[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 185 (Thursday, December 10, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H14487-H14496]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 PROVIDING FOR FURTHER CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 4173, WALL STREET REFORM 
                  AND CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT OF 2009

  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, 
I call up House Resolution 962 and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 964

       Resolved, That at any time after the adoption of this 
     resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule 
     XVIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the 
     Whole House on the state of the Union for further 
     consideration of the bill (H.R. 4173) to provide for 
     financial regulatory reform, to protect consumers and 
     investors, to enhance Federal understanding of insurance 
     issues, to regulate the over-the-counter derivatives markets, 
     and for other purposes. No further general debate shall be in 
     order.
       Sec. 2.(a) The bill, as amended, shall be considered for 
     amendment under the five- minute rule and shall be considered 
     as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill, 
     as amended, are waived.
       (b) Notwithstanding clause 11 of rule XVIII, no further 
     amendment to the bill, as amended, shall be in order except 
     the amendments printed in the report of the Committee on 
     Rules accompanying this resolution and amendments en bloc 
     described in section 3 of this resolution.
       (c) Each amendment printed in the report of the Committee 
     on Rules shall be considered only in the order printed in the 
     report (except as specified in section 4 of this resolution), 
     may be offered only by a Member designated in the report, 
     shall be considered as read, shall be debatable for the time 
     specified in the report equally divided and controlled by the 
     proponent and an opponent, shall not be subject to amendment, 
     and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the 
     question.
       (d) All points of order against amendments printed in the 
     report of the Committee on Rules or amendments en bloc 
     described in section 3 of this resolution are waived except 
     those arising under clause 9 or 10 of rule XXI.
       Sec. 3. It shall be in order at any time for the chair of 
     the Committee on Financial Services or his designee to offer 
     amendments en bloc consisting of amendments printed in the 
     report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution 
     not earlier disposed

[[Page H14488]]

     of Amendments en bloc offered pursuant to this section shall 
     be considered as read, shall be debatable for 20 minutes 
     equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking 
     minority member of the Committee on Financial Services or 
     their designees, shall not be subject to amendment, and shall 
     not be subject to a demand for division of the question. The 
     original proponent of an amendment included in such 
     amendments en bloc may insert a statement in the 
     Congressional Record immediately before the disposition of 
     the amendments en bloc.
       Sec. 4. The Chair of the Committee of the Whole may 
     recognize for consideration of any amendment printed in the 
     report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution 
     out of the order printed, but not sooner than 30 minutes 
     after the chair of the Committee on Financial Services or his 
     designee announces from the floor a request to that effect.
       Sec. 5. At the conclusion of consideration of the bill for 
     amendment the Committee shall rise and report the bill, as 
     amended, to the House with such further amendments as may 
     have been adopted. In the case of sundry amendments reported 
     from the Committee, the question of their adoption shall be 
     put to the House en gros and without division of the 
     question. The previous question shall be considered as 
     ordered on the bill and amendments thereto to final passage 
     without intervening motion except one motion to recommit with 
     or without instructions.
       Sec. 6. The Chair may entertain a motion that the Committee 
     rise only if offered by the chair of the Committee on 
     Financial Services or his designee. The Chair may not 
     entertain a motion to strike out the enacting words of the 
     bill (as described in clause 9 of rule XVIII).
       Sec. 7. During consideration of H.R. 4173, the Chair may 
     reduce to two minutes the minimum time for electronic voting 
     under clause 6 of rule XVIII and clauses 8 and 9 of rule XX.
       Sec. 8. In the engrossment of H.R. 4173, the Clerk is 
     authorized to make technical and conforming changes to 
     amendatory instructions.

                              {time}  1545

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Colorado is recognized 
for 1 hour.


 =========================== NOTE =========================== 

  
  December 10, on Page H14488 the following appeared: conforming 
changes to amendatory instructions. 1545 Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. 
Speaker, for
  
  The online version should be corrected to read: conforming 
changes to amendatory instructions. 1545 The SPEAKER pro tempore. 
The gentleman from Colorado is recognized for 1 hour. Mr. 
PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, for


 ========================= END NOTE ========================= 

  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, for purposes of debate only, I yield the 
customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions).


