[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 149 (Thursday, September 18, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9011-S9013]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              THE ECONOMY

  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I know it is getting late in the evening, 
and we are at the end of a long day for a lot of people in our country. 
I want to talk about not just the economic crisis our families and our 
country are living through right now, but also what we have seen over 
the last couple of years, and certainly in the last 7 to almost 8 years 
now.
  I think it is instructive to look at where we were 7 years ago and 
where we are today. By virtually every indicator, it is a much tougher 
world for a lot of families, especially working families and poor 
families. On the one hand, you have an increase in the number of 
Americans living in poverty; by one estimate, more than 5.5 million 
more people. So now that number goes above 38 million Americans.
  Health care, there are so many different ways to look at it. I know 
in my home State of Pennsylvania, since 2000, family premiums--the cost 
of health care for a family--are up by almost 50 percent, between 45 
and 50 percent. If you look at it in another way, in terms of overall 
health care, we have seen these national numbers of 47 million 
Americans uninsured right now in the country. Some say it dropped to 45 
million. Whatever that number is--whether it is 45 million or 47 
million--it is way too high.
  I think the current administration has done nothing to address that--
no leadership by the President, no prioritization of that issue as a 
compelling national issue. There are 9 million American children with 
no health insurance, and the President vetoed the expansion of the 
Children's Health Insurance Program, which, as the Presiding Officer 
knows, got almost 70 votes in this Chamber more than once.
  There are so many different ways to look at these numbers. In the 
last year, over 605,000 Americans lost their jobs. The mortgage crisis, 
the foreclosure crisis is in the lives of so many families. I live in a 
State which, if you compare it to other States, relatively, has not had 
as much of a problem as some States such as California or Nevada or 
others.
  But in the month of August of this year--August of 2008--versus 
August of 2007, if you compare it month to month for those 2 years--
August 2007 to August 2008--the foreclosure rate in Pennsylvania is up 
some 60 percent, much higher than the national rate. So even in a State 
which has not felt the same effects, relatively, as these other States, 
now the foreclosure crisis is closing in on places and on families in 
Pennsylvania. In so many indicators, we can see it.
  We can see it obviously on Wall Street in the headlines. I do not 
need to repeat what we have seen in the newspaper. But I think when we 
look at our own communities, we can see the same is true. I am not 
going to read all of this document. I am going to have it printed in 
the Record. I am going to read the headline and ask that the document 
be made a part of the Record: ``Recent major Pennsylvania plant 
closings and/or layoffs.'' I ask unanimous consent to have this 
document printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

        Recent Major Pennsylvania Plant Closings and/or Layoffs


                               Northeast

       Luzerne County, Wilkes-Barre: Geisinger Health System in 
     South Wilkes-Barre is laying off 451 employees, primarily 
     those who work in inpatient services, by September 2008.
       Luzerne County, Mountaintop: Fairchild Semiconductor 
     International is laying off 331 employees, this was announced 
     7/24/2008.


                             Lehigh Valley

       Lehigh County, Allentown: Mack Trucks Inc. is moving 800+ 
     jobs from Allentown to North Carolina when it consolidates 
     its headquarters by the end of 2009. This will be partially 
     offset when Mack moves 200+ jobs from Virginia into its 
     Macungie manufacturing facility by the end of 2008. This was 
     announced on 8/14/2008.


                               Southeast

       Montgomery County, King of Prussia: Idearc Media 
     Corporation laid off some 120 CWA members at the end of 2007 
     from its facility in King of Prussia. The workers there 
     produced advertisements for the yellow-pages phone book. 
     Idearc moved this production to India and laid off half of 
     the 240 employed at this facility.
       Bucks County, Warrington: MeadWestvaco Consumer Packaging 
     Group LLC is laying off 145 when they close their packaging 
     manufacturing plant in Warrington, which was announced on 5/
     15/2008.
       Northumberland County, Elysburg: Paper Magic Group Inc. is 
     laying off 312 employees when it closes its Elysburg 
     facility. This was announced on 1/4/2008.
       Berks County, Reading: Hershey Inc. is laying off 274 when 
     it closes its Reading facility, announced on 3/14/2008.
       Montgomery County, Fort Washington: Chase Home Lending is 
     laying off 266 employees, announced on 5/29/2008.


