Spencer Bachus

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, is the gentlewoman talking about cases in identity theft? Is that what we are talking about?

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, let me first stress that the legislation before us on which we are having an amendment by the gentlewoman from California now, and we will have one from the gentleman from Vermont which will follow that, I first want to say to them that there are many important consumer protections in this bill: free credit report, fraud alerts, the one-call-does-it-all, protecting of health information. And I want to commend both of the gentlewomen for their participation in that. So I do want to say that several of their suggestions, several of the things that they advocated are in this legislation. To the gentlewoman from California, I rise in opposition to disregarding a national uniform standard in the case of, and this amendment covers two different acts; one of them because the act before us simply does not address a lot of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley things that this legislation did not address. I think this Congress will, at some point, take up a review of those things. The second one does deal with ID theft; it is the California legislation that was just passed. This legislation before us today, if it passes, Californians will have important new protections in ID theft cases. And I think we all, no matter how we feel about the gentlewoman's amendment, I hope we can all agree on that. We do think that this amendment really strikes at the essence of this bill; and that is a broad, uniform standard where what is done in California meets the test of what is done in Alabama, and what is done in Alabama meets the test of what is done in Ohio. If we apply different standards to fraud alerts, if we require different standards of credit reporting agencies or reports, there is so much interaction here between States. It simply drives up the expense, when California, representing a fourth of this Nation, can impose its own standards on a national issue in which, on a daily basis, millions of transactions are crossing State lines. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, let me say this. The body just heard from the gentleman from Arizona. He actually introduced in the 104th Congress the very first legislation dealing with identity theft. It was the Identity Theft and Deterrence Act, which had criminal penalties in it. Before most Americans, even most Members of Congress, knew of this problem, he knew about it. We do have a continuing concern about Social Security numbers. If we are going to truncate them, this is a great example of why we need a uniform standard. We cannot have one State truncating them into six numbers, another State into five numbers where we could not interchange them. I would encourage the gentleman from Arizona to continue to work with the Committee on Ways and Means in dealing with this problem, because it is something that we need to address in identity theft. I applaud and commend him for his effort and encourage him to continue with it.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, as we have said, we need a national standard just like we need a national interstate highway system or other national uniform standards. California saw fit, when they passed this law, to exempt local statutes.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, just to make a clarification, it has been said that this bill will preempt the new California legislation.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I would like to affirm the understanding between the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Oxley) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank). In this bill we built upon the amendments that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) and the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley) had first offered along with the gentleman from New York (Mr. Ackerman) and also the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) to flesh out existing uniform standards. The bill of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) and the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley) that we used as our base text expanded on the uniform standards for identity theft. But in that bill, as in ours, there is no intent to go beyond the specific subjects identified in the bill. So, for example, we do create uniform standards for opening new credit accounts when there are allegations of potential identity theft under our fraud alert and blocking provisions. Because you need a consistent rule that consumers and businesses can rely on when there has been a fraud alert, when there has been an allegation of identity theft. We do not address other subject matters that are not covered such as limits on Social Security number use or criminal penalties for identifying theft perpetrators. These are issues that we expect the States to continue to work out solutions to. Hopefully we can return to work on those ourselves with Members like the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw) or the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg), the gentleman from California (Mr. Ose), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel). And I think the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley) also wants to address some of those issues. Many of them will have to be addressed either in the Committee on Ways and Means or in the Committee on the Judiciary. And they have valid concerns, but it is just from a jurisdictional standpoint.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Oxley), for yielding me this time and who was certainly instrumental in making this a priority and in allowing the committee to take as much time as it did to consider this issue, because it was an important issue. We have received a statement from the Executive Office of the President, which arrived here today, concerning this legislation; and I want to read from it. It says the administration strongly supports House passage of H.R. 2622. The bill includes many of the administration's proposed consumer protections, including new tools to help fight identity theft. The national credit reporting system has proven critical to the resilience of consumer spending and the overall economy. That is one thing we heard over and over, that the national credit reporting system was essential to maintain the overall economy and consumer spending. So I am pleased that Chairman Oxley has received this important endorsement from the President. It has been said that I was the author of this legislation, and, in fact, I would sort of like to claim that, but it is truly a bipartisan bill. We had a blueprint to start with, however, on our ID theft provision, and I would like to recognize at this time and thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) for all his work on identifying the theft provision that needed to be in this legislation. Actually, he introduced, with the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley), the original number of provisions which were taken and put in this bill verbatim. So we did not have to start from scratch. It was a big help that we had a bipartisan