                             General Leave

  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I also ask unanimous consent that all Members be 
given 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on 
House Resolution 964.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Colorado?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 964 provides for consideration of 
amendments to H.R. 4173, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection 
Act of 2009. The rules provide for consideration of 36 amendments and 
authorizes the chairman of the Financial Services Committee to move 
amendments en bloc. In the case of amendments reported from the 
committee, the question of their adoption in the House shall be put en 
gros and without division of the question. The rule provides one motion 
to recommit with or without instructions and allows the Chair to reduce 
to 2 minutes the minimum time for electronic voting and also authorizes 
the Clerk to make technical and conforming changes to amendatory 
instructions.
  Mr. Speaker, as we have seen over the past year, our financial system 
is broken, and we can no longer afford to maintain the status quo. We 
face a recession. I call it a Republican recession based on the Wild 
West practices of Wall Street and the Republican Congress and the Bush 
administration.
  As a result of this Republican recession, we are talking about people 
losing their investments and retirement savings last year when the 
stock market reacted to the heart attack our banking system suffered 
and the countless jobs that were lost throughout the recession. This 
bill makes critical reforms to our financial system to address this 
Wild West era of lax regulation that the Bush administration 
encouraged.
  When Wall Street operates like the Wild West, Main Street suffers, 
and that is precisely what we've seen for the last few years. The Wall 
Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act preserves our economic 
system, restores confidence and takes reasonable steps to prevent 
future meltdowns. It establishes a robust regulatory oversight regime 
creating transparency in areas previously hidden from the public.
  In this bill, we address consumer protection, investor protection, 
regulation of hedge funds, credit rating agencies, insurance, 
derivatives, executive pay, mortgage reform, and we eliminate ``too big 
to fail.'' Loopholes are closed, consolidated regulation is improved, 
and transparency is increased so there is no place to hide.
  But, Mr. Speaker, yesterday we heard repeatedly from the other side 
that this bill puts the taxpayers on the hook in addressing ``too big 
to fail.'' Well, taxpayers were put on the hook by the lax regulation 
of the Bush administration which cost this country and each and every 
citizen trillions and trillions of dollars and millions of jobs, 4 
million jobs during the last year of the Bush administration.
  In this bill, with those institutions that are so big that they would 
create a domino effect such as we saw last year, we liquidate or close 
those firms at no expense to the taxpayer. And I put in precisely a 
provision that any moneys get paid to the taxpayer first.
  Unlike our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, we do not want 
these firms to reorganize. We want to put them out of their existence, 
for no one is too big to fail. There is no guarantee for these 
institutions, and precisely what we do is provide preventive measures 
before this comes about, divestiture, increasing capital, a whole 
variety of preventive measures before bringing about a liquidation. 
But, ultimately, if an institution that affects the financial system 
grows so large or is so complex, ultimately, it is the liquidation.
  This bill is about more than just reforming our financial system, 
though. It is about people's lives and the jobs lost and restoring 
confidence to a broken system. None of us wants to ever face anything 
like we did last year, and this bill will help ensure that the Wild 
West mentality and lax regulation promoted by the Republican Party, 
which led to huge frauds and robberies, like those committed by Bernard 
Madoff, Petters, and Stanford and their various Ponzi schemes, doesn't 
happen again. It is not a coincidence that those kinds of frauds on a 
scale unlike anything we had ever seen before occurred under the Bush 
administration.
  We are reforming our regulatory system so it is able to fix problems 
before they become a threat to our economic system. The changes this 
bill makes are essential to rebuilding Main Street and getting credit 
flowing to small businesses, creating jobs, and rebuilding our economy.
  I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the rule and the underlying 
bill.
  With that, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Colorado 
yielding me the time, and I will use such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I do admit, I know the gentleman was not here back in 
2003, but on September 11, 2003, President Bush formally asked the 
Congress for legislation to regulate Freddie and Fannie, seeing a 
problem that was ahead. The ranking member of the Financial Services 
Committee, the gentleman, Mr. Frank, had a quick response that said 
there is no problem. There is no problem. That's the last thing we 
should be doing. Their books are clean. They knew that everything was 
okay. In 2005, just the next session, legislation did pass and was 
filibustered in the Senate by Democrats, filibustered by Democrats.
  To say that the Wild West exists would be a misnomer in financial 
services terms. There were people who broke the law. There have always 
been people who break the law. But the people who broke the law knew 
that they were breaking the law and did so at the expense of other 
people's money.
  But if you want to talk about recession, let's talk about the 
recession that we are in right now after 3 years of Democratic control 
in this House of Representatives. Let's talk about 85 percent increase 
in spending that this body is going to take up a bill today to spend 85 
percent more in the last 2 years by this Democrat-controlled Congress. 
So, I think that we should be very careful about trying to describe a 
problem when, in fact, someone else is adding to it and making it 
worse.
  Today we are going to consider a 1,300-page bill which will be a 
Federal takeover of the financial services industry. That is a heck of 
an answer. An hour ago, I discussed the flaws of the underlying bill, 
and now you will hear about a number of amendments that

[[Page H14489]]

were shut out by our friends, the Democrats. They shut out Democrats. 
They shut out Republicans. They shut out bipartisan amendments. And 
here we have on the floor today this massive bill.
  I offered a cautionary amendment that would make this bill 
ineffective if the Government Accountability Office were to find that 
this bill would kill more than 1 million free enterprise jobs. I stood 
before the Rules Committee and said that if this bill kills more than 1 
million jobs, let's not do it. Forget it. On a party-line vote, my 
friends in the Rules Committee, the Democrats, voted ``no.'' That's 
because we are more concerned about politics than we are about the 
American people, jobs, and the economy.
  Also, I offered two commonsense amendments that simply clarify that 
this bill would not create a bottomless fund for frivolous lawsuits by 
trial lawyers. The first amendment deals with giving shareholders a 
nonbinding vote on executive compensation packages. My amendment 
clarifies that this new vote creates no new private right of action. 
Without this amendment, trial lawyers will be able to exploit a brand 
new opportunity to shake down companies for huge payouts. This is a 
commonsense amendment, and it was rejected by the Rules Committee on a 
party-line vote. Once again, the Democrats said no, no.
  The second amendment I introduced was to protect businesses from 
frivolous lawsuits and simply clarifies that none of the new 
registration requirements for investment advisers of private funds 
shall be construed as creating a private right of action. This is a 
noncontroversial measure, or it should be, seeking to protect investors 
from frivolous lawsuits, and this, too, was rejected.
  Mr. Speaker, it is my belief that my colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle care more about creating a trial lawyer bonanza than 
protecting businesses, consumers, our financial systems and certainly 
the free enterprise system.
  In an effort to clarify the intent of the executive compensation 
provisions, I introduced an amendment that would have provided sunshine 
and transparency for shareholders by requiring full SEC disclosure 
about who is financing that purchase to influence votes on this new, 
congressionally mandated, nonbinding shareholder resolution. Put 
simply, this amendment would provide shareholders with access to 
information about who is trying to influence a vote. Of course not. We 
would never want to do that. Trial lawyers would hate that. So the 
Democrat Party up in the Rules Committee, they got it. They complied. 
No.
  As Federal candidates, we are obligated to disclose to the Federal 
Election Commission the name, occupation, and amount given by our 
donors. We require this because public interest is advanced by letting 
voters know who funds each candidate's campaign. This is important. My 
amendment asks for the same disclosure so that shareholders know who is 
trying to influence a vote, what people, what organizations, what 
groups, what consumer advocates, the amount of money, and who is 
influencing this. Surprisingly, this amendment was also voted down. So 
much for transparency and the light of day.
  The goal of regulatory reform should be to help, not hinder, our 
economy and to sustain economic growth and job creation. This 
legislation does the opposite. It takes a one-size-fits-all approach to 
governing, undermining U.S. economic competitiveness and business 
growth. That's why so many business groups oppose this. This Democratic 
solution will only increase government intervention in the financial 
markets, ration resources, limit consumer choice, raise taxes, dictate 
wages, and kill jobs.
  Mr. Speaker, the motives are clear. My Democrat colleagues are using 
policy and regulation to force a government takeover of the free 
enterprise system while paving the road for trial lawyers and killing 
American jobs. I guess this is nothing new. We should get used to this.
  I encourage my colleagues to vote against this rule and the 
underlying legislation.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Doggett).

