[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 58 (Wednesday, April 11, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2059-S2061]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Nomination of Mike Pompeo

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor as we, as Americans, 
continue to see the regular reminders that the world is a very 
dangerous place. The horrendous reports out of Syria over the weekend 
show us there are leaders in the world who will test the rules that 
define civilized nations. They will exploit any crack that they see in 
our resolve.
  President Trump has consistently responded to these kinds of 
challenges by showing that he is resolute and that he is unshakable. He 
has a foreign policy that always puts America first. To continue to do 
this, the President needs to have a full national security team on the 
job and working for America. The Secretary of State is a very important 
part of that team.
  Tomorrow, the Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to have a 
hearing on Mike Pompeo's nomination to do this very important job. Mike 
Pompeo understands that if we want safety and security at home, we need 
a world that is peaceful and stable. I expect he is going to talk about 
all of these things at the confirmation hearing, and I look forward to 
his testimony.
  We have all heard about Mike Pompeo's impressive qualifications for 
the job to which he has been nominated--first in his class at West 
Point; Harvard Law School; a Member of Congress; and the Director of 
the Central Intelligence Agency. He has the integrity, and he has the 
experience to serve as America's Secretary of State. As a former Member 
of Congress, he certainly understands how policy decisions get made and 
the key importance of congressional oversight. As head of the CIA, he 
clearly understands the crucial role that the intelligence community 
plays in preserving America's national security. As a soldier, he 
understands the consequences of decisions that get made in Washington, 
DC.
  I have traveled with Mike Pompeo to meet with world leaders and to 
attend national security conferences. He knows the issues, and he knows 
the people. He is the right person for this job. I met with him just 
last month after he was nominated. We talked about some of the specific 
issues going on around the world and how they affect our Nation's 
national security. It was a very good conversation, and I am extremely 
confident that he is the right person for this job.
  I expect many more people will come away from these hearings tomorrow 
with great confidence in Mike Pompeo. He will be an excellent 
representative for our Nation, and he will be a strong hand to 
implement President Trump's foreign policy. So I look forward to voting 
on this nomination as soon as possible after the hearings.
  It was just a little over a year ago that he was confirmed by a very 
large, bipartisan majority for his current job as the CIA Director. It 
was right here on this Senate floor where that confirmation occurred. 
Fifteen Senators from the other side of the aisle agreed that Mike 
Pompeo was the right choice for that position. As the nominee for the 
job he now holds, he drew bipartisan praise for his qualifications. Two 
Democratic Senators actually came to the floor and spoke in favor of 
his nomination--Senators Feinstein and Warner. They are the current 
vice chair of the Intelligence Committee and the former chair of the 
Intelligence Committee. Since that time, Mike Pompeo has done an 
excellent job at the CIA. Even Hillary Clinton has come out and praised 
his time in heading that Agency.
  I expect that this can be a short process to confirm him in the new 
job for which he has been nominated, that of Secretary of State. There 
is certainly no good reason for Democrats to slow things down or to 
attempt to slow things down.
  We need to restore America to a position we once held as the most 
powerful and respected Nation on the face of the Earth. For 8 years, 
the previous administration had us going in the wrong direction. The 
Obama administration followed a policy that it called strategic 
patience. That meant watching while the Assad regime in Syria crossed 
one redline after another. Then the redline became a green light. The 
result is that Syria continues to use chemical weapons today in 
attacking its own people. Strategic patience did not work.
  The Obama administration's policy also meant that North Korea was 
allowed to get away with too much for far too long. North Korea 
continued to test nuclear weapons, continued to test missiles, and 
continued to use hostages as a way of getting what it wanted from other 
countries. Strategic patience did not work with North Korea.
  The Trump administration has said very clearly that the era of 
strategic patience is over. The leaders of these countries need to 
understand that their belligerence will not succeed. They need to get 
the clear message that America has a new foreign policy. It is a policy 
to secure America's national interests and demonstrate America's 
leadership around the world. Part of this leadership is to stand up to 
show that there is a limit to the patience of the civilized countries 
of the world. The previous administration too often placed 
international opinion ahead of what was actually best for America. That 
only made the world a more dangerous place. The Trump administration 
has begun to get us back on the right track, and Mike Pompeo will 
ensure that we stay on the right track.
  When it comes to issues like the upcoming discussions with North 
Korea, Mike Pompeo understands the risks of dealing with these kinds of 
aggressive adversaries. He also understands the opportunities that we 
now have because of President Trump's forceful stand for American 
interests.
  Democrats should commit to allowing this nomination to move as 
quickly as possible. We will have a hearing tomorrow. We need to have a 
thorough discussion about what is happening around the world, and then 
we need to vote. Let's not have any more of the deliberate delays that 
we have been seeing by the Democrats in this body--no more pointless 
and partisan obstruction.
  America's adversaries around the world are watching closely--in 
Russia, in Syria, in North Korea, in Iran, and in other places. It is 
time for us to show that we are serious about maintaining a strong 
foreign policy that

