Spencer Bachus

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, this does not authorize them to offer any accounts which they presently cannot offer nor expand the rights of corporations to own these industrial companies.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, what Chairman Greenspan has said is, these institutions are not regulated by the Federal Reserve. There is nothing in this that takes any regulation or adds any regulation.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman agree that an industrial loan company can already offer a NOW account?

Mr. BACHUS. I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to address the issue of what this bill does and what it does not do. The bill authorizes the Federal Reserve to pay interest on sterile reserves, and as has been testified before our committee, that should result in depositors in banks, thrifts, credit unions, receiving higher interest on their deposits. It should also result in lower interest rates for consumers. The second thing that this legislation does, it allows banks to pay interest on accounts established by businesses in those banks. It does not authorize any new types of accounts. It does not in any way change who can own a bank and who cannot own a bank. It does not in any way allow these industrial loan companies to offer accounts which they are prohibited from offering now. And they are prohibited at the present time from offering demand deposit checking accounts; there is nothing in this legislation that allows them to offer those accounts. The Bank Holding Company Act establishes the rules for who can own a bank and who cannot. We do not amend that legislation in any regard. The bill does not, with respect to the gentleman from Iowa, authorize Wal-Mart, WorldCom, Enron or any other company to own a bank or expand the authority that they might have under existing law. They already have authority under existing laws and under the Bank Holding Company Act, which specifically permits them to own certain limited-purpose banks, including credit card banks, industrial loan banks, grandfathered unitary thrifts, grandfathered nonbank banks, and trust banks. That is the present law. There is nothing in this legislation that expands their right to own an institution. So WorldCom presently, Wal-Mart presently, they could own an industrial loan company or a unitary thrift, or some of these grandfathered institutions. We do not expand that authority at all. The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach) has a fear, first of all, that we are mixing banking and commerce. Well, we are already mixing them. Present law already allows them to mix. We do not expand that in any way under this legislation. Mr. Speaker, we addressed the amendments of the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach); he offered two amendments in committee. And I have great respect for the former chairman of the committee. He offered two amendments to strip the ILC language from the bill. They were overwhelmingly rejected, 55 nays, 8 yeses; the other amendment, 55 nays, 8 yeses. The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach) has legitimate concern with certain types of commerce and financial institutions and the mixing of them. However, this legislation does not do that. That will have to be addressed in the Bank Holding Act.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce) to speak in favor of the legislation.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey), who, along with the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Kelly), is one of the two primary cosponsors of the legislation and both drafted legislation. (Mr. TOOMEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Kelley), the sponsor of the bill.

Mr. BACHUS. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach).

Mr. BACHUS. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 758.

Mr. BACHUS. Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 758) to allow all businesses to make up to 24 transfers each month from interest-bearing transaction accounts to other transaction accounts, to require the payment of interest on reserves held for depository institutions at federal reserve banks, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I want to first commend the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce) for introducing this bill. This bill was actually introduced in the last Congress by the gentleman from California and passed almost unanimously. He has enlisted broad support for this bill, both in the committee and from the rank and file. It is also a bill which has bipartisan support. It has people who have sponsored it from both sides of the aisle. It was drafted to be consistent with the previous recommendations by the Federal Trade Commission to apply the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act protections based on the nature of the overall business conducted by the party to be exempted rather than the status of individual obligations when the party obtained them. H.R. 314 is actually even narrower than the FTC recommendation. It only exempts mortgage servicers from the Miranda warnings required by section 8071 on original first lien Federal-backed mortgages. All other borrower protections provided by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act remain in full force. I want to read a portion of a letter explaining why the Miranda warnings are clearly appropriate for third-party debt collection activities, but they are actually inappropriate for the type of situation addressed in this bill, and that is where a new servicer comes in and takes over the mortgage and the mortgage is in default. What the letter says, first of all, is that by requiring these Miranda warnings, it actually does two things. It puts borrowers at greater risk in mortgage servicing transfers, and two, it impairs the ability of the new mortgage servicers to establish a strong customer relationship. This letter was drafted by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kanjorski), has a signature of the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney), the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman), the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks). Of course, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks) is a cosponsor of the bill. These are all Democrats and all members of the Committee on Financial Services. They say this about the present state of the law and the need for this legislation which the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce) is offering. One, the present Miranda notice misleads the borrower about the nature of the new servicers' relationship. The most important thing a delinquent mortgage borrower can do is call his or her servicer to work out options. The harshly worded warnings actually discourage borrowers from contacting the new servicer out of the fear that the company is simply another debt collector. Two, the notice ``protects borrowers from providing information that the mortgage servicer already has in its possession. Mortgage servicers already possess detailed information about the borrower in the loan files.'' Third, the notice hurts customer relationships for the remaining term of the mortgage. The mini-Miranda is required in all subsequent contacts with the borrower, even after the customers have brought their loan current and maintained them that way for years. In closing, as the gentleman from New York said earlier, mortgages now are transferred. They are assigned. They are bought. It is a normal course of action in a businessplace. When this happens, people need to know whether they are dealing with a debt collector or with their mortgage servicer. This new law will allow that. So I would urge the membership to endorse this bill with a strong yes vote.