                              {time}  1600

  Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, a year ago as home foreclosures shot up and 
retirement accounts fell to new lows, after years of permissiveness 
toward corporate misconduct, the Bush administration responded by 
handing Wall Street the biggest subprime loan in American history using 
American taxpayer money. I opposed that Bush bailout because it did not 
provide adequate protection for our taxpayers. I wanted those who 
caused the crisis to be responsible for a little more of the cleanup. 
Instead, Wall Street banks took taxpayer money and they continued their 
scams with teaser rates and hiding rate increases in the fine print.
  Well, now today through this legislation, we respond with extensive 
reforms. Maybe not all the reforms that I personally would prefer, but 
reforms that can really empower the cops on the beat. One of the most 
important of these is the Consumer Finance Protection Agency envisioned 
by Professor Elizabeth Warren, who Democrats appointed to head the 
oversight committee over all of these bailout funds. Professor Warren 
is independent. She is a visionary and an expert in this area. Working 
with our colleagues Representatives Miller, Delahunt, Frank, and others 
of us, we have provided cops on the beat to address abusive lending 
practices that helped cause this crisis to see that they do not plague 
consumers once again.
  There's a line in an old Hank Williams, Jr. song, ``The cops are 
against the robbers but the laws are against the cops.'' We need this 
law to create a new squad of financial cops whose sole job is to 
protect taxpayers from others' greed. It is working families that we 
cannot let fail, and it is time we enacted the meaningful protections 
for American consumers that are embodied in this legislation.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from San Dimas, California (Mr. Dreier), the ranking member 
of the Rules Committee.
  (Mr. DREIER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. DREIER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this rule.
  It's been fascinating to listen to the debate here, and a lot of 
hyperbole has come forward. We have heard terms like the ``Republican 
recession,'' and ``Wild West mentality.'' And the fascinating thing 
that I have just been talking to a couple of my staff members about is 
much of the legislation which is being criticized so harshly was signed 
into law by not George W. Bush but the President before George W. Bush, 
President Bill Clinton. So I think that we should recognize that there 
has been a lot of bipartisanship in creating what we all admit have 
been excesses.
  Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, we found that the regulators were asleep 
at the switch. The name Bernie Madoff was thrown out earlier. The fact 
of the matter is we know that the regulators were asleep at the switch 
when it came to dealing with that. We can look at a wide range of other 
areas where inadequate oversight took place. The question that we have 
before us right now is do we want to create what many of us are 
concerned about, and that is unintended consequences?
  One of the things that we have found over the past year plus has been 
a tremendous contraction in credit. Individuals who want to utilize 
their credit cards or start a business, buy a home, have been having 
real difficulty gaining access to credit. We've seen this contraction 
take place.
  My concern, as we look at this legislation, is that we're going to 
take this contraction of credit and make it permanent. We will 
basically be making it permanent. Why? Because we are going to codify a 
regulatory structure which is going to undermine the ability of the 
American people to have access to the best quality product at the 
lowest possible price.
  A lot of things have been said and done over the past year which I 
think lead us to be overreacting. This massive expansion of government. 
We can start with the stimulus bill, cap-and-trade, this 2,500-page 
bill that we just reported out with all these appropriation bills that 
had an 85 percent increase in nondefense discretionary spending. This 
is not a way to encourage and lay the groundwork for us to

[[Page H14490]]

get our economy moving again. So I am very concerned about that.
  I want to talk about one particular amendment, Mr. Speaker, that I 
offered in the Rules Committee, and that amendment dealt with a huge 
inequity that unfortunately took place when the economic downturn 
began. We unfortunately have seen a lot of financial institutions go 
under. One of them that went under very early on was a California 
institution known as IndyMac Bank. At that time, which was July of last 
year, we found that we had the $100,000 guarantee and that was it. 
Shortly thereafter, as more institutions went down, we increased that 
level to $250,000.
  My colleague Ms. Harman introduced an amendment which I offered in 
the Rules Committee earlier today which would simply have allowed us to 
have a chance to debate that. There are just under 9,000 depositors and 
a total of $233 million that would be making these individuals whole 
who have been depositors because the depositors in other financial 
institutions, Mr. Speaker, were able to have the $250,000 guarantee 
provided, and yet these depositors at IndyMac, victimized in the same 
way that these other depositors were with the failure of institutions, 
were unfortunately prevented from being able to do that. We simply 
wanted the House to debate that amendment so that we'd have the chance 
to make these hardworking men and women from not only California but 
across the country who happened to be depositors at this institution to 
be able to receive what every other depositor who dealt with a failed 
institution following its failure was able to face.
  I offered Ms. Harman's amendment, I was happy to join with her in 
doing that, and on a party-line vote, we as Republicans said that this 
amendment should be made in order; the Democrats chose to vote en masse 
against allowing a debate to take place for these hardworking 
individuals who had deposits that were in excess of $100,000.
  So, Mr. Speaker, in light of that and the unintended consequences 
which I right now am foreseeing, I hope very much that we can defeat 
this rule. Defeating the rule, because so many amendments that should 
have been made in order were not made in order, will allow us to come 
back and put into place a very, very decent work product that can end 
this contraction of credit and get our economy back on track.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, first to respond to my good friend 
from California, he talked about getting the best quality product at 
the best price. Part of the problem that we had, Madam Speaker, is the 
fact that you didn't know if you had the best quality product because 
the way things were done under the Bush administration and the lax 
regulation that occurred, you didn't know whether there was money in 
the Bernie Madoff account. The whole approach here is to make sure that 
these things are scrutinized and that people know what it is that 
they're getting into when they invest or when they buy a product.
  Mr. DREIER. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I yield to my good friend.
  Mr. DREIER. I just want to say that the issue of transparency and 
disclosure is what we are focusing on with the alternative that we put 
forward. This bill does not do that at all.
  I thank my friend for yielding.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Reclaiming my time, I would say that my friend is 
mistaken because the bill proposed by my friends on the Republican side 
does nothing but protect Wall Street, not make it transparent and to 
avoid hidden bombs that might go off from time to time.
  I would like to yield now 3 minutes to my colleague from Colorado 
(Mr. Polis).
  (Mr. POLIS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. POLIS. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the rule to bring H.R. 
4173, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, to 
the floor of the House. I'd like to thank Chairman Frank and my 
colleagues on the Financial Services Committee as well as their staffs 
for the hard work in crafting this legislation. I'd also like to thank 
the other committees who worked on this bill, including the Agriculture 
Committee; the Energy and Commerce Committee; the Judiciary Committee; 
the Budget Committee; the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform; 
the Committee on Ways and Means; and, of course, my Chair, Chairwoman 
Slaughter, on the Committee on Rules, as well as my colleague 
Representative Perlmutter for managing the rule. The crafting of this 
legislation has truly been an all-hands-on effort.
  The rule is a fair one. I would like to thank Chairman Frank for 
including two amendments which I offered into his manager's amendment.
  Our economy is driven by private investment. In order to encourage 
investment, we need to give investors peace of mind that at the end of 
a fraud, they have some recourse. Due to limited protections available, 
many investors realized significant losses as a result of investment 
fraud, the most infamous of which was the Madoff Ponzi scheme. In my 
district in Colorado, the dreams of a comfortable retirement from a 
lifetime of work or a college education for their kids were stolen from 
many of my constituents, most of whom had no idea that they were 
investing in Madoff. The Securities Investor Protection Corporation, or 
SIPC, is a wise insurance program that is simply outdated and 
insufficient. Investor protection must evolve. My first amendment is an 
important step in this evolution. My amendment directs the Comptroller 
General to study the feasibility of optional, premium-based additional 
coverage for investors. While there is private insurance available, 
SIPC plus will give investors at once choice and peace of mind to know 
that should they become a victim of a fraud, they're protected and will 
be able to realize a cash settlement in the event of a fraud to begin 
rebuilding.
  My second amendment relates to student loans. As a representative of 
the district that's home to one of our Nation's premier public 
institutions of higher learning, the University of Colorado at Boulder, 
I'm keenly aware of the importance of college affordability. Families 
have had less income to pay for students' education, and State 
governments have had fewer dollars to fund higher education, resulting 
in higher tuition for students and families. We have a healthy Federal 
student loan program because we recognize that subsidizing investment 
in education yields positive economic results. Unfortunately, high 
interest private industry loans disguised as equal alternatives to 
Federal loans have condemned graduates to debts so outrageous as to 
destroy the very opportunity for prosperity that college offers. An 
alarming number of students are taking out high-cost debt, frequently 
with interest rates as high as 18 percent, and debt that doesn't offer 
the same favorable deferment or repayment options as Federal loans. 
Even more troubling, one out of four private loan borrowers took out no 
Federal Stafford loans and more than half of them didn't even apply for 
student aid.
  My amendment addresses this by requiring that before a private loan 
is funded, financial aid advisers inform students about the Federal 
loan options that are available to them. In 2007, two out of three 
students with private loans hadn't exhausted their lower-cost Federal 
financial aid. Students and their families should apply for and exhaust 
all of their available less-expensive Federal financial aid options 
before turning to risky and expensive student loans.
  I am also grateful to Chairman Frank and the Rules Committee for 
eliminating troubling language regarding liability of Internet access 
providers and also for the study of how best to fund dissolution 
authority and hopefully find alternatives to the current language.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman 
from the great State of Illinois (Mrs. Biggert).
  Mrs. BIGGERT. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Madam Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this restrictive rule.
  I filed several amendments to protect taxpayers in the economy from 
regulatory mismanagement. Unfortunately, they were summarily rejected 
by the Rules Committee. On a bill of this magnitude and significance, I 
would hope the majority wouldn't be so eager to shut the door on 
bipartisan amendments or, for that matter, any good

