Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the Metropolitan Airports Commission's board members and staff for Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport's recent recognition as the Best Airport in North America and Third Best in the World in its size category.

The Airports Council International granted this award to the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport based on feedback from air travelers during the 2008 Airport Quality Survey. The 2008 airport rankings reflect the responses of more than 200,000 passengers who filled out questionnaires at 108 airports.

Minnesota is well known for the strong work ethic of its residents, and their commitment to ensuring Minnesota continues to be one of the best places to live, work and visit. Those characteristics form the foundation for the Metropolitan Airports Commission's latest outstanding accomplishment.

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport serves as Minnesota's front door for those who come to the state for business or pleasure. I invite you and all the members of this esteemed Congress to come experience the hospitality Minnesota is famous for from the moment their plane touches down on the runways of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

In closing Madam Speaker, I would like to once again extend my deepest congratulations to the Minneapolis Airports Commission hard work and great accomplishment.

Mr. Speaker, let me first say at the outset that I support President Obama and his Administration in their overall foreign policy objectives and implementation. However, I cannot vote for this War Supplemental request because I believe that it does not represent the departure from the past that we all hope for and which is urgently needed to move our country forward in a new course.

While I understand that there's a momentum building toward winding down our involvement in these conflicts and the move away from the war- making culture, I believe that there must be a sharp departure from past policy in order for us to achieve that goal.

This War Supplemental budget will significantly expand our military presence in Afghanistan, while at the same time it does not go far enough in eliminating our longstanding presence in Iraq, either.

I am very concerned by the fact that almost 90 percent of the funds are going for military operations and equipment replacement. While it contains some beneficial items like economic development and agriculture programs in Afghanistan, efforts to strengthen rule of law in Iraq, humanitarian assistance for Gaza--which I strongly support-- wildfire suppression, and efforts to fight against the spread of a new flu pandemic, all these items combined amount to less than 13 percent of the total budget.

I also believe that funding for the war and military occupation and funding for diplomatic, humanitarian and other benevolent efforts must be separated. It is disingenuous and deceptive to combine these two and force the lawmakers to make the choice they shouldn't have to make; that is, supporting funding for the wars in order to get humanitarian assistance for Gaza.

President Obama has made strong, inspirational statements that signal positive change of policy toward the Muslim world, but this budget will send a contradicting message to those statements. Approving this budget will send the message to the Muslim world and the international community at large that we are not serious in getting to the root-cause of the problem, which is our extensive engagement in war-making. At the end of the day, the best way to achieve our objectives is to send consistent messages that demonstrate our unwavering determination to scale down our military footprints.

Supporting this bill will surely perpetuate military operations that are likely to fail or become a pyrrhic victory.

President Obama will give a major speech in Egypt on how he would reduce those military footprints and increase civilian-led involvement. But the figures in this War Supplemental budget, over $75 billion for military operations versus merely $7 billion for state and foreign operations, will perpetuate the picture of how much we still prioritize war-making over diplomacy and development.

With these reasons, and despite my continued support for the President and the Administration, I cannot support this War Supplemental budget request.

Madam Speaker, let me welcome America and the rest of the world to the Progressive Caucus Special Order hour. We would like to call it ``The Progressive Message.''

And the Progressive message is something that the Progressive Caucus does every week to project a Progressive vision for America; not a reactionary vision, not a status quo vision, but a vision of America as we believe that it could be, can be, that all men and women are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The Progressive Caucus and the Progressive message, tonight, are here to come to bring a message to the people about where we are going, where we have been. And tonight's topic is ``Why I'm a Progressive.''

Why I'm a Progressive; here's why. We are going to talk about it tonight, and it's going to be good. And to help us get kicked off on this subject of why I am a Progressive, I want to yield to the gentlelady from the great State of California, who is also one of our co-Chairs, Lynn Woolsey.

From the great State of Maine.

We have been here on the House floor together before, and at that time in the past you shared one of your own personal stories about what motivated you toward Progressive politics.

But leave it to say that the gentlelady from California, our co- Chair, Lynn Woolsey, came to Progressive politics not just because of something she read in the book, but because of the life that she lived that helped her understand what the importance of Progressive politics are all about.

I yield back to the gentlelady. Is that right?

The fact is that many of us come to our own conclusions about the need for shared prosperity, and some of us find that that helping hand that we would give others, sometimes we need it ourselves.

But, you know what? It's okay, because Progressive politics has a long, strong, proud history in the United States. Part of that history has been fighting for peace. And that fight goes on today.

I want to yield to the gentleman from Colorado, Representative Polis, who has some views on that. How does Progressive politics inform you as you search for America as a more peaceful partner in the world?

I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

The gentleman has yielded to me. The attack on Iraq is the single worst decision any President of the United States has ever made. And I'm proud to say the Progressives stood up and voiced opposition to it. But not only that--Vietnam. Not only that, members of the Progressive community have stood up and questioned the very military buildup itself and the United States posture in the world.

You know, I'd like to share with the gentleman, if I may, and the gentlelady from Maine, that if you took every military budget in the entire world--I'm talking about Palau, Timor-Leste; I'm talking about places like Indonesia, Kenya, wherever--and you added them all up and you compared them to the United States military budget, ours would still be bigger.

We spend more money on military armaments than every other country in the world--and many of our military expenditures go to things that have absolutely positively nothing whatsoever to do with fighting terrorism. They're for fighting Russians--states that are confined within nonporous borders, state actors, not nonstate actors who are fluidly moving throughout the world.

So I toss it back to the gentleman from Colorado and yield to the gentleman from Colorado. Have Progressives stood up for peace? What do you think?

Let's now introduce our freshman colleague from the great State of Maine, Representative Pingree, who comes here with a long-term service of the people of the State of Maine, but who is going to focus on another aspect of what it means to be a Progressive.

There's the peace aspect, there's the question of domestic economic progressivity, but there's also this element of Progressive politics, which says individual liberty is very important.

Let me yield to the gentlelady because she made a very important 5- minute speech today, which we would ask her to elaborate on just a little bit. Let me yield to the gentlelady from Maine.

Will the gentlelady yield?

Do you think that perhaps part of the Progressive tradition is this idea of individual liberty? There are certain things that we as Americans may not agree on, but we will agree that the decision rests with the individual.

I can't tell you, from Maine, how many children you should have, or whether you should have any. I can't tell you who to marry or who not to marry. I can't tell you about these essential decisions that are like your business.

This is a very Progressive idea. Sometimes when you hear about the government getting off people's backs, you associate it with people who are on the ``right'' end of the political spectrum. But when it comes to many other decisions that are essential and private, these are Progressive values.

How does the gentlelady from Maine feel about this idea?

If I can turn to the gentleman from Colorado. The gentlelady from Maine makes an interesting point. Part of the Progressive vision is doing things together which we should and could do together, and doing things separately, then maybe we get to make that call on our own. Maybe we should make sure that all Americans have health care, that everyone is safe, that women don't have to live in a home where they fear battering, and that we have a criminal justice system that protects them from that.

But maybe on certain other decisions like marriage or other things, that's just your business and we let people make decisions for themselves on that. How does the gentleman feel about this issue?

If the gentleman would yield, when it comes to this issue of marriage equality, I always say to people that it's not mandatory. It's up to the individual. What about individual liberty?

I just want to ask the two Members with me today, the gentleman from Colorado, the gentlelady from Maine, to just review with me, if you would, some of these things that I believe were Progressive in nature.

When it comes to this issue of the American Revolution, I think it was progressive. Yes, America was a slave-holding country. Yes, women didn't have equal rights. And, yes, there were a lot of problems. But if you look in that day and in that time for the American colonialists to say we are not going to ruled by a king and we are going to choose our leaders, that was a progressive step forward.

We may look at that time and say there were problems, people didn't overcome a lot of social injustices. But if we look at it for what it was, individual citizens saying I don't want a king making up my mind for me, I want to cast a vote and select my own leaders, that, I believe, was a progressive step forward.

The Bill of Rights I think was progressive. Think about the first one: No government religious institution, everyone practices their own religion as they choose; the establishment clause; right to freedom of the press; right to assembly; right to redress grievances. It was a progressive step forward.

Universal white male suffrage. Of course, not all Americans got the right to vote at the same time, but there was a time when being a white male was not good enough to get you a ballot. You had to have some property. You could not be Catholic, you had to be a white male Protestant property owner. So when America said the property thing and the religious thing, those don't apply any more. Of course we would have liked to have more people get the franchise, but a lot of people got it.

Public education; emancipation of the slaves; national park system; food safety; break up of monopolies; antitrust legislation-- progressive. The Homestead Act. Land grant universities so that all Americans could really enjoy a university education.

What about this one, I would like to ask the gentlelady from Maine, what about rural electrification, was that a progressive step forward for America?

Would the gentlelady talk for a moment about the corollary of rural electrification and extending broadband access to all of America?

I think it is a Progressive value because it says, look, we know Americans who live in rural America like living there. They grow the crops and they enjoy that life. But if there is no economy out there, then it is difficult to live out there and you see young people moving into the city, not necessarily because they want to but because they feel that they have to.

This rural electrification in one generation, broadband access in another, represents our shared commitment to each other to live our lives as we would choose.

Moving down the list, women's suffrage, 1920. It is important for Americans to know that women could not always vote in America. It was progressive women, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others who stood up and fought. It was Sojourner Truth and a man by the name of Frederick Douglass fighting for women's right to vote. And it was women in the West who made the claim, we are already voting. You may not have a constitutional right to do it, but we do it in our State, and they helped lead the way.

But what about the abolition of child labor, the 8-hour workday? Pretty progressive. We all hope we can do that. Minimum wage, Social Security, civil rights for minorities and women, voting rights for minorities and the poor. Cleaning up our air, water, toxic dump sights, consumer product safety and Medicare.

Today, I ask the gentlelady from Maine, are we done? Has the Progressive agenda been completed? Do we have more work to do?

Yes, we have a great progressive history, but we have a tall order to do. We have to get health care to all Americans. We have to make sure that we have a green renewable future so we can live in harmony with the planet. The planet is going to keep on turning. Whether we can continue to survive on it is another question.

I am happy that in the 110th and 111th Congress, we were able to pass legislation like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which is an important step forward for people to bring pay equity lawsuits when they were victims of gender discrimination on the job.

We were able to pass the children's health insurance program, not health care for all, but health care for children, a very important bill.

We were able to pass the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which is a law that says, Look, you can have your value system as to how you feel about different sets of Americans, but you better not harm them. They are within the protection of the law. They have a right. People like Matthew Shepard will not be harmed. The rest of us will not tolerate it, and that is how we express our values for all human beings.

And as you pointed out the, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the so-called stimulus act which gave a tax cut to middle-class Americans. Progressives aren't against tax cuts; we are just against tax cuts for only the rich people. We believe that working people ought to get a break sometimes, too.

