Floor Statements

I rise today to bring to the attention of my colleagues the ever-worsening plight of dairy farmers in Vermont. Frankly, dairy farmers around the country.

The life of a dairy farmer is hard always. Never easy. Long hours, uncertainty in the markets, competition from factory and farms make it tough for family farmers in Vermont and elsewhere to survive and thrive. It's even tougher these days.

With the cost of production of milk at about $18 per hundredweight, it's well below the $11 per hundredweight that farmers are being paid. It's no wonder that so many farmers are having to sell their herds and walk off the land they love.

But dairy is so important to Vermont--economically, culturally, environmentally, and historically. We need to do all we can to help this sector and to help our farmers.

That's why I and 23 of our colleagues are calling on Secretary Vilsack to consider the cost of production when setting milk prices. We need to act now to resolve this crisis. Even more importantly, we need to find a long-term solution that will help create stable and sustainable dairy in this country.

Madam Speaker, today I would like to honor Christopher Caine's 25 years of service to one of Vermont's most important and valued businesses, IBM.

The largest private employer in Vermont, IBM has long served as a bedrock in Essex Junction in the greater Burlington community. It has proven itself to be a strong corporate citizen and has shown the world that Vermonters can compete for quality high-tech jobs.

For the past 25 years, Christopher Caine has made a major contribution to that success in such positions as public policy director and, most recently, as vice president of governmental affairs.

Like thousands of Vermonters who earn their livelihoods at IBM, Christopher has worked diligently to ensure the success of this great American company, and, in so doing, he has contributed to a key part of Vermont's economy.

Upon his retirement this year from IBM, I want to salute Christopher for his contribution to IBM and to the State of Vermont.

Mr. Chairman, among others, dairy farmers are facing an enormous crisis. And there is some possibility that the Senate may add in the supplemental some money for the milk program. And my request is that you would take that into consideration as best you can.

I appreciate your efforts.

Madam Speaker, the House this week will take the critical first step towards ending reckless and predatory lending practices and mortgage fraud in particular.

Since our economy fell off the cliff last fall, Vermonters and all Americans have been reeling from the mess created by those who engage in reckless lending and reckless borrowing.

The Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2009 will help ensure that the practices that helped foster this casino economy will end. The bill will restore responsibility to lending, holding creditors responsible for the loans they originate, requiring borrowers to have a reasonable ability to repay the loans, ban the practice of rewarding brokers and loan officers for steering homeowners towards mortgages they can't afford.

We won't be able to end years of irresponsible lending and borrowing overnight; not with one bill. But this legislation is the critical first step towards restoring responsibility and common sense to our financial system.

I thank you, Mr. Manager of the bill. I thank Carolyn Maloney, the Representative who has provided leadership on this from the Financial Services Committee.

The legislation that is before us is overdue. It does provide basic transparency and protection to consumers who had no rights to anything.

But there are two things that I hope will be part of the future debate about protecting consumers. Not in this bill. This bill on its own deserves to be passed.

But those two issues are, one, is it time to consider a cap on interest rates? And, number two, is it time to provide protection to the merchants, the small businesses?

I believe it is time to have an interest rate cap. We have historically had it until the Supreme Court took those away, but we have had caps on interest as far back as the Babylonian times. Commerce has succeeded when there have been reasonable interest rate caps.

It's one thing if somebody gets notice that their interest rate is going to go from 8 percent to 38 percent. But it probably shouldn't go up to 38 percent and we ought to have a lid.

Second, there's an argument that the banks are making that this will compress credit, making it more difficult to get. The reality is that credit is shrinking already because of practices that have been excessive.

Over 8 billion solicitations go out, not just to consumers, but sometimes to their pets. There is an alarming parallel between what is being done here in credit cards, or what has been done, and what happened in the subprime crisis.

Credit card issuers securitize and pass off their risk to the secondary market, pass on the losses by increasing fees on responsible users of credit, and they fail to exercise reasonable underwriting standards. We have got to change the business model so there is responsibility on both sides.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor a Vermonter who has dedicated his life to serving others, one who's made an impact nationally and internationally, but most importantly, in his hometown of Springfield, Vermont.

Edgar May has worn many hats in his life, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, a leader in President Johnson's War on Poverty, and a top administrator in the Peace Corps under Sargent Shriver.