[[Page H14491]]

ideas from Members of any party that would improve the bill.
  Thanks to the rule, Madam Speaker, amendments I offered to prevent a 
shift of U.S. businesses overseas are barred from consideration. My 
amendments would have preserved language in the underlying bill, a 
result of amendments that I offered in the Financial Services Committee 
that unfortunately will be undone by the Peterson-Frank amendment.
  The result, according to testimony provided by one of my constituents 
who is the head of the largest U.S. futures exchange in the world, will 
be a dramatic shift of transactions out of the U.S. exchanges and over 
to foreign competitors abroad.
  The two amendments I offered at Rules would have safeguarded 
competition, flexibility, and innovation in the U.S. markets. At a time 
of record job losses, how can we afford to push businesses out of the 
country?
  My third amendment would have prevented the misuse of housing 
counseling funds by ACORN and its affiliates. It would withdraw ACORN's 
Federal housing certification. Given the group's clear link to illegal 
and inappropriate activities, how can we divert precious resources from 
legitimate housing counselors working overtime to help struggling 
homeowners?
  Unfortunately, this bill will not allow an up-or-down vote on any of 
these amendments. Madam Speaker, these issues deserve a full and fair 
debate and a vote on the House floor. I urge my colleagues to oppose 
this rule.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman 
from Maine (Ms. Pingree).

                              {time}  1615

  Ms. PINGREE of Maine. I thank the gentleman from Colorado, my good 
colleague on the Rules Committee, both for yielding me the time and for 
all of his hard work on the Financial Services Committee, and to the 
Chair, Barney Frank, as well. I know these committee members have 
worked long and hard on this particular bill that is soon to be before 
us.
  For too long we have looked the other way as the big banks and the 
credit card companies ran roughshod over American consumers. By 
exploiting loopholes, they have acted recklessly and irresponsibly to 
line their pockets, leaving America's families and small businesses to 
pay the price.
  Effective Wall Street reform is vital to creating jobs and growing 
our economy. This bill puts in place commonsense rules to ensure that 
these same irresponsible actors that caused the worst financial crisis 
since the Great Depression are not allowed to jeopardize the recovery 
we have worked so hard to begin. This bill, Madam Speaker, H.R. 4173, 
holds the big banks and the credit card companies accountable.
  Today we can create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency to 
make sure that credit card companies stop misleading consumers with 
hidden fees buried in the small print or teaser rates that lure people 
in and let the banks make huge profits. Americans look to the FDA and 
the Consumer Product Safety Commission to keep the food we eat, the 
medicine we take and the toys we buy for our children safe; now it's 
time to make sure that the financial products and services that we buy 
are secure, understandable, and transparent.
  With this bill, we can ensure that hardworking families in Maine and 
across the country are never again on the hook for risky and 
irresponsible schemes by putting an end to taxpayer bailouts and ``too 
big to fail'' firms that threaten to bring down our entire economy. We 
can inject transparency and accountability into a financial system that 
has far too long been allowed to operate behind closed doors, trading 
complex financial instruments in secret without the necessary 
regulation and enforcement.
  Madam Speaker, the big banks, irresponsible mortgage lenders, and 
predatory credit card companies have made a mess out of our economy, 
and they have expected the American taxpayer to clean up. We can't let 
that happen again. It is time to ensure that those who acted so 
irresponsibly are finally held accountable and made to play by rules 
that are fair.
  I realize this bill is not perfect. It could go further, and I think 
many rightfully agree we should go further. But this bill before us 
today is a critical first step in restoring confidence in our financial 
markets. We must act now to create jobs and grow the economy. This is 
the fair and commonsense regulation that the American public expects 
and deserves.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam Speaker, the Republican Party is made up of a 
group of Members here in Congress who have various backgrounds, and one 
of them who I am getting ready to yield to came as a small businessman 
from a manufacturing firm that employed people, cared about their 
community and the families that worked therein.
  I am delighted to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Clarence, New 
York (Mr. Lee).
  Mr. LEE of New York. Madam Speaker, I rise today to oppose the rule 
and to speak on behalf of two commonsense amendments I offered which 
were not accepted.
  The first amendment, sponsored with my friend from Texas (Mr. 
Hensarling), simply limits the power of the Consumer Financial Product 
Agency's credit czar if the national employment rate remains at these 
astronomical levels. Studies have shown that this bill will stifle job 
growth across our entire economic spectrum. We should be focusing on 
job creation, not job extinction. Handing off more control of the 
private sector to unelected bureaucrats is not going to solve our 
economic problems.
  The second amendment I offered would restrict the CFPA, this new 
massive agency created by this bill, from mandating disclosures to be 
made in any language other than English. English is the principal 
language in which commerce is conducted in the United States. Imagine 
the nightmare if disclosures must be reported in any of the more than 
300 languages that are spoken here in the United States; it would 
ultimately be sheer chaos. The cost of compliance for private 
businesses to print materials in multiple languages amounts to more or 
less an added tax and pushing people further into the unemployment 
ranks.
  H.R. 4173 is going to eliminate jobs, raise taxes, create a new 
bailout authority, and create a massive new government bureaucracy. I 
urge my colleagues to vote against this rule.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I would just say to my friend from the 
Financial Services Committee two things as to his amendments. It was in 
January of 2009, the last month that George Bush was in office, that we 
had the highest job loss throughout this whole period. Since that time, 
it has been shrinking. So under the Bush administration, tremendous job 
loss in 2008, up to 4 million jobs. And those job losses have been 
shrinking ever since.
  I would also say to my friend from the Financial Services Committee, 
we had this debate in the committee on the language issue. As he knows, 
my grandparents are from Ukraine. My grandfather came over here, was a 
successful businessman, but even over a 40- or 50-year period, he had 
difficulty with the written language. And where we have seen so much 
fraud and so much con artistry is with people who have difficulty with 
the language being taken advantage of. And part of this bill, the 
consumer protection bill, is so that we avoid that kind of fraud and 
scheming because of people who can't speak the language.
  With that, I would yield 1\1/2\ minutes to my friend from Illinois 
(Mr. Quigley).
  Mr. QUIGLEY. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of this measure, 
which includes two important proposals that I wrote and worked with the 
Financial Services Committee to include.
  The first one ensures that regulators can do their jobs and regulate 
effectively for systemic risk. Under current law, regulators are not 
best equipped to prevent systemically risky behavior because their 
focus is on individual firms, not on the system as a whole.
  My second measure that is included in the manager's amendment came 
from a constituent request and is strongly supported by groups like the 
AFL-CIO, the NAACP, and the National Fair Housing Alliance. It simply 
says that if your loan modification is denied, you deserve to know why. 
It makes the loan modification program more transparent by giving 
homeowners the ability to verify their mortgage servicer's net present 
value analysis. If the servicer used an incorrect