So these kinds of things are things that we are fighting on. This may be the history, but we have a tall agenda

for the future that we want all Americans to partake of.

I want to say briefly that to be a Progressive is to be one who believes, yes we have our individual rights, but we also have things that we proudly share together, like our safety and clean water and like our environmental legal regime.

But on the other side, what a Progressive is not, what a Progressive is not is somebody who basically operates on the basis of fear-based politics. We boldly say we can do this new thing together. We are not afraid to embrace the future. But there is a set of politics that says be afraid, be very afraid. The Russians or somebody is going to get you, and you have to be afraid. You can't share with anybody. You just have to look out for yourself. That is a set of political ideas that is prevalent around here, too; and those ideas are not the ones that made America great. The ones that made America great are the ones listed on this board and the ones that we are talking about now.

I yield to Ms. Pingree for your final comments.

As I just wrap up, this is the Progressive message. We have had Members, including Congresswoman Woolsey, Congressman Polis, and Congresswoman Pingree, talk about why I am a Progressive, giving their personal testimony and giving their own ideas and values about this critical subject.

We also want folks to be able to check in on the Website right here: http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov. Very important for people who are watching to check in and check out the Progressive Caucus agenda. It is very important. The Progressive Caucus is a moral force within the Congress bringing America to its better half.

I agree with Congresswoman Pingree, who pointed out that all of these things on this list are things where people said, Look, let's embrace our common life, our shared life. But these are all things, and I think that Congresswoman Pingree would agree with me, that before they were passed, people said it can't be done. They said this is something that we shouldn't do. But you know what? All of these things were done, and we are all as Americans much better off for it.

Let me also wrap up by saying that it was the words of President Barack Obama, who said in his first address to Congress, ``I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves, that government has no role in laying the foundation of our common prosperity.'' That rejected view, I submit, is a conservative view because government does have an important role to play in our common prosperity, and our problems will not simply take care of themselves.

President Obama went on to say, ``For history tells a different story. History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this Nation has responded with bold action and big ideas.'' I quite agree with the President on this point.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Let me say, I do thank the gentleman, but I do it in all sincerity. Congressman Miller, you and Congressman Frank and Congressman Watt and Congresswoman Waters and Congressman Gutierrez and Congresswoman Maloney have really been offering the kind of leadership on the Financial Services Committee that any freshman or sophomore Member could only dream of. Any freshman or sophomore Member joining our committee could easily wonder where do I fit in and all this stuff, but you all have carved away so that those of us who have a compassion for consumer justice and for an America where we have shared prosperity, not just for some of us but where all of us have an opportunity to do well and take care of our families, you all have cut a wide berth for us, and so I thank you for that.

Let me say about the foreclosure crisis, in many ways I come here somewhat embarrassed because we could have had a bill like this years ago. It is not as if you and Congressman Watt didn't think of it. It is not as if the Miller-Watt bill wasn't on your mind back in the 109th Congress and 108th Congress. It was there, but it took this propitious moment to get as close as we are. And yet, we still don't have a signed bill. We have a bill that has passed through the House, and we have great hopes for it getting through the Senate, and we have even greater hopes to get it on the President's desk for signature. But the moment that the American people are waiting for, which is to end predatory mortgage lending, that moment has yet to come. And we have seen foreclosures that have rivaled the Great Depression. That is very disturbing to me.

I want the American people to look at this chart that we have here tonight. The number of new foreclosures increased dramatically between 2005 and 2008. That is precipitous growth in foreclosures. As foreclosures were going up, we also see human beings attached to each one of those foreclosures. Congressman, you know what I am talking about. The stories can be told.

Let me tell a story. I was knocking on doors one day and I saw a gentleman hobble to the front door to answer the door to talk to me. This particular gentleman lived on the south side of Minneapolis. I heard a voice come from deep within the house say, Be careful, Honey, and it clearly was his partner. And he hobbled up to the front door anyway on a cane.

I said, How are you doing?

He said, Fine.

I said, I'm running for Congress. I want to go there and I am going to work on consumer justice. I am real concerned about credit cards and real concerned about predatory lending.

He said, I hope you are, because let me tell you, I was on my roof trying to fix it. It is because I didn't have the money to fix it to hire a guy who really knew what he was doing. My wife told me not to do it, but I did it anyway. As usual, she is right. I fell. I hurt my back, which I hurt years before, and we didn't really have the money. It cost us $1,800 for an emergency vehicle to come get me. They got me there. I had a big bill. I didn't know what hurt more, the back or the bill. I didn't have the money, so I put it on a credit card. I ended up getting another credit card, and I started juggling these cards. And then when the mortgage payments came and I wasn't working, I just couldn't keep up.

Well, a few years ago we bought this house and we had a huge balloon payment after 3 years. We thought we would be able to do it because when we talked to the guy, he said, You know what? The value of your house is going up and you will be able to do a refinance and you won't have any problem.

That man told me, Look, I have big credit card debt and medical debt, and I am starting to get notices that they are going to foreclosure if I don't make some payments to the bank. Unfortunately, time went by, November came, I ended up being a Congressman, and this man ended up being in foreclosure.

The sad fact is the people who are in foreclosure, there are a lot of ingredients to this very sad cake; but one is hard times and economic difficulty, and two, bad loan products. The combination of the two makes for foreclosures.

As we open up tonight, Congressman Miller, I am grateful to you and Congressman Frank, Congressman Watt, Congresswoman Waters, Congresswoman Maloney, and all of the people who have been leading the charge on this issue.

I want to keep it in mind that we are not talking about just statistics. We can tick off, in 2008, there were 2,417,000 foreclosures, but there was a life and a family connected to each one of those.

As we do this Special Order tonight, we need to keep that in mind.

Will the gentleman yield? Was there an obligation to disclose that I'm getting paid more money for selling you this loan, and it's costing you more but it's making me more? Was that part of the disclosure requirement?

If the gentleman would yield one more time. So what you're saying is it was telling you without telling you anything; is that right?

I yield back.

Would the gentleman yield? May I ask the gentleman a personal question?

How many homes have you ever purchased in your life?

Could you count them all on one hand?

How many mortgage transactions does a mortgage broker do in a given week?

If the gentleman would yield back. So they do more transactions in a week than you have done in a lifetime?

Is that what you call an information asymmetry?

So if the gentleman would yield back. The bottom line is, you are a lawyer, you are a Member of Congress, you have served in the North Carolina State Legislature, you're a man, clearly, of ability and all these things--I'm not just praising you gratuitously, I'm just identifying the facts--and here you walk into a transaction to buy a home, and quite literally you are at a disadvantage because the person on the other end of the transaction has done more transactions in a week than you have in a lifetime.

Now, imagine a person who is a first-time homebuyer, a person who has not finished law school and college and maybe even high school, a person who maybe works hard every day, and the idea of buying a home for them is a dream come true, maybe nobody in their family has ever owned the place where they lived. And so they're juiced up, they're excited, and they really don't understand the documents that they're signing.

The fact is, I think that this legislation that you have helped shepherd through Congress is a long time coming. And we need people to really register their support for a piece of legislation like this. I just want to ask you a question, Congressman, because I think it's an important one.

Now, someone might make the case that, okay, Congressman, you're talking about predatory lending a lot. What about predatory borrowing; isn't it true that some of these people bought loans that they knew they could not afford? Well, what are your views on that, given the fact that people were in fact steered to more expensive loans, that mortgage brokers--some of them, not all, some of them--did get paid to get you to pay a higher cost loan, that there were these things like information asymmetries; what does the reality of predatory borrowing really mean? I yield back.

Would the gentleman yield? Is there a commonly referred to name for the kind of loans you are referring to?

Elizabeth Warren.

Well, let me say, I'm proud to be on that bill with you. I think that Elizabeth Warren, Professor Stiglitz and Professor Shiller are all brilliant for coming up with the idea. The fact is, if you look at many of these mortgages, they were not safe at any speed, to borrow a phrase from Ralph Nader.

The fact is, if the only way that this mortgage, quote-unquote, works is if you can refinance it in 3 or 2 years, then that is a mortgage that doesn't work. It's designed to end up in foreclosure but for a very shaky assumption.

If the gentleman would allow me to mention in our waning time, I would also like to say this about the bill we just passed through the House. And that is that many of the properties that have ended up in foreclosure are not homeowner-occupied. In other words, they're multifamily dwellings. They're investor-owned. And in many States across our country, you can be a tenant who has paid every, every rental payment on time, never missed one. And yet if your landlord didn't use that money you gave him to pay that mortgage on that building, you could find yourself kicked out without any notice at all.

Some States have regulations, many don't. This bill gives people 90 days from the date of foreclosure in order to stay and make new plans for their lives.

I think this is a critically important piece of legislation, very important provision in the bill, and I'm glad it is a part of it.

I know you're going to have to wrap up pretty soon, Congressman Miller, so I just want to yield back to you now.

Ridiculous.

Let me thank the Chair for his shepherding this critically important piece of legislation to the floor and getting us to this point.

Mr. Chairman, I am very grateful that the Chair and all the members of the committee were able to include in the manager's amendment what I believe is almost the very heart of the problem here, and that is that people who qualified for certain kinds of loans were steered to loans that made certain other folks more wealthy and other people who were out to seek loans had their credit ratings mischaracterized. Sometimes people had appraisals that were false and not true, and then, of course, people who were eligible for certain loans were literally discouraged from shopping around to get a better loan.

This type of steering is not ambiguous; it's not middle-of-the-road stuff. It is just wrong. And I am glad that the manager's amendment is going to direct the Secretary to promulgate rules that will put certain no-nos into the bill that would prevent steering.

I think if we had not had the level of steering that we had, we would not have the number of exotic subprime loans that we had, predatory loans. And if we didn't have that, we very likely would not be at the depth of trouble that we're in right now.

So I'm very happy that this is included in the manager's amendment, that we will have some clear don'ts that we will ask rules to be promulgated on, prohibiting mischaracterizing of appraisals, prohibiting discouraging shopping around, prohibiting mischaracterization of credit scores and others.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition.

Let me first thank my friend from Colorado who has worked diligently. He is an excellent legislator and was a fine lawyer and I think still is licensed to practice law, and so it is a pleasure working with him. On this issue, unfortunately, we don't quite see it the same.

I think that the 90-day provision is fine and should remain in the bill as it exists now. To cut down by 60 days the opportunity for a renter to find a new place to live after they may have done nothing wrong, made every payment, paid every penny on time, really is not fair and is not good for public policy.

The fact is that, when a house goes into foreclosure, that neighborhood and that home are best preserved by keeping that occupant in there. If they are required to leave just after 30 days, which is very, very fast, that means that we could end up with an empty building where it is subject to copper strippers. It will be an attractive nuisance for people who want to commit, perhaps, crime. It will be a very difficult and bad situation. And we know that once a house goes into foreclosure and then is not occupied, that is a direct blow to the property values of people who live everywhere in the neighborhood.

