[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.