[[Page H14492]]

credit score, or misstated income, or made any number of mistakes, then 
you might be improperly denied loan modification.
  I urge my colleagues to support this measure which includes both of 
these proposals.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam Speaker, the gentleman from Colorado keeps trying 
to search and search and search and find who to pin this on, this bad 
economy and the job loss. Well, I would direct the gentleman to 
something that we have known for a long, long time in this country. The 
answer is, pin the tail on the donkey.
  Madam Speaker, at this time, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from Clinton Township, New Jersey (Mr. Lance).
  Mr. LANCE. Thank you, Mr. Sessions.
  I rise today in opposition to this restrictive rule and in opposition 
to the underlying legislation.
  This bill will have severe negative consequences on our financial 
sector and economy as a whole. Specifically, I am strongly opposed to 
title I, which would create a permanent bailout fund at the FDIC, paid 
for in part by companies that will never see any real benefit. 
Furthermore, while every Member of this body supports increased 
consumer protection, title IV of the bill related to that important 
issue could do more harm than good by restricting choice and further 
tightening consumer credit markets.
  The language of this title is far too broad and ill-defined. Its 
uncertainty will only hurt consumers while financial companies retreat 
from the market to avoid running afoul of a new Federal bureaucracy.
  I am also concerned with the title's insistence on completely 
separating consumer protection regulation from prudential safety and 
soundness regulation. In my judgment, to accomplish either, regulators 
should be looking at both. This bill does not accomplish that.
  Finally, I want to express my disappointment that this body will not 
be allowed to debate and vote on an issue of importance to all 
taxpayers, renewing the Troubled Asset Relief Program set to expire on 
December 31. I offered an amendment last evening in the Rules Committee 
to ensure that TARP ends as scheduled and any funds repaid or not yet 
spent are used for the statutorily mandated purpose of debt reduction 
and not for further spending. The amendment failed on a purely partisan 
basis.
  The President's plan announced earlier this week to use TARP to fund 
more governmental spending violates the intent of the law, does very 
little to create jobs, and further adds to America's ever-growing debt 
burden. Colleagues on both sides of the aisle believe we need to end 
TARP. This body should have been allowed to have a substantive debate 
on this issue.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, to my good friend from Texas, I think 
it is easy to know who to blame, and that is the policies of the 
Republican Congress and the President, George Bush, because things fell 
apart, jobs were lost, trillions of dollars lost, and companies fleeing 
as a result of those policies, which we are trying to repair and 
correct.
  Madam Speaker, I would like to inquire as to how much time each side 
has remaining.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Loretta Sanchez of California). The 
gentleman from Colorado has 13\1/2\ minutes. The gentleman from Texas 
has 11\1/2\ minutes.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I would like to yield 3 minutes to the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman).
  Mr. SHERMAN. I have had to sit here and listen as one Republican 
after another comes down and says that this bill facilitates bailouts. 
Most of those Republicans have quoted me. I did say that the Treasury 
draft of this bill submitted last summer was ``TARP on steroids,'' but 
apparently they didn't notice that the bill changed in committee. In 
fact, the gentleman from New Jersey came down and said he wants to end 
TARP--which I voted against twice--and that on a straight party-line 
vote, the Rules Committee turned down his amendment. I voted for such 
an amendment in the Financial Services Committee, and last I checked, I 
was a Democrat. But I want to focus on the issue of bailouts, comparing 
the bill to the Republican substitute.
  Now, keep in mind that most of the bailouts we've done have not been 
through the TARP program, but rather were pursuant to sections of law 
that existed long ago, including, and especially, 13-3 of the Federal 
Reserve Act, which was adopted in 1932. It is that one code section 
alone that has allowed $3 trillion to be spent on what could be called 
bailouts.
  So, since the biggest bailouts have come from the Fed, we ought to 
end secrecy at the Fed. The Democratic bill includes the Ron Paul-Alan 
Grayson amendment to audit the Fed; for reasons I do not understand, 
the Republican substitute does not. Their substitute allows the Fed to 
continue to be exempt from many GAO audits.
  Now, as I said, the biggest bailouts are under section 13-3 of the 
Federal Reserve Act. That has been used for $3 trillion, but the Fed 
could legally use it for $30 trillion. The Republican bill does very 
little to limit the Fed's power under section 13-3. The Democratic bill 
includes my amendments to put a dollar limit on the amount that the Fed 
can obligate and my amendment to require that only the most secure 
loans are made. For some reason, the Republican bill limits the Fed 
barely at all.
  12 U.S.C. 1823(c)(4)(G)(i) under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act 
has been used by the FDIC to make loan guarantees of more than $300 
billion, and in fact there is no dollar limit on this section. What 
they've done with $300 billion they could have done with $800 billion. 
The Democratic bill suspends this broad authority. The Republican bill 
contains no limits on this authority.
  So if you want to live in Bailout Nation, then you've got to make 
sure that the Fed doesn't lose its exemptions from audits.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman's time has expired.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I yield the gentleman another 30 seconds.
  Mr. SHERMAN. You have to make sure that the Fed's powers under 13-3, 
which have already been used to the tune of $3 trillion, remain 
unlimited and could go to $30 trillion. And you have to keep the FDIC 
with unlimited powers under 12 U.S.C. 1823(c)(4)(G)(i). If you want to 
live in Bailout Nation, you have to vote for the Republican substitute.
  If you want to rein in the bailout powers of the executive branch, 
and if you want to make sure that the Fed is subject to audit, you have 
to vote for the Democratic bill.