bill that the gentleman from Ohio and the gentlewoman from Oregon had worked on. What he brought to the table from the start was a piece of legislation that has since evolved over time, been updated, and I think improved with the help of consumers and the industries and the administration and Members of this Congress to serve as a valuable protection against identity theft, and I commend him on that. I want to run over some of those protections if time permits. Here are some of the important consumer protection tools. It allows consumers to place fraud alerts in their credit reports to prevent identity thieves from opening accounts in their names, including a special provision to protect active duty military personnel, who we found, sadly, had been particularly susceptible to ID theft. It allows consumers to block fraudulent information from being given to a credit bureau and from being reported by a credit bureau if that information results from identity theft. It provides ID theft victims with a summary of their rights. It gives consumers the right to see not only their credit reports but their credit scores. Now, that is an important new right which will help people. And I think there was unanimous agreement on this from industry, from consumers, and Members of Congress. This will actually help people save money with lower interest rates. One estimate I have read is $21 billion in savings in home mortgages alone. It restricts access to consumer-sensitive health information. That is something people said: we do not want our health information to be shared without our permission. It empowers consumers by making it easier to limit unsolicited marketing offers. And it ensures improved accuracy of credit report procedures. It is very important that the information that is shared between creditors and credit bureaus is accurate. It provides consumers with a one-call-for-all protection by requiring credit bureaus to share consumer calls on ID theft, including reporting fraud alerts with other credit bureaus. One call does it all. Important suggestion. With that, Mr. Chairman, I would also like to commend Wayne Abernathy, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and Secretary of Treasury Snow. And once again, I wish to commend the chairman, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette), the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), and all of the 58 cosponsors of this original legislation.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I yield the gentlewoman 1 minute of my remaining time.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. What this amendment does, first of all, it addresses two things; one is SB1 that was just passed in California. And as to affiliate-sharing, that is what is preempted by this legislation. But the present preemption, what we are doing is, we are taking a preemption that presently exists in the law and we are extending it as of January 1. So SB1 as to affiliate-sharing, you cannot do that today in California. You would be, if FCRA was not renewed. Now, the second component that you have here is California's version of FCRA. And what that would do, the Waters amendment would not only allow California to change its law on an ongoing basis, but beyond what we grandfathered today, and we are grandfathering some of those protections, but it would also resurrect certain laws that are preempted today. Now, as to a uniform standard, and I want to go back to what we posed to Treasury and what their response was in testimony before our committee, why should uniform national standards be extended to include matters that are designed to help fight identity theft? Why should not States be able to adopt stricter anti-ID theft measures? Now, since that time, in the manager's amendment, we have allowed a lot of those as long as they do not affect the operation of the FCRA, and the answer that we got from the Federal Reserve, from the Treasury, from the FTC was that it would literally cost millions of dollars; that it is important to have national uniform standards for identity theft prevention measures. For example, section 202 of the act calls for the development of a national fraud alert system. This requires the credit reporting agencies that operate on a nationwide basis to allow consumers to place various types of alerts in their credit reports when they are victims of identity theft. Now, we require certain things to go into those alerts. If California requires other things, then a company doing business in Ohio or Alabama or New York would not only have to comply with that law, they would have to comply with the California law if they had customers or consumers in California. Merchants dealing with California consumers would not only have to comply with the national law, they would have to worry about the law in all 50 other States with credit reports. We would have a gradual erosion and chipping away of our national system. And we took volumes and volumes of testimony how the person most penalized by this would be the consumers in paying higher interest rates, also in being a less effective national standard. We would also discourage people from using the National Uniform Credit System to report and to furnish information if they thought they not only had to comply with a national law but a California law. Finally, philosophically, when California is able to basically define what FCRA will be, then California imposes its will on the national policy. And we have to have a national policy. We have representatives of California here. In fact, probably one-fifth of this body is made up of California representatives, or one-sixth. They participated in this. I anticipate that when this final vote is taken, the vast majority, as in committee, of Californians will vote for this legislation. But we simply cannot allow any State to dictate how this system will operate in Alabama, Ohio, New York or to impose additional requirements and costs on consumers in California or Massachusetts or other States. Simply put, this amendment, it sounds good but it strikes at the very efficiency, the cost efficiency, of our national credit reporting system. It bogs it down. I will conclude with this: California recognized this when they preempted the law of several large cities in California who had attempted to impose their own standards simply by saying we cannot. The cost of cities and counties imposing their own standard would be prohibited. California ought to see that that logic also applies on a national level. Governor Davis, I believe, initially bought into this. Initially when this legislation, some of this legislation was proposed, he did not sign it. He did not support it. He is now facing a recall in a few weeks, but I am not sure that is the time to judge what ought to be done in the middle of a politically expedient campaign. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, the original FCRA that the gentleman from Ohio pointed out was passed in 1996. Right? Not 1776. Is that right? I will admit to the gentleman from Massachusetts we took absolutely no testimony on the American Revolution and none of our witnesses actually tied that in. But I appreciate his input.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, how much time remains?

