[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 58 (Wednesday, April 3, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2227-S2229]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                  Nomination of Mark Anthony Calabria

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, as you know and as we know, our Nation is 
facing an affordable housing crisis.
  Right now, we are considering the nomination of someone who will have 
the power to do something about it--Mark Calabria, the President's 
nominee to spend the next half decade heading the Federal Housing 
Finance Agency. He would be responsible for overseeing a $6.5 trillion 
housing market that provides homes for millions of American families, 
and $6.5 trillion is $6.5 thousand billion; that is how big a trillion 
is. He would oversee a $6.5 trillion housing market that provides homes 
for millions of families.
  Far too many Americans are left behind in our housing policy. Think 
about this. One-third of all households spend more than 30 percent of 
their income on housing. A number that is even more frightening is that 
one-quarter of American renters spend at least half their income on 
housing.
  One-quarter of American renters spend half of their income on 
housing. What does that mean?
  That is not something people around here, frankly, think about very 
much. If you are a Senator, if you are a Congressman, if you are some 
of the highly paid staff people, and many aren't, but if you are the 
chief of staff or legislative director or if you are a staff director, 
you don't think about those things.
  If you do what Lincoln used to do and say ``I need to go out and get 
my public-opinion baths'' and if you see how people live and you see 
that somebody is paying half their income in rent, and their car breaks 
down and they don't have $600 to fix their car, what happens is they 
can't pay their rent. Then, if something else happens and they get 
evicted, their whole life turns upside down. They have to give away 
their pet, no matter what their kids think. They have to move out of 
that apartment. They have to send their children to a different school. 
They often have to live in the basement of a neighbor's or a cousin's 
home. They end up putting their things in storage and losing them.
  I don't think we understand what the housing crisis means to, 
literally, tens of millions of Americans. It is not just in the city, 
as the Presiding Officer knows. It is in rural areas. His State is 
pretty rural. Big parts of my State are pretty rural. It is not just 
East Cleveland or Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati. It is Appalachia, small 
towns, and small cities like Zanesville, OH, and Mansfield, OH--places 
where you can't pay the rent or you get your home foreclosed and you 
lose your home; you get thrown out of your home, and your whole life 
turns upside down. That is why this is so important.
  We are not only talking about renting but also about homeownership 
too. The homeownership rate among African Americans is at the same 
dismal level it was before we had laws in place to protect against 
discrimination. Those laws are barely being enforced. The Secretary of 
Housing and Urban Development seems to have little interest in 
enforcing housing discrimination laws. The Senate Banking Committee 
majority seems to have little interest in enforcing anti-discrimination 
laws. Hispanic households are hardly better off than African-American 
households. These are serious issues we have to solve.
  As we face this crisis, Mark Calabria, the President's nominee for 
FHFA will be on the frontlines. He will set policies that determine how 
many families can afford to buy a home and how much they pay. He will 
have the power to promote or discourage building affordable apartments 
to serve the lowest income renters. It is not just that people's wages 
are stagnant in the Trump economy. Wages are flat. It is not just that. 
As prices go up, there simply isn't enough housing, so rental units are 
getting more and more expensive.
  If your wages are flat, no matter how hard you work--you might have 
two jobs, a job making $9 and a job making $14, but it is not enough if 
your rent keeps going up, as it does in far too many cases.
  The record shows that Dr. Calabria is exactly the wrong person for 
this job. He actually questioned the need for the 30-year fixed-rate 
mortgage. Think about that. That is the primary tool

