[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 121 (Wednesday, July 23, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H6840-H6852]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1145
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF SENATE AMENDMENT TO HOUSE AMENDMENTS TO 
  SENATE AMENDMENT TO H.R. 3221, HOUSING AND ECONOMIC RECOVERY ACT OF 
                                  2008

  Ms. CASTOR. Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I 
call up House Resolution 1363 and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 1363

       Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be 
     in order to take from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 
     3221) to provide needed housing reform and for other 
     purposes, with the Senate amendment to the

[[Page H6841]]

     House amendments to the Senate amendment thereto, and to 
     consider in the House, without intervention of any point of 
     order, a motion offered by the chairman of the Committee on 
     Financial Services or his designee that the House concur in 
     the Senate amendment to the House amendment numbered 1 with 
     the amendment printed in the report of the Committee on Rules 
     accompanying this resolution. The Senate amendment and the 
     motion shall be considered as read. The motion shall be 
     debatable for two hours, with 80 minutes equally divided and 
     controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the 
     Committee on Financial Services and 40 minutes equally 
     divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority 
     member of the Committee on Ways and Means. The previous 
     question shall be considered as ordered on the motion to its 
     adoption without intervening motion.
       Sec. 2.  Upon adoption of the motion specified in the first 
     section of this resolution, the House shall be considered to 
     have receded from any remaining amendments or disagreements.
       Sec. 3.  During consideration of the motion to concur 
     pursuant to this resolution, notwithstanding the operation of 
     the previous question, the Chair may postpone further 
     consideration of the motion to such time as may be designated 
     by the Speaker.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentlewoman from Florida is recognized 
for 1 hour.
  Ms. CASTOR. Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support. For the 
purpose of debate only, I will yield the customary 30 minutes to the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions). All time yielded during 
consideration of the rule is for debate only.


                             General Leave

  Ms. CASTOR. I ask unanimous consent that all Members be given 5 
legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on House 
Resolution 1363.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from Florida?
  There was no objection.
  Ms. CASTOR. I yield myself such time as I might consume.
  Madam Speaker, House Resolution 1363 provides for consideration of 
the Senate amendment to H.R. 3221, the American Housing Rescue and 
Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008. The rule makes in order a motion by 
the chairman of the Committee on Financial Services to concur in the 
Senate amendment, with the text of the House amendment printed in the 
Rules Committee report.
  The rule provides 2 hours of debate on the motion, with 80 minutes 
controlled by the Committee on Financial Services, and 40 minutes 
controlled by the Committee on Ways and Means.
  Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the American Housing 
Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act and this rule. Our landmark 
legislation today throws a lifeline to families who are struggling to 
maintain the American dream of home ownership during this housing 
crisis and the economic downturn.
  Families across America are being forced to make heart-wrenching 
decisions in order to stay in their homes. What will they pay for in 
this day and age, with rising gas prices, property insurance rates 
escalating, the cost of health care rising? But nothing is more 
fundamental than having a safe and clean home for your family.
  The good news is that many of us in the Congress understand, and we 
are going to stand up for families and ensure that if you work hard and 
you play by the rules, the tools and resources will be made available 
to you to help you stay in your home.
  The American people have a number of champions here in Congress that 
understand the importance of a safe, clean and affordable home. 
Chairman Barney Frank has spent countless hours in providing the tools 
necessary for families across this country to have a safe, affordable 
place to live.
  Chairwoman Maxine Waters of California has spent a great part of her 
career dedicated to affordable housing for American families.
  Speaker Pelosi and the Chairwoman of the Rules Committee, Louise 
Slaughter, are champions of American families and affordable housing as 
well.
  Madam Speaker, today three million to four million families are 
expected to lose their homes to foreclosure. And when a home in your 
neighborhood ends up in foreclosure it affects everyone. It is usually 
sold at a reduced rate, and the values of homes throughout the 
neighborhood are affected. We have all seen these eyesores with 
overgrown grass, broken windows and in disrepair.
  Well, that is why we are all in this together. It is vital that we 
fight to maintain the property values of our communities.
  Madam Speaker, just a few weeks ago I had my first foreclosure 
workshop to get families together with lenders to try to get to a point 
where they could work out their loans. We were very surprised. We had 
over 600 individuals show up who were either in foreclosure, had fallen 
a month or two behind, or could see on the horizon, because of an 
adjustable rate loan or some family circumstance like the loss of a job 
or the kids going off to college, that they needed a little bit of 
help.
  Well, we have been very active in this Congress because while this is 
a problem that, yes, critically affects a State like Florida, in the 
Tampa Bay area that I have the privilege to represent, and it affects 
California desperately, Ohio, Nevada, no part of the country has been 
immune from the sub prime lending crisis.
  Fortunately, this American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention 
Act comes at an important time. But, you know, this Congress has been 
working on this for over a year and a half. So many of the initiatives 
contained in this package have been passed by the House of 
Representatives. This ``New Direction Congress'' has worked, in a 
bipartisan way, to pass most of the initiatives that are contained in 
the act today.
  Families should know that H.R. 3648, the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt 
Relief Act, was passed and did become law at the end of last year; 
passed by a margin of 386-27 here in the House. It provides that over 
the next 3 years, families who have had to sell their homes in 
foreclosure will be spared from getting hit by a larger tax bill, in 
addition to the pain of losing their homes.
  There are a number of other critical components in the Housing Rescue 
Package that were previously passed by the House. And I would like 
everyone to note, because we will probably hear a great deal of debate 
here today on the housing package. Everyone should note that almost all 
the initiatives contained in the bill today were passed over the last 
year and a half by wide, bipartisan margins.
  First, the Neighborhood Stabilization Act. That was approved in May 
by a vote of 239-188. It provides grants to the States and local 
governments to purchase and rehabilitate foreclosed properties and turn 
them into safe, affordable places for folks to live.
  And I would like to recognize and thank the White House for removing 
its veto threat. It had threatened to veto this entire package that had 
been negotiated with the White House over this small section that 
provides important tools to our State and local governments to tackle 
those properties that are up for foreclosure, the ones that are 
overgrown, that have the broken windows, allows them to go in and 
purchase those properties and turn them into affordable housing for 
families who are in need.
  The package also includes the important provisions of the Federal 
Housing Finance Reform Act that we passed in May of 2007 by a vote of 
313-104. This is vital legislation today because it establishes new and 
extensive oversight and regulatory authority over the Federal National 
Mortgage Association, Fannie Mae, and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage 
Corporation, Freddie Mac.
  To protect the taxpayers, we are instituting new requirements for the 
safety and soundness of the portfolio operations of these regulated 
entities. We need to make sure that we have oversight on the effects of 
the financial and housing finance markets of all these alternatives and 
provide an alternative to the current secondary market system for 
housing finance.
  Madam Speaker, last September we also passed an important part of 
this package, the Expanding Home Ownership Act of 2007, by a margin of 
348-72 here in the House. This is a critical piece because it expands 
access to the middle class to the low interest, low fee loans provided 
by the Federal Housing Administration. These FHA loans are a much 
better option to the sub prime loans. We are going to take a proactive 
step here to allow families facing foreclosure to qualify for the

[[Page H6842]]

low interest, no fee loans offered by the FHA.
  The housing package today also includes the National Affordable 
Housing Trust Fund Act of 2007. That was passed here in the House last 
October by a vote of 264-148. This creates a new, innovative fund that 
will be used to build more affordable housing for hard working families 
and families who have lost their homes due to foreclosure. The new 
trust fund will focus on construction, rehabilitation and preservation 
of affordable housing in our hometowns. It will pool monies to target 
housing for families with the greatest economic need.
  And our efforts come at a critical time if we can get this trust fund 
up and running. See, the Federal money for affordable housing has 
largely disappeared under the current administration over the past 7 
years.
  In many communities like mine, housing agencies have thousands on the 
waiting list. In my hometown of Tampa, Florida, during a 1-week open 
enrollment session, more than 10,000 seniors, veterans and families 
indicated a need for housing. But instead of receiving housing, they 
are placed on a waiting list, and the waiting list takes up to 4 years, 
and it is so long that the Tampa Housing Authority is unable to help 
others that need it.
  Madam Speaker, another important part of this housing package is the 
Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007. Yes, we passed 
this here in the House last November by a vote of 291-127. It requires 
States to license all mortgage professionals and mandate criminal 
background checks, requires exams and a ban on felons participating in 
the mortgage loan industry.
  We all know that the predatory lending was rampant during the sub 
prime loan run up. And I would like to draw your attention to anyone 
that would like to examine in depth the details of predatory lenders 
and how they worked. Go to the MiamiHerald.com Web site and review 
their series on predatory lending that they have run over the past 
couple of days. It is outstanding.