Mr. BACHUS. One of those acts was just passed by the California legislature in the past few days.

Mr. BACHUS. Well, the amendment deals with two specific acts.

Mr. BACHUS. As to identity theft?

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, in 1948, Mother Teresa came across a half- dead woman lying in front of a Calcutta hospital. She stayed with the woman until she died. From that point on, she dedicated the majority of her life to helping the poorest of the poor in India. If everyone in the world able to help the poor would donate a small fraction of their time in the spirit of Mother Teresa, the world would be a much better place. It takes an extraordinary person to ``see God in every human being.'' Almost 50 years later, her Missionaries of Charity has grown from 12 sisters in India to over 3,000 in 517 missions throughout 100 countries worldwide. For 50 years, this remarkable woman has touched the lives of so many that were in dire need of help. As we members of Congress go about our daily routines, we would be well served to use Mother Teresa as an example of how we should conduct ourselves. Our duty is public service, and there was no greater servant to mankind than Mother Teresa.

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time. The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Whitfield). The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus) that the House suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 23, as amended.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes to speak in support of this bill. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to thank many of those responsible for the bill coming up today. I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Oxley), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ney), the chairman of the subcommittee. I also want to thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), who has always been very supportive of this legislation. This legislation has had overwhelming, bipartisan support. Mr. Speaker, this legislation is a response to something that every day, during at least 6 months out of the year, almost every day, we open the newspaper and we read where someone has been killed by a tornado. Now, we cannot prevent tornadoes from happening, but we can save lives when those tornadoes do happen, because the technology is there. The technology today, particularly on an F4, F5 tornado, the technology is there to give residents a 30- or 40-minute warning of a tornado bearing down on their community. Now, what many residents have when they get these warnings is they have a place of shelter, they have a place to go. Many residents have a site-built home, they go down in the basement of that home, and that offers protection; or they go into an interior room. Manufactured housing residents do not have a basement. That is pretty obvious. They often do not have an interior room. The Society of Civil Engineers, who have endorsed this bill this week, actually pointed out the fact that this is something that manufactured housing communities need, and they have endorsed this legislation. Because what this legislation will do is it will allow, wherever we have concentrations of manufactured housing, sometimes referred to as mobile homes, it will allow community development money to be used, and this is the option of the city or the county, to be used for a storm shelter for those residents. I have actually in the past few months visited two storm shelters, and they offer almost 100 percent protection from these storms. Coupled with the warning and the shelter, we should be able to reduce fatalities substantially. Last year, the House of Representatives passed this bill, and Senator Tim Johnson tried to bring it up or attempted to bring it up; he made efforts to bring it up in the Senate. But for whatever reason, that bill did not come up. Senator Johnson and many other Senators have joined with House Members in asking that this bill be a priority this year. Last year, when this House overwhelmingly passed this bill, I introduced the picture of a little girl named Whitney. Whitney was a resident of a manufactured house, a mobile home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She shared that home with her mother and her 16-month-old baby brother, and also a sister. When a tornado struck their home, it threw Whitney out of the home several hundred yards. Because it actually took hours and hours to find her, and she was actually mistaken for a pile of rubble, but an Associated Press photographer was there on the scene when Whitney was found and her little picture with her torn dress and her bloodied face went all over the United States. What a lot of people that saw that picture did not know is that Whitney's little brother did not make it through that storm. Whitney's little sister and Whitney spent days and weeks in a hospital recovering, but now they are home with their mother. What Whitney did not have and what a sixth of the people in the United States who live in manufactured housing do not have is they do not have a shelter from the storm. This storm was predicted to go through her community some 30 minutes before it went through her community. Her parents had a warning, but what they did not have is a place to hide. In fact, they were advised wisely: do not get in an automobile. So I close by simply saying, this legislation was too late for Whitney's little brother and Whitney's father, but it is not too late for millions of American families today. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the gentleman and also the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis), my home State, who joined me along with my fellow Alabamans, the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Everett) and the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Rogers) in being original cosponsors of this bill. What we saw was little Whitney and any citizen that lives in manufactured housing is basically discriminated against in Federal law today because there are not funds available for mobile home shelters for them. Had she lived on a site-built house, the Federal Government would have provided money for a tornado shelter. One thing that we are doing with this legislation is we are going to allow all of our residents to be prepared for our next tornado, all our community, not just those that live in site-built homes. We need to be careful as we move forward that we do have legislation that does not discriminate against any of our residents. And in this case, manufactured housing, many of our low- and middle-income residents choose this as a most affordable option, but when they choose this option they should not be discriminated against. They ought to, particularly in those areas that are tornado prone, also have an opportunity for those programs that had been created to protect them from this type of disaster or to mitigate the circumstances. Had a shelter like this been in place in my community when this tornado hit, Whitney's father would be there to take care of her today. Whitney's little brother would be with her. Because they are not, she has continued to incur medical bills and her mother has continued to have to have assistance. And I do not want that to be the case. I want us to be able to offer these people protection and security, and this is a very affordable way to do that and it is very sound. It works as the recent endorsement from the American Society of Civil Engineers shows.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 23) to amend the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 to authorize communities to use community development block grant funds for construction of tornado-safe shelters in manufactured home parks, as amended.