief and R&D tax credits to spur business innovation. Many of these tax cuts are immediate, and more than half of the Recovery Act tax cuts already

are in the hands of the American families and businesses. And $40 billion of the tax credits, or 4 million small businesses offering health care coverage to their employees starting this year. That's an immediate benefit for small businesses who want to offer health care to their employees to get a tax credit, a big deal to help people get health care and to help small businesses in the same swing.

So the fact is the Recovery Act, it takes 25 tax cuts for Americans, including the fastest and one of the most widely shared tax cuts in American history, the Making Work Pay tax cut credit or tax cut. Ninety-five percent of Americans benefited from it. Not one Republican voted for it. Think about that when you think about who is looking out for the American people and trying to cut taxes, even though we started this session tonight talking about the importance of taxes and the fact that some taxes are necessary. And we don't run from that idea.

The fact is taxes are the dues you pay to live in a civilized society. But despite that, the Democrats, under the leadership of President Obama and Speaker Pelosi, have been cutting taxes. This is an important thing for people to bear in mind and think about as they go forward, particularly on this Tax Day, particularly as they think about their refund. Who helped you get that, Madam Speaker? It was the party in the majority.

The Recovery Act also gives a tax cut by making your home more efficient, buying a house, buying a car, and sending a child to college; all very important. The result of the Recovery Act is that tax refunds are already up 10 percent, pushing average refunds to a record $3,000 per taxpayer. That is huge.

So Congress has enacted job-creating tax incentives to spur hiring out-of-work Americans, strengthening small businesses with tax credits and accelerated write-offs so they can expand more and hire more.

One of the taxes is the business incentive to create jobs; 10 billion over 10 years. It involves a lot things which I'm going to talk about in a moment, but the main thing is that we need to understand that while taxes are the dues that we pay to live in a civilized society, the people who represent the majority in this Congress are actively trying to reduce that burden so that Americans can have a little extra money in their pockets, not so much the well-to-do people who already have enough.

The fact is folks who are working so hard every day to put food on the table, maybe the washing machine broke, they've got to get a new one, these things are going to help their families out quite a bit.

And I really admire those families who are well to do and who may not have been among those 95 percent who got a tax cut. Many of them know, however, that their good fortune is because of the public and the taxes people before them have paid: the people who pay the taxes for roads and bridges; the people who pay the taxes for our universities and colleges; the people who pay for Head Start, Social Security; people who pay for fire and roads, firefighters, police officers, to make our society a good place to live. These folks understand that, and so they don't complain about paying taxes. They pay them because they know that it's what we need to have a society that is free from foreign aggression, that our streets are safe, that there are firefighters out there looking out for Americans. And if they should have a problem with a fire in their home or business, we understand.

So this is not a matter of dividing well-to-do Americans from the rest of us. It's a matter of saying, Look. Middle class folks need a tax cut too, and the well-to-do have gotten well cared for while the Republicans have been in charge, and many of the policies that they enacted have brought us this recession that we're just trying to emerge from now. But the fact is, if you invest in the middle class through tax cuts, it will pay dividends in the long run.

And we're already starting to see unemployment decrease. Won't be long before we have positive job growth because of these important tax relief policies that Democrats, led by President Obama and Nancy Pelosi, have led to enact.

So, let me move on and talk a little bit about my own State of Minnesota. It's a State where people work hard every day. We're a State where we're very proud. We have among the highest voter turnout in the entire country. I'm proud to announce that only one State has a greater response to the census than our great State of Minnesota, and those are our neighbors to the east, Wisconsin. We're coming to get you, Wisconsin. We want to be first in that.

But the fact is I'm so proud to be from the State of Minnesota. It's a wonderful place, and there is no prettier place than Minnesota, especially in the springtime.

But I want to talk about the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act which significantly cut taxes for Minnesota families, too. Two million families in Minnesota. That is the number of families in Minnesota that will receive a tax cut of up to $400 or $800 for a married joint filing couple under the Making Work Pay tax credit that is included in the Recovery Act.

Also, 895,000 individuals are the number of people in Minnesota living on Social Security and supplemental security income and railroad retirement income and veterans benefits who will receive a one-time recovery payment of $250 under the Recovery Act.