                              {time}  1200

  They reviewed thousands of pages of court documents, State industry 
reports, internal e-mails, and police reports from 2000 to 2007 and 
they discovered that over 5,000 people with criminal histories during 
that time became loan originators, a rate of nearly two a day. Worse, 
those include over 2,000 who had committed financial crimes such as 
fraud, money laundering, and grand theft. Too many of our neighbors 
were outright lied to and steered into unaffordable, exploding 
adjustable-rate mortgages without being given an option for a fixed 
rate and are now facing foreclosure which harms their families and all 
of us in their community.
  To accompany this extensive package, what has been added that really 
has not been voted on by the House today is a request by the Treasury 
Secretary for new standby authority to buy stock or debt in the GSEs if 
it is determined that an emergency exists. This is something of an 
insurance policy against broader losses in the housing market that 
could bubble up.
  Mr. Speaker, our efforts here today are absolutely necessary. 
Families across this country are depending on us. It's unfortunate that 
while the House and the new-direction Congress has been focused on 
affordable housing over the past year and a half and has passed 
terrific, substantive legislation, that it's taken a few months to get 
it enacted and passed in the end.
  Thanks again to Chairman Barney Frank for headlining our negotiations 
with the other body and with the White House. And I feel secure that a 
large bipartisan vote here today will prove that we can stand up and 
address this housing crisis across this country.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this rule 
and to the underlying legislation, which is proof of not only the 
Democrat majority's careless disregard for the American taxpayer but 
also their complete disregard for the energy crisis facing Americans 
today. Mr. Speaker, today you will hear the other side of the story.
  This legislation--submitted late last night after the House had 
already finished its business for the day--is proof that when the 
Democrats want to bring legislation to the floor in a hurry, they're 
very capable of that. It's just too bad that we aren't seeing some 
energy legislation which would make a difference to consumers all 
across America.
  Mr. Speaker, despite the pleas of working families and small 
businesses across the country, Democrats have failed on every occasion 
to treat the serious issue of high energy costs with the same level of 
urgency that they're bringing to this debate over this massive bailout 
of two private companies.
  This is not to say that there are not good parts to this hastily 
negotiated legislation. While I believe that Congressman Lee Terry, 
myself, and other Republicans had a better, more effective proposal, 
the inclusion of the first-time home buyer credit is wise and has the 
potential to help reinvigorate our slumping housing and homebuilding 
markets.
  Additionally, I support the establishment of a more robust and 
competent regulator of the GSEs which will restore competence to the 
marketplace and ensure that these entities operate in a safe, sound, 
effective manner maintaining adequate capital and internal controls and 
``contribute to the liquid, efficient, competitive, and resilient 
national housing financial markets that minimize the cost of housing 
finance.''
  If this were all that the bill did, I'm confident that the bill would 
pass this House unanimously. Unfortunately, there are a number of 
extraneous provisions--cynically added by the Democrat majority to an 
emergency bill that they are bringing to the floor today under a rushed 
and closed process--that either weaken the financial position of the 
GSEs that they claim to be helping, provide a taxpayer bailout of 
reckless financial behavior, or simply don't make logical sense.
  Most perplexing of all is the logical inconsistency underlying the 
entire bill. On the one hand, this Congress is being asked to declare 
an emergency and authorize the use of unlimited taxpayer funds to 
become a part of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac problem while also 
raising the debt limit by $800 billion to lend these companies as much 
money as they may need. On the other hand, this bill creates an 
affordable housing trust fund that taxes the GSEs to support 
questionably effective low-income housing activities and to cover the 
losses that the FHA will surely incur after the Federal Government 
accepts financial responsibility for the most toxic loans in the 
marketplace.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I will ask my Democrat colleagues that drafted this 
legislation, which is it? Are Fannie and Freddie private companies 
teetering on the brink of financial disaster thereby justifying this 
unprecedented taxpayer exposure and government intervention into the 
marketplace? Or are they cash cows that can and should be forever 
milked to provide financial support to every low-income housing whim 
that this Congress can dream of? I ask this because the answer simply 
cannot be both.
  Mr. Speaker, because this lockdown rule provides the minority with 
only 60 minutes to debate this 694-page bill, I'm going to use the 
little time that I have to let my Republican colleagues come to the 
floor and use this limited opportunity to discuss all of the 
shortcomings associated with this bailout of mortgage lenders, 
investors, and speculators. I will leave it to my Republican colleagues 
to talk about all of their problems associated with the creation of 
this permanent housing slush fund, this $800 billion debt-ceiling 
increase, and this new $4 billion liability that will allow local 
governments to expose themselves to the up-and-down risks of the real 
estate market. And perhaps most of all, I will leave it to my 
colleagues to let them explain why the multibillion-dollar tax increase 
included in this bill to fund all of the bad ideas I've just described 
and certainly many more is a bad idea.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. CASTOR. Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to yield 5 minutes to the 
distinguished chairwoman of the Rules Committee, Ms. Slaughter of New 
York.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. I certainly thank the gentlelady for yielding and for 
her exemplary service on the Rules Committee.

[[Page H6843]]

  Mr. Speaker, we know today that we are in a crisis without question. 
Families all across this great Nation are wondering if they're going to 
lose their house, what they're going to do next, burdened by a mortgage 
crisis that we have not seen in a generation, and it makes me angry.
  As America's families call out for relief, we have this bipartisan 
bill before us today to try to address it. As we consider this 
legislation, we have to ask ourselves why are we in this position and 
how did we get into this situation in the first place? If we don't know 
the answer to that, we're not going to be sure that the next generation 
is not going to be asked to bail out the wealthy.
  Mr. Speaker, the past 7 years brought some of the most egregious 
financial blunders this country has ever seen. On a daily basis we 
discover new evidence of incompetence. Americans have been blindsided 
by the mortgage crisis just as they were blinded by the savings and 
loan crisis. Due to the lack of oversight by this administration and 
the previous Congresses believing that most businesses and agencies 
should simply police themselves, American families are paying the price 
at the same time as the cost of gasoline and groceries skyrocket and 
foreclosure rates continue to climb.
  We're seeing the evidence of this administration's failed policies 
play out in neighborhoods across the country. From California to New 
York, from Texas to Michigan, millions of hardworking families, 
mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, grandmothers, and grandfathers have 
had their homes foreclosed, their dreams shattered, and many of them 
find themselves homeless.
  Mr. Speaker, recent reports estimate that 1.4 million homes will 
enter into foreclosure this year alone. It was reported in May that 
there were 157 new mortgage foreclosures filed every day in New York 
City. In my district in New York, the housing vacancy rate in Buffalo 
has risen 46 percent over the past 6 years, and soon the city will own 
one out of every 12 or 13 homes. That is 7,000 to 8,000 homes.
  Despite these staggering numbers, our President, the optimist, 
continues to insist that our financial systems are ``basically sound.'' 
I have to wonder if the Americans who poured their lives and savings 
into their homes feel the same way.
  Make no mistake about it, this crisis didn't jump out of the woodwork 
yesterday. It has been years in the making. But instead of taking 
meaningful action to protect Americans, their investments, their 
livelihood, and the American economy, the administration and the 
previous Congress has insisted the problem didn't exist. They told 
Americans a story of a healthy robust economy while the reality they 
were living told them something quite different.
  Pervasive greed has replaced the public good. This is the 
administration that led us into war in Iraq, that won't address global 
warming, and built an energy policy based on the Enron loophole. 
Insisting upon living in a dreamworld, this administration failed to 
take any meaningful action to rein in the housing crisis until it was 
spiraling completely out of control. The failure to accept the reality 
of the situation has led us to this problem we're in today.
  Crucial opportunities were missed to investigate the risky lending 
practices that Americans are suffering the consequences of today. 
Opportunities to instill safeguards to ensure that Americans are able 
to afford their mortgages were lost.
  Mr. Speaker, the mortgage crisis is complex, and there is enough 
blame to go around. But it is clear that the lack of oversight allowed, 
if not encouraged, this crisis, and at the same time, the heads of the 
GSEs were paid millions of dollars in salary and millions of dollars in 
bonuses every year for not overseeing the work they were hired to do.
  At the very least, thorough oversight would have uncovered how risky 
the lending and investment practices at the root of this crisis 
actually are--serving as a warning sign to the likely participants. 
Instead of oversight, they encouraged deregulation. Instead of holding 
hearings, they allowed big business to run rampant over protecting the 
most vulnerable Americans. Instead of strengthening our critical 
safeguards, they looked the other way while our Nation entered into a 
mortgage meltdown. For the past 7 years, this administration has 
ignored the needs and security of the American people.
  Should Americans working every day pay the price for this 
recklessness? Should retired Americans who depend on their homes for 
their retirement pay the price for their troubling risks? Should future 
generations lose their shot at the American dream because of this 
incompetence?
  Mr. Speaker, the Congress is not going to stand for it. Like 
President Franklin Roosevelt, who led this Nation out of our last great 
economic crisis, this Democrat-led Congress is committed to helping 
families out of this crisis and ensuring the situation never happens 
again.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Holden). The time of the gentlewoman 
from New York has expired.
  Ms. CASTOR. I yield the gentlewoman an additional 1 minute.
  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Sadly after 1929, all the safeguards that President 
Roosevelt put on to have no more bank failures in the United States 
have almost all been removed. He recognized, President Roosevelt did, 
the strength of a great nation depends on the strength of its working 
families, and our strength is about exhausted.
  Everything that he did, as I say, has been done away in the past 7 
years, and I think that restoring some of the safeguards that he put on 
financial institutions would be a start.
  The legislation we are considering today was forged by bipartisan 
consensus, and it will take bipartisan consensus to focus on future 
legislation to address the issues. This is a short-term solution today 
to a large and long-term problem. In these troubled times, righting the 
housing crisis is an important first step to getting our country back 
on track.
  Quite simply, ladies and gentlemen, we need stronger regulations, we 
need real teeth, we need oversight, and we have to clean up the mess. 
I'm happy that Members on both sides are dedicated to doing that. I 
implore my colleagues to commit to increased oversight. Together we 
have to make sure this does not happen again.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, there are lots of reasons to oppose this 
bill. We've talked about the things that we have in common with the 
bill. But I think it's important that we talk about what this bill 
actually does.
  First of all, the GSE bailout. The 18-month term of authority for the 
Treasury to extend Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's line of credit and 
purchase their equity is too long, we believe. Six months should be the 
limit. Not 18 months. The conditions under which a bailout is allowed 
should be clearly stated and should restrict the unlimited authority of 
the Treasury Secretary to act. The amount of Federal investment 
authorized should not be unlimited.
  We've just given two great ideas, ideas that, because of a closed 
rule, you will not see on this floor of the House of Representatives. 
The conditions under which a bailout is allowed should be clearly 
stated and should restrict the unlimited authority of the Treasury 
Secretary to act.
  Mr. Speaker, we believe the amount of Federal investment authorized 
should not be unlimited, and perhaps most importantly, we see that what 
Congress is doing is abdicating completely our authority and our role 
to the executive branch.

                              {time}  1215

  That's bad policy, and we should not be doing that on this floor of 
the House of Representatives today.
  Secondly, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, this legislation would 
place a permanent Affordable Housing Trust Fund mandate on the GSEs. In 
light of their current liquidity and capital conditions, taking money 
from Fannie or Freddie is a bad policy. Taking money from two of these 
instruments should not be done.
  Moreover, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund could be used as a slush 
fund for political activity purposes. We see one of the housing groups 
that actively engages in open partisanship on a regular basis, and yet, 
they quite likely will qualify for a lot of taxpayer money. For what 
purpose? More politics.
  Mr. Speaker, once again, the Republican Party is on the floor 
offering alternatives to this bad piece of legislation. We are not just 
saying ``no.''