So this provision, this 90 days actually makes a lot of sense. It should stay in harmony with the bill as it exists and not be reduced. I will acknowledge appreciation that the author of this amendment does allow for 30 days. I appreciate that, but I think it should be more. It should be the 90 days that is already there.

This amendment, if adopted, would work to penalize the one person who has not had anything to do with the foreclosure crisis. They were not party to the foreclosure. They were not party to the mortgage in the beginning. They weren't party to the securitization, nor did they engage in any derivatives or anything like that which have brought us to this very difficult point.

The fact is that the tenant who may have been paying every rent every month, month after month, has no control or responsibility over the owner who may have violated certain conditions of the mortgage agreement, and this extra 60 days that the existing bill provides is not a major detriment to the lender.

Let me just also say, the fact is this is not just an individual problem. To take a very legalistic view of this problem and say they are not in the chain of title, therefore, they are out, ignores the fact that this problem of foreclosures has spread across the Nation, is a community problem, is a problem of everyone, not just a narrow, fixed party-to-party agreement. Therefore, there needs to be a solution that takes into consideration the broader interests as well.

Again, I thank the gentleman from Colorado for his diligent work on this issue.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I thought I had the right to close.

Let me just point out that tenants are hard hit by this foreclosure crisis even though the mortgage is not their responsibility.

As of February 2009, at least 20 percent of the properties in foreclosure were rental properties, and roughly 40 percent of the families facing eviction due to foreclosure are tenants. Only seven States and the District of Columbia provide clear protection for tenants.

The fact is that, if this amendment is adopted, it will add to the pain of some tenants when we don't have to do it. The 90 days in the bill is more than adequate, and 30 days is too short. We will put pressure on our homeless shelters if we adopt this amendment. We will put pressure on families who really had no part in making this foreclosure crisis occur.

I thank my friend from Colorado.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am here to tonight to claim the time on behalf of the Progressive Caucus. The Progressive Caucus come to the floor every week to talk about a progressive vision for America, to discuss what America is and could be, to embrace the idea that everyone does better when everyone does better, to embrace the idea that we should look at the world with courage, not with fear, that we believe in dialogue, we believe in discussion. We believe in people doing well, and we believe in radical abundance, not fear of scarcity, a progressive vision; yes, even a liberal vision of an America which is doing well because everybody is working. We are promoting broad-based economic policies that allow for a higher quality of life for all Americans.

Yes, the Progressive Caucus comes to the floor every week to talk to the American people and with our colleagues about these critical issues.

Tonight we have a great topic, but before I announce tonight's topic, I just want to say we are very, very happy and pleased to be joined by a dynamic advocate for the cause of human justice, none other than Congresswoman Gwen Moore of the great State of Wisconsin.

Congresswoman Moore, is that why it might be a good idea to support the Healthy Families Act, which is H.R. 1542, which is critical to guarantee workers up to 7 paid sick days a year?

I yield to the gentlelady.

I quite agree with the gentlelady from Wisconsin who pointed out that the Healthy Families Act is a great piece of legislation, something that is progressive, something that makes sense for America, much like legislation of the past which supported workers' rights. What this piece of legislation would do for Americans, it would allow Americans to recover from short-term illness, it would allow Americans to care for a sick family member, it would allow Americans to seek routine medical care, or to seek assistance related to domestic violence.

Some people might think, ``Oh, my God, that's going to cost us a lot of money.'' If people are that sick or in serious dire straits, they're taking the time off anyway. You're not planning for it, it's not in the schedule and there's no accommodation. If somebody can come in and say, look, straight up, I've got to take the day off because I'm sick and I have 7 days I can take, then what happens is you have greater productivity because workers are taking the time off they need to get well; workers are taking their kids to get the immunizations they need; workers are now actually engaging in preventive health care which means that they are not going to have to take extended periods of time off and thereby cut productivity.

By expending the money that it would take to provide the 7 sick days that are called for under the Healthy Families Act, businesses would save money. Businesses would be better off because we would have greater productivity and a healthier workforce over time. It's what my mother would call being penny wise and pound foolish to deny this legislation. But it would also be what my mother would call an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure if we were to have a great piece of legislation like the Healthy Families Act.

As you pointed out, as fear of the missed and inaccurately called swine flu is going around, and it should be called the H1N1 virus--not as catchy but it's more accurate--the fact is that such legislation at this time, so people could get the flu shots and checkups that they need, in times like this would be a great idea.

As you pointed out in your original 5-minute, it would help moms out, wouldn't it?

I do thank the gentlelady for nailing this point. It is so important. It is part of the progressive vision that we would have an important piece of legislation that would really help Americans like the Healthy Families Act. At a time when we are concerned about illness and sickness, this kind of bill would be embraced by a progressive vision. A bill that says, hey, look, you guys, let's give 7 paid sick days to workers. This is not unusual when you compare it to what workers get in Europe, for example.

It actually makes a lot of sense. You would have healthy workers, more productive workers, and as you pointed out, the gentlelady from Wisconsin, Congresswoman Moore, we would have people who go to the doctor rather than come in while they're sick.

Let me just point out a few other important facts; you already hit a number of them already. But according to that University of Chicago study that you referred to, one in six workers report that they or a family member have been fired, suspended, punished, or threatened with being fired for taking time off because of personal illness or to take care of a sick relative. The lack of paid sick days is a major public health concern.

As we try to prevent the spread of the H1N1 virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, has issued important guidelines that are sound and prudent: if you get sick, stay home; if you get sick, don't go to work or school; limit contact with other people. But how can you do this, I ask the gentlelady from the great State of Wisconsin, if it is going to cost you economically, if you are already close to the edge economically, if that job that you're on says that you don't have health insurance? You are paid by the hour, and you know that if you don't work, you don't get no money, you don't get paid. What, then, do you do if you do not have a bill like the Healthy Families Act? I think it is important that we get such legislation.

I yield back to the gentlelady.

If the gentlelady would yield.

Well, I think what you are saying is so very important. It is part of a progressive vision for America. It is part of the idea that, hey, we all do better when we all do better. You are not a sucker or you are not a person who is gullible if you believe that it is a good idea to look out for your fellow Americans. You are a person who may be a very savvy business person because you know that by supporting the Healthy Families Act, it may cost you a little bit to give paid sick leave days for some of your low- and medium-income workers, but it will allow you to keep that dry cleaners going over the long term; it will allow you to keep your small business moving, your store, whatever it is that you may be doing, your lawn care business. You may be able to stay out there because you know you have workers who can take the day off and go get that checkup, who can take the day off and look after that child so that when they are at work, you have an alert, healthy worker. It makes so much sense.

And as we began this health care debate, I noticed that one of our colleagues was doing a 5-minute speech, talking about how he is against a public plan. Well, I want to tell everybody, and I think it's important to note that when you talk about comprehensive health care reform, part of it has got to be giving low-income and medium- and moderate- workers paid sick days. Let's face it, if you are an executive, if you are at the top of the food chain economically and you are sick, you can take a day off. But what if you are a line worker, what if you are at the front desk, what if you are a low-wage worker, what if you are a minimum-wage worker? That's when you don't see many of the bennies going around. Or you could take a day off, but you're not getting paid for it. And in that case, you are forcing the worker into a terrible choice: lack of income or health. Which do you want to pick today? And that is something that people are too close to the edge to make a decision on.

I yield back to the gentlelady.

Will the gentlelady yield?

What is presentee-ism? Is it anything like absenteeism? I yield back.

Well, thank you for that important statistic because we have got to count up the bill.

The real difficulty in a bill like the Healthy Families Act is that we know that some people who are just looking to the next quarter, the next minute, the next moment, and if they are going to have to spend a little bit of money in the short term, they are going to say, well, that is going to cost money. Well, you know what? Not doing it is going to cost way, way, way more money.

So the Healthy Families Act is a part of a progressive vision. It is just like the Wagner Act, which guaranteed workers the right to organize, just like Social Security, just like Workers' Compensation, just like a number of important programs and pieces of legislation passed in America that may have been considered liberal--or even radical at one time--but Americans have come to rely on and expect from our government. It is part of what we do as Americans together: we share. We allow in the marketplace that you can do your own thing, you are free to come up with your idea and make your money, but certain things we do together. We defend the Nation together. We defend our streets with the police together. We provide justice through our courts together. We make sure our elderly are not eating dog food through Social Security. We do this together. We make sure that people whose parents die have survivor benefits through Social Security. We build infrastructure together. And this is another thing we should do together. We should come together and say that 7 days of paid sick leave a year is a very modest request, particularly for low- and moderate-income workers. And it pays tremendous dividends down the line.

If the gentlelady would allow me, I just want to share a couple of stories from my own State of Minnesota.

Chrissy from Minnesota. Chrissy says, ``I am currently a stay-at-home mom''--happy Mother's Day, Chrissy--``however, prior to that I worked as a natural foods manager in a conventional grocery store for 6 years. This company offered no sick leave at all to any of its employees. Many people often work sick out of necessity.''

Chrissy, we are trying to do something about it.

Amanda from Minnesota: ``I am fortunate enough to have sick time at my job at the University of Minnesota. When I was in my early 30s, I was totally healthy, exercised regularly, was at a healthy weight, and suddenly developed a rare kidney disease requiring multiple trips to multiple clinics to get multiple diagnostics. This took a lot of time away from work. Thankfully, I was able to get paid for this time. If I didn't have any income, in addition to the stress of the condition, it would have been unbearable.

``I am not so naive to believe that this is a reality of every workplace. I am very much aware of the fact that many people face struggles similar to mine on a daily basis. It is time to guarantee workers paid time to care for themselves so they are able to get their work done efficiently at no risk to themselves or their coworkers.''

Or what about the situation that Cindy is in. Cindy from Minnesota: ``I work a part-time job for a university as a researcher. In my category, sick leave is all discretionary and flexible; however, no paid vacation days accrue ever for me. The only way I feel legit in scheduling a week's vacation is if I am never sick and make up those hours pre and post.'' That's from Cindy.

I offer these stories because I think it is important to point out that the Healthy Families Act is going to help Americans all over the United States. Real people are suffering because of a lack of paid sick days. This is in keeping with the protection for workers' right to organize, Social Security, workers' compensation. This is right in line with every important and progressive step Americans have made in order to improve the quality of life for your average Americans. This is like the minimum wage; this is like workers' rights; this is like civil rights; this is like women's rights. This is what we should do at this time. It is part of a progressive vision that we are going to work to make a reality for Americans.

I yield back to the gentlelady.

Will the gentlelady yield for just a moment?