                        Central and Southcentral

       York County, York: Harley Davidson is laying off 300 as 
     part of a nationwide layoff of 730. The layoffs were 
     scheduled to begin this month.

[[Page S9012]]

       Fulton County, McConnellsburg: JLG Industries is laying off 
     375 employees by September of this year. They produce heavy 
     aerial lifts and work platforms. It was announced in July 
     that they will be laying off 250 employees in McConnellsburg, 
     100 at Shippensburg, and 25 at Bedford.
       Centre County, Bellefonte: Bolton Metal Products is laying 
     off 223 when it closes its Bellefonte facility due to 
     increased foreign competition. This was announced on 2/4/
     2008. A letter under your signature was sent to the 
     Department of Labor in support of the workers when they were 
     denied TAA benefits. The workers then won the benefits on 
     their appeal.
       York County, Red Lion: Yorktowne Inc. is laying off 349 
     employees when it closes its plant #6 in Red Lion. This was 
     announced on 1/23/2008.
       Lancaster County, East Petersburg: Sterling Financial is 
     laying off 325 employees in its East Petersburg facility, 
     which was announced on 4/15/2008.


                               Southwest

       Allegheny County, Bethel Park: Washington Mutual is laying 
     off 247 when it closes its facility in Bethel Park. This was 
     announced on 4/9/2008.


                               Northwest

       Erie County, Corry: Erie Plastics is laying off 189 
     employees, announced on 2/15/2008.