                              {time}  1630

  Mr. SESSIONS. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Eden Prairie, 
Minnesota (Mr. Paulsen).
  Mr. PAULSEN. I thank the gentleman.
  Madam Speaker, I rise to oppose this rule because there were numerous 
amendments which would have improved this bill, but they were not made 
in order in the Rules Committee.
  Now, many of these amendments were actually ``good government'' 
amendments. They were amendments that would have assured the reforms we 
were making were smart and would not be harmful to the economy. One 
amendment I offered with Representative Tiahrt would have guaranteed 
the end of the TARP bailout program at the end of this year, and it 
would have applied the remaining $200 billion-plus worth of taxpayer 
money towards reducing the Federal budget deficit.
  We all know that the TARP program has had a myriad of problems since 
day one. We have heard testimony in committee that has said the funds 
have not been properly monitored. This is the program that was used to 
fund executive bonuses by taxpayers. We have been told by the special 
inspector general that the program is ``almost certainly'' going to 
result in a loss to the taxpayers. Last month, it was just reported 
that now taxpayers could lose over $5 billion in investments in foreign 
banks.
  Rather than ending this flawed program once and for all, the 
administration announced just yesterday that they will extend the 
bailout for TARP for another 10 months. This was after the Treasury 
Secretary just said last month that he wanted to work to put TARP out 
of its misery. So the Treasury Secretary has kind of flip-flopped now, 
and taxpayers are going to be

[[Page H14493]]

forced to stand idly by while this administration will have the ability 
with Congress to spend over $200 billion of taxpayer money as ``walking 
around'' money.
  What is even more alarming, I think, Madam Speaker, is the fact that 
the legislation before us creates a TARP second bailout program and 
more bailout authority. With all of the problems we've had on this 
first bailout program, why on Earth is the Federal Government pursuing 
a sequel?
  Without these amendments, the underlying legislation will make it 
harder to create jobs, harder to get credit for companies, and most 
importantly, it will make it more difficult for consumers to have 
freedom in their financial decisions.
  I would urge Members to oppose this closed rule, which has 
effectively limited debate on many good amendments.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I would just remind my friend from Minnesota that he 
has an amendment that was made in order, and he and I cosponsored an 
amendment in the Financial Services Committee, an amendment which has 
become part of the manager's amendment.
  I would also remind him that we create in this a fund assessed 
against the banking institutions to deal with their liquidation. There 
is no bailout. As much as my friends on the other side of the aisle 
would like to be on message and continue to repeat that, there is no 
bailout.
  I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Driehaus).
  Mr. DRIEHAUS. Madam Speaker, when the American people listen to this 
debate, they hear a lot of rhetoric, but they don't get much in the way 
of facts as they were not able to sit through all of the committee 
hearings which so many of us went through. I want to go through some 
facts because I hear about amendments not being offered.
  The fact of the matter is that we have spent weeks marking up this 
bill in committee. We had over 65 hours of debate alone in the markup. 
The hearings concerning these issues have been going on for the entire 
year. The number of Republican amendments heard in committee was 137. 
One hundred thirty-seven Republican amendments were heard in committee. 
There were over 50 rollcall votes on those Republican amendments. There 
were over 140 Democratic amendments and over 30 bipartisan amendments. 
There were days and days of markup in considering the legislation.
  What the Republicans don't want you to pay any attention to is their 
inaction for years on these critical issues. We had predatory lending 
legislation in 2001. They don't want to let you know that it was 
ignored, that it was ignored again in 2002, in 2003, in 2004, in 2005, 
in 2006, and in 2007. They don't want you to know that, for all of the 
years that they were in power, they failed to take up this legislation.
  Now we have legislation, and they bring out stacks of paper with 
fewer words than in a Harry Potter book. I don't know if we have to get 
as small as ``Good Night, Moon'' or as ``Harold and the Purple 
Crayon.'' I'm not quite sure what it takes. This is a big topic, and 
that's why we took so much time in committee to address the 
complexities of a derivatives market run astray. That's why we took the 
time to address the complexity of mortgage-backed securities, which 
wasn't addressed during those many years the Republicans were in power.
  The results of that inaction are millions of foreclosures across the 
States, the worst recession since the Great Depression, over 700,000 
jobs lost the month the President was sworn into office. This is 
because of the inaction of the Republican Party.
  Now the American people demand that we step up and that we take 
action. What do they want to do? They want to do the same thing they 
did when they were in power year after year after year, which is 
nothing.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from Fullerton, California (Mr. Royce).
  Mr. ROYCE. Madam Speaker, I would like to make a couple of points 
here.
  One is that the Democrats have been in control of this institution--
of the House and the Senate. If anybody remembers back in November of 
2006, the Republicans lost control of the House and Senate. So, for 
2007, 2008 and 2009, the Democrats have controlled this process. Every 
spending bill originates in this House, and under that Democratic 
leadership in this House, we have watched the unemployment rate more 
than double for the American public.
  As far as those of us attempting to do something about the cockamamie 
schemes put forward years ago in 1992--and it was under Democratic 
leadership in this Congress that this was done--we gave Fannie Mae and 
Freddie Mac the ability to go out there and participate in arbitrage at 
a 100-1 leverage for affordable housing. That was the goal. Yet look at 
the consequences of it when you pushed that zero down payment loan on 
them, when you pushed the requirement that 50 percent of their mortgage 
portfolio be in subprime and in Alt-A. Well, we see those results 
today.
  Let me speak to another issue, which is the opposition to this bill. 
I voted against the bailouts. Regardless of what you call it, this is 
an extension of bailouts. While the new language regarding the 
preemption of State consumer financial laws in the manager's amendment 
represents a step in the right direction, I believe it is far from 
sufficient and should be improved.
  For example, there are aspects of the preemption standard and process 
for reaching preemption decisions which need to be clarified. In 
addition, the visitation provisions dealing with the authority of State 
officials over federally chartered banks and thrifts continue to 
contain serious problems. These provisions are an unnecessary extension 
of State jurisdiction over federally chartered institutions which are 
already subject to Federal oversight, which raise significant new 
potential liabilities and uncertainties and which go far beyond the 
standards recognized in the recent Supreme Court decision in the Cuomo 
case.
  I raise this issue because, as it is currently written, the 
underlying legislation will move us in the wrong direction in terms of 
Federal preemption.
  The architects of our Constitution threw out the Articles of 
Confederation and added the commerce clause precisely to prevent a 
fragmented economy. They envisioned one national market, not a market 
where local and State governments could strangle free trade among the 
States. We have seen the ill-effects of an inconsistent regulatory 
framework in our insurance market where we have 50 separate markets 
with 50 sets of rules. It is inefficient, anticompetitive, and it fails 
to provide adequate, consistent consumer protections.
  If we are looking for the most effective regulatory model for our 
financial sector, we should not move toward a regulatory framework with 
varying standards from State to State for federally chartered 
institutions.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time both 
sides have remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Colorado has 6\1/2\ 
minutes remaining. The gentleman from Texas has the equivalent.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. I would like to first say to my friend from 
California--and this does cut both ways--the House of Representatives 
in 2005 did pass legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It 
was bipartisan. I am referring to an article from September 9, 2008, in 
the FinancialTimes.com, which interviewed Mr. Oxley, who was the 
chairman of the Financial Services Committee at the time. The bill was 
never acted on.
  In that article he fumed about the criticism of his House colleagues. 
``All the handwringing and bedwetting is going on without remembering 
how the House stepped up on this,'' he says. ``What did we get from the 
White House?''--remember, George Bush was in the White House--``We got 
a one-finger salute.''
  That was from the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services 
Committee.
  Mr. ROYCE. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. No, I am going to yield 3 minutes to my friend from 
North Carolina (Mr. Watt).
  Mr. WATT. I thank the gentleman for yielding time.
  Madam Speaker, obviously, I am a very strong supporter of this 
legislation, and I was here on into the

