Marilyn N. Musgrave

I thank the gentleman for his time.

Some things have changed in this bill, but taxpayers will still be picking up the tab for Wall Street's party.

I was proud to stand together with a group of women from both sides of the aisle and ask for real reform, not a temporary fix. We still have no fundamental reform to Fannie and Freddie, nothing that resembles the amendments that I supported in 2005 and 2007 that would have avoided this debacle in the first place.

Instead of suspending mark-to-market, we are going to study the possibility of it. Instead of requiring Wall Street to purchase insurance on their mortgage-backed securities and work out of the problem, we are still bailing them out.

I am voting against this today because it is not the best bill, it is the quickest bill. Taxpayers for generations will pay for our haste, and there is no guarantee that they will ever see the benefits. We should not reward bad behavior. Wall Street won't have to learn its lesson, and we are not doing anything to keep them from running our economy into the ground again.

I urge my colleagues to join me in voting ``no'' on this bill.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased that the strong opposition to the initial administration proposal has helped to force some very important changes such as the bipartisan oversight board, which is an online database that will allow greater oversight of the Secretary's actions, but this is still a bailout for Wall Street that will cost the average Colorado household thousands.

I simply cannot stomach transferring that kind of money from the middle class families to a bunch of Wall Street bankers whose avarice and greed put us in this situation in the first place. It's interesting that, when working families were being crushed by soaring energy prices this summer, Congress went on vacation. Yet, when Wall Street faced the consequences of its actions, we worked around the clock to help them. We should place the same priority on helping Main Street that we place on helping Wall Street.

Mr. Speaker, due to a traffic problem, I am a little bit late in getting into this Chamber to make comment on H.R. 3299, and I so much appreciate the opportunity.

That bill under consideration today provides for a boundary adjustment to the Roosevelt National Forest to correct an erroneous survey.

In May of 2006, a number of my constituents who live in the Crystal Lakes Subdivision in Larimer County, Colorado contacted my office after they received notice from the Forest Service that they were encroaching upon Federal property. You can imagine what a surprise this was to those folks. Many of those people who had purchased the land in the 1970s, improved it, built homes on it and had literally lived there for decades.

However, the Forest Service informed these homeowners that a survey that had been conducted in 2003 and in 2004 had found that the earlier survey that was conducted in 1975 was, indeed, inaccurate. This 1975 survey was privately commissioned and was used in the development of the Crystal Lakes Subdivision.

Thirty years after the property was originally developed, landowners have now been informed that the portions of the land they paid for and that they improved may actually be on Federal property. Even more, a number of these landowners were faced with the reality that their homes might be on Federal land.

The property owners bought this land and made the improvements all in good faith, and are now faced with an undue burden to deal with this mistake.

The only recourse for individuals whose homes are within the area of dispute is the Small Tracts Act. However, this requires homeowners to pay for this land a second time at current fair market value. Obviously, the land prices in this beautiful area have increased dramatically over the past three decades and this purchase would place an enormous financial burden on these homeowners. The uncertainty associated with this dispute has made it difficult for impacted property owners to sell their property. H.R. 3299 would remedy these problems by conveying without consideration the disputed areas to the impacted homeowners.

The 7 acres involved in this boundary dispute are a miniscule fraction of the 1.3 million acres of the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest. Because this land has been cleared and it has been occupied, obviously, for a number of years, transferring it back to the Forest Service would not enhance the environment or the scenic attributes of the area. Additionally, H.R. 3299 would not in any way impact the integrity or affect the operation of the forest.

The landowners impacted by this boundary dispute need resolution and certainty. H.R. 3299 did that by allowing them to keep the land they purchased and improved.

Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to thank Chairman Rahall and Congressman Young, as well as Chairman Grijalva and Mr. Bishop for moving this legislation through the Natural Resources Committee. I am grateful for the support of my colleagues of H.R. 3299.