I just want to say that if we were to pass the Healthy Families Act, then the medium to larger businesses would provide these 7 days. Now, Big Business has a way of setting a trend for small business. So if big businesses did this, perhaps small businesses with fewer than 15 employees would say, hey, it's working for them, it's the industry standard, it makes sense, we might just do it voluntarily.

I yield back to the gentlelady.

I thank the gentlelady for yielding.

Let me tell you about Leslie from Minnesota. Leslie says: ``I used to wait tables full time. And there are rare occasions where you can get paid sick days, like when I worked for a large chain hotel. However, most people don't realize that you will be paid your hourly minimum wage, but not any compensation for lost tips, which is the vast majority of your money earned as a wait person. In fact, most servers barely seek a paycheck; it is eaten up with taxes taken for declared tips--yes, you are required to declare tips. It is a myth that you can conceal this information.

``So even if you do get paid sick leave or paid vacation--which is unlikely--it is not in your interest to use it. Servers basically cannot get paid unless they are physically at work. And restaurants are such hectic places that if you are short staff, the quality of service suffers everywhere. Customers in restaurants are notoriously unsympathetic to details like this.''

Just another quick one, Kari from Minnesota: ``My kids are ages 2 and 3, and the child care center doesn't take them when they're sick. Neither my husband nor I have paid sick days. Please pass the Healthy Families Act.''

And I yield to the gentlewoman.

Well, you might end up being charged with negligence. Knowing that you're sick, knowing that you're contagious and still going to work, potentially some smart lawyer might figure out a way to sue you for negligence because you exposed them to an illness. Of course, it could be taken up by workers' compensation, but somebody's going to have to pay something somewhere. And the fact is, clearly, if you've got an on-the-job illness or injury, it would be a workers' comp claim. So the bottom line is it is something that we all need to be concerned about.

I want to thank the gentlewoman from Wisconsin. As she knows, she is one of my very favorite Members of this House of Representatives, and I want to wish the gentlewoman, Gwen Moore, a Happy Mother's Day, and I also want to thank her for her very important presentation on global health for mothers.

I just want to say that we have a duty and obligation to present a progressive vision for America. Which way forward? Well, the way forward is to be more inclusive, to bring more people into the warm embrace of the American people's generosity. The way forward is peace and dialogue. The way forward is to have a better America, a higher quality of life for everybody because everybody does better when everybody does better, as the late great Senator Paul Wellstone said.

So, with that, it has been another progressive message, and I want to thank the gentlewoman.

Mr. Speaker, what else are these purveyors of confusion supposed to say?

They have had an opportunity to spread deregulation all over. They have declined the opportunity for many years to pass an antipredatory lending bill. They have promoted tax breaks for the wealthiest among us. And now that they have had the opportunity to have a House and a Senate in which their particular caucus was in the majority, they have had a full opportunity to manifest their economic ideas, and what those ideas have come to has been the largest foreclosure crisis since the Great Depression. What these economic ideas that the poor have too much and the rich don't have enough is that we have had serious unemployment spikes higher than any that we have seen since the early eighties, which was the Reagan recession. What we have seen is record lows in consumer confidence.

The fact is you can't expect the people who are purveying confusion regarding the CRA to come clean because then they would have to admit that it is their economic policies that have brought forth the economic malaise that America is in now.

In fact, the Community Reinvestment Act is good economics. The Community Reinvestment Act says that what we are going to do is we are going to ask banks who draw deposits from neighborhoods to also loan to that neighborhood.

The Community Reinvestment Act came about based on statistically documentable evidence of red-lining, which is a process whereby lenders and sometimes insurance companies systematically denied credit to certain communities, particularly low-income and minority communities. Importantly, the Community Reinvestment Act does not prescribe minimum targets nor dictate specific underwriting policies. It doesn't even set goals for lending or investment. Instead, it gives considerable discretion to bank regulators and examiners, and ensures that loans are made in a manner consistent, as you pointed out, Congressman Cleaver, with safe and sound banking practices.

Let me just quote from somebody who ought to know a little bit about banking and the financial markets, and that is Fed Governor Elizabeth Duke. Fed Governor Elizabeth Duke is a person with a Ph.D. in economics who studied these issues, is not known for wild statements, and is essentially a paragon of reliability and stability.

Here is her analysis. She says that the claim that the CRA, the Community Reinvestment Act, caused the current crisis is a ``misperception promulgated by many who either do not know much about the law or don't like it.''

That's what Fed Governor Elizabeth Duke had to say.

Finally, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has indicated, ``Our own experience with the CRA over more than 30 years and recent analysis of available data, including data on subprime loan performance, runs counter to the charge that the CRA was at the root of or otherwise contributed to in any substantive way the current mortgage difficulties.''

So I have more to say, Congressman Cleaver, but let me share the mic with others who have much more to say as well. Thank you.

I will certainly yield to the gentleman from Texas, Congressman Al Green, who is a stalwart advocate of consumers, investors, and all Americans.

Congressman and Mr. Speaker, let me just point out for our listeners that, today, about 30 percent of all homeowners are underwater. About 30 percent are underwater. That means that the value of their home is lower than the debt owed on their home.

This is a very serious and catastrophic situation and obviously causing a tremendous amount of angst, consternation, fear, and frustration among people across our country. Obviously, when your house is underwater, it might be easier for you to just leave the keys and walk away. We urge people to try to work things out with their lending institution.

But there's no doubting that the American Congress must be attune to the tremendous pain, difficulty, and frustration people are facing. When people are suffering from frustration, sometimes what they need is people who are in leadership to help clarify what is really going on as opposed to people in leadership confusing what is really going on. Confusing the issue is a very dangerous thing to do.

I would submit to you that America that has done so much to overcome racial division and may be one of the only countries in the world to go from a slaveholding society to a society where a person who, based on color, would have been a slave himself but is now President, a person who would have been denied a cup of coffee 50 years before he became sworn in to be President, is President.

This is a tremendous thing and a great thing for America. The credit goes to people of all colors: black, white, red, yellow, brown, everybody. But at times like this, it's important to also not allow the racial progress America has made to slip back by allowing some people to use code language and say that people of color, poor whites, are responsible for the problem.

When people are frustrated, they need answers. When they need answers, they need clarity, not confusion from leaders, not fear- mongering tactics assigning blame that is not there. And I would submit to you that all of us, people of all colors, need to stand together to clarify what is really going on with

the CRA because, in my opinion, people who say that the CRA is to blame, Fannie and Freddie are only to blame--of course, they do have some fault on them, but they are not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only one. I think it is very important that we say together as a unified racial community that we will not allow racial stereotyping as it relates to what caused this housing crisis.

In my opinion, saying that it's because of the CRA, knowing that the CRA was designed to promote racial harmony and opportunity, is a way of blaming people of color for the financial crisis. Now we can debate this issue, but I guarantee you, if you were to say, ``What does the CRA do?'' and you say, ``It was in response to redlining, that's why it was passed,'' so the question you might ask, ``Well, you mean so it was to try to stop racism or antidiscrimination?''

And the answer would have to be yes, that is what it is for.

So it sounds like, according to Mr. Greenspan, that he is saying that it was this excessive demand for collateralized debt obligations, for the credit default swaps, which a lot of people would take on more risk than they were able to really absorb. These things really accelerated the financial crisis, according to the experts. Is that right?

Certainly. And I just want to raise this issue, if either gentleman would care to comment. While it is obviously true that the CRA did not cause this financial crisis, I hope you don't fault me too much for straying away and talking about what I think did cause the crisis.

And what I think caused the crisis, clearly, when you have a mortgage originator--and many mortgage originators are good, and I thank the gentleman for pointing out that we are not here to indict an entire industry. But we are saying that the bad actors, there was no cop on the beat here for the people who would transgress. That when mortgage originators were given additional money in order to steer a homebuyer who was seeking a mortgage to a higher priced loan, that is the kind of thing that would get people into a whole lot of trouble, particularly when that same mortgage originator would say, ``Oh, we'll just do stated income.''

``Oh, you don't have to verify income.''

``We're just going to underwrite your mortgage during the teaser rate period and not during the entire length of the loan.''

These are the kind of things that got people in trouble. There is one of our colleagues that is fond of saying: Oh, predatory lending, predatory lending. What about predatory borrowing? Have you heard this term before?

Well, predatory borrowing, what happened is that people would get a financial incentive to steer you away from that lower interest rate loan to that higher interest rate loan and keep the cream, yield spread premium. This is what got people steered to the higher priced loans. So that is part of the problem.

The next part of the problem is that when those mortgage originators did that loan, they could sell it on the secondary market where it was almost never scrutinized as whether it was a good loan or bad, that it would just be sucked up and it would be packaged up into a mortgage- backed security. And those mortgage-backed securities would be packaged up into collateralized debt obligations. And some of these loans that were nonperforming, and there were large numbers of them, people would go out and buy insurance or, quote-unquote, insurance on these securities, but they were never required with these swaps to have enough money to cover if in fact the value of the security went down. So when they started going down and people said ``pay me,'' the companies that wrote these swap agreements weren't able to cover; and when they couldn't cover, then some of them started going under.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of long overdue legislation to crack down on predatory mortgage lending. This week the House will consider legislation to curb abusive and predatory lending, a major factor in the Nation's highest home foreclosure rate in 25 years and the precursor to the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression.

The Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2009 prohibits lenders from steering borrowers to higher-cost loans and protects tenants who rent homes that go into foreclosure.

Mr. Speaker, the situation we find ourselves in did not happen overnight, but there is a new day dawning in America with this new President and this new Congress. By passing this legislation, we will mark one more step toward restoring economic prosperity to all Americans by protecting consumers, as we did last week with the credit card bill, and from the many vile and unscrupulous practices that have directly contributed to the mortgage crisis.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to be removed as a cosponsor from H.R. 1214.

Madam Speaker, I am here tonight representing the Progressive Caucus with the progressive message. I am hoping I can get the assistance of some of our very able pages who are seated in the back to grab my boards and my setup materials to help me along the way tonight.

But the main idea is that the Progressive Caucus offers a progressive message, Madam Speaker, every single week, and this week, tonight, we are very, very pleased to be able to talk to the American people about the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights.

Everybody knows for the last several years that our economy has not had equal and open access to everybody. American people are struggling hard, with flat wages on average for the last number of several years, and we have seen people's pay remain flat as other costs increase, such as health care costs, higher premiums, higher copays. We have seen these kind of things the American worker has been suffering with, and it has been tough out there for everybody. And what happened with the collection of higher costs and higher expenditures and flat pay is that Americans began to rely more and more on debt to meet their basic expenses.

We are not talking about living extravagantly. We are talking about the basics. We are talking about a home that you can live in, raise your family in. We are talking about trying to move into a decent school district. We are talking about trying to have a house that is large enough for your family to live in, things like that.

So at this point we are here tonight to talk about a triumph that the American people have had tonight with the passage of the American Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights. So let me just get started.