And then, also, 157,000 families in Minnesota are the folks who benefited from the Federal tax credits for college expenses. Minnesota is a high education State. We have some of the highest ACT scores in the Nation, and we take education very seriously in the State of Minnesota. So it's really a great benefit that so many families will be able to benefit from the Federal tax credits for college expenses.

So in 2009 and in 2010, families in Minnesota with children in college will be able to claim a larger Federal tax credit, and that's a good thing for even me and my family since I've got two kids in college right now. And you know how tough that can be. There are more than 41,000 students in Minnesota, 41,000 students in Minnesota who previously did not benefit from the college tax credit but will now benefit as a result of the Recovery Act. That's a lot of people. A lot of young people saying, You know what? I have enhanced my skill, developed my mind, and can contribute to this society of ours in a greater way because Democrats believe in reducing and offering tax credits for me to be able to do what I've got to do.

For 182,000 children in Minnesota, that's the number of children in Minnesota who will benefit from the expanded child tax credit that's included in the Recovery Act.

And, of course, children need a tax relief, too, because that's where their parents can afford to get them the things they need, whether they be clothes or school supplies or food or anything like that. Children need their families to have less to have to pay if, as long as it's responsible, as long as it's paid for, as long as it makes sense, it's a good thing.

Again, I don't want to go too far. Because the fact is, folks, while I believe in cutting taxes for people, I also just want to remind folks taxes are the dues that we pay to live in a civilized society. Taxes pay to keep our roads nice and taxes pay to fill up the potholes in places like Minnesota where we have come through a large, tough, winter.

Taxes pay for police officers, taxes pay for firefighters, taxes pay for public works employees, taxes pay our soldiers so that they can defend our country, and taxes go to pay for Head Start to educate our children at university and at the middle, K-12 level.

So I am not here to say taxes are bad. That's a Republican thing to say that taxes are evil or that taxes are a punishment or that they are punitive. I don't believe that at all. I don't believe that for a second.

But I do say that when we can responsibly cut taxes to the middle class, we should do so. We should do so. That's just common sense, and the Democrats have proven that we believe that because we did it. And the fact is we didn't get any Republican support to do that. Because, as I just want to remind you for those of you who maybe just tuned in, every congressional Republican voted against a tax cut for 95 percent of Americans. I don't how they

can stand up and call themselves looking out for the American middle class with a straight face, but I am sure they will manage somehow.

Let me also talk a little bit more about Minnesota businesses. Because, of course, in Minnesota we believe in entrepreneurship. We believe that people should allow their creative talents to bring their services and goods to the market so that other people can participate in those and enjoy those things for a fair price and, therefore, those businesses can hire people, and we can really have our economy working well.

So I just want to mention, you know, that the Recovery Act significantly cut taxes for businesses as well, about 385,000 sole proprietors, 385,000 sole proprietors in Minnesota that filed with the IRS in 2007. Well, the fact is the Recovery Act provided relief for those businesses by providing, one, tax breaks for small businesses, expensing and bonus appreciation, businesses that purchased new capital equipment, providing small businesses with temporary, 5-year net operating loss, carryback, and providing small businesses with estimated tax payment relief, and excluding 75 percent of the gains on small business stock from capital gains purchased in 2009 and 2010 and, finally, providing businesses with relief from paying taxes on income resulting from discharged debt.

Minnesota businesses, again, about $1.1 billion, about $1.1 billion is the amount of additional dollars in the hands of consumers in the State of Minnesota as a result of Making Work Pay. That means that if you take that tax cut that 95 percent of all Americans benefited from and you bring it right to the great State of Minnesota and you ask yourself, well, how much did that mean to the Minnesota economy, that's $1.1 billion that our families have to be able to spend on their needs so that they can make their ends meet, and they can put that money into the economy to help bolster the sales for our businesses that are out there.

Moving right along, about 538 units, about 538 units, housing units, are being constructed in Minnesota under a low-income housing tax credits exchange program that was enacted as part of the Recovery Act. That's a lot of houses, a lot of places for people to live, and that's a very, very big deal.