[[Page S2228]]

families use to afford homes and build wealth. I am guessing that 
almost every one of my colleagues, except those born extraordinarily 
rich--I am guessing that for most of us in this body, most people 
watching this, most of our staffs, and most Americans who own homes, 
especially the first home they bought had a 25- or 30-year fixed 
mortgage. Before people owned homes much in this country, a century 
ago, they had to pay off their home in 3 or 4 or 5 years, typically. 
Almost nobody can do that. That is why we have the 30-year fixed-rate 
mortgage.
  Dr. Calabria wonders whether we need the 30-year mortgage at all. 
President Trump clearly doesn't know. President Trump knows how to 
build big apartment buildings and borrow money from Deutsche Bank 
because no reputable bank in the United States will lend to him. But he 
doesn't know what it is like to pay off a mortgage and for people who 
think in terms of, ``How am I going to pay off my mortgage?'' He 
doesn't understand what the importance of a 30-year mortgage is. 
Presumably, that is why President Trump picked somebody like Dr. 
Calabria to be in charge of housing.
  Dr. Calabria has called for repealing the affordable housing goals. 
One-third of households are spending more than one-third of their 
income on housing, and it is worse for renters. You would think making 
housing affordable would be one of Dr. Calabria's top priorities, but 
he doesn't think we need the current affordable housing goals. He told 
Congress that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which he would be in charge 
of, should be eliminated. He would be the one overseeing a housing 
finance system that has helped more than 28 million American families 
become homeowners. He has questioned the need for 30-year fixed-rate 
mortgages. He has called for the end of the entities he would oversee 
that contribute to this housing market.
  It is pretty clear--over his years of writing--whose side he is on. 
During the financial crisis, when Wall Street wrecked the economy and 
American communities were left to clean up the mess, Dr. Calabria 
blamed homeowners for this. He called homeowners who were underwater on 
their mortgage ``deadbeats.'' Think about that. The guy who is going to 
oversee the whole housing agency market for the U.S. Government said 
that the people who were underwater--what does underwater mean? 
Underwater means that you have been paying your mortgage, but because 
of a drop in the economy or in your community, what you owe is more 
than what the house is worth. The house becomes devalued because of the 
neighborhood, because of other foreclosures, because of other people 
being evicted, and your home is worth less than what you owe the bank 
for your mortgage. That is called underwater. Dr. Calabria called those 
people deadbeats. Those people probably work every bit as hard as Dr. 
Calabria does--not to make it personal--or as hard as most of us in the 
Senate work. These are people working hard to try to get ahead. Because 
of circumstances in this global economy where wages are flat, where the 
rich are getting richer, where most of America is treading water, Dr. 
Calabria calls these people deadbeats for something they didn't even 
do. Anybody who doesn't think families will do everything they possibly 
can to stay in their homes has clearly never met those who have 
actually had their homes foreclosed on. I have met those families.

