[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7823-7824]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           LET'S BE CAUTIOUS WITH MORTGAGE BAIL-OUT PROGRAMS

  (Mr. NEUGEBAUER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Madam Speaker, before I came to Congress, I had an 
opportunity to serve my constituents in a different way. I was a home 
builder, a land developer, and even a mortgage lender. I know firsthand 
some of the problems that the real estate industry and the housing 
industry is facing today.
  Ninety-four percent of the American homeowners are paying their 
mortgage payments on time and in full. Are some people having a hard 
time making these mortgage payments? Of course they are. Can the 
government help? Yes, in some cases. But I urge my colleagues to be 
very careful here. We do not need for the Federal Government to be the 
piggy bank for folks that made poor decisions or to bail out the 
lenders that made loans to people that really didn't have the capacity 
to pay it back. It is not fair to penalize those folks that made good 
decisions and played by the rules by taking their tax money and 
rewarding those who didn't.
  For many of my constituents, they are having a hard time just making 
their own mortgage payment. What we shouldn't be doing is taking their 
tax money to pay their neighbor's payment.
  Madam Speaker, I encourage folks to be very cautious about these 
bail-out programs.

[[Page 7824]]



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