So I just want to say that I think that Democrats who responsibly cut taxes on the middle class, not the irresponsible tax cuts for the well- to-do who don't even need a tax cut, but Democrats responsibly cutting taxes for the middle class are helping America get stronger and get better after an 8-year nightmare where they cut taxes for the richest people, didn't enforce the financial regulation, allowed Wall Street to run wild, and allowed predatory mortgage lending to take place. Now we pay the awful price for that, but it's a good thing because Democrats to the rescue are making sure that this economy is coming back strong, in part by responsible tax cuts to the middle class, and I am proud of that.

Let me move on to just talk a little bit about, just pose a question to people who may be listening, Mr. Speaker, and the question is, are you better off on Tax Day? There is a group called Third Way that prepares a report and asks the question, are you better off on Tax Day? And here are a few things that they found, Mr. Speaker, that I would just like to share with you.

Third Way compares three average middle-class families' tax returns from the 2007 to the 2009 returns under President Obama. They posed a question, is the average middle-class American better off under Obama's tax policies or under Bush? They compare the differences between tax credits offered by the Bush administration and the Republican Congress to those offered by Obama and the Democratic Congress. And in every case the answer was, without question, yes, Americans are better off with President Obama in the White House and Democrats in Congress.

This Third Way report, which I hope people will take a look at, says definitively on many measures that Americans are simply better off. Democrats are just better at managing the economy. We are better when it comes to deficits, better when it comes to tax cuts, better when it comes to jobs, better, better, better.

Of course, if you are a very super rich person, you may have to pay some taxes that you didn't have to pay before. But the fact is you have better services for it, and you have the pride of knowing that you are making a contribution to your fellow Americans, improving the quality of life for everybody, not just yourself. I think that means a huge deal for people. Because I think Americans, even well-to-do Americans, are extremely patriotic and want to know that their fellow Americans are doing well and that the ladder of opportunity has not been pulled up, as Republicans always try to do, but that it's still there for Americans who want to work hard and climb that ladder from the poor or even the middle class up to a higher income level.

So I just also want to talk about some results from the tax justice report on the Obama tax cuts. This Citizens for Tax Justice report says the following. The analysis notes that 53 percent of Americans believe that the President has kept taxes the same, 24 percent believe the President has raised taxes, and only 12 believe the President has cut taxes. But the fact is he has cut taxes overwhelmingly. This was part of the spin machine that we hear all the time and we are trying to correct tonight.

But by the analysis of the Citizens for Tax Justice, tax cuts enacted by Obama and the Democratic Congress reduced the Federal income taxes for the tax year 2009 for, actually, they find, 98 percent of all working families. I just said 95, but according to this think tank it's even higher than that.

The Citizens for Tax Justice also observe one reason why the broader American public may not realize that the President cut their 2009 taxes is that the tax cut that affected most people took effect gradually by reducing withholding on wages. So you see a little more in your paycheck every week, but it's still there, still there for you to be better off and do what you need to do for your family.

They also note, well, I would also add that the spin machine doesn't help. But the fact is, it's there. The folks have it.

This Center for Tax Justice also says that, in addition to massive middle-class tax cuts, the Recovery Act made direct cash payments to a large population of Americans, including Social Security recipients, and extended unemployment benefits to out-of-work Americans.

And, so, this report, which I am going to hold up so people can see, this is kind of small type, but I just hope folks can look at that, see, right there, it says President Obama cut taxes for 98 percent of working families in 2009. Mr. Speaker, I think that's pretty good. I think that that's all right, and I think that's something to be commended, something to be proud of.

Mr. Speaker, as I just want to keep saying, you know, as I am standing up here talking about cutting taxes, I don't want any of the folks who might be tuned in tonight to get the impression that I am against taxes. I am in favor of paying the dues that we must pay in order to have a civilized society. I don't want people to pay more than they should pay, and I certainly do want every dollar to be used responsibly.

I am totally against any kind of wasteful spending or boondoggles, and I am absolutely against the spending that we did to fight the Iraq war, which was offered to us by President Bush and the Republicans. They told us it was weapons of mass destruction and everything else, and none of that was true. That was an enormous expense on the American people, not to mention loss of life, both Americans and Iraqis.