[[Page H14494]]

evening last night to express my support for it; but there is one 
aspect of it that I want to point out that I have some discomfort with 
and which I would like to speak about. There is really nothing we can 
do about it, and it is not going to cause me to vote against the bill, 
but I think we need to continue to work on it.
  The Financial Services' version of the bill requires swap dealers and 
major participants to execute their standardized swaps on exchanges, or 
swap execution platforms. These provisions, we thought, were very 
important to the bill. The reason for that is, 15 years ago, the only 
way to search for a swap transaction was to use the telephone. It was 
time-consuming, expensive, and a company was never sure that it had 
found the best deal.
  Today, new electronic technology creates pre-trade price 
transparency. The House Financial Services' version required the use of 
that platform for transparency purposes so that companies could get the 
best price in an open transparent market and so that regulators could 
have a high-resolution view of risk as they moved through the system.
  It was our intent that the regulators would require these new 
technologies to be used for price discovery so that impartial, 
instantaneous information was available to all participants at the same 
time. So we kind of lost the totality of that in merging the Financial 
Services' version of the bill and the Agriculture Committee's version 
of the bill. I just want to rise to put it back on the radar screen as 
something that we need to continue to try to resolve. When you have got 
a $600 trillion over-the-counter derivatives business, there needs to 
be absolute transparency as there is in the stock market. That is the 
only way you can bring this out of the shadows and onto a transparent 
platform.
  So I hope we will be able to continue to work with it. The chairman 
of Financial Services has been excellent on this issue. I hope we will 
continue, as the House and the Senate move these bills, to figure out a 
way to make sure that we have the maximum amount of transparency as we 
did in the Financial Services' version of the bill.
  I thank the gentleman for yielding me time to raise this issue.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam Speaker, without challenging the gentleman's 
words on the floor, I challenge anyone to think that there would be 
$600 trillion worth of derivatives business that has taken place in 
this country.
  I yield 2 minutes to a member of the Financial Services Committee, 
the gentleman from Lubbock, Texas (Mr. Neugebauer).
  Mr. NEUGEBAUER. I thank the gentleman.
  Madam Speaker, Treasury Secretary Geithner gave my colleagues, the 
Democrats on the other side of the aisle, a Christmas present yesterday 
in that he extended their revolving slush fund until October of next 
year--again, going down the road of rewarding bad behavior and 
punishing good behavior. The American people were deceived from the 
very beginning on this--this TARP money, this revolving slush fund as 
it has evolved into--because they were told it was just for emergency 
purposes.