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, what we are doing today is simply a part of both responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11 and defending our country from continuing damage from those terrorist attacks. It is a very prudent thing that we do today. It is a part of the defense of our homeland and of our economy, for if our economy continues to be weakened by the terrorist attack, then the terrorists win. The President has called on us repeatedly to respond with legislation. I commend this House. This House has passed, and passed last November, good legislation to address the problem. And what is the problem? Mr. Speaker, before the terrorist attack, normally, as a matter of course, protection against terrorist attacks was included in commercial property and casualty insurance policies. After the losses on September 11, which amounted to 40- or $50 billion, it was impossible for insurance companies to predict when and if and the extent of these terrorist attacks in the future. It is impossible for us as a government to predict when and where and to what extent these attacks will occur. So there is no way for the insurance companies to assess that damage and to make reserves and charge premiums in an adequate amount. So what have the insurance companies done? They have done two things. They have either in most cases not extended coverage or, two, they have simply picked a very high number for a premium and extended coverage at a very substantial amount for what, in all probability, will not occur at a specific location because of the actions that this government and this administration has taken since September 11. However, because terrorist insurance coverage has not been extended, billions of dollars of projects have been put on hold or canceled. In fact, a recent, and this is very recent, real estate group estimated that the lack of affordable terrorist insurance has resulted in the delaying or the cancellation of more than $15.5 billion worth of new commercial building projects just in the past few months. The Federal Reserve, in fact, Chairman Greenspan recently said that as a result of terrorist insurance coverage not being provided, not being available, it is producing as much as a 1 percent drag on our gross domestic product. We talk about percentages of 1 percent. We talk about figures of $20 or $15 billion. What we are really talking about here is layoffs. We are talking about construction workers not working. We are talking about buildings not being built. We are talking about employees who work for companies that supply the office furniture for those buildings, who supply the goods that were to be sold in those buildings, the equipment in those buildings not being sold. As the President said, we have to respond comprehensively to what happened September 11. Thus, this bill. Let us talk about the liability provisions of this bill, because there was in fact an unwillingness on the part of some to endorse this legislation simply because of what was proposed. What is proposed here today is that, in the event of a large-scale terrorist attack upon this country in any location, one Federal court, one jurisdiction will take control and be charged with the administration of handling all the claims as a result of that attack, instead of having State and Federal courts all over the United States handling thousands of claims. Instead of that situation, which I think we all agree would be unmanageable, one Federal court picked for the convenience of those who had been hurt by this terrorist attack and picked for the efficient handling of the claims would be picked within 90 days of the terrorist attack, a Federal cause of action. The lawsuits under this legislation would be tried in Federal court, Federal rules of procedure. However, the substantive law of the State or where the attack occurred would be the applicable law. Finally, there has been a lot said about punitive damages. I for one have contended, and this bill makes it very clear, that punitive damages are not insured losses. Let me repeat that. Punitive damages are not insured losses. The taxpayers will not have to pay punitive damages under this legislation, and that is very important because the people that will be responsible for these attacks that ought to be punished will be the terrorists, not the American people. All the legal reforms, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Oxley) said, are an improvement over the current law. The Federal Government of the American taxpayers will not be forced to reinsure any punitive damage claims. Private rights of action for punitive damages are unchanged. In conclusion, let me simply commend the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Oxley), chairman, and the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Baker), chairman of the subcommittee, who have worked long and hard on this. I urge all Members of this conference, let us get on with strengthening our country, recovering from the attack of September 11 and doing everything we can do to prepare for other attacks, hoping they will not occur, but we have to act in self-defense.