I want to thank our pages. We can't do anything without them. They are very sharp, able young people. I would recommend to any young person that they look into becoming a page. I want to thank them.

But I want to start off by talking about tonight, and this is our progressive message and this is what we do every week as we bring a progressive vision to the American people, the progressive message, that is what I am talking about tonight, and this is on behalf of the Progressive Caucus. For people who are interested, we urge you to check out our e-mail address. Send us some information. We want to hear from you, the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

So, again, tonight we want to talk about the importance of subprime lending, the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights, debt in the American economy. Americans are having flat wages, increasing costs of all kinds, and people needed somewhere to go. Where did they go? They went to debt. They went to credit card companies. They went into the equity in their homes, as they would take out home equity loans or refinances, things like that.

What did people do to make the ends meet as they needed to make purchases they simply couldn't afford because of the flat wages that they suffered through? They did other things, like sometimes go to payday lenders, and even sometimes had to resort to other sorts of means.

But what ended up happening is that, as Americans began to rely more on debt, they began to experience negative savings rates. Negative savings rates. What does this mean? This means that if you get paid every 2 weeks, on the second week, sometime around Wednesday or Thursday, you have more week left but you have no more paycheck left. That is what that meant. And that meant that you had to do something. Cutting back is what people did. Of course they cut back. But when you have food to pay for, mortgages to pay, things like that, you have got to do something, and people relied on debt.

In 2005 and 2006, we had a negative 1.5 percent savings rate, a negative 2 percent. I remember when I first got elected in 2006 asking one of our more conservative testifiers at a committee hearing what he thought about our negative savings rate in America. He said, ``Don't worry about negative savings rates. We have got to recalculate what we mean by savings. Equity in your home, for example, is savings.'' Well, we now know, looking back from 2009, what that meant.

But I want you to know that even though the American people have suffered through these financial difficulties, even though we had to rely on debt, the American people made a decision that was in their best interests and decided, you know, we don't have good policy for our country. We need better financial policy that is more responsive to the needs of consumers. We need better fiscal policy that really invests in our infrastructure, puts money into people's pockets, increases jobs

and spurs demand. And this Congress and the 110th Congress, starting in the 110th Congress and in the 111th Congress, has done this.

Now, I don't like partisan politics, but I do believe in the truth, and I just want to point out that these difficulties that the American public has been going through, going into debt, taking on loan products that are difficult to afford, the American public really didn't want to get into this. But look how things changed, given the changing political reality.

This chart entitled ``Subprime Lending,'' Republicans controlled Congress during all this period, 1996 right up to 2005. All this area, Republicans are in control of Congress. But in the shaded area, they are in control of the White House, too. Also on this chart you see subprime mortgages starting at $100,000 up to $700,000, and you see time on the bottom axis. And what is this line doing? It is going up.

You see during Republican control, when we had no regulation, when we had a nonresponsive Congress, when we had a Congress not listening to the American people, you saw subprime mortgages go up. But we began to fix this. We began to work on this. We began to act quickly. And today is an example of what I am talking about, the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights, which I hope to talk about in a moment.

But during these years when the Republicans had both the White House and the Congress, this shaded portion, what happened to subprime loans? They just kept going through the roof. As a matter of fact, since the Democrats got in control, we have begun to see a lot of action. But during the Republican-controlled period that I mentioned, 1995 to 2006, the Republicans, when they had the White House and the Congress, put out zero, passed zero in the area of financial regulation. The Republican scorecard, GSE, that means government sponsored enterprise, and subprime legislation, nothing. They did nothing.

Now, people don't like this sometimes because it is like, well, you are being partisan. I am not trying to be partisan, I am just trying to be honest. But what has happened recently, starting in 2006? What took place then?

Well, Democrats have passed bill after bill addressing the financial difficulties Americans are facing. Democrats today passed a Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights. But this bill was passed in 2007 once the Democrats got ahold of the Congress. This bill we passed today is the second time we passed it. We are hoping that the other body, the folks down the hall, will pass a bill that matches up with it so the President can sign it. The President has made it clear he wants to sign a bill to help consumers with credit cards. But today we passed a bill again.

I want to talk to folks about what some of the basic issues were and what some of the basic features of the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights we passed today are, keeping in mind the fact that the Republicans didn't pass anything when they had the White House and the Congress and during their tenure subprime loans were just going through the roof.

Here is what happened when you got Democrats in here. The Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights ends unfair arbitrary interest rate increases. This legislation prevents credit card companies from unfairly increasing interest rates on existing card balances. Retroactive increases are permitted only if a cardholder is more than 30 days late, if a promotional rate expires, if the rate adjusts as part of a variable rate, or if the cardholder fails to comply with a workout agreement.

This legislation, which ends unfair and arbitrary rate increases, is good for the American consumer. This legislation lets consumers set hard credit limits and stops excessive over-the-limit fees. This bill does that by the following way: It requires companies to let consumers set their own fixed credit limit that cannot be exceeded.

So people think, well, look, you know, if I have a $500 limit on this card, I don't want to spend more than that. This is my way of controlling my spending. Well, what some credit card companies do is let you still spend that $501, but then they charge you $35 for the privilege, ``privilege'' in quotes, that is. You didn't want that. That is not what you paid for. Now you can say $500, that is it.

This bill lets consumers set hard limits and stop over-the-limit fees by preventing companies from charging over-the-limit fees when the cardholder has set a limit or when the preauthorized credit hold pushes the consumer over the limit.

What will happen? The credit charge is denied and you just can't buy that purchase. But maybe consumers want that so they can control their spending, or if they let their child use the card, they want to do that. So now consumers will be able to do this, if we can get this through the Senate and the President signs it.

This bill ends unfair penalties for cardholders who pay on time. It ends the unfair practice known as double-cycle billing. What is this? What is double-cycle billing? It is when card companies want to charge interest on a debt consumers have already paid on time. So let's say you paid your debt on time, but what they want to do is charge you interest on that debt that you paid on time. Is that fair? No. If a cardholder pays a bill on time in full, this bill that we passed today prevents card companies from piling additional fees on balances consisting only of leftover interest. And this bill prohibits card companies from charging a fee when customers pay their bill.

So there is this thing the credit card companies have called ``pay to pay.'' Not pay to play, but pay to pay, meaning if you want to pay, you got to pay in order to pay. That doesn't seem like it makes much sense. If you are paying your bill, they ought to take the money for the bill you paid.

This Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights which we just passed, which addresses the credit card situation that people are facing, requires a fair allocation of consumer payments. This is an important thing, because it is through this clever little practice that a lot of Americans see their pockets get holes in them and their money run out.

What this means is many companies credit payments to a cardholder's lowest interest rate balances first.

Now, why does that matter? Because if you incur a debt, and part of that debt you're paying 10 percent on, and then you make another charge, and now the interest rate has increased and you're paying 20 percent on that other part of the debt, so now you've got two charges, one for 110 percent, another for 120 percent. They won't let you pay off the higher interest rate amount first. They pay off the lower interest amount first. Why? Because the higher interest rate for the longer period of time gets them more money, loses you more money.

So, companies credit payments to a cardholder's lowest interest rate balances first, regardless of when you incurred the debt, making it impossible for a consumer to pay off the higher rate debt. The bill bans this practice. This bill we passed today bans this and requiring payments made in excess of the minimum to be allocated proportionally to the balance with the highest interest rate. So now you can get out of debt.

Now, if you charge something on your credit card, you're not able to pay it off at the end of the month, you don't end up drowning in a sea of debt. You can get out of this muck, out of the mire.

The credit cardholders' bill of rights protects credit cardholders from due-date gimmicks. This bill requires credit card companies to mail billing statements 21 calendar days before the due date, and to credit as on time payments made before 5 p.m. on the day due. This makes a big difference because you might pay your bill on time, but they say, nope, you didn't pay on time. Why? Because we played some shenanigans with the due date.

This bill extends the due date to the next business day for mailed payments when the due date falls on a day the card company does not accept or receive mail; that's Sunday and holidays. Very good for consumers.

This bill prevents companies from using misleading terms and damaging consumer credit ratings. The bill establishes standard definitions for terms like ``fixed rate'' or ``prime rate'' so companies can't mislead or trick consumers by marketing and advertising. You know, the 9.9 fixed rate, until it's

not fixed. And when is it not fixed? Well, when they say it's not fixed. It's fixed right up until it isn't fixed anymore. When is that? Whenever we say it is. This kind of practice is not fair and is going to be stopped by this bill.

This bill protects vulnerable consumers from high-fee subprime credit cards. It prohibits issuers of subprime cards where the total yearly fixed fee exceeds 25 percent from charging those fees to the card itself. These cards are generally targeted to low-income consumers. So just think about it, somebody says come get a credit card. You're low- income, and they say, there's going to be a fee for having this card. So you say, okay, well, whatever. I don't know because the fine print has me all confused and I don't really get it. I just think I'm going to get a credit card.

So then what happens is you get the card. You sign on the dotted line; and before you even use the card for the first time, you find that there's already $400 worth of charges on the card. How could that be? You've never really used it before. Well, the fee that they're charging you has been already put on the card before you ever used it. So if you cancel the card, you still owe them. And the interest rate just keeps on climbing. This bill stops that.

Now, I tell folks all the time that I knew that things were bad when my 19-year-old son, who wasn't working, kept getting credit card solicitations in the mail. And I thought that was a problem. But I knew we had a real problem when my 13-year-old son started getting credit card solicitations in the mail. Yes, if you're watching this broadcast, you may have seen a 13- or 12-year-old get a credit card solicitation. How does this happen?

Well, because you sign up for Sports Illustrated or some magazine, your name gets on the list, and then they start doing it to you.

Now, this bill says that it prohibits card companies from knowingly issuing cards to individuals under 18 who are not emancipated.

Now, the fact is, these are the basics of this credit card bill, this credit cardholders' bill of rights. It's responsive government in action. It's responsive government in action.

And I'm very proud to report that even though, when the Republicans were in charge of both the White House and Congress--I'm not happy to report this part--but even though they passed no legislation to protect consumers from subprime lending, and even though, during their tenure, which is from this period, 2001 and right up to the end of 2005, they controlled both the White House and Congress, they didn't pass anything. Subprime loans just went through the roof.

Even though those two things are true, there's a lot of Republicans who did the right thing today, and I want to commend them. I can tell you that in the Financial Services Committee, we had nine Republicans vote for the credit cardholders' bill of rights. And today you only had 70 Members of Congress who voted ``no.'' And therefore, you had over 130-some Republicans voted for this bill. They are to be commended. They put the interests of their constituents over that of certain credit card companies, and they deserve the applause and my personal thanks.