[[Page H6844]]

What we're saying is this is an open slush fund and should not be 
allowed.
  Mr. Speaker, we reserve our time.
  Ms. CASTOR. Mr. Speaker, I'm very pleased to yield 2 minutes to the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), a champion for affordable 
housing and America's families.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I came to the floor to support this rule 
because it is so important that we move to deal with the sub-prime 
crisis in this country. It is not getting better. It is getting worse. 
And we find that community after community is being destroyed because 
we have boarded up, foreclosed homes that are driving down the property 
values, driving down the cost of the houses that are now upside down on 
their mortgages, and they cannot sell them and they're stuck.
  And so the Rules Committee has worked hard, understanding the many 
aspects of this issue, and they have heard the legislation that is 
before us today that would simply mark down these properties by 15 
percent. FHA, which we have strengthened, will do the refinance on 
these properties. We've also learned that FHA has been strengthened 
substantially with this legislation, and that part of the bill that 
I've been very much involved in will provide about $4 billion to cities 
and counties so that they can have money to rehabilitate these 
properties, put them back on the market for sale and for rent, and help 
to stabilize these neighborhoods.
  And so the GSEs are in the bill, and you're going to hear a lot about 
the GSEs. But the fact of the matter is this bill is about stabilizing 
this economy, and we cannot afford to have the largest two semi-
government agencies unprotected. While some people know that there's 
more work to be done on the GSEs, we're talking about now making sure 
that we put confidence in the market and that we send a message out 
there that we're not going to have disruption in the market at this 
time, that we're going to do something about the foreclosures and about 
the problems that we're confronted with.
  I thank you.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I'd like to yield 4 minutes 
to the distinguished gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Price.
  (Mr. PRICE of Georgia asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas for 
yielding.
  There are so many remarkable aspects of this bill that deserve debate 
and discussion, but it's not going to happen. So the question that I 
would ask is, what on Earth are the Democrats afraid of? What on Earth 
is the new majority afraid of? This majority, the Democrat majority, 
promised the Nation a fair and open process, and again, they've failed 
to live up to their promises.
  This bill, we received the final language of almost 700 pages in this 
bill at 6:30 p.m. last night, 6:30 p.m., Mr. Speaker, and we were told 
that the Rules Committee was meeting at 7:30 p.m., 1 hour later. The 
bill itself increases the debt limit by $800 billion. Mr. Speaker, by 
my calculation, that is $1.3 billion a minute to allow Members an 
opportunity to look at the bill and determine whether or not amendments 
ought be in order. But the Rules Committee didn't accept any 
amendments.
  The bill has the potential to increase the national debt by 50 
percent, by $5 trillion. Don't you think the taxpayers of this Nation 
deserve an open and an honest debate about that?
  The bill gives unprecedented and unchecked authority to the Treasury 
Department to put taxpayers on the hook for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. 
And we've been given 2 hours to debate it, with no amendments, no 
opportunity for change? What are you afraid of? What are you afraid of?
  The most sweeping changes to housing law in a generation were 
circulated to our offices just 16 hours prior to floor consideration. 
Now, this is in contrast to what the leadership, the Democrat 
leadership, said just 2 short years ago before they became leaders.
  Speaker Pelosi said in June of 2006, ``Because the debate has been 
limited and Americans' voices silenced by this restrictive rule, I urge 
my colleagues to vote against the rule.''
  Well, I agree with the Speaker. But what's changed? What's changed 
for her? Is it political expediency or is it a broken promise?
  In December of 2006, following the election, now-Majority Leader 
Steny Hoyer bragged to the media. He said, ``We intend to have a Rules 
Committee . . . that gives opposition voices and alternative proposals 
the ability to be heard and considered on the floor of the House.''
  What happened, Mr. Speaker? What are they afraid of? What are they 
afraid of? Here we are considering a rule in which the majority didn't 
even bother to post a process by which Members could submit amendments. 
What's changed, Mr. Speaker? What are they afraid of? What debate would 
be so scary that they wouldn't even allow an amendment or an 
alternative on the floor?
  The chairwoman of the Rules Committee, Ms. Slaughter, said, ``If we 
want to foster democracy in this body, we should take the time and 
thoughtfulness to debate all major legislation under an open rule, not 
just appropriations bills, which are already restricted. An open 
process should be the norm and not the exception.''
  What changed, Mr. Speaker? What changed? What are they so afraid of?
  The Democratic Caucus Chair Rahm Emanuel said, ``Let us have an up-
or-down vote. Do not be scared. Do not hide behind some little rule. 
Come on out here. Put it on the table, and let us have a vote. So do 
not hide behind the rule. If this is what you want to do, let us have 
an up-or-down vote. You can put your vote's right up there . . . and 
then the American people can see what it is all about.''
  Mr. Speaker, what's so scary about an open rule? Such heavy-handed 
tactics effectively silence half of the American people. How can that 
be consistent with the campaign promises that we heard from this new 
majority?
  A number of Republicans, including myself, submitted amendments to 
the bill. I submitted two thoughtful and substantive amendments.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I would like to give the gentleman an additional 30 
seconds.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. But my two amendments were not even given an 
opportunity to come to the floor for a vote.
  So this, just like energy, Mr. Speaker, just like energy, we are 
unable to bring the American people's desires to the floor to have a 
vote. That's all we ask for.
  Mr. Speaker, what's so scary? What are they afraid of? Are they 
afraid of the American people?
  Ms. CASTOR. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to correct the record here because 
this House of Representatives has been working in a bipartisan way for 
almost 2 years now on housing legislation. In fact, in my opening 
statement, I chronicled the number of bills starting last year that 
have been passed in this House by substantial bipartisan margins and 
sent over to the Senate where they waited. To say that there's been no 
opportunity for amendment or debate, that's wholly inaccurate.
  Out of this package, it contains at least five or six bills that had 
committee hearings, extensive hearings, the opportunity for amendment 
in committee, the opportunity for debate, previous debate, debate on 
the floor, amendments here on the floor, debate in the Rules Committee.
  So I think it's important that the record reflect that reality.
  And at this time, I'd like to yield 5 minutes to the chairman of the 
Financial Services Committee, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Frank).
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I thank the gentlewoman.
  Mr. Speaker, we confront here one of those moments in which there is 
a certain degree of confusion, and we are here, in substantial part, 
today at the urgent request of the Bush administration.
  This package has several pieces. Three of them, in fact, are urgent 
requests of the Bush administration, and indeed, the Bush 
administration does have a criticism to make of the pace with which we 
are doing this. They think it is too slow.
  Well, Members on the other side, some of them have complained that 
we're moving too rapidly. The Secretary of the Treasury has been a 
little frustrated that we were moving so

[[Page H6845]]

slowly. Clearly, we have here an example of the classic situation in 
which the right hand does not know what the far right hand is doing.
  We are dealing today with legislation that has, with one exception, 
already passed this House. As to the ability to amend and debate, one 
of the high priorities of this administration has been significantly 
increasing the regulatory structure for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and 
the Federal home loan banks. This House passed it last April of 2007. 
It was very much debated in committee, and it came to the floor of the 
House with many amendments. Well, that piece has already been debated 
on the floor of the House and amended, subject to a fairly open rule, 
not totally open.
  We have the modernization of the Federal Housing Administration, 
another high priority of the Bush administration. Several months ago, 
the head of the FHA, the Bush appointee, Mr. Montgomery, the head of 
the FHA lamented the fact that we hadn't acted. Despite that, the 
senior Republican on the Financial Services Committee sent me a letter 
last week saying don't act on it. So we have the head of the FHA a 
couple of months ago complaining that we had not acted on this urgent 
administration priority, and then I get a letter from the senior 
Republican of this committee saying don't do that piece, leave that 
piece out. He talks about doing only 1 piece, that one's left out.
  So we have the administration's request for GSE reform, already voted 
on and debated last year; FHA modernization, already voted on and 
debated by the House. This is a re-passage to accommodate, frankly, 
some of the problems we've had with the Senate.
  We did have the FHA rescue plan that was voted on on the floor of the 
House, and that one was not amendable, and I acknowledge that.
  All of the things I've talked about, by the way, these three pieces 
that have already been voted on, all passed the House by very large 
majorities. All had significant Republican support. All were fully 
debated in committee and amendments offered. This is a repackaging.
  Now, the gentleman who preceded me said what are we afraid of. I 
guess I do have a certain fear of being caught in this Republican 
crossfire, with the administration telling us move more quickly and the 
Republican members of the committee saying how dare you move so 
quickly; and the Secretary of the Treasury saying we'll have confidence 
undermined in the market, and the Republicans saying we didn't have 
enough time to read the bill.
  Again, almost everything in here has previously been debated in 
committee and voted on on the floor of the House. There's one new 
element, and I agree that did not go to committee. We didn't have a 
public hearing on it. The Secretary of the Treasury asked us not to 
have a public hearing, said he thought it would be damaging to the 
market if we had a public hearing. We have had a week and a half to 
talk about it, to discuss it, including in informal ways, and I've been 
open to discuss it with anyone who wanted to. But the Secretary of the 
Treasury did say that he thought the hearing would be a problem.
  So what are we afraid of? Well, I had a certain fear of rebuffing the 
Secretary of the Treasury, President Bush's appointee, on the matter 
that he thought was so important as to how we handled it. So that's why 
we are here.
  This is a balanced bill that includes a significant increase in the 
reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It does give to the 
administration the ability to make some loans to them or maybe buy 
shares with an instruction that they protect the taxpayer with various 
mechanisms and with a requirement that the compensation of the CEOs and 
the top officials of those agencies be strictly regulated.