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, this morning at 9:07, each Member of this body received an e-mail message, an alert; and it asked all of us to take precautionary measures. It told us all to restrict our activities at home and in our office. We were asked to share it with each member of our staff. I have that e-mail here. That e-mail dealt with a killer, a killer who we all know had murdered 5 people in Montgomery County, Maryland, and now is expanding his range. The question has been asked this entire weekend, What motivates this person? Why is he doing what he is doing? Last night if one listened to the news stories, there was an answer given, a profile. The profile gave his motive; it gave his weapon. We all know his weapon is a high- powered rifle. It showed the geographic area he was operating in. But what caught my attention was his motive. They said he is not a serial killer because a serial killer selects a certain type of victim. They said no he is motivated by something else, he enjoys killing. It is sport. He must kill again. He is what we call a thrill killer. In that regard he shares something with another thrill killer, a thrill killer we know as Saddam Hussein, a thrill killer that is not equipped with simply a high-powered weapon, but we have heard the litany of weapons at his disposal. We are also told that he started out killing members of his own family in his own village and then he moved on to members of his cabinet, members of his political party, his countrymen, whole villages at a time, then Iran, then Kuwait. Then in the Gulf War, the first two victims of this thrill killer were two majors from the Alabama National Guard that served at the same base I served in in Birmingham, a thrill killer. What is the response to a thrill killer when we identify, when we learn the identity of that thrill killer who started his rampage in Maryland? Will we react with resolutions? Will we try to establish a dialogue? Will we restrict him to home? Will we give him a notification that we would like to inspect his home from time to time? Will we simply rage about the violence and say that we are good people and he should not do these things? Thank goodness when we find him it will not be the United Nations that goes after him; it will be the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department, and we will not have to build a consensus all over the United States among every sheriff's department and every group as to what to do. We will know what to do with him; and it will not be home restrictions, and it will not be inspections with notifications and limitations. Mr. Speaker, I close with the words of George Washington, our greatest President when he responded at a moment like this as to how do you preserve peace, how do you make the community safe once again, how do you assure the safety of the people. He said: ``To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.'' I close by saying that what this Congress needs to do is give our President what he needs to prepare our Nation for war, and in doing so we will preserve the peace and ensure the peace for our children and our grandchildren.

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5507) to amend the Truth in Lending Act to adjust the exempt transactions amount for inflation.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in strong support of H.R. 5507, the Truth in Lending Inflation Adjustment Act. This bill makes a very modest change in the Truth in Lending Act. This legislation adjusts for inflation the dollar threshold for transactions that are exempt from the Truth in Lending Act. The Truth in Lending Act offers great protection to consumers and, under the current law, merchants need not comply with the Truth in Lending Act for credit and leasing transactions when the amount financed exceeds $25,000. Congress set this dollar amount at $25,000 in 1968, and in the last 34 years inflation has eroded the effectiveness of the Truth in Lending Act. This bill corrects that problem and ensures that the Truth in Lending Act will once again apply to most consumer credit and leasing transactions by raising that to $75,000. This bill will not result in significant new costs to financial institutions and merchants because most financial institutions and merchants voluntarily comply with the requirements of the Truth in Lending Act even for transactions above the current threshold of $25,000. Let me commend the gentleman from New York (Mr. LaFalce), Member of the other party, for his sponsorship of this legislation. I do want to again commend, as with the previous legislation, these two consumer protection items or pieces of legislation had broad bipartisan support, once again, just a demonstration of what this Congress can do when it puts aside its differences and works together in a bipartisan way. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material into the Record on this legislation.

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, simply let me close by sort of reminiscing. If you think back to 1968, 1968 you could actually buy a two-bedroom home in the community I was raised in, a modest home, but you could buy a two- bedroom home in that community, for $25,000. Today, you would be hard placed to buy that for $50,000 or even $75,000. So this act that we do pass today and hopefully the Senate will take up and pass will extend those protections, which many lenders are presently voluntarily complying with. But the ones that are not are the ones we worry about. I want to commend, again, the gentleman from New York (Mr. LaFalce) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Bentsen). The gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Oxley), chairman of the Committee on Financial Services, and I both support this legislation. It is part of a package of three bills that will move through the House today: this bill; the Mortgage Servicing Clarification Act, which the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce) sponsored and we have just disposed of; and H.R. 4005, the District of Columbia and United States Territories Circulation Quarter Dollar Program Act, which will extend that program to the District of Columbia and the Territories. On behalf of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Oxley) and myself, I urge my colleagues to support all three of these bills. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, today in Sudan people are given a simple choice. They are either told to embrace the state-sponsored faith or die. That is the choice. Many of them are dying. You have heard the numbers. Several of our Members have gone over there. They can identify with what is going on. They have seen it firsthand. Can the American people identify with the tragedy that we know as Sudan? Yes, they can, because the same kind of hatred was directed at them on September 11 when 3,000 of our fellow Americans were killed by this same radical Islamic movement that basically said, If you don't agree with us, you're an infidel; and if you're an infidel, we'll kill you. That is what happened here on September 11. That is what is happening every day in Sudan. I think Chuck Colson probably summarized it better on how Americans can imagine what is going on in Sudan: Now, imagine September 11 happening 666 times. Imagine 2 million Americans being killed by radical Islam. Then you will have an idea of what the citizens of southern Sudan have endured at the hands of the government in Khartoum. That is right, 666 times. If September 11 happened another 666 times, we would have the number of innocent people that have been killed in Sudan; 4.5 million raped, brutalized, bombed, put in slavery. Yet it goes on and on. Mr. Speaker, I commend the House. We offered a very strong bill which would have helped put an end to this slaughter in Sudan. But I commend this bill; and I urge Members to vote for this bill, because we have to be practical. We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the practical. This bill has a wonderful chance of passing today; it will go over to the Senate, I believe it will be passed in the Senate, and the President will sign it. And for the first time, there will be a link made officially between the genocide and the slaughter in Sudan and oil money. And what this legislation says, it gives President Bush if in 6 months peace negotiations are not proceeding, there is not a moving towards resolution, he can intervene to cut off the flow of money. The Sudanese Government has gone to Ukraine, they have bought helicopters, they have bought all sorts of weapons from Iran. We will cut off that oil money. The tie between the genocide and oil is well established. The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Weekly Standard, the Birmingham News in my own home State, the Financial Times of London, they all say cut off the oil and you help cut off the slaughter. This bill is the first step in doing that. I would like to commend the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith). I would like to commend the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson); ranking member, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne). I would like to commend the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo), who is not here with us today. I would like to commend Senator Brownback and Senator Frist in the Senate for working on this. I too would like to commend President Bush. He recognized soon after he became President that we needed to end this slaughter in Sudan. He appointed Senator Danforth, and we are working our way towards that. I will close simply by saying that the U.S. Holocaust Museum here in Washington, they for the first time in 60 years recognized Sudan and what is going on there as genocide and named Sudan as a country of conscience and said it must be ended. And it must. No wonder that Osama bin Laden found refuge in Sudan. It is because he and the government in Khartoum share the same twisted logic. With a vote for this bill today, we will begin to do what we can here today to end that slaughter.