I came to know Edgar May when we served together in the Vermont State Senate, where we reminded colleagues every day of our obligation to be there for average Vermonters. He earned tremendous respect for his ability to solve difficult problems, to temper emerging feuds and, most importantly, for the profound decency at the core of all his work.

Edgar has devoted his recent years to providing the people of Springfield with something they thought they'd never have, a downtown recreation center at the site of an old machine tool plant, a resource for all people of all ages and all incomes. The Southern Vermont Health and Recreation Center is a symbol of Springfield's quiet but confident determination to continue reviving one of Vermont's proudest cities. Its creation is a testament to Edgar May's perseverance and his devotion to his city, his State and country.

I thank my colleague from Rhode Island. I thank the Armed Services Committee and Chairman Skelton and my colleague, Mr. Coffman.

We have heard eloquent statements about the urgent problem of piracy and what the United States has to do. I would like to talk a little bit about Captain Phillips and about his hometown of Underhill, Vermont, and what is the good news behind this extraordinary rescue operation conducted by the United States Navy.

Mr. Speaker, Underhill is a small town in Vermont in the shadow of our largest mountain, Mt. Mansfield; about 2,800 people live there. The center of life is the Underhill Country Store where people go for their morning coffee to have conversation about what's going on. Neighbors know neighbors.

The folks who live in Underhill know the Phillips family very well. And it turned out that in that week when Captain Phillips was a hostage, all of the activity, all of the conversation in Underhill, of course, was totally about him, about his wife, Andrea, about Mariah and David, their son and daughter, both in college. And life in some ways went on in the ordinary course. David went over to a neighbor's and did his morning chores; it is what he said his dad would have wanted. And the neighbors did what neighbors do in Underhill and do in Vermont and do in communities all around this country when one of their own is in peril; they helped out. They brought over food. They checked in on their neighbors. They gave privacy and respect to Andrea and their family while they were going through this ordeal.

It is also the story about an extraordinary seaman, Captain Phillips, who, I think, as much as his bravery impressed all of us. His modesty impressed all of us as well. He insisted that he was not the hero. Let me use his own words that he was able to recite when he returned. ``I'm not a hero, the military is,'' the cargo shipper, Richard Phillips, told reporters. ``I'm a small part. I'm just a bit part in this story. I'm a seaman doing the best I can like all other seamen out there.'' Captain Phillips insisted on giving all credit to everyone else--his crew, the extraordinary Navy SEALs, the United States Navy, not taking any of the credit for his heroics upon himself.

Now, why is it that he is that way? You know, oftentimes it is said that a hero is a person who is ordinary but, faced with extraordinary circumstances, does extraordinary things. And certainly Captain Phillips fits that description because, when faced with this danger, he put himself and his life on the line to save his crew. It was an extraordinary act in extraordinary circumstances.

But when you reflect on it, Captain Phillips didn't see it that way. He was a seaman doing his job. And maybe what he is reminding us, all of us in America, is that it is doing our jobs day in and day out, what is required of us, that makes us all have it within our reach to be heroic.

Captain Phillips has as his primary responsibility, the way he defines it and the way the law of the sea defines it, to protect his crew. And on some days protecting his crew may be that he has to guide his ship through troubled waters, but on another day, when his ship was seized by pirates, protecting his crew meant turning over his life and his safety to the pirates in exchange for the safety of his crew. And for him, that was just an ordinary, matter-of-fact decision. He didn't even have to think about it because that was his job. It is what he signed up to do. And when the circumstances required he make that decision, he did.

That is what is so inspiring, I think, to so many of us about Captain Phillips, the matter-of-fact way in which he went about being a captain in the Merchant Marine. And it is the same attitude he displays as a dad when he is home, with the jealous guarding of his time with his family that means so much to him so that he can ski, play basketball, do outdoor activities with his kids and with his friends. He is known in the community as just another guy, and that is the person who he wants to return to be.

The inspiring story here is all up and down the line. When a captain was faced with an extraordinary decision, he made it as though it was just an ordinary decision. When one of America's own ships on the high seas was in peril, our Navy responded as they were trained to do. And when one of the hostages, Captain Phillips, was in imminent danger of losing his life, these Navy SEALs, who had trained quietly, relentlessly, and effectively, did what was required of them, and they went on to live the rest of their lives. So this act is an extraordinary act of heroics because of how Captain Phillips made this an ordinary day in his life.