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puts America first. President Trump is doing his part. Mike Pompeo is 
ready to do his part in his job. It is now time for the Senate to do 
our job.
  Thank you.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                50th Anniversary of the Fair Housing Act

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, 50 years ago today, Congress enacted the 
Fair Housing Act, exactly 1 week after the assassination of Martin 
Luther King as he fought for economic justice for sanitation workers in 
Memphis. It also came just weeks after the Kerner Commission issued its 
report on the origins of urban unrest in the 1960s. This report 
contained the now famous warning that ``our nation is moving toward two 
societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal.''
  In the wake of these events, the Fair Housing Act made discrimination 
in the sale, rental, and financing of housing illegal for the first 
time. For generations, redlining, restrictive covenants, and outright 
discrimination kept families of color locked out of entire 
neighborhoods, often far from where jobs were, and they created 
segregated communities that linger to this day. They denied these 
families the opportunity to build wealth through home ownership. Many 
of these exclusionary practices were carried out by private entities 
and local governments. But as Richard Rothstein reminds us in his new 
book, ``The Color of Law''--and I recommend to everybody listening that 
they read that book--Federal policies also played a significant role in 
reinforcing segregation.
  From 1934 through 1962--30 years, three decades--98 percent of all 
FHA mortgages went to White homeowners. In a country that in those days 
was about 10 percent African American, 98 percent of mortgages went to 
White homeowners. The Fair Housing Act made this despicable 
discrimination illegal. It required that Federal housing and urban 
development grants be administered in a way that would ``affirmatively 
further'' fair housing--not in a reactive way but in a way that would 
affirmatively further fair housing. State and local governments and 
public housing authorities were required to use their Federal funds in 
ways that would reverse, rather than accelerate or reinforce, 
segregation in their communities.
  April 11, 1968, however, was not the end of our work to ensure fair 
housing and equal opportunities. Fifty years later, we haven't had the 
progress we should have had, and so much more needs to be done.
  A new report this year from the Center for Investigative Reporting 
analyzed tens of millions of mortgage records and found that all across 
the country people of color are far more likely--even holding constant 
for economic situations--to be turned down for a loan, taking into 
account factors like their income and the size of the loan. We know 
that the 2008 housing crisis hit communities of color particularly 
hard.
  In the run-up to the crisis, faulty mortgages were targeted to people 
of color. Even those who qualified for a no-frills, no-surprises prime 
mortgage were often instead steered into a subprime, much riskier loan. 
Even African-American and Hispanic borrowers with higher incomes than 
other borrowers found themselves in risky, subprime, designed-to-fail 
products. These practices of discrimination stripped a generation's 
worth of equity from communities that had fought hard for equal access 
to home ownership.
  I know in my community in Cleveland, on the southeast side of 
Cleveland in the Broadway, Harvard area of that community, so much 
wealth has been lost. As people finally began to gain in home ownership 
and in wealth accumulation, what happened in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 
2010, and 2011 devastated these communities. As a number of my 
colleagues have heard me say, in my ZIP Code of 44105, in Cleveland, 
OH, in the first half of 2007, there were more foreclosures than any 
ZIP Code in the United States of America.
  The household wealth of communities of color still hasn't recovered. 
My neighborhood hasn't, my community hasn't, and my State hasn't. 
Middle-class Black and Hispanic families lost half their wealth from 
2007 to 2013--half their wealth. Middle-income Black household wealth 
was $63,000 in 2007. A decade later, it was $38,000. The numbers are 
similar for Hispanic households--$85,000 down to $46,000.
  Borrowers with these higher cost loans were foreclosed on at about 
triple the rate of borrowers with standard, 30-year, fixed-rate 
mortgages. Over a recent 8-year period, 9.3 million homeowners lost 
their homes through foreclosure, distress sales, or surrendering their 
home to the lender.
  After the crisis, we took steps to fight this discrimination. We 
created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to look after bank 
customers and to help root out discrimination. We required lenders to 
report more detailed data so that we can more easily spot modern-day 
redlining.
  In 2015, HUD also issued the affirmatively furthering fair housing 
rule. This rule would have given clearer guidelines to communities to 
help them assess their own fair housing needs and provided them with 
the data they needed to inform their decisions. It would have allowed 
them to set their own goals and timelines.
  Some of the questions communities would ask during these assessments 
would demand they think in new ways about how to create housing and 
economic opportunities for all of their residents--no matter their 
color, no matter family size, no matter their disability if they have 
one. These are the types of questions this body told the country to ask 
when it enacted the fair housing bill five decades ago.
  But instead of recommitting ourselves to the promise we made 50 years 
ago, too many Washington politicians are trying to take us backward. 
Earlier this year, HUD suspended implementing the affirmatively 
furthering fair housing rule. That will not reverse the requirements of 
the Fair Housing Act. Instead, it hurts communities, which will once 
again be left to comply with the law without the technical assistance 
they need.