  My wife, Connie, and I live in ZIP Code 44105 in Cleveland, OH. That 
means nothing to anybody who is listening, but the ZIP Code in which we 
lived in the first half of 2007 had more foreclosures than had any ZIP 
Code in the United States. We live in a development of about 200 homes 
that are priced at $100,000 to $200,000 to $250,000, but not far away, 
in the rest of this ZIP Code, there is home, after home, after home, 
after home that has been foreclosed on. These homes are generally old. 
They are generally not in good shape. They generally have very toxic 
levels of lead that poison children in their central nervous systems.
  He is saying that these people are deadbeats--those who are working 
hard. They lost their jobs. That is the main reason most of them 
couldn't keep up with their mortgages. These families aren't deadbeats. 
They work hard. They work a lot harder than the Wall Street traders--
that is t-r-a-d-e-r-s, perhaps--who are taking big risks with other 
people's money.
  Some of Ohio's families were laid off, and they tried to find new 
jobs. They were making $22 an hour, and they found new jobs at $14 an 
hour. They work just as hard, maybe harder, but the new jobs don't pay 
as much. Some couldn't find new jobs because the economy was in a free 
fall. In 2010, one in five homeowners in Ohio was underwater in his 
mortgage. Yet he calls them deadbeats? One out of five people is a 
deadbeat because the worth of his home dropped, and he couldn't keep up 
with his mortgage?
  At that time, Ohio had lost 375,000 jobs. In that year, Dr. Calabria 
criticized one of the most important tools that States like Ohio had in 
trying to help homeowners--the Hardest Hit Fund. The Hardest Hit Fund 
helps States like Ohio and Indiana and Arizona and Florida. It helps us 
weather a crisis. The housing markets and the workers in those States 
were devastated. The Hardest Hit Fund helped more than 25,000 
struggling homeowners. It was not enough because the effort from the 
Senate was not enough, but it helped in the tearing down of thousands 
of plighted homes; it helped to make neighborhoods safer; and it helped 
them to recover.
  Dr. Calabria said the Hardest Hit Fund was just subsidizing States 
because their housing markets were getting more affordable. What kind 
of person thinks this way? What kind of person says these things? What 
kind of person is so hardhearted that he or she would possibly take 
these positions if he or she knows any of these people? Maybe he needs 
to go out and get to know some of these people.
  We asked about his solution. He said we should just let prices fall. 
He would sit back and let homeowners suffer and communities suffer 
because of Wall Street's greed. This is the man the President of the 
United States and, apparently, the majority leader in the Senate--down 
the hall--want to lead in the overseeing of the housing finance in this 
country.
  In more than 100 blog posts, articles, and papers, Dr. Calabria made 
his views clear. He said the goal of housing reform should actually be 
to shrink our mortgage market, that we should eliminate the GSEs and 
the Federal Housing Administration. My colleagues who plan to support 
his nomination today or tomorrow or whenever the vote comes should not 
act surprised if he raises costs for borrowers, if he makes it more 
difficult to develop affordable housing, or if he cuts off access to 
homeownership for American families. That is exactly what he has 
advocated for in his entire career.
  This is a critical job. It is why nominees like him should be 
debated. Americans should have the chance to make their voices heard on 
a nominee like him, who can make it harder for them to buy homes.
  My colleague down the hall is Senator McConnell. He has the office 
100 feet or so down the hall in which you see high-powered, expensive, 
suited, well-compensated lobbyists going in and out all day, streaming 
in and out. They are writing tax bills, fighting for the oil companies, 
enriching the pharmaceutical companies, and all of the kinds of things 
that lobbyists down the hall do who, I was going to say, work for 
Senator McConnell. They don't actually work for Senator McConnell, but 
they help Senator McConnell with part of what his political 
organization is. As a result, Senator McConnell, in order to help these 
special interests, is changing the Senate rules.
  It is not enough that Senator McConnell blocked a Supreme Court 
Justice for over a year. It is not enough that Senator McConnell 
supports all of the dark money in politics or that billionaires can put 
money into political campaigns and nobody knows exactly where the money 
comes from. It is not enough that the Supreme Court is now controlled 
by the corporate elite in this country. It is not enough that the 
Senate is controlled by the corporate elite. It is not enough that the 
White House looks like a retreat for Wall Street executives except on 
the day it looks like a retreat for oil company executives, except on 
the day it looks like a retreat for big drug companies. That is not 
enough for Senator McConnell. So what is he going to do? He is going to 
change the rules. He is going

[[Page S2229]]

to give less time to debate nominees who will have immense power over 
people's lives.
  We talk about judges who serve lifetime appointments. We talk about 
the heads of Agencies, like of the Consumer Financial Protection 
Bureau, who have the power to hold corporations accountable if they use 
that power. Of course, we are talking about Dr. Calabria, who is 
supposed to make the housing market work for all Americans, yet who 
isn't sure we need the 30-year mortgage. Think about that.
  We shouldn't be rushing these people through. We need time for the 
people we serve to make their voices heard. I would hope my colleagues 
would agree that these nominees deserve thoughtful consideration; they 
deserve debates; they deserve somebody who will defend them to come to 
the Senate floor. Let my fellow Republicans from the Banking, Housing, 
and Urban Affairs Committee--people with whom I get along well and 
personally like--make the case for Dr. Calabria. Let them answer why he 
is not for the 30-year fixed mortgage, why he calls people who are 
underwater in their mortgages deadbeats. Why is that?
  I would hope my colleagues would come to this floor and debate. I 
would hope that Senator McConnell would allow enough time for us to 
debate. I would hope my colleagues would reject Dr. Calabria's 
nomination and tell the President to send us a new nominee who will 
take the job at the FHFA seriously and make it easier, not harder, for 
Americans to afford housing.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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