All of us, of course, are thrilled about the safe return of Captain Phillips to Underhill, Vermont, and the reunification of the family, but we are also very proud of our Navy. We are proud of the Navy SEALs and all the people who were involved in this, doing the jobs they were trained to do, doing it successfully, and then going on about their lives without request for fame or favor.

Mr. Speaker, 164 years ago brave Texans and brave Vermonters fought on an historical battlefield about 60 miles south of here, the Battle of the Wilderness. There were 165,000 troops amassed there, including Vermonters from the 1st Brigade; and 1,200 from Vermont's ranks died. Among them was Daniel Lilly, a teacher in Barnard, Vermont. His funeral is still today remembered as the largest funeral in the history of that town. Another, Ed Holden, fought and survived, but saw his brother with his head shot off die on the battlefield.

Today a different battle is taking place on that hallowed ground. It is a conflict between a great American corporation, Wal-Mart, and a great American historic battlefield, the Wilderness. My friend from Texas and I have joined together to ask Wal-Mart to do the right thing and not build its facility, a 140,000-foot facility, on that battlefield where troops were massing.

The question for us is whether we can honor the fallen. And that, as my friend will tell you, is just the way it is.

Mr. Chairman, it is important to understand that Citigroup supports this bill. Why? They're a huge lender. It's because they understand that we have to stabilize home values in order to begin the recovery, and they need a tool to accomplish it.

So this is about lenders as much as it is about borrowers. Why? Because these mortgages that have been sliced and diced into 40 or 50 different sections make it impossible even for a mortgage company and a borrower, homeowner or a family to come together to resolve the problem that they share together. So this bankruptcy provision, written narrowly so that it is a last resort, is not only fair, but is necessary to lenders as well as to borrowers.

I applaud both committees for the work that they have done.

Thank you. I have been listening to some of your comments, and I just want to make a few remarks about the budget. We all know that we have an economy that's facing the biggest challenge since the Great Depression, and what this budget is attempting to do, and a lot of work getting from where we are to where we need to be, is, I think, very simple. It's about trying to revive the middle class.

You know, when you think about the recent history of America in the 1960s, when LBJ took on the challenge of trying to eliminate poverty and was successful in reducing it substantially, it was the right goal. The middle class paid.

And in the past 10 years, and even more, the policy has been, essentially, to lower taxes for very high-income folks, also provide deregulation for corporations, and it has resulted in a significant transfer of wealth. The top 1 percent of our country has enjoyed the greatest explosion of wealth since the 1920s, and, in fact, who paid for that? It was the middle class.

So the middle class paid for the programs that are essential, and I support it, that benefit the poor. The middle classes paid for the programs that were very, very generous to the quite wealthy, and it's the middle class who, in the end, is getting squeezed. This country has always done its best when it has had economic and political policies that have given an opportunity for people who are poor to move their way up into the middle class and for the middle class to sustain itself and to grow and prosper.

And what the Obama budget attempts to do is redirect our energies and our policies towards rewarding work and rewarding and enhancing the middle class.

Now, if we are going to be successful, we actually do have to pay attention to deficits, and it's a contradiction, so it seems, that on the one hand because of our fiscal situation we have to invest. We also have to commit ourselves to a health care policy that's going to make health care affordable, and to an energy policy that embraces the challenges of a new energy economy as something that can create jobs much. And we, as Democrats, who are supporting a middle class budget also have to embrace the absolute commitment to root out any waste and any excessive spending.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, President Obama understands something that every Vermonter knows, and that is that this economy faces the biggest challenge since the Great Depression. We have a very simple choice in Congress. It is to do nothing, as Herbert Hoover did, or it is to act boldly, as Franklin Roosevelt did.

This bill embraces the philosophy of Franklin Roosevelt that when the economy is deteriorating, people are losing their jobs, Congress must act to save jobs and rebuild our economy.

This bill is well-balanced and can provide 8,000 jobs in Vermont. It helps our taxpayers, property taxpayers and State taxpayers. It provides a safety net to the people who, through absolutely no fault of their own, lost their jobs. We owe it to them. And it provides investments in the future. Green jobs, health care information technology.

This is essential as a step to start revitalizing our economy and putting it in a growth path for the future.

