[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3739-3740]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        FORECLOSURE CRISIS AND GOP GUTTING FORECLOSURE PROGRAMS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Chu) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. CHU. Mr. Speaker, the effects of the foreclosure crisis and 
economic downturn have had a devastating impact on American families. 
Because of shoddy business practices and enormous risks taken by big 
banks, our housing and financial systems have utterly collapsed. And in 
the wake of this destruction, millions of Americans have lost their 
jobs, their homes and their quality of life.
  As the casualties rose and homeowners clamored for some relief, the 
government stepped in to do what it could. But with the scope of the 
problem, government foreclosure relief programs alone just aren't 
enough. We should do more--more to fix the housing market and more 
especially to create jobs, because putting people back to work will do 
more to right our economy, help people pay their mortgages and get the 
banks back to lending than anything else.
  But the Republican House leadership hasn't gotten the message. In the 
last 10 weeks since the Republicans took control of the House, they 
haven't created a single job. What's worse, they haven't even put a 
single jobs bill on the House floor. Instead of creating jobs, they are 
slashing them. The GOP spending plan eliminates 700,000 jobs and 
stifles economic growth. Rather than moving the Nation forward, they 
are forcing America backward.
  And this week is no different. Republicans are making things worse 
for American families as they continue their assault on the middle 
class. They want to completely abolish four programs designed to help 
homeowners keep their houses and avoid foreclosure. Republicans have no 
interest in making these programs work better for the American people. 
By offering nothing in their place, the GOP is simply abandoning 
hardworking homeowners who are underwater and struggling to find jobs 
to pay the bills.
  Now, we all know that government foreclosure programs are not 
perfect. But why are we completely dismantling programs that have 
helped thousands of Americans stay in their homes? Though not perfect, 
why are we targeting the victims of the foreclosure and financial 
crises instead of helping them by fixing these programs?
  There's a lot that we can do better without giving up on people like 
Francisco. Francisco is from Duarte in my district. After a year, he 
was underwater, and, at the height of the recession, he tried to modify 
his home loan.

[[Page 3740]]

He visited his servicer and was pushed back and forth between customer 
representatives. After 2 years of fighting for help, he only had four 
pieces of mail from the lender to show for it. He was eventually denied 
the modification, and he can't even appeal the decision. And though we 
should be doing more to help him, the Republican plan of doing nothing 
means that he is completely out of luck.
  Commonsense improvements can be made to make the government 
foreclosure program better, ones that could provide relief to 
Francisco. Take the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP. 
Simple fixes like having a case manager assigned to each case will 
allow for better communication between the customer and the bank. If a 
customer is denied a loan modification, it would be more effective to 
appeal the decision instead of having to reapply all over again. And we 
can do more to provide incentives for banks to complete modifications 
and ensure that servicers complete due diligence before denying 
modifications.
  These are reasonable solutions that servicers have been slow to 
adopt, if at all. And if we don't make changes to these programs and 
instead just throw them away, what will struggling homeowners be left 
with? They will be left to the banks whose bad policies caused this 
financial crisis in the first place. They will be left with unstable 
communities strewn with abandoned homes, and they will be left without 
a home and no one to turn to for help.
  It sounds like Republicans would rather return to old policies that 
we know don't work rather than trying to fix the policies we know that 
can work. Struggling Americans deserve better than that.

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