  Mr. CASEY. This is a brief summary of plant closings that involve 
hundreds of jobs in particular communities: Luzerne County--the county 
right next to my home county--451 employees at Geisinger Health System 
losing their jobs; 331 employees at the Fairchild Semiconductor 
International plant being laid off. That was announced in July. In 
Lehigh Valley, at Mack Trucks: more than 800 jobs being lost in our 
State and moving to another State. In Montgomery County--a very 
prosperous county in southeastern Pennsylvania--a corporation there 
laying off 120 employees. In Bucks County, a company there laying off 
145 employees. In Berks County, Hershey Incorporated laying off 274 
employees. That is just in the southeast.
  Then you go to central Pennsylvania. In York County, a plant there--
Harley Davidson, in fact--laying off 300 employees; a plant in Fulton 
County--a very small county in Pennsylvania--laying off 375 employees.
  It goes on from there: hundreds and hundreds of people losing their 
jobs, just in some communities in Pennsylvania, just this year. So that 
is exhibit A in terms of job loss in Pennsylvania.
  But also I think it gets back to this whole question of about what 
the Congress can do. We look at what has been happening on Wall 
Street--the loss of wealth, the loss of confidence--but what is 
happening on Wall Street mirrors what has happened in the lives of a 
lot of families. When you lose your house--and because of foreclosure, 
you are forced out of your home--you lose not only your home, the place 
you live, the place your family lives--a sense of your own, and the 
reality, I should say, of your own net worth--but as much as all that, 
you lose your dignity. So many families have lost that dignity. I think 
as much as we in the Congress, for the next couple of weeks and months, 
even leading into a new administration, will debate policies that 
pertain to financial markets--what about credit, what about capital, 
all these terms, ``liquidity,'' the things we are hearing a lot about 
as they pertain to Wall Street--and regulation is going to be an 
important part of what we do--but as we debate all of those issues, I 
think we have to get back to the fundamentals about why we are living 
through this nightmare.
  Part of it is the failure of this administration to do something in 
an aggressive way about regulation. Part of it is greed. But what 
resulted from that greed and from that inability to regulate markets 
and to oversee mortgages in an appropriate way is the fact that we have 
foreclosures. So if the Congress wants to respond to this in a positive 
way, to get something done, we have to do something about foreclosures, 
to bring that number down, to keep people in their homes and thereby to 
strengthen neighborhoods and our economy overall. If we keep 
neighborhoods strong, keep people in their homes, it will affect the 
whole world's financial markets and certainly our economy.
  So what do we do? Well, I think what we can do--there will be a lot 
of proposals about how to get there--but just broadly--and I will 
conclude with these thoughts--to get there broadly what we have to do 
is to say: If in the July legislation--which was not everything that 
all of us wanted; I know the Presiding Officer and I probably wanted a 
lot more in that bill than we got, but what we did in that bill was to 
create an opportunity for 400,000 people to stay in their homes by 
getting the borrower and the lender in the same room, so to speak, to 
work out a modification, to work out some arrangement to keep that 
family in that home. What we have to do is take that 400,000 and expand 
it exponentially to at least a million and, beyond that, if possible, 
to do everything possible to keep those families in their homes.
  If there is nothing else the Congress does for the next couple of 
months but focusing on the prevention of foreclosures, we will have 
contributed significantly to preventing some of the trauma we see on 
Wall Street and, as we have been hearing over and over again, on the 
Main Streets of America in the lives of our families.
  There are a lot of ways to do that. One of those strategies is making 
sure that the prevention of predatory lending is a higher priority. But 
I think focusing on individual mortgages and the relationship between 
an individual lender and that homeowner is going to be critical to 
this. So we have to expand what we have already done and do more on 
keeping people in their homes.
  We will talk more about it. But do you know what. All the answers to 
these questions do not simply reside in what we talk about in the 
Senate or what happens in the House or here in Washington. A lot of 
good ideas are coming from our communities.
  I point to one example. In Philadelphia--one of the places in 
Pennsylvania where the foreclosure rate has been far too high, even 
though other places have escaped it so far--in the city of 
Philadelphia, the court system, Judge Darnell Jones, and others, the 
mayor of the city, Michael Nutter, a very effective and capable mayor, 
came together with activists and people who understand how to keep 
people in their homes and said: Let's develop a program at the local 
level, and let's try to implement it.
  They developed the Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Pilot 
Program. I have spoken about this before. But it is a kind of example 
we should expand upon and use as an example to keep people in their 
homes. In a word or two, it is an early intervention program. Instead 
of letting these mortgages go so far out of control where someone 
cannot stay in their home, they intervene earlier. The courts are able 
to facilitate loan workouts and other solutions to keep homeowners and 
their families in their homes.
  It is an effort, as I said before, by the city and the mayor's 
office, Mayor Nutter, of being able to bring together housing 
advocates, volunteer attorneys, lenders, and servicers who all share 
the same goal of keeping people in their homes.
  Now, the interests of these groups are divergent, but they have set 
aside those differences, and they realize that stemming the tide of 
foreclosure helps everyone. It obviously helps the homeowner and the 
family and the community. But it also helps lenders and, in a very 
substantial way, our economy.
  So that is one example. We will talk more about it later in detail. 
But we need to enact policies that make sure those kinds of good 
examples coming from our communities become part of national policy. If 
we do that--if we are able to keep more and more, instead of 400,000 
people staying in their homes, we make that 1 million, or even higher 
than that; if we do that, I think we can begin to stabilize the root 
cause of a lot of our problems.

  In addition to that, we have to do more in regulation. We have to do 
much more in holding government agencies accountable that should have 
been the cop on the beat, so to speak, when it comes to what happens to 
lending practices and to mortgage practices.
  So there is much to do, but I think the best thing we can do is focus 
on the root cause of this, which is foreclosures and the prevention of 
those foreclosures through counseling, through good programs, and 
through bringing people together at a time of real stress in the life 
of families. I think we can do that. I think we have done that in the 
past. I think it is a bipartisan wish. What we are going to need here 
is leadership beyond the finger-pointing that we often see here in 
Washington.

[[Page S9013]]

  So if we bring that spirit to this priority of stabilizing our 
economy, I think we can move forward and have a much stronger economy. 
If we choose not to and choose to focus on issues that will divide us 
when it comes to foreclosures, I think we are going to be off on the 
wrong track.

                          ____________________