But the fact is is that I don't like every expenditure that the government makes, but the fact is that in a democratic society we have the majority rules. We elect the President and trust that those decisions will be made responsibly. They are not always done that way, but I wouldn't change this system for any system in the world.

The fact is, Mr. Speaker, tonight we are talking about taxes. Tonight is, today is Tax Day. Many Americans are probably still rushing out to the mailbox to make sure that that tax filing gets into the mailbox and gets stamped tonight so that they can get their taxes in on time, and maybe the ones who are the early birds have already done that a long time ago and taken care of

that business. But the bottom line is, Mr. Speaker, that today, Tax Day, is a big deal in America.

It's the day that we can stop and think about how lucky, how we have benefited by being in this great country of ours, where we have a great Constitution that protects our liberties. We have great public employees who work hard every day to make sure Americans have good services, teachers, firefighters, police officers, people who work in Head Start every day to try to help the children, people who really get out there and give all they have to help Americans.

It's a great day to just think about how lucky we are as Americans to have the Medicare system to help our seniors, TRICARE to help our soldiers, and now we are going to have over 32 million Americans get health care under the newly passed health care bill. These things, our taxes go to these things, and I am proud that they do.

It means that we live in a society that has compassion, it means we have a society that is responsible, that is going to meet the needs of all Americans, and it means that it is going to be done in a responsible way. Not the way the Republican caucus has done in the past, which is just cuts taxes for the wealthiest Americans and then creates massive deficits, but in a responsible way that's paid for and that broad cross-sections of Americans benefit from.

This is the kind of tax cut that we need. This is the kind of help that we need. Not the Bush-type tax cuts but Obama tax cuts, which go to benefit large percentages of Americans.

Every congressional Republican voted against a tax cut for 95 percent of American families, Mr. Speaker. These 95 percent of Americans, I betcha they are going to be remembering that come November.

Anyway, the fact is that this is a very important day. This is Tax Day. This is the day that we think about our investment in our country. This is the day that we say, you know what? Not everything the government spends money on I agree with, but I am happy that I am in America and can benefit from living in this great country.

Being an American is not free. If you have the income to help pay the dues, to pay the costs of this society, you should help. There is nothing wrong with it. It's not a punishment. Some of our Republican caucus friends will say it's a punishment or taxes are evil or they are bad or something like that. They shouldn't be higher than they are supposed to be, but they ought to be high enough to pay for the needs of the government so we don't have massive deficits.

And yet they have created these massive deficits that Democrats are trying to dig us out of right now.

So let me just say, as I begin to wind down--and just signaling to my Republican Caucus folks that if they're going to take the rest of the time, it might be a good time to think about getting up--the fact is that under Democratic leadership we passed a bill that would promote hiring incentives. We passed health care legislation that would promote health care and small businesses to be getting a tax credit in order to cover Americans to offer them health care. We have offered tax cuts to 95 percent of Americans.

Democrats believe in middle class tax cuts that are responsible and paid for. Democrats believe that it is progressive to put money in the hands of Americans when it doesn't explode deficits and when it does help spur demand and when it does help Americans meet their daily expenses. We're not in favor of huge tax cuts for people who don't really need them--and didn't even ask for them--but we are in favor of responsible tax cuts to middle class Americans.

So on tax day, I joined with you just the other day this weekend in signing my tax form. I owed this year, but as I said goodbye to my money, I knew that if it was going to take care of a kid who needed a meal or give a young soldier the equipment they need in defending our country or to help this country do better and be more effective, well, I'm willing to do that because I think it's my duty as an American to do so.

So with that, I yield back and thank the Speaker for the time.

Madam Speaker, on March 19, 2010, I inadvertently failed to vote on rollcall No. 140. Had I worked, I would have voted ``aye.''

Madam Speaker, on March 20, 2010, I was absent but had I been present, I would have voted ``no'' on rollcall Nos. 148 and 150; and I would have voted ``yes'' on rollcall Nos. 149, 151, 152, 153, and 154.

I rise in support of universal health care.

Mr. Speaker, there was a time in our country's past that the enactment of a comprehensive civil rights law was deemed merely a dream.

There was a time in our country's past that enactment of Social Security to guarantee the retirement security of our seniors was deemed merely a dream.