                              {time}  1230

  But it doesn't do that in isolation. It does it only as part of a 
bill which significantly tightens the increase, that tightens and 
increases the regulatory structure.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Ms. CASTOR. I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. So just to summarize, this bill again 
responds to an urgent request by the Bush administration that we 
enacted in April, we passed it in the House in April. We tried to put 
it in the stimulus. The administration said not yet. That's already 
been voted on and debated.
  It has the FHA modernization that's been voted on and debated. It has 
the FHA rescue plan, voted on and debated. All of those have already 
been in the bill, and three of these pieces in this bill are urgent 
requests of the Bush administration.
  It does do some things for affordable housing, and I understand that 
many on the other side are ideologically opposed to that. But they were 
ideologically opposed to it when we debated it on the floor. And on the 
affordable housing trust fund, we have already voted about 10 times on 
the floor of the House.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield 4 
minutes to the gentleman from Dallas, Texas (Mr. Hensarling).
  Mr. HENSARLING. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the distinguished gentleman 
from Massachusetts, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, 
who indicated that part of the package before us was a request of the 
Bush administration.
  It may be a request of the Bush administration, but it was 
necessitated by that gentleman and by others who for years have 
forestalled any type of reform of Fannie and Freddie, neither man nor 
beast, half private, half public. You can go back, Mr. Speaker, and 
look at the record.
  Before I arrived here almost 6 years ago, the debate has been ensuing 
how can you have these entities that essentially are able to privatize 
their profits but socialize their losses and not put the taxpayers at 
risk?
  Now we were told, well, there is no taxpayer guarantee here. There's 
nothing to worry about. I've got a press release here dated '01 from 
the chairman of the Capital Market Subcommittee who says that the new 
GSE bill is a solution in search of a problem; that OFHEO has developed 
and implemented a robust and comprehensive and continuous examination 
program that works.
  Well, many of us have said, no, that is wrong. I have got language 
from, again, the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts who says, 
dating back to a hearing in 2003, ``I believe there has been more alarm 
raised about potential unsafety and unsoundness than, in fact, 
exists.''
  Well, I think what we discovered today is perhaps there is a lot of 
unsafety. Perhaps there is a lot of unsoundness that has to be 
addressed.
  So now we are being asked to take--really this is a historic moment--
we are being asked to take a terribly flawed housing bill that could 
put the taxpayer on the line for $300 billion to help bail out people 
on Wall Street who made bad bets, and then couple that with an 
absolutely breathtaking bailout of Fannie and Freddie that in its 
worst-case scenario, which admittedly is unlikely, but in its worst-
case scenario could add $5 trillion to the national debt at the snap of 
a finger. That's an increase of 50 percent in the national debt 
overnight.
  That's what would happen, Mr. Speaker, if you have the Federal 
taxpayer underwrite all the debts of Fannie and Freddie. I mean, this 
will help establish this particular Congress as having, perhaps, the 
worst record on fiscal responsibility in our Nation's history. They 
have had lots of competition.
  There are so many different reasons why we should not pass the bill 
today. Let's look, number one, at the underlying housing bill. You have 
95 percent of America that either rents their home, owns their home 
outright and are current in their mortgage, and they are being asked to 
bail out the other 5 percent. Now out of that 5 percent, some are very 
deserving. Some were victims of mortgage fraud, predatory lending. Some 
had bad reverses in the economy that were beyond their control. But 
others are not so deserving. Many were speculators. Many engaged in 
mortgage fraud themselves. There's been an explosion of mortgage fraud 
in the market.

[[Page H6846]]

  Finally, some people just didn't exercise personal responsibility. 
When people are struggling to pay their own mortgages, who acted 
responsibly, they shouldn't be forced to pay for their neighbors as 
well, much less bail out Wall Street.
  Let's look at the Fannie and Freddie package.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman from Texas has 
expired.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.
  Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Speaker, I regrettably admit that today Fannie 
and Freddie are too big to fail. The repercussions to our economy could 
be dire.
  But we should not pass any legislation that doesn't ensure the 
taxpayers are never here again. Not only does this legislation not 
ensure that, it makes it worse.
  I mean, even the Washington Post, not exactly a bastion of 
conservative thought said, ``Strangely, though, both the Senate and 
House versions of the bill potentially increase the very risks Mr. 
Paulson's plan is intended to mitigate.''
  Don't give these people a blank check. Vote this down.
  Ms. CASTOR. Mr. Speaker, we reserve the balance of our time.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield 2 
minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake).
  Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, the famed economist Milton Friedman once said that the 
government's solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem 
itself. I think that that is certainly applicable here today.
  When we had the housing bill up for debate a few months ago, I had a 
bit of a dialogue with the chairman of the Financial Services 
Committee. I had mentioned that he had appropriately and often 
excoriated Republicans when we would lavish corporate subsidies on 
private interests there, when we didn't live up to our belief in the 
principle of capitalism. I think that was sometimes deserving.
  But here is a gentleman that certainly understands the free market 
and understands that this bill has moral hazard written all over it. We 
are pretending to chain a monster here, and we are, instead, letting 
that monster loose.
  The competitive advantages that Freddie and Fannie have had over the 
past several years, with an implicit government guarantee, which many 
people have tried to tell us who have wanted GSE reform for so long did 
not really exist, that taxpayers were really not on the hook. Well, 
that implicit guarantee today is made explicit.
  Can you imagine the competitive advantage going forward that Fannie 
and Freddie will have over their competitors when you have an explicit 
guarantee rather than an implicit guarantee? This is simply the wrong 
way to go. If we wanted to tailor something that dealt with GSEs, both 
with ensuring that they are solvent but making sure that the taxpayers 
aren't put in this position again, that would be one thing. This bill 
does not do that. We are unchaining a monster here, and we are making 
the situation far worse.
  Ms. CASTOR. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 1 minute to the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).
  Ms. LEE. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding and for her leadership.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this bill and the 
rule. I want to thank, first of all, Chairman Frank and Chairwoman 
Waters for crafting a bipartisan bill to address this crisis, which is 
what it is. As a former member of the Financial Services Committee, I 
know how effective they are in bringing bipartisan consensus to the 
committee.
  Quite simply, far too many families are losing their dream of 
homeownership. It truly has become a nightmare. This bill will restore 
that dream by modernizing the Federal Housing Administration; 
strengthening oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; raising loan 
limits to help homeowners in high-priced markets like California; 
creating an affordable housing trust fund, which is very important. 
Senator Bernie Sanders and myself introduced this bill several years 
ago.
  Also, I want to thank Chairman Frank for including language from my 
bill to provide new guidelines for reverse mortgages, protecting our 
seniors from another potential financial crisis, and, of course, the $4 
billion in CDBG funds to State and local governments to buy, rehab and 
resell foreclosed homes, helping to fix blighted homes and stabilize 
prices in hard-hit neighborhoods like in my district in Oakland, 
California.
  I strongly support this rule and the bill.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, if I could inquire upon the time remaining 
on both sides.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Texas has 11 minutes 
remaining, and the gentlewoman from Florida has 2\1/2\ minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to inquire of the gentlewoman 
from Florida if we could ask unanimous consent to extend on both sides, 
15 additional minutes. We have a lot of speakers that are here on the 
floor, and it seems like a reasonable thing to do.
  Ms. CASTOR. I will have to object to that. I will note that the rule 
does provide for an extended amount of debate on the legislation, 
itself.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Well, Mr. Speaker, we tried to get additional debate on 
this issue, but I know the closed rule we have got is intended entirely 
to squeeze down time and the amount of debate that would take place, 
confirming that again.
  Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell).
  Mr. CAMPBELL of California. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. Speaker, there are a whole bunch of things in this bill I think 
are awful. I don't like funds, government funds to buy foreclosed 
properties. I don't like having a fee that might increase the interest 
rates that people pay for loans. I don't like creating a slush fund 
that will probably largely go to some political organizations. And I do 
not like helping irresponsible lenders that don't deserve to get any 
help.
  However, I am going to support this bill today. I am going to support 
it because we are in a position where we cannot afford to not have 
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the marketplace.
  If you think the economy is tough now, watch what would happen if we 
took 50 percent of our lending capacity out of this marketplace today.
  We can argue about whether Fannie and Freddie should be as they are 
constructed today, and I don't think they should be. We should have an 
argument about how they should be constructed in the future. We should 
have a debate about that. But they are as they are now, and the 
guarantee from the Federal Government is implicit, and this bill will 
make it explicit, and I think that is, very unfortunately, something we 
are going to have to do.
  The bill also does provide some lending support out there. There are 
people out there who did get in a problem that was not of their own 
making and who do deserve some help and some support. Unfortunately, we 
will be supporting a lot of people who don't deserve, but at least it 
will get to people who do deserve support as well.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I stand before you reluctantly supporting the bill, 
but supporting it because we cannot afford at this time to see the 
housing market slip further and further into a problem. Although this 
has a number of things which won't help at all, it does have some 
things which I think are necessary.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Yes, I would be happy to yield to the 
gentleman from Georgia.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I appreciate your perspective on this. It's not 
one with which I agree, but I appreciate your perspective.
  But wouldn't the gentleman agree that under this rule, shouldn't this 
be a rule where all amendments are debated?
  Mr. CAMPBELL of California. Yes.
  Ms. CASTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from 
Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. I thank the distinguished gentlelady from 
Florida for her leadership and yielding to me. I thank the chairman of 
the full committee.
  Mr. Speaker, the American people are asking this Congress to do the

[[Page H6847]]

right thing. They are certainly not asking us to blame them for the 
crisis in the mortgage foreclosure market.
  And as a member of the Judiciary Committee, I know the number of 
bankruptcies of hardworking Americans. This bill provides a refundable 
first-time home buyer credit, $7,500. It provides a temporary increase 
in the low-income housing tax credit. And it does not bail out Fannie 
Mae and Freddie Mac.
  It is simply a guarantee to protect the American consumers and 
taxpayers. This Congress will make sure you are protected. All it does 
is says the Secretary of the Treasury can provide a guarantee if 
necessary. Then, of course, it buys back all those foreclosed homes on 
your block that keeps your house from going down in value. This is a 
bill that is needed.
  I support the rule and the underlying bill. The American people are 
asking this Congress to do the right thing, and this Democratic 
Congress is going to do the right thing on behalf of the American 
people.
  The people of Houston Texas, the 18th Congressional District, need 
this relief. We will vote on it today.

