[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Page 14310]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                HOUSING

  Mr. ISAKSON. I would like to talk for a minute, if I can, Madam 
President, about a very important issue. I don't come to the floor all 
that often, but people will tell you I come to the floor too often to 
talk about the housing industry. I am going to do it for a little bit 
tonight because it is critically important to our economy and to our 
country.
  A year and a half ago, I introduced a piece of legislation, in 
January of 2008, creating a housing tax credit of $15,000 for any 
family who would buy and occupy their home as a principal residence in 
the United States. I did so because housing had collapsed, foreclosures 
were beginning to become rampant and are rampant today. Standing 
inventory proliferated, builders were going out of business, and our 
economy was in a downward slide.
  The CBO score on that $15,000 tax credit is $34.2 billion, and I was 
told last January that was too expensive, we couldn't afford to do it. 
By my last count--Senator Coburn is a better counter than I am--we 
spent about $5.5 trillion trying to fix an economy that has been in a 
continual downward slide.
  Fortunately, in July of last year, with the help of Members on both 
sides, we did get a tax credit passed, but it was basically an 
interest-free loan for $7,500, it was means tested to families who were 
first-time home buyers or had incomes under $150,000. It did no good.
  Later in the year, I finally convinced this body, and we took off the 
limitation in terms of the payback and made it a real tax credit and 
raised it from $7,500 to $8,000 and it has made a difference. First-
time home buyers used it and the market stabilized, but we don't have a 
recession in first-time home buyers. We have a recession in the move-up 
market.
  The man who is transferred from Missouri or Georgia who can't sell 
his house in Missouri, can't come to Georgia, can't take the transfer. 
The corporation can't afford to buy the house and hold it for him 
because of the proliferation of inventory that is owned and today in 
the United States of America one in two sales made every day is a short 
sale or a foreclosure. That is an unhealthy market, and it is 
continuing to precipitate a downward spiral in values, loss of equity 
by the American people, and a protracted, difficult economic time for 
our country.
  Tomorrow, joined by a number of Members of this Senate on both sides, 
I will reintroduce the $15,000 tax credit that is available to any 
family or individual who buys or occupies any home in the United States 
of America as their principal residence with no means test for first-
time home buyers, no means test or income limitations. Tomorrow it also 
will be announced in New York the Business Roundtable has adopted this 
tax credit as its No. 1 suggestion to the U.S. Government as the one 
thing we can do to turn around the American economy.
  I am getting to be a pretty old guy. I went through the second 
recession of my career in 1974. Gerald Ford was President, it was a 
Democratic Congress. America had a 3-year standing inventory of new 
houses built and unsold. The economy went into a tailspin. Values 
started to go down. We were in deep trouble.
  That Republican President and that Democratic Congress came together 
and passed a $2,000 tax credit for any family who bought and occupied 
as its principal residence a new house that was standing and vacant. In 
1 year's time, a 3-year inventory was reduced to 1 year; values 
stabilized, the economy came back, home sales became healthy, and 
America recovered. That is precisely what will happen this time.
  I am not so smart that I figured it out, I am lucky enough that I 
lived through it in 1974, and 30 years later we need to do the right 
thing for America and the right thing for our economy and put in a 
time-sensitive, 1-year significant tax credit for anyone who buys and 
occupies as their residence a single-family home.
  An independent group estimated, when I introduced this last year, 
that it would create 700,000 house sales and 684,000 jobs this year. I 
think it is ironic that house sales today are at half a million. A 
normal to good year in the United States is 1.2 to 1.5 million sales.
  If you could get the tax credit and the 700,000 sales that have been 
estimated it will introduce and add it to the 500,000 sales we have 
today, it will return our housing market to normalcy. It will stabilize 
the values of the largest investment of the people of the United States 
of America. It will recreate equity lines of credit that have 
dissipated and disappeared in the American family. And over time it 
will restore our vibrant economy back to the economy we all hope and 
pray will come.
  So I ask all of the Members of the Senate to reconsider their 
positions in the past and consider joining me in the introduction of 
this legislation tomorrow. We have three Democrats and three 
Republicans who have come on board. I would like to see all 100 of us 
because in the end all of our problems will be more easily solved if 
the problems of the American taxpayers and citizens are solved, and 
their biggest problems today are an illiquid housing market, a decline 
in their equity, a decline in their net worth, and a depression in the 
housing market that we are obligated to correct if we possibly can.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma is recognized.

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