Madam Speaker, I recently heard the tragic story of Amer Shurrab, a young man from Khan Yunis in Gaza. Amer is a recent graduate of Middlebury College, in Vermont.

On Friday, January 16, Amer's brothers, Kassab and Ibrahim, and father, Mohammad, were driving from their farm near the Israeli border to their apartment in Khan Yunis. The three men had waited until the daily three-hour calm designated by the Israeli Defense Forces before beginning their journey. They drove the family's jeep through the city and then, without any warning, the car was fired upon by the IDF.

Kassab, a 28-year-old engineer, was killed almost immediately. His father and Ibrahim, an 18-year-old college student, were wounded but survived the initial barrage of gunfire. When the two tried to crawl to safety, the IDF shot the street around them. An ambulance that they managed to call was turned away blocks from the scene. For the next 20 hours, the two were forced to remain in the jeep.

Amer's father spread the word to the immediate family, and the family did all it could to get help. Family members called Israeli government officials, international aid organizations, and human rights groups, while Amer's father, still stuck in the jeep, managed to get through to local radio stations and BBC Arabic to broadcast his pleas for help live on the air. But no help could get through. In the middle of the night, Ibrahim Shurrab bled to death in his father's arms. When relating his story, Amer repeated one word over and over again to describe what happened to his family: cruel. ``It was just so cruel,'' he repeated.

The Israeli government must conduct a full and open investigation of the circumstances regarding this horrible tragedy. I am not sure what kind of explanation can ever account for such suffering, but those responsible for reportedly denying aid to the injured should be held accountable and punished accordingly.

My heart aches for the Shurrab family and all those who have lost loved ones in the most recent round of violence. I will remember their story and pursue peace in the hope that stories like Amer's not be repeated in the future.

Mr. Speaker, the question of whether to delay the transition to digital television is important and deserves thoughtful consideration. But today's debate misses a key point that will affect many Vermonters, many Americans, living in rural areas: once the transition to digital television is completed, even if every household in America has a DTV converter box, many TVs simply will not work.

Reception of a digital television signal is an ``all-or-nothing'' proposal: rural areas that currently receive a weak analog TV signal may receive no digital signal at all. For many people across Vermont and across the country, this transition does not represent a step forward, but a step backward. I am particularly concerned about the many elderly viewers living in rural areas; for them, television is a lifeline that provides information and entertainment.

We know that this problem is out there. In order to ensure that all our constituents have access to broadcast television, we need to do one or all of three things: increase digital television broadcast signal range; increase the ability of viewers to receive the signal through antennae; or increase access to low-cost cable or satellite television.

If there were an easy answer, this problem would most likely have already been solved. But the problem persists, and it must be addressed. I look forward to working with Chairman Waxman as well as you, Chairman Boucher, to ensure that rural Americans maintain access to television broadcast over the public airwaves.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 31) expressing support for designation of January 28, 2009, as ``National Data Privacy Day''.

I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support today of House Resolution 31, introduced by Representative

Price of North Carolina. This resolution correctly identifies the importance of data security in all of our lives. Particularly, as we continue to incorporate Internet use into our daily lives and routines, it's vital that we focus on the need to protect the sensitive information that is transmitted over the Internet.

Over the past few years, as we all know, we have seen numerous and troubling incidences involving data breach that compromise private information. That includes credit card numbers, bank statements, Social Security numbers, and health records. According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, over 250 million records containing sensitive personal information has been subject to security breaches since 2005. We know we have got to protect security if we are going to have the advantages of electronic transmission of records.

Just last week, it was reported that another data breach involving credit and debit card information potentially exposed tens of millions of consumers to the risk of fraud. These incidents underscore the need for vigilance in protecting the privacy of sensitive information.

At this time, Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the author of the resolution, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

I reserve the balance of my time.

I am the last speaker on my side, and I will continue to reserve.

Madam Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Price and Ranking Member Stearns for this excellent resolution. It draws attention to the importance of privacy protections by supporting the designation of January 28, 2009 as the National Data Privacy Day. It seeks to inform the public of data privacy concerns and urge them to take steps to ensure that their own private data is secure and accounted for. In that vein, State and local governments, as well as schools, are encouraged to educate citizens about data privacy. I thank the Representative from North Carolina for authoring this resolution.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Concurrent Resolution 440, 110th Congress, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 51 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until Saturday, January 3, 2009, at 11 a.m.