                              {time}  1245

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays).
  Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, this legislation has been a long time coming, and I'm 
grateful for the work of my colleagues on the House Financial Services 
Committee in bringing this legislation to the floor today.
  Like Congressman John Campbell from California, I believe this is 
imperfect legislation, but needed. I am hopeful passage of this bill 
will give required liquidity and credit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, 
restore some confidence in the housing market, provide stronger 
regulation over the GSEs, keep more American families in their homes, 
and protect the value of the homes of their neighbors.
  The past year has been a tumultuous one for the mortgage market, and 
we are now in the midst of a significant housing crisis. It is 
absolutely essential we take action. Now is not the time to raise 
taxes, cut spending, and stand by idly like former President Herbert 
Hoover and let an imperfect market work its wonders.
  Ms. CASTOR. Mr. Speaker, I have the right to close, so I will reserve 
the balance of my time until the gentleman from Texas has made his 
closing statement.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the 
gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Bachmann).
  Mrs. BACHMANN. Mr. Speaker, today we're considering a massive housing 
bill which saddles the American taxpayer with billions of dollars to 
bail out both Fannie and Freddie as well as irresponsible lenders, and 
yes, even some irresponsible borrowers.
  But what will the American taxpayer be getting in return for being 
asked to be put on the hook for a deal that they weren't a part of and 
now all of the sudden they have to jump in and bail out someone else? 
Remember, 95 percent of Americans are paying on time their mortgages, 
their rents. They weren't a part of this very bad equation, but now 
they're being asked to come in, to have their taxes raised to bail out 
irresponsible lenders, and yes, even some irresponsible borrowers.
  What are they going to get in return? Are they going to be assured 
that the worst loans that were made won't be dumped into this refinance 
program? No, not going to happen. Will they be assured that this 
affordable housing slush fund that will finance millions of dollars for 
political groups like ACORN, groups that are currently under 
investigation in States for voter fraud, that they won't be getting 
more tax money? No. Are they assured that Fannie and Freddie will never 
again become too big to fail? No. Fannie and Freddie will become even 
bigger. Are they assured of a clear path out of this explicit Federal 
backdrop? No. It's not going to happen. In fact, it's the opposite. The 
banks are going to rid their balance sheets of the worst performing 
loans--what we used to call ``dogs'' in the industry--and it will 
encourage them to serve up on a silver platter for hardworking 
Americans a huge tax increase for them to pay.
  The hardworking Americans, unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, that are 
financing this bailout are already paying over $4 a gallon for gasoline 
and prices for groceries they never thought that they would have to 
pay. They are the forgotten man, Mr. Speaker. The ``forgotten man'' is 
the hardworking man and the hardworking single woman who is paying 
their bills, but who now is being asked to front the cost for poor 
performing loans. It's a bad deal, and we need to reject this rule.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 1 minute and 45 
seconds to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett).
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I thank the gentleman.
  I rise to the floor to oppose this rule and to also oppose the 
underlying bill, a bill that would, as the hurricanes that are going 
across this country, devastate this country financially and put the 
American taxpayer on the hook, not for $10 billion, not for $20 
million, we're upwards to $5 trillion.
  I commend the hearing that we had last night on this bill, which was 
over 1 hour. That's an hour more than we've had any discussion 
whatsoever on this potential of putting the American taxpayer on the 
hook for $5 trillion. Chairman Frank did not hold one single hearing to 
discuss how this would impact the American public nor the American 
financial system; hearing after hearing that we held on all sorts of 
other things, but never could we get to this topic.
  In fact, the chairman last night called ``nonsensical'' the idea that 
the American public could be put on the hook for upwards to $300 
billion. Well, remember this; that was the same chairman, 
unfortunately, who told us 5 years ago and 3 years ago and 1 year ago, 
nonsensical was the idea that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could ever 
fail. In fact, that's the same chairman who told us that he would never 
support the bailing out of the GSEs. In fact, if I looked into the 
transcripts of our past hearings where the gentleman from Massachusetts 
spoke, he said repeatedly, ``I would never support the bailout of 
Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or the GSEs.'' Well, sir, here we are today, 
upwards to a $5 trillion bailout for the GSEs. In fact, this will make 
the savings and loan scandals of a few years ago pale by comparison.
  And I remind the American public, how did that unfold? First, it was 
a $10 billion request to the American taxpayer that they used to bail 
out the savings and loan. Then it was $50, $70--finally, $200 billion 
plus was asked for the American taxpayer to bail out the American 
savings and loans in this country. That's the exact same thing that's 
potentially going to occur here today as we bail out Fannie Mae and 
Freddie Mac for their exclusively bad decisionmaking.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I give the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I appreciate the additional 15 seconds, 
and I would yield those 15 seconds to the gentlelady from Ohio (Ms. 
Kaptur).
  Ms. KAPTUR. With a heavy heart, I rise in opposition to this rule and 
the Wall Street rescue bill. Why? The key provision added over the 
weekend amounts to a huge elephant galloping over the American people 
with its blank check to Wall Street. In exchange, the American people 
get to cling to fool's gold--a few billion dollars to cities and States 
which are facing hundreds of billions of dollars of loss. Ohio alone 
needs the total amount of meager funds allocated to workouts. Sadly, 
less than one percent of the assistance in this bill is targeted to 
those local communities! We need a bill that strengthens each 
community's real estate values through Federal bond guarantees to them, 
not to the big investment banks and uninsured housing enterprises that 
caused this problem in the first place. I thank the gentleman very much 
for yielding.


                              Introduction

  President Franklin Roosevelt aptly gave a name to the Wall Street 
financial manipulators who, time and again, put our nation in enormous 
financial peril. He called them ``malefactors of wealth''--
``malefactors,'' from the Latin ``mal'' meaning ``bad,'' and 
``factor,'' meaning ``makers'' . . . makers of bad. That is, people who 
do great harm with the use of wealth.
  As a scion of old wealth himself, Roosevelt knew them well. He knew 
the lengths to which

[[Page H6848]]

they would go to satisfy their cravings for more, and more, and more--
as if reason and prudence didn't apply. And they did not care who they 
ran over in their quest. Their deeds have placed our nation at risk, 
time and again. Now, with the mortgage foreclosure crisis, they have 
done it again--this time, the damage is so huge it dwarfs the savings 
and loan fiasco of the 1980's when they ponzi-schemed up housing 
markets, saw them crash, and then ran to Congress to bail them out. 
Back then, the perpetrators centered their attention on California, 
Texas, Arizona, and the hot housing markets. Yet all Americans, from 
all states--like Ohio which was not one of the epicenters of their 
gluttony--were forced to pay the bills for their bad deeds.
  Today, Congress will vote to burden the American people with another 
blank check, totaling hundreds of billions of dollars lasting three 
generations, to Wall Street brokerages and the shareholders of Freddie 
Mac and Fannie Mae. It is times like this that my heart feels very 
heavy for my fellow countrymen and women, as I cannot save us from this 
wrongful debt being imposed. This bailout of Wall Street giants never 
had a hearing in Committee.
  Why should our people be made to pay for them? What will our 
communities get for this added, massive debt obligation?


                            The Legislation

  The Foreclosure ``Rescue'' bill we're being asked to vote on today 
won't live up to its name. I challenge any Member to tell me how much 
help your district will receive from this trickle down to turn around 
local housing markets. This bill does not measure up to the challenge
  The Congressional Budget Office under estimates that the bailout 
package will cost the American public $25 billion. This estimate isn't 
a good indication of the potential cost since $25 billion is just an 
estimate based on many faulty assumptions. The potential cost to the 
public actually is several hundred billion dollars. Fannie Mae and 
Freddie's current debts total $5.2 trillion, which equals our national 
debt of $5 trillion.
  The fig leaf offered--and that our communities are clinging to is the 
promise of a mere $4 billion in community aid plus $10 billion for 
state housing authorities to counteract the nearly $356 billion loss in 
property values and property taxes in 2007 and 2008. $4 billion doesn't 
even meet the City of Cleveland's needs; Ohio alone is estimated to 
need $164.2 billion, just the gap for the state housing authority is 
$20 billion. With blocks of abandoned, vandalized, and stripped homes 
to contend with, along with an onslaught of displaced families, our 
communities are being asked to do more than ever, with fewer and fewer 
resources.
  This bill asks taxpayers to issue a blank check with the words 
``stand by authority''--to Wall Street--for the first time to federally 
uninsured investment houses and secondary market housing agencies. This 
critical provision never went through Committee, there were no 
hearings. This was a Boardroom deal.
  The former head of Goldman Sachs is now the Secretary of Treasury 
under a Republican administration; under the former Democratic 
administration, the Secretary of Treasury was from Goldman Sachs. Just 
this week, Goldman Sachs' top banker, Ken Wilson, will take a leave 
from his job there to join his former boss at Treasury, Secretary 
Paulson. Who's running whose show here? Is Treasury serving the 
American people or simply Goldman Sachs, IndyMac Bank, and Bears 
Stearns?
  Further, under this bill the Department of Treasury that failed to 
regulate, examine, and audit is now going to be given even more power 
to create another bureaucracy to regulate the Department that didn't 
regulate. This house of cards only gets more topsy.
  Last year, Freddie Mac Chairman and Chief Executive Richard Syron 
received $19.8 million in compensation--even though the company's stock 
lost half its value. During the same period, Fannie Mae President and 
Chief Executive Daniel Mudd was paid $12.2 million, including a $2.2 
million bonus. But curbing their excess doesn't even come close to 
offsetting the huge debt this bill anticipates for the American people.
  Our cities are left holding the bag, yet the greedy corporations that 
blew through town are being made whole. Meanwhile, homeowners have lost 
decades of savings and equity. Once tight-knit communities are left 
shattered, shuttered, and dangerous. In order to make things even 
worse, big banks like Citigroup are now plundering our local 
communities even more by offering land contracts. How much lower can 
these banks sink? And yet Congress rewards them?