Let me say that it's time to rebuild our economy in a way that's consistent with our values, the economy that's built on a strong foundation, not financial schemes, overheated housing markets and maxed-out credit cards. We want to build an economy that offers prosperity in the long run, not just the short quarter.

American families face the reality of this financial crisis every day. We think the lending industry has continuously found new ways to make profits out of old regulations and has faced little oversight and needs a reality check.

As I say this, I want to commend that there are a number of good lenders out there, and credit cards are not bad in and of themselves. But there have been some bad practices. This credit cardholder's bill of rights allows for a basic floor, so that good credit card companies, watching bad credit card companies make a lot of money off those abusive practices, are not tempted to engage in those practices themselves. We're setting a floor. That's what it means to be a Member of Congress, to try to set a floor for our free market system to operate properly.

During the reign of the Bush administration, Republicans presided over a systematic weakening of financial regulations. And along with this deregulation, we saw the dramatic rise in subprime loans and consumer credit without increasing consumer protections.

I already mentioned this very troubling statistic, and I urge people to take a close look at it and examine it because it tells a very, very disturbing story. Some credit card companies, not all, have long engaged in deceptive practices that harm consumers, and real reform is long overdue, which is why we're so happy to have passed the credit cardholders' bill of rights today.

With credit card debt in the United States reaching record heights, nearly a trillion, that's trillion, with a T, and almost half of all American families carry an average balance of about $7,300 in 2007, this bill could not come soon enough. This bill came right on time.

In 2008, credit card issuers imposed $19 billion in penalty fees on families with credit cards. In fact, they weren't upset with you when you didn't pay off that balance every month. They were quite pleased because they could hit you with a big old fee and you would have to pay a lot of money, which, if you're relying on a credit card, you might not have readily available.

This year, credit card companies will break all previous records for late fees, over-the-limit charges and other penalties, resulting in more than $20.5 billion. That's a lot of money. And this is just--I'm not talking about their profits. I'm talking about their profits generated from over-the-limit charges and penalties and fees; not all profits, just penalty-based profits.

This legislation, which we passed today, the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights, would require companies to provided advanced notice of rate increases, while also placing restrictions on the ability of card companies to raise rates retroactively.

This legislation, the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights, is a comprehensive credit card reform package that also incorporates a bill I authored called the Universal Default Prohibition Act of 1990. I was proud to introduce a bill that was a stand-alone bill that had been woven into this larger bill, prohibiting universal default provisions.

Some people are lucky enough to not know what universal default is. But what universal default means is that if you have more than one credit card and if you default on one of them, you now get hit with late fees and increased penalties and interest rates on the ones you were on time for, because the credit card company can say you're now a higher risk because of the adverse action on the one card, and so they can hit you on the other cards.

Now, a deal ought to be a deal. If you say, I'm going to pay this rate and I'm going to pay on time and on this card, and you don't mess up on that one, they shouldn't be able to get you because of some other problem. I mean, your mortgage doesn't go up because you don't pay your car note on time. I mean, the fact is, your gym fees don't go up because you didn't pay a library book, get a library book back on time.

The reality is that this universal default practice is unfair to consumers, and there should not be any adverse action against you unless you default on the card that you defaulted on.

So we're now happy that this provision was in the legislation and encourage consumers to rejoice because this important practice is in the bill. This important provision is in the bill.

Currently, a credit card company can raise interest rates on a cardholder, even if he or she has never made a late payment to that particular company;

and that ain't right. This legislation bans most of the abusive practices, including universal default. I've worked hard to stop this harmful practice in part of my work on consumer justice. I'm proud to say that this landmark bill passed the House today. And even though last year the bill was not taken up by the Senate, we expect the Senate to take swift action, this Congress to enact crucial reforms to protect consumers.

We have a President in the White House who's actually concerned about the rights of consumers. And this is a golden opportunity to bring true reform to the credit card industry.

Again, this is not an anti-credit card bill. Credit cards help us. They help us rent cars, get hotel rooms, buy expenditures. This is not about being against credit cards. But it is about trying to stop some of the more abusive practices of some credit card companies that hurt American consumers when we can least afford to withstand some of these difficult practices.

I want to talk about what some of my colleagues who oppose the bill had to say. Some of them were quite critical of the bill and didn't vote for it. You can hardly believe it. Yes, it's true. Seventy people did not vote for the bill. I guess that's their prerogative. I'm sure that their voters will learn about this.

But my point is, I'd like to just talk a little bit about what some of their arguments were. One of the arguments was this: that if we stop these abusive practices, that it will dry up credit for everyone. This is not true. There are 10 big credit card companies, and over half of them don't do universal default. They're profitable. Other practices in the credit card industry are not done throughout the industry, but only certain companies do them.

The fact is, that some of these things that have been banned, many of these practices banned in this bill or restricted in this bill have been identified by the Federal Reserve, under a lengthy study, as abusive and deceptive practices. And so, therefore, if they're abusive and deceptive, are some of the critics of the bill saying that we must let the consumer exist at the tender mercies of what are abusive practices or there will be no credit? That simply makes no sense.

It's almost like saying that unless you allow a toaster that explodes every second or third time it's used, then nobody will be able to get a toaster because the price of making a safe toaster would make having a toaster for anyone too high. That's just silly, and we should never go for it.

We should always stand up against that.

I want to say that, as for this bill, the bill that we passed today, I'm proud of this bill. I was honored to vote for it, and I would vote for it again.

Let me just talk about a few folks from my district and what they said to me.

Kristen from south Minneapolis writes: ``Dear Representative Ellison, I'm writing to you to ask you to support a strong version of the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights. This bill improves important provisions for protecting consumers. The main problem is that H.R. 627--'' that's the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights ``--won't be implemented quickly enough. We need protection from predatory credit card practices now. Predatory credit card practices drain hard-earned money from people like me who cannot afford these tricks and traps any longer. The credit card companies have been targeting me for no reason in the last 2 months. I have a good job and a decent credit score. Recently, I saw my APR go up because the banks are under financial strain. These are the same banks that received billions of dollars in unregulated support from the U.S. taxpayers, and now they're taking it out on us.''

Annette, also from Minneapolis--my town--writes: ``I'm very concerned about rising interest rates by credit card companies. I worry that this will turn out to be the same as banking and the housing crisis.''

Mark from northeast Minneapolis writes: ``We are residents of northeast Minneapolis. Due to our self-discipline, we have a top-tier credit rating. We recently received notification from Capital One that our credit card annual percentage rate would increase from a 9.9 percent fixed rate to a variable rate, which was 17.9 percent as of January 28, 2009. We find this action reprehensible. It is contrary to the needs of taxpayers in this economic climate. We ask that you sponsor legislation which limits and regulates usury practices for all financial institutions.''

I just want to say to Mark from northeast Minneapolis: Did it today, Mark. Thank you. Thank you.

Eugene from south Minneapolis writes: ``Would like credit card reform passed immediately. There should be limits set on interest rates in order to help consumers.''

Mr. Stein writes that he has never been late on a payment, but Citibank just raised his rate by 5 percent while they were getting bailout money.

John from Minneapolis wonders why his rates on his Capital One card are increasing so much recently: ``They're almost doubling. Please support legislation to stop this type of lending.''

I'm just reading letters from my constituents. They're very concerned about this situation. They wanted somebody to do something about what they were going through in this tough economic climate.

So I'm just going to wrap up by saying that we have worked hard. We've gotten a lot of Republican votes on this legislation today. It was a bipartisan bill. I want to commend Democrats and Republicans for passing this bipartisan bill, which was passed with only 70 ``noes'' and 357 ``yeas.'' That means it was bipartisan. That means that both sides saw that this was an important bill to pass.

I want to say that I'm proud of groups like ACORN. Yes, I like ACORN. I'm proud of the AFL-CIO, Americans for Fairness in Lending, Capital Progress in Action, the Center for Responsibility, Consumer Action, Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Demos, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, NAACP, National Association of Consumer Advocates, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, National Consumer Law, National Council of La Raza, National Small Business Association-- let me repeat that one--National Small Business Association, Opportunity Finance Network, Public Citizen, Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, Service Employees International, and U.S. Public Interest Research Group. They all wrote this really, really nice letter urging us to support this important legislation.

These are civil rights groups, small business groups, labor unions-- people of all types--knowing full well that we've got to do something to rebalance the scales in this wonderful country of ours. That's why we have this Congress, so that Representatives can come here and say, We're going to set things right.

Now I'm going to take a few more minutes before I wrap up to say that this bill that passed today, the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights, is really, simply, a bill that signals greater change. In the near future, we will be taking up another important consumer justice piece of legislation.

This bill I'm referring to now is a bill that addresses this practice of predatory lending in the mortgage housing sector. This antipredatory lending bill, of which I am also a very proud author, is going to be up in a week from today, Madam Speaker. This bill, which we're going to get the chance to vote on in about a week, is a bill that is a long time in coming, and if we'd have passed a bill like this years ago, as advocates were urging us to do, we may not be in the situation we're in today.

I want to say that this important bill is going to be up next Thursday. If people, Madam Speaker, want to weigh in on this bill, they should start doing so now if they have not already done so, because it's coming up soon. We want folks to know that Democrats and some Republicans care about the consumer; we are not going to back down from fighting for the consumer, and we are proud to be able to represent the American consumer.

So, with that, Madam Speaker, I'm just going to say it's an honor to come before you and the folks watching.

I just want to say, as we begin to wrap up, that the American consumer has been experiencing mounting debt. As we see the average household income, this is a flat line going straight across. Do you see that flat line? It's just going flat. There are a few dips and a few dives and a few blips upwards, but it's a flat line.

What has not been flat? Nonrevolving credit card debt has been going down here all the way up here to the 110th. Revolving credit: also setting a trend upward. Home equity loans: going up. Mortgages: going up. The difference between this line and these up here explains why Americans have gotten in such difficult dire straits. Now is the time to start fixing it.

We see two things happening that are very important for the American consumer. On the one hand, we see financial regulation. On the other hand, we see the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act put into our economy to reinvest in infrastructure, to invest in innovation, to invest in health care, to invest in a renewable economy so that we can actually increase demand, increase jobs, increase tax revenues, and get ourselves out of the deficit. We see ourselves plugging the holes that these credit card companies and other debt instruments have created for the American consumer.

Help is not only on the way; help has arrived. You see responsible legislation coming forward so that the American consumer and the American economy can fly high, once again, as it has in the past. Consumer justice is what we need. Consumer justice is what we're getting.

Madam Speaker, it has been an honor to come before you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding.

All appropriate thanks being given except for one person who deserves special thanks. I believe Congresswoman Maloney must feel like a mother giving birth. This bill is phenomenal. I am so incredibly proud to be a friend of hers.

Let me say that I knew that we had a problem in America when my 19- year-old son, who didn't have a job and was a college student, kept getting solicitations for credit cards; but I was quite convinced we had a real problem when my 13-year-old son, who did nothing more than apply for a Sports Illustrated subscription, started getting credit card solicitations.