                              {time}  1645

  Now we are told that, even by the Secretary and the President, that 
maybe the financial emergency is over. Well, if it's over, we ought to 
be giving that money back to the American people or, unfortunately, 
some of that money was borrowed, and we are borrowing the money from 
the Chinese. But, no, we are going to put that money back into a slush 
fund and now we are going to use it for whatever purposes our 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle decide to do with it. Let me 
tell you, they are very good at it. If you want somebody to teach you 
how to spend, they can teach you how to spend.
  Unfortunately, Mr. President, and to my colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle, we are spending money that we don't have. We are 
borrowing all of this money. Here we are today talking about now making 
a permanent slush fund, a permanent TARP fund, over $150 billion.
  The American people are tired of the bailouts. They are tired of 
making their own mortgage payment and then they are being asked to make 
their neighbor's house payment. You know what the American people are 
doing is they are getting their own financial household in order.
  But the other part of this bill that bothers me, and it should bother 
the American people, is we are going to have this new czar or czarina 
that is going to be able to tell you what kinds of financial products 
that are appropriate for you. Maybe there is only a certain kind of 
mortgage that you should have or a certain kind of car loan you should 
have, certain kind of student loan that you should have when you are 
trying to send your kids to college.
  But the big concern I have is it's going to hurt the credit, limit 
the credit for small businesses across this country, the people that 
create the most jobs in this country and have the ability to bring us 
out of this economic slump. Yet now we are going to be able to put this 
big regulatory umbrella over them.
  Defeat this bill. It's a bad bill.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I would ask my friend from Texas how 
many more speakers he might have, because we have no other speakers, 
and I will close.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Good, I appreciate the gentleman. It sounds to me like 
you would like me to go ahead and take the time to close.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Yes.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I appreciate the gentleman advising me of such.
  Madam Speaker, at this time I would like to yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from Rockledge, Florida (Mr. Posey).
  Mr. POSEY. Madam Speaker, I have been sitting here listening to the 
debate, and it's almost laughable that I have heard my friends across 
the aisle blame everything except Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami on 
President Bush and the Republicans. I think everyone with half a brain 
knows this meltdown created--or began a couple of administrations ago 
when they came up with the Community Redevelopment Act and Congress 
decided to get in and start telling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac how to 
behave, when they said everybody in this country deserved to own a 
home, doesn't matter if you don't have a job, doesn't matter if it's 
overpriced, doesn't matter if you can't afford it, this is the better 
world we are looking for.
  I think most of the people back home, at least where I am from, 
remember the days when no banker wanted to make a bad loan. If you 
wanted to borrow money from a bank, you had to convince the bank you 
needed the money before they were going to loan it to you, basically. 
That all changed after the Community Redevelopment Act, so it's no 
surprise that we have people buying houses they can't afford and that 
they can't pay for, and that's the tip of the iceberg.
  Yes, we need to make some changes in the way that we deal with 
derivatives and some of the downstream spending. To blame it all on one 
side or the other is laughable. There is more than enough blame to go 
around to both sides of this Chamber, and I think it's unfair to the 
people that we represent that we spend so much time trying to place 
blame and not focus on a solution.
  This bill is very well intended, but it's not going to solve the 
problem. If regulation and creating more bureaucracies would have 
solved the problem, we wouldn't be here today. We have gone through 
that cycle a couple of times. We know what happened with Bernard 
Madoff. We know the attorneys at the SEC only file one-half a case 
every other year. That's one case each lawyer files every other year.
  Somebody is not watching out for the citizens of this country, the 
people that put us here. Our job, I think, is to put those people to 
work before we hire more bureaucrats and create more bureaucracies that 
will lead to more of the same.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Madam Speaker, as I said earlier, while it's important to provide 
consumer safety and security in the marketplace, our constituents are 
more concerned with the economy, the debt and the loss of jobs. When my 
friends on the other side of the aisle finally

[[Page H14495]]

focus on this, I think we are going to start making advances for the 
American people to reduce our debt and to get back to where we have a 
growing economy.
  Week after week we come to the House floor to debate bills that kill 
and diminish jobs. It's not what I want to spend my time doing, but, by 
golly, the Republican Party is going fight the Democrat Party all the 
way on these job-killing bills, whether it's cap-and-trade, health 
care, or government takeover of the financial sector. And we are 
talking about millions of jobs at a time that are coming up for 
unemployment. The Republican Party will stand up for the American 
people.
  I would like to encourage our friends and Democrats to start 
listening to the American people. Stop the borrowing, stop the taxing, 
stop the spending policies, including an 85 percent increase in 
spending in a 2-year cycle increase, that have led this country to 
record deficits and record unemployment.
  Unfortunately, due to a tragic event that happened back in my home 
State, I will be unable to be here tomorrow to vote ``no'' on all these 
bills. I will be attending a funeral tomorrow in Dallas, Texas, of a 
dear friend. However, if I were here, I would vote ``no''--``no'' on 
taxing, ``no'' on spending, and ``no'' on bigger government.
  So I will encourage my colleagues right now to do the same. Just say 
``no.'' We have heard that before. Just say ``no'' to more taxes, more 
spending, and more unemployment in this country.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself so much time as I might 
consume.
  ``Just say `no.' '' That is the Republican mantra. ``Just say `no'; 
we like the status quo.'' We are opposed to any movement to get this 
country back on track.
  They oppose health care. They oppose the Recovery Act. They oppose 
everything, because they like the way it is. They like it so that their 
friends on Wall Street can continue to reap billions of dollars and 
record profits.
  This is to look, their opposition is solely to look after their 
friends so their friends can continue to make money at the expense of 
average Americans, average Americans who lost jobs last year because of 
the credit crunch on Wall Street which resulted from the lax regulation 
and the gambling-type approach taken by the Bush administration and the 
Republican Congress before that.
  The recession that we faced, which is as great as anything we have 
seen since the 1930s, has got to be pinned on my friends in the 
Republican Party in this Congress and on President Bush.
  Really, in the last fall, we saw millions of jobs lost. We are not 
out of the woods, but that trend has reversed so that we are losing 
fewer and fewer jobs each month. But there is no recognition of that, 
because my friends don't want to take any credit for ruining the 
economy last year to the tune of trillions of dollars to this country, 
to its taxpayers, and millions of jobs to the people who work every 
day.
  Now, my friends say that this is a job-killing bill. The only thing 
killed in this bill are failing financial institutions which would 
affect the economy, just like that domino effect last fall.
  We protect consumers. We protect investors. We look at hedge funds. 
We deal with credit rating agencies. We look at the derivatives and try 
to rein them in so that they have to post and there aren't dramatic 
losses as a result of that. We look at insurance, executive pay, but, 
most importantly, we take a look at institutions that are so big that 
they, in a prior administration, couldn't fail. Under this bill, we 
either take them apart or put them out of their misery. There are no 
bailouts as we had under George Bush.
  We are trying to end this recession, and you do it by restoring 
confidence in the financial system. I urge an ``aye'' vote, and I would 
urge passage of this bill.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the 
previous question on the resolution.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the resolution.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 238, 
nays 186, not voting 10, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 952]

                               YEAS--238

     Abercrombie
     Ackerman
     Adler (NJ)
     Altmire
     Andrews
     Arcuri
     Baca
     Baird
     Barrow
     Bean
     Becerra
     Berkley
     Berman
     Berry
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                               NAYS--186

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[[Page H14496]]


     Shimkus
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     Young (FL)

                             NOT VOTING--10

     Baldwin
     Barrett (SC)
     Buyer
     Cardoza
     Deal (GA)
     Lofgren, Zoe
     Mica
     Moran (VA)
     Murtha
     Radanovich

                              {time}  1723

  Ms. KAPTUR changed her vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
  So the resolution was agreed to.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________