                   Savings and Loan Crisis Background

  Even worse than the proposed no strings attached bailout is the fact 
that this is deja vu all over again. The Savings and Loan bailout of 
the 1980s cost the American taxpayers upwards of half a trillion 
dollars. The American people were asked to grin and bear it for the 
good of the Nation. States like Ohio were not among the worst abusers, 
yet our taxpayers were forced to bear this debt load too.
  The savings and loan scandal destroyed an entire class of community 
banks, moved more power to Wall Street and money center banks, and 
exploded our public debt. Back then, they told Americans that if they 
were bailed out, such catastrophes would never happen again. They 
claimed a new money instrument was being developed by Wall Street 
called the mortgage backed security. Through its magic, the public 
would never have to worry again about greedy bankers in the housing 
market. Your mortgage would be safer, as it would be packaged with 
others and sold through securities Wall Street would invent, like an 
anonymous piece of paper.
  Meanwhile, face to face community banking, and necessary underwriting 
and regulation first enacted for home lending in the Great Depression, 
were destroyed. Financing became more and more hot wired, more 
absentee, even over the phone and internet. A deluge of promotional 
materials from the banks arrived at our doorsteps, almost daily, urging 
mortgagees to borrow more and more against their shrinking home equity, 
to borrow for almost anything--a vacation, a car, to put on a roof. Few 
cautioned against it, and the debt pushers pushed on.
  Home values inflated beyond their worth. But the regulators, like 
FNMA and Freddie, the OTS and FDIC stood frozen in place. The mortgage 
itself--which is a debt that must be repaid--was rolled up and packaged 
with thousands of other mortgages and, as America itself is in debt, 
sold into the international market for the first time to foreign 
buyers. Try to work out a loan when your financier is located in China.
  Sadly, their entire modus operandi is an old trick--create a house of 
cards with money by pushing risk beyond what can be considered prudent, 
leverage the money pyramids where the underlying asset is purposely 
poorly appraised, and voila--the perpetrators make billions until the 
market they have created busts. Then blame the American people and run 
to Congress to close the gap by borrowing, borrowing, and borrowing 
from the very people they thought so little of. Oh yes, and then, blame 
the whole washout on ``them,'' the public.
  Wall Street's money grabbers are back, this time stretching their 
long arms even deeper into your pockets to cover their latest craze--
draining out our home equity and home values. Americans have built 
their equity over decades in their mortgages. Yet Wall Street set its 
sights on families' home equity, and went after it with a vengeance. It 
was the only major savings pool America had left other than our public 
assets like roads, water systems, and public works. Millions of 
families succumbed to the snake oil.
  Overall, home equity in our nation, our largest source of savings--
has now dipped below fifty percent for the first time in modern 
history. Millions of Americans have negative equity in their homes, 
they own more on their homes than their homes are worth.
  So, to fill the gap, Wall Street wants the American taxpayer--the 
people they bilked--to bail them out, again. Bear Stearns succeeded to 
the tune of $30 billion. So now there is a longer line of bankers lined 
up to prop up their profligacy. This bill legitimizes their behavior 
and gets crumbs in return for the American people. The malefactors 
wealth manipulated and created panic in the market. They got the Bush 
Administration to propose an ``emergency'' bailout plan. And then they 
got Congress to ``limit'' executive pay as a fig leaf to cover over 
their real motherload in this bill. Not a bad bit of insider dealing.
  But what about the American people? What about their interests?


         Meeting the Needs and Strengthening of Our Communities

  Let's get something real for the taxpayer. And let's get it now. As 
the Economist proposed this week, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could 
issue their own debt and exchange it for loans from the government--
this way, our taxpayers who are on the hook at least get something if 
markets recover. Otherwise, all this bill does is hand over the U.S. 
Mint to Wall Street.
  I ask any Member: how much of this bill is going to your district 
relative to what it is going to cost to turn your local real estate 
market around?
  If you don't know the details, you shouldn't vote for the bill.
  And how do you know when the help will arrive? This bill is a trickle 
down from Wall Street; communities across this nation will be left 
holding an empty bag.
  Our communities need expanded bonding power at the grass roots, not 
more rewards for Wall Street brokers who got us into this sorry 
situation in the first place.
  We need trickle up, not trickle down.
  Our communities need expanded bonding power at the grassroots level 
to raise the funds to combat this crisis, not more rewards to the very 
institutions and people who created this mess.

[[Page H6849]]

  I have a better idea. Rather than Congress vowing to borrow more 
money--plus interest--from the American taxpayer for three generations 
to come, to make Wall Street whole, why not instead design a 
refinancing approach that benefits the taxpayer, and the communities 
they live in? Rescue local real estate markets. Give the bulk of 
assistance there. Let any refinancing medium reach deep into every 
affected community across this country. Stop the hemorrhage. Accelerate 
workouts now to save real estate values from plummeting even further--
including on families who own properties that had nothing to do with 
this ponzi scheme.

  Strengthen each community's real estate values through federal bond 
guarantees to local countries and cities, not Wall Street. Empower 
local people. Empower local housing authorities' ability to respond. 
Democratize this bond offering. The largesse of the American people 
should not trickle down from the big bond houses on Wall Street who 
caused the problem, traffic in debt, and operate far from home. The 
bill being proposed in Congress is weighted WAY too heavily in their 
favor. For affected localities, less than 1 percent of this proposed 
aid is targeted to them; Wall Street gets the lion's share. Imagine a 
bill that strengthens local real estate markets NOW, and into the 
future through additional federal bond guarantee authority to those 
same communities. The ability of hundreds of affected jurisdictions to 
do refinancing and workouts will be direct, local and not just through 
Wall Street. Direct support to localities should be at a level 
commensurate with the scale of the foreclosure crisis--not just one 
percent of the largesse while Wall Street cleans up.


                               Conclusion

  This approach makes sense as real estate markets are local. There is 
a greater likelihood that units will be turned around more responsibly 
and expeditiously at the local level. Wall Street is too far away. And 
they are already hawking their disgusting ``land contracts'' to move 
foreclosed units which are further blighting troubled neighborhoods.
  Let's democratize this bond offering in community after community. 
Let's not give it away to the same Wall Street crowd that bleeds us 
time and again, but pays us no respect. Franklin Roosevelt understood 
the difference between money and wealth. He was about creating wealth 
in community after community, household after household, not letting 
Wall Street raid us dry. This Congress should remember how his policies 
built a middle class. We should champion that democratic vision of 
capitalism. It's long overdue. As this bill moves to the Senate, 
perhaps someone there will remember what representative democracy is 
all about and make this a much better bill. My vote is cast for the 
American people and against the malefactors of wealth.

                                Addendum


                       Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

       A Better Approach: Based upon Treasury Secretary Paulson's 
     emergency announcement and proposal on July 13, 2008, ``The 
     two companies could issue their own debt and exchange it for 
     loans from the government--at least the American people might 
     yield something rather than giving wall street the equivalent 
     of having access to the printing press.'' (Source: The 
     Economist, July 19th-25th, 2008)
       Additional Facts: According to a Federal Reserve economist, 
     because the U.S. government has essentially guaranteed Fannie 
     Mae and Freddie Mac's debt, the ability of home buyers to 
     borrow has remained difficult, while the savings Fannie and 
     Freddie have realized--about $79 billion--instead went 
     straight to their shareholders. (Source: The Economist, July 
     19th-25th, 2008)
       Current regulation, ``allowed Fannie and Freddie to operate 
     with tiny amounts of capital. Their capital reserves (as 
     defined by the regulator, Office of Federal Housing 
     Enterprise Oversight [OFHEO]) of $83.2 billion at the end of 
     2007 supported $5.2 trillion of debt and guarantees, a ratio 
     of 65 to one.'' Imagine if a household earned $83,000 a year 
     and was able to borrow $5.2 billion on that salary.
       In 1998 Freddie Mac owned $25 billion of other securities, 
     according to OFHEO and by the end of 2007 it had $267 
     billion. Fannie Mae's outside portfolio grew from $18.5 
     billion in 1997 to $127.8 billion at the end of 2007. This 
     shift in investing in outside securities does not meet Fannie 
     and Freddie's core mission of increasing home ownership.
       OFHEO as recently as July 10th said that both Fannie Mae 
     and Freddie Mac had enough capital.
       Freddie Mac lost $3.5 billion in 2007; Fannie Mae reported 
     a $2.2 billion loss in the first quarter, having lost $2.05 
     billion in 2007. Each had credit-related write-downs of 
     between $5 billion and $5 billion last year.
       Currently, Freddie Mac only has a market value of $5.3 
     billion.
       On a fair-value basis, Freddie Mac had a negative net worth 
     of $5.2 billion at the end of the first quarter.


        fannie mae and freddie mac's debt and foreign ownership

       ``Paulson said the Fannie and Freddie have issued $5 
     trillion in debt and mortgage backed securities. Of that 
     amount more than $3 trillion is held by U.S. financial 
     institutions and over $1.5 trillion is held by foreign 
     institutions.'' (AP; Crutsinger, July 22, 2008)
       Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's foreign debt has tripled from 
     $504 billion in 2001 to $1.5 trillion in 2007. Fannie Mae and 
     Freddie Mac's $1.5 trillion foreign debt is owned by China 
     $376 billion, Japan $228 billion, Russia $75 billion, South 
     Korea $63 billion, and Middle Eastern Oil-Exporters $29 
     billion. Now, both interest and principal is owed to foreign 
     bondholders.
       The current proposal will allow Bank of America to purchase 
     Countrywide's portfolio. Then if Bank of America works out a 
     refinancing, FHA stands ready to insure it. If the owner 
     fails to make payments, FHA assumes the unit. This is a great 
     bonanza for Bank of America.