I hope some people don't have access to credit, namely my 13-year-old son. I hope some people don't get credit cards, people who cannot handle credit. But credit card companies have given credit card solicitations out all over the country to anyone, and so it's no doubt that some people have gotten credit cards who perhaps should not have them.

This legislation is about keeping good credit card companies good. Not all credit card companies engage in some of these policies that even the Federal Reserve Bank found were deceptive and abusive. Some credit card companies didn't engage in universal default; some did.

This bill sets a basis for an entire industry so that good credit card companies never have to be tempted to engage in some of these nefarious practices just to stay competitive with companies that do.

I am happy that at least nine Republicans voted for this bill in committee. They understand the wedding of good policy and good politics.

My friends, this bill is popular because it makes sense for the American people. And so, from a partisan standpoint, I hope I do see a bunch of red up there from the other side of the aisle.

The fact is that in 2008, credit card issuers imposed $19 billion in penalties and fees on families with credit cards. This year the credit card companies will break all previous records.

I am proud to be associated with this legislation.

Mr. Chairman, don't believe that unless this Congress allows some credit card companies to abuse consumers, that no one will have credit. It is just not true. Don't believe that if we say no to double cycle billing, no to switching due dates around at random and arbitrary times, no to giving credit cards to minors, if we say no to these kind of practices, it will not drive out credit in America. It is nothing but fear-based stuff that will allow credit card companies, that have made record profits, to continue to take advantage of American consumers.

The Democrats, and many Republicans as well, are joining together to say we are on the side of the American consumer. Vote no to this bill at your own peril. The fact is that with the confusing disclosures that the gentleman from Texas has accurately said are present, this bill says those things are wrong. We ask everyone to join with us to say the provisions that allow these confusing disclosures should be stopped. We ask everyone in this Chamber to say no to this.

The fact is, Mr. Chairman, if we don't do something to protect the American consumer, we are abdicating our responsibility as stewards of this sacred trust of being a Member of Congress. This is the time to do something for the American consumer.

If the gentleman would yield, I want to ask the gentleman a question. Did the stimulus package also include the Neighborhood Stabilization Act, which is money, passed through the Democratic Congress, that would allow the neighborhoods to get money to help buy up some of these foreclosed properties? Did that happen?

Well, you know what, I appreciate that, but I am going to toss it back to the gentleman from Massachusetts, who I think is going to toss it to the gentlelady from Wisconsin. I am happy to wait my turn in the line since I was one of the last ones here tonight.

But I do appreciate the gentleman from Colorado's comments; I think they were dead on the mark. And I am very happy to be here tonight sticking up for the Democratic record and the leadership of Barney Frank on Financial Services reform.

Well, actually, I'd like to address the question that was raised by Congresswoman Gwen Moore from Wisconsin. I'd like to pose a question to her, and this question is going to take a little buildup, so bear with me.

Now, if you were responsible for deregulating the markets and if you were responsible for unleashing the wildest impulses in human nature--greed among them--and if you presided over a catastrophic increase in the budget deficit as you cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans and if you let loose a war in Iraq that should never have been fought, after it all came crashing down, wouldn't you be looking for somebody to blame? Well, you might just blame the people who are the most vulnerable in our economy, and that is what is at the very root of the CRA mess.

You can't possibly expect people to accept responsibility. Look, when you look at these crossed lines here, this is when the party opposite ran the whole shooting match. This is when they had the White House and this House and the other body--the Senate. They ran the whole shooting match, and we got a big, fat, enormous, giant goose egg out of it as it relates to any kind of financial regulation.

As soon as the 110th Congress broke out and when we finally got a chance to do some regulation, what did we see? Through this House, we passed the shareholder vote on executive pay, the so-called ``Say-on- Pay.'' If you were upset, frustrated, angry or were in any way annoyed by the AIG scandal and by the executive pay or by any of this stuff, you can know and feel good about the fact that it was the Democratic Congress and the Financial Services Committee, under the leadership of Barney Frank, that passed Say-on-Pay, which said, ``You know what? We're going to let those investors have a say-so over these executive pay packages. We're going to do that.'' That was passed in the 110th Congress, but it wasn't made law. It was passed through the 110th Congress.

Not only that, we did pass legislation to bring in regulation and oversight to the Office of the Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. OFHEO was moved out, and the Federal Housing Financial Agency was moved in.

So, yes, the problems that the gentleman from Massachusetts identified with Fannie and Freddie were there. They did buy too many of these mortgage-backed securities. But what happened in the 110th Congress? We responded. We did something. We did not leave it to go unattended.

Not only that, we passed the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights in 2008, and we passed it again, and we're going to pass it again on the House floor tomorrow. I'm so excited about that. Let me just say something about it as we slow down to talk about it.

While we were debating the bill on the floor today, we had a good friend of

mine speak, a gentleman whom I actually quite enjoy listening to, a gentleman from Texas. He's a fine man, but he's fond of saying, ``Okay. You guys are talking about predatory lending, but what about predatory borrowing?'' You've heard this phrase, right? Well, let's talk about predatory borrowing for a minute.

When somebody gets an extra amount of money called a yield spread premium to steer you to a high cost loan and it makes them money to do so, that's how you get people getting into loans they are not supposed to get into. They get into loans because the people they trust, the mortgage originators who they rely on, are incentivized to do so.

What are we doing about it in the 111th Congress? We're addressing this practice right now to try to say no, it's your job to look out for the borrower. You have got to look out for the borrower. You can make more money by doing a lot of loans, you can make more money doing bigger loans, but you can't make more money simply by steering somebody to a high-cost loan. That is going on now.

We passed the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act in 2008, and we're going to pass it again very soon, and, God willing, it will be law in the very near future.

But not only that, the gentleman from Colorado talked about passage of the Neighborhood Stabilization Act. This is a bill that directed the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to make loans to qualified States, metropolitan cities and urban areas in accordance with HUD approval grants to carry out eligible housing stimulus activities, which included greenification--is that a word? Greening. Renewable energy. And also buying up houses so that you wouldn't have these vacant, boarded-up places that were an attractive nuisance for everything from arson to young people getting dragged into these places and copper strippers and all the rest.

I submit today that the Democratic Congress, since we became the majority, has been actively engaged in financial regulation. We have been actively engaged in trying to look out for the American consumer. We have been trying to bring stability and liquidity to the financial markets. And I will submit that in the 110th Congress and the 111th Congress, the majority has demonstrated--and some Republicans have been smart enough to vote with us--and say yes, America is a free market society. We believe in the generative power of markets. We believe markets should be allowed to run, but we know human nature needs some restraint sometimes, and we need to have some rules to this game, and thank goodness this is happening right now.

So look forward to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which put real financial change in, the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act of 2009, and the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act which was passed in 2007 but hopefully will become law in the weeks to come and which should be on the House floor in the very near future. That's what I call being a good steward, that's what I call being a financial leader, and that's what I call the leadership of Barney Frank from Massachusetts. I am proud to be on the committee.

Barney Frank with a tremendous intellect, with a tremendous sense of humor, with a bipartisan spirit and an even hand has shepherded great legislation to help stabilize America and begin our ascent once again.

I want to say that even on the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights, a bill that I am emotionally involved in, I feel so good about, we got nine Republican votes and a bunch of Democratic votes.

Look. Even a lot of Republicans know that we have been doing the wrong thing by neglecting regulation. It's time for us to put all this squabbling aside and say no matter what the party is, no matter what party you may belong to, Democrats are just better at running the economy. I like Republicans. Some of my best friends are Republicans. My dad is a Republican. I think they're great.

But if you want good regulation that helps the economy grow, you can look at the 110th and 111th Congress for an example of who knows how to do that. It's happened successfully. It will continue to happen. And I bet you when that Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights hits the floor of this House and I bet you when the anti-predatory lending bill hits the floor of this House, we're going to get a bunch of Republican votes because even they know that the Democratic Party is a good financial manager.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of a progressive vision for America's energy future and the opportunity to create millions of American jobs for our working families.

President Obama and this Congress are taking on our Nation's energy crisis with a plan to create green jobs and build a clean energy economy; a plan that creates 300,000 new jobs by implementing a Renewable Electricity Standard, and another 222,000 new jobs with its high efficiency savings provisions.

Mr. Speaker, we have a choice to make in this Congress; we can choose to create millions of new American jobs that cannot be shipped overseas, reduce our dependence on oil from overseas, increase production of cleaner renewable energy sources, crack down on polluters who damage our air and our water quality, and give American entrepreneurs and innovators the tools they need to stay combative in the global economy, or we can do something else.

America can become a world leader in the new clean energy economy, or we can continue the failed policies of the last 8 years.

I am here with the Progressive Caucus, that caucus that brings to the people of the United States every week a progressive vision for America.

I am very honored to be joined by our Chair tonight, the only one who continues to fight week in week out every day for peace in our world who has the longest running record of 5-minute speeches for peace, Lynn Woolsey.

Let me yield to the gentlelady for a welcome this evening.

Thank you. Let me just say that you are right. And I do want to commend you, I don't know if anyone has a longer running number of 5-minute speeches on any issue than you do, so I am proud to know that the longest-running series of 5-minute speeches is on the subject of peace, is on the subject of Iraq, and is by a dedicated and progressive leader such as yourself.

Madam Speaker, we want to welcome folks to The Progressive Message and let people know that they can always plug into the Progressive Caucus. The e-mail address is cpc.grijalva.house.gov where people, I hope, will communicate. It's very important that we stay in touch and that this is The Progressive Message.

Tonight, you are right, the subject is clean energy jobs and our Earth. Let's start out with just a few basics.

The progressive energy policy, global climate change and green jobs, has to be made up of a few essential components. The fact is that U.S. energy policy is everyone's business.

U.S. energy policy touches nearly every aspect of American life, our homes, our natural environment and, most importantly, our economy and the Earth itself.

Last year Americans spent $400 billion buying oil outside of the United States. This is a tremendous expenditure on our economy and sends dollars outside of our economy. And that means that last year American families spent about $3,000 apiece on fossil fuels that contribute to the disastrous changes in our global climate.

I think it's important to point out that we are here now, we are approaching the first 100 days of the new administration. Haven't been here long, but we have been here strong. There is no doubt that energy policy will be a major component of the next 2 years, and it's critical to point out that the Democratic Caucus and the Progressive Caucus are here to lead the way on this discussion.

I would like to stay positive, but we have to make sure that we have a good record, and the record requires that we revisit some of the things that have been proposed over the last 8 years that have not been so good.

One, the Republican plan has not been a good plan. This plan, people contend, that efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions are perilous and will

cause undue hardship for Americans in the midst of a recession. The fact is if we don't do something about this global crisis, greenhouse gas emissions, we are all going to be in much more trouble than we are right now.