  Remember that new data that banks were going to report to make it 
easier to spot lenders who discriminate? The bill the Senate passed 
last month right here would exempt 85 percent of banks from reporting 
the data they are collecting and reporting today. So we are not even 
going to know what happened. This body has scaled back the amount of 
data we are trying to gather to stop discrimination. Without it, we 
can't monitor trends in mortgage lending. It will be harder to see who 
has access to affordable mortgage credit and, importantly, who does not 
have access.
  HUD is even thinking about changing its mission statement in ways 
that diminish the importance of combating housing discrimination. The 
administration's actions over the past year make it clear they are 
already wavering in that commitment. For example, in 2017, HUD withdrew 
guidance requiring equal access for transgender people in homeless 
shelters. Let's pick on them even more. According to a report in the 
New York Times, Dr. Carson's HUD has suspended several anti-
discrimination investigations, including an investigation of 
discriminatory housing advertisements on Facebook. The administration 
proposed a 14-percent cut to the HUD budget, including affordable 
housing and community development programs aimed at creating housing 
and opportunity for low-income communities.
  We know that one-fourth of renters in this country spend at least 50 
percent of their income on housing. If one thing goes wrong in their 
lives, they are evicted or they lose their homes. One-fourth of people 
in this country who rent are paying at least half their income in 
housing costs. In Cuyahoga County, the second most populous county in 
Ohio, one-fourth of all family units, one-fourth of all residents, 
homeowners or renters, spend one-half of their income on housing, so it 
is not just renters, but it is often homeowners too.
  We are deciding in this body because the President wants to--the far 
right in this body wants to cut spending on housing even more. We have 
enough money to do a huge tax cut for the

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richest people in the country. The richest 1 percent will get 81 
percent of that tax cut. I was talking to an accountant the other day 
in Elyria, OH. It is tax season, of course, and he is busy. He said: 
When people come and see me, they ask inevitably when I am doing their 
taxes ``Well, how does this tax bill affect me?''
  He asks: Are you a billionaire?
  They laugh and say: Of course not.
  He then says: Well, only if you are a billionaire will it affect you, 
and then you will save millions of dollars on your taxes.
  That is a bit of an exaggeration, but that is what that tax bill is 
all about. So if you are a billionaire, if you are a decamillionaire, 
if you made a million dollars last year, you are going to save a whole 
lot on your taxes this year. But if you are living in working-class 
housing, if you can't afford much more than the very basic kind of 
housing or even worse than that, you are going to see your budget cut. 
You are going to see fewer vouchers. You are going to see less funding 
for housing.
  What kind of government is this, this mean-spiritedness? There are 
more tax cuts for the richest in this country, but let's stick it to 
people who are barely making it. These are people who make $10 to $12 
an hour. They make $10 to $12 an hour, and we are going to cut their 
Medicaid. They are making $10 to $12 an hour, and we are going to scale 
back their SNAP benefits. They are making $10 to $12 an hour, and we 
are going to undermine their housing subsidies. What is all of that 
about in this new government that we are living in now?
  The last thing we ought to do at a time when a quarter of all renter 
households--400,000 families in my State of almost 12 million, 400,000 
families pay half of their income in housing costs. Again, if one thing 
goes wrong, if their car breaks down going to work, could they come up 
with $500 to fix their car? Probably not. Then what happens? Then they 
are evicted, and then everything goes upside down because they can't 
pay their rent, so they get evicted. The kid has to go to a new school 
district. They lose most of the things they have. They have to find a 
place to live. They probably don't have the money for the downpayment 
that a landlord charges.
  A few years ago, I hosted a discussion with some of my colleagues and 
invited Matthew Desmond, the author of the book ``Evicted.'' In the 
front of the book, he scribbled the phrase ``Home = Life.'' If you 
don't have decent housing, it is pretty hard to put a stable life 
together for you and your family. One of the things he said in that 
book is that when you get your paycheck every 2 weeks or once a month, 
the rent eats first. You have to pay your rent. If you can't afford to 
pay your rent or you can barely afford to pay your rent, you can't do 
much else. That simple statement captures so much--a safe, stable home 
is the foundation for opportunities.
  This government is going to give tax cuts to the richest people in 
the country, and we are pulling the rug out from under people who are 
working every bit as hard as we do in this body--and many of them work 
harder than we do--just trying to get along on $8 or $10 or $12 an 
hour. We are denying people the opportunity of living in a safe, stable 
home. That is why we must redouble our commitment to fair housing. That 
is why we must take real, proactive steps.
  My colleagues and I have legislation, the Fair and Equal Housing Act 
of 2017, that would add gender identity and sexual orientation to those 
protected from discrimination under the Fair Housing Act. Rather than 
take us backward, we must take these sorts of actions to give more 
Americans the opportunity to have a safe, stable home and to build 
wealth through home ownership. We must constantly work toward Dr. 
King's vision--killed 50 years ago this month--of equality and equal 
opportunity for all.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.