                       what the legislation needs

       A better solution would be to let Fannie Mae and Freddie 
     Mac issue debt and then exchange that for a government loan. 
     At least our people would get something back on the upside--
     just as America did when Chrysler Corporation was refinanced 
     through redeemable warrants.
       Democratize the bond offerings by diverting some of the 
     securitized debt that is intended to prop up Wall Street, 
     Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. Direct it to Main Street--our 
     counties, our cities, our housing agencies and authorities. 
     Make the approach more equitable to the taxpayer. This 
     approach allows communities, not only corporations, mega-
     banks, and investment houses, to actually own something. 
     Isn't that a value worth fighting for?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I thank the gentlelady from Ohio for 
supporting this measure to make sure that this rule does not pass and 
that the American taxpayer is not put on the hook for $5 trillion.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I will go ahead and close with the 
understanding that the gentlewoman is at that point in her 
presentation, also. Seeing an affirmation, I will go ahead and close.
  Mr. Speaker, since taking control of this House, this Democrat 
Congress has totally neglected its responsibilities to address the 
domestic supply issues that have created the skyrocketing gas, diesel 
and energy costs that American families today are facing.
  Today, they are proving that they can move a bill--like this housing 
bill--quickly when they choose to do so. However, they do not believe 
that the energy crisis facing American families and businesses is 
important enough to treat it with the same level of seriousness.
  So today I urge my colleagues to vote with me to defeat the previous 
question so this House can finally consider real solutions to the 
rising energy costs in addition to this housing and GSE legislation.
  If the previous question is defeated, I will move to amend the rule 
to allow for additional consideration of H.R. 6566, the American Energy 
Act. This bill would increase the supply of American-made energy, 
improve conservation and efficiency, and promote new and expanded 
energy technologies to help lower the price at the pump and help reduce 
America's increasing costly and dangerous dependence on foreign sources 
of energy.
  I encourage everyone that believes that a comprehensive solution to 
solving this energy crisis and achieving energy independence includes 
increasing the supply of American energy should vote to defeat this 
rule and the previous question.
  I ask unanimous consent to have the text of this amendment and 
extraneous material inserted in the Record prior to the vote on the 
previous question.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Texas?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, we have given lots of reasons about ways 
we can make this bill better. The ways we can make it better is to make 
sure that what we do today is carefully understood, that we do not pass 
on to future taxpayers billions of dollars, and to any administration 
the opportunity simply to hand out money without an understanding and 
an expectation of performance.
  Mr. Speaker, we've outlined our reasons today. We need to make sure 
that the Members of Congress who will vote today understand that 
opposing this bill and sending it back and making it better is the 
right thing to do. We also need to make sure that we take care of the 
American consumer who is having

[[Page H6850]]

increasing problems paying their bills, not just their housing bills, 
but also at the gas pump.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Ms. CASTOR. Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of the American Housing 
Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act and this rule, as families across 
America are in the grips of a housing crisis and it demands expeditious 
action.
  The President of the United States says it's necessary. The Governors 
in this great Nation say it's necessary, and I will submit their 
statements into the Record.
  Foreclosures are way up, and the options for safe, clean, and 
affordable housing are down. In my home town of Tampa, Florida, one in 
280 homes is in foreclosure. Now, as Rules Committee Chairwoman 
Slaughter said, we're going to clean up this mess because America's 
hardworking families are depending on us, but we will also need to 
follow up and hold those accountable who have created this mess.
  Now, the House of Representatives over the past 1\1/2\ years have 
passed bills to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, provide resources to 
local communities to build new, safe and affordable housing, and crack 
down on predatory lenders. It has all come to fruition here today.
  Our efforts will keep the American dream of homeownership available 
to more American families, thanks to the efforts of Speaker Nancy 
Pelosi, Chairman Barney Frank and Chairwoman Maxine Waters, and the 
other champions for America's families who are going to continue to 
side with them, and our commitment to affordable housing and safe and 
healthy communities.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question and the 
rule.

         Executive Office of the President, Office of Management 
           and Budget,
                                   Washington, DC., July 23, 2008.

                   Statement of Administration Policy


 H.R. 3221--Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, (Rep. Frank (D) 
                                  MA).

       The Administration supports House passage of H.R. 3221 as 
     amended. This legislation contains several critically 
     important provisions that the Administration strongly 
     supports, as well as others the Administration opposes. With 
     Congress about to begin its scheduled summer recess, it is 
     important that the desirable aspects of this bill be enacted 
     expeditiously into law, despite the Administration's concerns 
     about other provisions in the legislation.
       The Administration strongly supports the bill's provisions 
     to increase market confidence in the housing government-
     sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and to aid the stability of the 
     financial system by providing the Treasury Department with 
     the temporary authority to assure the GSEs continued access 
     to liquidity and capital. In addition, the Administration 
     strongly supports the creation of a stronger and more 
     effective regulatory regime for the GSEs.
       For nearly five years, the Administration has sought 
     legislation to reform the regulation of the GSEs, 
     particularly Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. On numerous 
     occasions, the Administration has made clear the importance 
     of ensuring that the regulator of these enterprises has 
     powers commensurate with the GSE's size and importance. This 
     bill provides those necessary powers: it enables the new 
     regulator to set both minimum and risk-based capital 
     requirements; directs the regulator to evaluate the GSEs' 
     retained mortgage portfolios in the context of their risk and 
     housing mission; and provides the new regulator with 
     receivership authority, in the event that an insolvent GSE 
     must be liquidated in an orderly fashion.
       As communicated in previous Statements of Administration 
     Policy, the Administration has concerns with several of the 
     other provisions in this bill. It is disappointing that 
     Congress did not remove these objectionable provisions before 
     adjourning for the month of August. While this bill should 
     have been improved, the temporary Treasury authorities and 
     GSE reform provisions are too important to the stability of 
     our Nation's housing market, financial system, and the 
     broader economy not to be enacted immediately. For these 
     reasons, the Administration supports passage of H.R. 3221 as 
     amended.
                                  ____



                               National Governors Association,

                                    Washington, DC, July 22, 2008.
     The President,
     The White House,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. President: The nation's governors urge Congress 
     and the Administration to complete work on legislation to 
     assist at-risk homeowners facing foreclosure, reform and 
     stabilize government-sponsored mortgage financing enterprises 
     (GSEs), and strengthen housing markets.
       While housing foreclosures have affected all states 
     differently, those most negatively affected have responded by 
     using a variety of policy tools to help homeowners in 
     distress. Ultimately, no state will be immune from the 
     cascading effects of this challenge, and its national 
     implications for citizens, communities, and state and local 
     governments justify immediate federal action.
       To that end, governors continue to support a voluntary 
     mortgage-refinancing program backed by Federal Housing 
     Administration insurance that will prevent further 
     foreclosures. Second, while governors acknowledge that any 
     federal action should avoid unintended consequences that 
     could make current conditions worse in the long-term, a one-
     time federal outlay to support the acquisition and 
     rehabilitation of foreclosed properties is vital to stabilize 
     home values and protect neighborhoods. Federal funds should 
     flow directly through states, and states should have 
     flexibility to contract with local governments and nonprofit 
     partners to implement tailored strategies. Such federal 
     pecuniary assistance should be allocated based on the degree 
     of need in each state. Third, any federal action should avoid 
     changes that shift costs to states, preempt state authority 
     to protect the public, or impose new unfunded mandates. Such 
     federal actions undermine state efforts to maintain services, 
     balance budgets, and speed economic recovery.
       Finally, governors commend federal efforts to restore 
     market confidence in the GSEs through the use of targeted and 
     temporary tools. The roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 
     remain critical to the housing markets in the states.
       We look forward to working with Congress and the 
     Administration to stabilize neighborhoods, protect the equity 
     of homeowners, and set the economy onto a path of sustained 
     growth and prosperity.
           Sincerely,
     Governor Jon S. Corzine,
       Chair, Economic Development and Commerce Committee.
     Governor M. Michael Rounds,
       Vice Chair, Economic Development and Commerce Committee.
                                  ____



                               National Governors Association,

                                    Washington, DC, July 22, 2008.
     The Hon. Harry M. Reid,
     Majority Leader,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
     The Hon. Nancy Pelosi,
     Speaker,
     House of Representatives, Washington, DC.
     The Hon. Mitch McConnell,
     Minority Leader,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
     The Hon. John Boehner,
     Minority Leader,
     House of Representatives, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Reid, Senator McConnell, Speaker Pelosi, and 
     Representative Boehner: The nation's governors urge Congress 
     and the Administration to complete work on legislation to 
     assist at-risk homeowners facing foreclosure, reform and 
     stabilize government-sponsored mortgage financing enterprises 
     (GSEs), and strengthen housing markets.
       While housing foreclosures have affected all states 
     differently, those most negatively affected have responded by 
     using a variety of policy tools to help homeowners in 
     distress. Ultimately, no state will be immune from the 
     cascading effects of this challenge, and its national 
     implications for citizens, communities, and state and local 
     governments justify immediate federal action.
       To that end, governors continue to support a voluntary 
     mortgage-refinancing program backed by Federal Housing 
     Administration insurance that will prevent further 
     foreclosures. Second, while governors acknowledge that any 
     federal action should avoid unintended consequences that 
     could make current conditions worse in the long-term, a one-
     time federal outlay to support the acquisition and 
     rehabilitation of foreclosed properties is vital to stabilize 
     home values and protect neighborhoods. Federal funds should 
     flow directly through states, and states should have the 
     flexibility to contract with local governments and nonprofit 
     partners to implement tailored strategies. Such federal 
     pecuniary assistance should be allocated based on the degree 
     of need in each state. Third, any federal action should avoid 
     changes that shift costs to states, preempt state authority 
     to protect the public, or impose new unfunded mandates. Such 
     federal actions undermine state efforts to maintain services, 
     balance budgets, and speed economic recovery.
       Finally, governors commend federal efforts to restore 
     market confidence in the GSEs through the use of targeted and 
     temporary tools. The roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 
     remain critical to the housing markets in the states.
       We look forward to working with Congress and the 
     Administration to stabilize neighborhoods, protect the equity 
     of homeowners, and set the economy onto a path of sustained 
     growth and prosperity.
           Sincerely,
     Governor Jon S. Corzine,
       Chair, Economic Development and Commerce Committee.
     Governor M. Michael Rounds,
       Vice Chair, Economic Development and Commerce Committee.