Right now, in fact, is a good time to deal with the crisis in our economy. It's a chance to rebuild, it's a chance to strengthen, it's a time to invest in infrastructure.

I think, Chairwoman Woolsey, it's just a good time to point out that it was during the Civil War that Abraham Lincoln made the decision we are going to have a railroad span the United States. It was during the 1930s, the Depression, that we saw rural electrification be a major commitment of the United States Government under Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was under Eisenhower, a recession, where we talked about the interstate highway system that we now enjoy today.

In fact, at times like this, it's no time to shrink, no time to be afraid, but it's a time to be bold. Let's not go for any naysayers or fearmongers; let's move forward.

Is this a time to be bold, is this a time to shrink and be afraid, or is it a time to be bold and grab on to a new energy policy?

I thank the gentlelady for that important recognition. In fact, it is our appreciation and gratitude for this beautiful Earth that we live on that drives our dedication. We are not really here from the Progressive Caucus talking about what we are against. We are talking about what we are for. And we are for a clean Earth, in which everyone can breathe, can drink, can live and enjoy this wonderful planet that we have, and not just human beings, but all creation. I think it is very important that you set us on the right trajectory for that.

I think as we are looking back and remembering this 29th anniversary of Earth Day, it is important to remember that the course of action we have been following has not been one that has been helpful. In fact, it has brought us to a very difficult situation.

We have seen the energy plan over the last 8 years essentially be made up of tax breaks for oil companies. ``Drill, drill, drill,'' remember that one?

Yes, you had better believe we heard that one, which resulted in more pollution which taxpayers have to clean up, and no fundamental investment in a green energy economy like the investment we have been talking about, the investment in an Earth Day to commemorate and rededicate our commitment, the investment in our economy over the centuries, as progressive leaders like Lincoln and FDR made those important investments I referred to a moment ago. There has been no investment in a green energy economy, that will lessen our dependence on oil and reduce global climate change, and, perhaps most importantly, create jobs.

You know, Earth Day, Earth Day is a wonderful time to have this conversation about American clean energy jobs, because Earth Day is not simply about fighting pollution. It is also about enhancing our natural world and our existence in it. It is about development along the lines that are smart and green, clean and renewable. We can do both.

I will say that I do appreciate some of our Republican colleagues, and I respect them all and enjoy them a lot, but I think it is important to point out that their vision was on display on ``Sunday Morning Talk'' when one of the Republican leaders said that he dismissed as ``almost comical'' the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen and that it is harmful to our environment. The proof and evidence was that, you know, that carbon dioxide must be safe because humans exhale it and cows deposit it. That is not a definition of whether it is a carcinogen or a harmful substance. Of course, we do have a science gap, and we can do an hour on that.

But I think it is important to point out that we are not only in commemoration of Earth Day talking about fighting pollution; we are talking about enhancing our world, our green planet, the only one we have, by the way. And, again, as you know very well, the gentlelady from California knows, our Chair of the Progressive Caucus, if we acidify our oceans and if we overheat our planet, the planet will still continue to exist. We just won't be able to live on it. So that is very important to point out.

I think the Progressive plan, and I want to hand it back to the gentlelady right now, is to talk about the importance of a progressive vision for energy policy. I would ask the gentlelady from California, do you believe we need a progressive vision for a progressive energy policy?

If the gentlelady will yield for a question, you have a lot of experience in Congress. You have been here for a little while, right?

Ninth term, that means 18 years. In all the time you have been here on this committee, have you ever heard any credible scientist say that global warming does not exist

or that human beings are not contributing to global warming? Have you ever heard anything like that?

Well, if the gentlelady will yield back, let me say that part of the progressive vision is to implement provisions of a renewable electricity standard which will create over 300,000 jobs, implement an energy efficient resource standard so we can get energy savings to create over 222,000 new jobs by 2020. By cutting waste, we save money. The renewable electricity standard alone will result in nearly $100 billion in savings for consumers and businesses by 2030. Efficiency savings, the energy efficiency resource standard will result in nearly $170 billion in utility bill savings by 2020.

Opponents of that change that Americans are demanding are not going to be the ones who are remembered finally by history. The ones who oppose efficiency and renewable energy, these are the same folks who are in danger of directing U.S. energy policy. They have ignored global climate change, as you and I have talked about. They have ignored acidification of the ocean, overheating of our planet. They have widened tax loopholes for polluting industries and they have made minimal advances in new, clean energy techniques.

Madam Speaker, the will of the American public is being represented in Congress and the White House now, and we need the American people to continue to demand responsible energy policy, climate change policy that creates jobs and cannot be outsourced. As the gentlelady from California, Lynn Woolsey, was just talking about, somebody will come up with the great ideas to green our world. Will they be here? Only if we make the proper investments. Only if we become innovative and maintain our position as innovator.

I yield back to the gentlelady.

Well, I would point out though that the sacrifices that you are referring to are not always just giving up something. Sometimes these sacrifices involve getting something.

For example, let's just say if you were to get out of that habit of driving three blocks to the grocery store, you might view that as a sacrifice, but you will save money on gas and you will reduce your waistline.

If you ride a bike to work, and we promote, as Congress, if we promote nonmotorized transportation, this will reduce our obesity, increase our green and renewable program. Some of these things are things that we think of as a sacrifice but really are not.

If we shut off the television, you know, we might talk to each other and get to know each other a little bit better. If we just pull the plugs out when we leave the house, we can get rid of that ghost energy drain that steals energy when we're not even using these appliances.

So these are just changes that you're speaking of that will definitely enhance our quality of life.

But I want to mention that we have a bill called the American Clean Energy and Security Act which does do some very important things. It creates jobs that cannot be shipped overseas. It reduces our dependence on foreign oil, increases production of clean and renewable energy sources, cracks down on heavy polluters, and gives American entrepreneurs and innovators, as you mentioned your role on the Science Committee, what they need to stay competitive in the global economy.

The fact is that this bill, this ACES bill, invests in American jobs, reduces our dependency on foreign oil and does a lot of important things that we need, as Americans. And so I'm thinking that, you know, it's important that citizens, individuals like you and I, do better. But it's also important that the Congress take action. Individual citizens, pull those plugs out, walk, do things, do more walking, riding your bike, doing things like that. But also, we have, as a Congress, a societal responsibility that we cannot just relegate to the individual citizen. In fact, government often will signal better behavior and more green and renewable and Earth-friendly behavior that citizens can partake of.

So I yield back to the gentlelady.

Well, that's very important. And I want to thank you for those observations. The Progressive Caucus needs good ideas, too. We are being fully engaged in this energy debate that's going on. We are not shrinking from this debate at all. And if people want to offer some advice, there is a Web site that we have, and folks can give us their views, cpc.grijalva.gov--Grijalva is the name of our other co-chair-- because we do want to have people say here's what you should do.

One of the things that it means to be progressive is to be open- minded and try to gather in ideas from all places, to be grassroots, to gather in views and opinions from multiple sources. We don't claim a monopoly on good ideas, but we do have values that we uphold here of a progressive type.

I want to just say, as we prepare to, in the next 5 to 7 minutes, hand it over to our Republican colleagues, that it's important that we do debunk a few myths, though. I mean, I've heard it said that the progressive support of cap-and-trade, isn't that just an energy tax? Well, we believe that it's not.

First off, the Democratic plan is to repower America with clean energy and jobs. As for capping global warming pollution, the Democratic plan is simple. It makes polluters pay, and helps green companies prosper so they can hire more workers. It's time that the American solution we put in place to successfully fight acid rain in 1990, after which time electricity rates fell 10 percent and the U.S. economy added 16 million new jobs. It's important to point out that the acid rain solution had bipartisan support and was signed by the first President Bush.

It's true also--I mean, another attack item. Won't Democrats' energy tax raise electricity rates even though President Obama said cap-and- trade will make energy prices increase?

Saving consumers money is not a tax. Saving business money is not a tax. Sending $400 billion a year abroad, now, that is the kind of tax that we do want to avoid and help the American people not have to pay.

The Democratic plan declares energy independence and puts America on a path to economic recovery. President Obama spoke of transitioning to a clean energy economy that will create jobs, make our homes and buildings and vehicles more efficient, and protect consumers. In his inaugural address, he said we will harness the sun and the wind and the soil to fuel our cars and our factories.

We believe that this is the right direction. Although the Progressive Caucus will not simply adopt or parrot any policy, we will put forth a progressive policy and argue for those changes as the energy policy moves forward. We will be part of this conversation, fully participating in it, and ask that members of the public and the progressive community stand up and come forward to be part of this important energy policy.

So, before we wrap up, I just want to offer our co-chair an opportunity to comment on our subject tonight. And after that we'll conclude.

That's an excellent word, Congresswoman Woolsey. You again have been a great champion of a progressive message. You have been talking about a progressive promise. You've been talking about a progressive message. You have been lifting up the banner of progressive politics in this Congress, and we all want to thank you for your tremendous leadership, not to mention your 309 consecutive speeches in favor of peace.

Tonight we've been talking about American clean energy and jobs. This is the symbol of a windmill. We can harness the wind and the sun. We can harness the natural world to live in harmony with the planet, not simply use it and exploit it like so much of an endless commodity, but to truly use it in a way that will allow humanity to live in harmony with the natural world and to create jobs and to make our needs met.

We talked about, tonight, the need for individuals to do things; is that right, Congresswoman Woolsey? Individuals should step forward. We do need to walk, not necessarily ride. We do need to promote transit. We do need to promote smart growth, livable communities. We need to do all these things. We should try to get a hybrid car, or not even take a car. Just walk or use nonmotorized transportation. We should pull out those plugs that we just leave sitting in the wall all day when we're not even at home.

But it is also on the responsibility of government to take decisive action, to make the investments that we need in those bike paths, to promote a cap-and-trade system that surely reduces our carbon footprint and takes the proceeds from those programs and puts them back into renewable energy and helps ameliorate the cost to low-income individuals of meeting this important task.

We need to do these things. We need to have a bold, committed program which gets the carbon footprint much, much lower so we can live on this planet.

But finally, we need to remember that, in honor of Earth Day, that this Earth is something that we come from, not something that we are here to exploit. Even from a religious standpoint, we are the trustees of this Earth and have a responsibility to take good care of it. And I want to commend all those congregations, Congregations Caring for Creation, other groups like that doing good work, citizens out there doing good work, people concerned about the environmental justice aspects of this question of energy policy,

making sure that low-income communities, communities of color, are in the middle of this fight for this clean renewable world that we're coming into and are participating fully. Not green for some, green for all, right?

And so, with that, we just want to thank everybody. Here's our Web site. We want to know what you think. We care about your opinion. Check back with us next week at the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the progressive message, hear about the progressive promise, and give us your ideas.