There was a time in our country's past that enactment of the Medicare law to guarantee the health care for our nation's senior was deemed merely a dream.

We now take all three--civil rights, retirement security for our seniors and health security--for granted in our society.

They are all assumed as a given and as a right in our society.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I believe when we leave this chamber tonight after passing this health care bill, we will forget how hard it was to pass this bill. And in another generation, our grandchildren will also assume that universal health care is a right and a given in any modern society.

Mr. Speaker, tonight marks the beginning of the dream of universal health care becoming a reality in our society.

It is an important beginning--

When 40,500 uninsured Fifth District residents will have access health care coverage to health insurance.

When 9,700 Fifth District residents with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied coverage.

When 57,000 Fifth District young adults can obtain coverage on their parents' insurance plans.

When insurance coverage for 358,000 Fifth District residents is improved--and when the cost of uncompensated care for hospitals and other health care providers is reduced by $101 million--that is positive change.

And when thirty-two million more Americans have health insurance it is a good beginning. At the same time, when $1.3 trillion in deficit spending (accumulated over the past eight years) is reduced, it is a good start.

I look forward to enthusiastically casting my ``yes'' vote tonight for this historic legislation.

Let me thank the gentlewoman for her excellent work in the area of the environment, our oceans and our watersheds. But it seems like every conversation here is going to be about health care, so let's take that on.

The fact is, Madam Speaker, this bill that we'll vote on on Sunday cuts the deficit by $138 billion in the first 10 years. That level of deficit reduction is something the Democrats are known for and Republicans, unfortunately, have not been known for. We know that when the Democrats left office in 2000, we had a surplus, and then we quickly--based on tax cuts for the wealthy and unpaid-for wars and other things--we ran into a massive deficit. Quite frankly, if I was a Republican, I would be embarrassed to talk about deficits. But it seems like they're not.

So the fact is, we have to talk about the facts and straighten out the situation so that the American people will know that the fact is that that bill, this health care bill, cuts the deficit by $138 billion in the first 10 years, and cuts it by $1 trillion in the second 10 years. The fact is this bill is good for America. It is fiscally sound. It is paid for. It makes sense. And for any Republican to stand up here and talk about deficits and lecture on deficits, they really do need to review their history because they are the party of deficits. Democrats are the party of deficit reduction. Americans all over this country, some of whom have said that they're scared about the change that is about to come, their fear should be overcome by the good things that are in this bill.

Madam Speaker, wouldn't it be nice if we could continue honoring Donald Harington, a great novelist in America, but we can't because we have to counteract things that are not exactly accurate, which some of our friends are talking about on the subject of health care.

The fact is we are honoring a great American novelist, but we have to divert that important conversation to focus on the truth about health care. Now here is the truth about health care.

The truth is that the Republican caucus has been engaging in a campaign of fear to scare the American people from doing what is best for themselves. The fact is that this campaign, first they said there were death panels. Then they said there were community-based sex clinics. Now they are saying the IRS is going to come get you. America, this is not what is going on.

The truth is that 45,000 people a year die from the lack of health care, and that is what the Democratic caucus is going to address and that is what the American people will benefit from: being able to not go bankrupt because you have health care, being able to not have to lose a loved one because you have health care, being able to survive and thrive in America as a small business person, provide a good benefit to your company because you can afford to offer a health care benefit. That is what is going on on Sunday.

I wish we could talk about the great novelist Donald Harington right now. He deserved it. He earned it and he is a great American and we honor him, but the fact is the Republican caucus wants to go toe to toe on health care. We can go toe to toe on health care because this is a good bill. It is going to improve this country. It is going to help small business. It is going to help people who are underinsured, and it is going to make this country stronger.

Why aren't our colleagues outraged about people being dropped for preexisting conditions? Why don't they join us in our outrage in trying to fix it? Why don't our colleagues join us in saying, you know what; preventative medicine ought to be free? People shouldn't have to pay to be able to do preventative medicine. We are doing that right now. People ought to be able to get a good, decent health care policy for a good price, and they ought to be able to survive and do well in America. I wish we could get some support for that from the other side of the aisle; unfortunately, we won't.