[[Page H6851]]

                               National Governors Association,

                                    Washington, DC, July 22, 2008.
     The Hon. Christopher J. Dodd,
     Chairman, Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
     The Hon. Barney Frank,
     Chairman, Committee on Financial Services,
     House of Representatives, Washington, DC.
     The Hon. Richard C. Shelby,
     Ranking Member, Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban 
         Affairs,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
     The Hon. Spencer Bachus,
     Ranking Member, Committee on Financial Services,
     House of Representatives, Washington, DC.
       Dear Chairman Dodd, Senator Shelby, Chairman Frank, and 
     Representative Bachus: The nation's governors urge Congress 
     and the Administration to complete work on legislation to 
     assist at-risk homeowners facing foreclosure, reform and 
     stabilize government-sponsored mortgage financing enterprises 
     (GSEs), and strengthen housing markets.
       While housing foreclosures have affected all states 
     differently, those most negatively affected have responded by 
     using a variety of policy tools to help homeowners in 
     distress. Ultimately, no state will be immune from the 
     cascading effects of this challenge, and its national 
     implications for citizens, communities, and state and local 
     governments justify immediate federal action.
       To that end, governors continue to support a voluntary 
     mortgage-refinancing program backed by Federal Housing 
     Administration insurance that will prevent further 
     foreclosures. Second, while governors acknowledge that any 
     federal action should avoid unintended consequences that 
     could make current conditions worse in the long-term, a one-
     time federal outlay to support the acquisition and 
     rehabilitation of foreclosed properties is vital to stabilize 
     home values and protect neighborhoods. Federal funds should 
     flow directly through states, and states should have the 
     flexibility to contract with local governments and nonprofit 
     partners to implement tailored strategies. Such federal 
     pecuniary assistance should be allocated based on the degree 
     of need in each state. Third, any federal action should avoid 
     changes that shift costs to states, preempt state authority 
     to protect the public, or impose new unfunded mandates. Such 
     federal actions undermine state efforts to maintain services, 
     balance budgets, and speed economic recovery.
       Finally, governors commend federal efforts to restore 
     market confidence in the GSEs through the use of targeted and 
     temporary tools. The roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 
     remain critical to the housing markets in the states.
       We look forward to working with Congress and the 
     Administration to stabilize neighborhoods, protect the equity 
     of homeowners, and set the economy onto a path of sustained 
     growth and prosperity.
           Sincerely,
     Governor Jon S. Corzine,
       Chair, Economic Development and Commerce Committee.
     Governor M. Michael Rounds,
       Vice Chair, Economic Development and Commerce Committee.

  The material previously referred to by Mr. Sessions is as follows:

       Amendment to H. Res. 1363 Offered by Mr. Sessions of Texas

       At the end of the resolution, add the following:
       Sec. 4. Immediately upon the adoption of this resolution 
     the House shall, without intervention of any point of order, 
     consider in the House the bill (H.R. 6566) to bring down 
     energy prices by increasing safe, domestic production, 
     encouraging the development of alternative and renewable 
     energy, and promoting conservation. All points of order 
     against the bill are waived. The bill shall be considered as 
     read. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on 
     the bill and any amendment thereto to final passage without 
     intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate on the bill 
     equally divided and controlled by the majority and minority 
     leaders, and (2) an amendment in the nature of a substitute 
     if offered by the majority leader or his designee, which 
     shall be considered as read and shall be separately debatable 
     for 40 minutes equally divided and controlled by the 
     proponent and an opponent; and (3) one motion to recommit 
     with or without instructions.
                                  ____

       (The information contained herein was provided by 
     Democratic Minority on multiple occasions throughout the 
     109th Congress.)

        The Vote on the Previous Question: What It Really Means

       This vote, the vote on whether to order the previous 
     question on a special rule, is not merely a procedural vote. 
     A vote against ordering the previous question is a vote 
     against the Democratic majority agenda and a vote to allow 
     the opposition, at least for the moment, to offer an 
     alternative plan. It is a vote about what the House should be 
     debating.
       Mr. Clarence Cannon's Precedents of the House of 
     Representatives, (VI, 308-311) describes the vote on the 
     previous question on the rule as ``a motion to direct or 
     control the consideration of the subject before the House 
     being made by the Member in charge.'' To defeat the previous 
     question is to give the opposition a chance to decide the 
     subject before the House. Cannon cites the Speaker's ruling 
     of January 13, 1920, to the effect that ``the refusal of the 
     House to sustain the demand for the previous question passes 
     the control of the resolution to the opposition'' in order to 
     offer an amendment. On March 15, 1909, a member of the 
     majority party offered a rule resolution. The House defeated 
     the previous question and a member of the opposition rose to 
     a parliamentary inquiry, asking who was entitled to 
     recognition. Speaker Joseph G. Cannon (R-Illinois) said: 
     ``The previous question having been refused, the gentleman 
     from New York, Mr. Fitzgerald, who had asked the gentleman to 
     yield to him for an amendment, is entitled to the first 
     recognition.''
       Because the vote today may look bad for the Democratic 
     majority they will say ``the vote on the previous question is 
     simply a vote on whether to proceed to an immediate vote on 
     adopting the resolution . . . [and] has no substantive 
     legislative or policy implications whatsoever.'' But that is 
     not what they have always said. Listen to the definition of 
     the previous question used in the Floor Procedures Manual 
     published by the Rules Committee in the 109th Congress, (page 
     56). Here's how the Rules Committee described the rule using 
     information from Congressional Quarterly's ``American 
     Congressional Dictionary'': ``If the previous question is 
     defeated, control of debate shifts to the leading opposition 
     member (usually the minority Floor Manager) who then manages 
     an hour of debate and may offer a germane amendment to the 
     pending business.''
       Deschler's Procedure in the U.S. House of Representatives, 
     the subchapter titled ``Amending Special Rules'' states: ``a 
     refusal to order the previous question on such a rule [a 
     special rule reported from the Committee on Rules] opens the 
     resolution to amendment and further debate.'' (Chapter 21, 
     section 21.2) Section 21.3 continues: Upon rejection of the 
     motion for the previous question on a resolution reported 
     from the Committee on Rules, control shifts to the Member 
     leading the opposition to the previous question, who may 
     offer a proper amendment or motion and who controls the time 
     for debate thereon.''
       Clearly, the vote on the previous question on a rule does 
     have substantive policy implications. It is one of the only 
     available tools for those who oppose the Democratic 
     majority's agenda and allows those with alternative views the 
     opportunity to offer an alternative plan.

  The American Energy Act: Reducing the Price at the Pump Through an 
                  ``All of the Above'' Energy Strategy

       House Republicans have transformed their ``all-of-the-
     above'' energy strategy into a single piece of legislation: 
     The American Energy Act. The bill--a product made possible by 
     energy policies proposed by Members throughout the House 
     Republican Conference--will increase the supply of American-
     made energy, improve conservation and efficiency, and promote 
     new and expanding energy technologies to help lower the price 
     at the pump and reduce America's increasingly costly and 
     dangerous dependence on foreign sources of energy.
       Bipartisan passage of the American Energy Act would 
     demonstrate to the world that America will no longer keep its 
     rich energy resources under lock-and-key. Not only will it 
     help bring down the price of gasoline now, but it will make 
     needed investments in the alternative fuels that will power 
     our lives and our economy in the future. Following is a brief 
     summary of the American Energy Act:
       To increase the supply of American-made energy in 
     environmentally sound ways, the legislation will:
       Open our deep water ocean resources, which will provide an 
     additional three million barrels of oil per day, as well as 
     76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, as proposed in H.R. 
     6108 by Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC). Rep. John Peterson (R-PA) has 
     also worked tirelessly on this issue;
       Open the Arctic coastal plain, which will provide an 
     additional one million barrels of oil per day, as proposed in 
     H.R. 6107 by Rep. Don Young (R-AK);
       Allow development of our nation's shale oil resources, 
     which could provide an additional 2.5 million barrels of oil 
     per day, as proposed in H.R. 6138 by Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI); 
     and
       Increase the supply of gas at the pump by cutting 
     bureaucratic red tape that essentially blocks construction of 
     new refineries, as proposed in H.R. 6139 by Reps. Heather 
     Wilson (R-NM) and Joe Pitts (R-PA).
       To improve energy conservation and efficiency, the 
     legislation will:
       Provide tax incentives for businesses and families that 
     purchase more fuel efficient vehicles, as proposed in H.R. 
     1618 and H.R. 765 by Reps. Dave Camp (R-MI) and Jerry Weller 
     (R-IL);
       Provide a monetary prize for developing the first 
     economically feasible, super-fuel-efficient vehicle reaching 
     100 miles-per-gallon, as proposed in H.R. 6384 by Rep. Rob 
     Bishop (R-UT); and
       Provide tax incentives for businesses and homeowners who 
     improve their energy efficiency, as proposed in H.R. 5984 by 
     Reps. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) and Phil English (R-PA) and in 
     H.R. 778 by Rep. Jerry Weller (R-IL).
       To promote renewable and alternative energy technologies, 
     the legislation will:

[[Page H6852]]

       Spur the development of alternative fuels through 
     government contracting by repealing the ``Section 526'' 
     prohibition on government purchasing of alternative energy 
     and promoting coal-to-liquids technology, as proposed in H.R. 
     5656 by Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), in H.R. 6384 by Rob 
     Bishop (R-UT), and in H.R. 2208 by Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL);
       Establish a renewable energy trust fund using revenues 
     generated by exploration in the deep ocean and on the Arctic 
     coastal plain, as proposed by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA);
       Permanently extend the tax credit for alternative energy 
     production, including wind, solar and hydrogen, as proposed 
     in H.R. 2652 by Rep. Phil English (R-PA) and in H.R. 5984 by 
     Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD); and
       Eliminate barriers to the expansion of emission-free 
     nuclear power production, as proposed in H.R. 6384 by Rep. 
     Rob Bishop (R-UT).

  Ms. CASTOR. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time and I 
move the previous question on the resolution.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on ordering the previous 
question.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further 
proceedings on this question will be postponed.

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