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, this bill which the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce) has introduced has broad support and that is bipartisan support. It also has broad cosponsorship from both sides of the aisle. The bill has been modified from an earlier version which was in the 106th Congress to address concerns raised by consumer groups. Now the Consumer Mortgage Coalition has endorsed the bill, as has the American Financial Services Association and the Mortgage Banking Association. They all support this legislation. The bill is drafted to be consistent with the previous recommendations by the Federal Trade Commission to apply the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act protections based on the nature of the overall business conducted by the party to be exempted, rather than the status of individual obligations when the party obtained them. H.R. 163 is even narrower than the FTC recommendation. It only exempts mortgage servicers from the Miranda notices required by Section 8071 on original first lien Federal-backed mortgages. All other borrower protections provided by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act remain in full force. And, finally, just to show the bipartisan nature of this effort, I want to read to a letter, just a part of a letter, explaining why the Miranda warnings are clearly appropriate for third-party debt collection activities but that they actually put borrowers at greater risk in mortgage service transfers and impair the ability of the new mortgage servicer to establish a strong customer relationship. This letter is from the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Bentsen), the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Maloney), the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kanjorski), the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney), the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman), the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones), the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gonzalez), the gentlewoman from Indiana (Ms. Carson), the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Ford) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks), all Democrats, all members of the Committee on Financial Services. Here is what they say about the present state of the law and why this bill is needed. They gave three reasons. One, the present Miranda notice misleads the borrower about the nature of the new servicer's relationship. The most important thing a delinquent mortgage borrower can do is call his or her servicer to discuss working out options. The harshly worded Miranda actually discourages borrowers from contacting their new servicer out of fear that the company is simply another debt collector. Second reason, the notice ``protects borrowers from providing information that the mortgage servicer already has in its possession. Mortgage servicers already possess detailed information about the borrower in the loan files. There is no need for the servicer to engage in deceptive tactics to obtain information from the borrower.'' Third, the notice hurts customer relationships for the remaining term of the mortgage. The mini Miranda is required in all subsequent contacts with the borrower even after customers have brought their loans current and maintained them that way for years. Let me simply close by saying that what this committee heard is, many times, a person's mortgage servicer would change. That mortgage would be assigned and that person would get a telephone call from someone who had to identify themselves as a debt collector. The mortgage might be up, it may be current. They would have to warn the person that they were trying to collect a debt and that they were a debt collector. In fact, what they were and, in fact, in reality they are, is they were the person's mortgage servicer, and as opposed to avoiding them, what you ought to be doing is talking with them, letting them answer questions and establishing a new relationship. In the original act, I think it was inadvertent that these Miranda warnings were applied to someone servicing a person's mortgage. This legislation will go a long way towards clearing up this confusion and protecting people who have mortgages.

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, on Thursday September 26 I missed rollcall votes 416, 417, 418, 419, 420, 421, 422, and 423 due to a family emergency. If I had been present I would have voted “yea” on rollcall 416, “aye” on rollcall 417, “yea” on rollcall 418, “yea” on rollcall 419, “nay” on rollcall 420, “yea” on rollcall 421 “yea” on rollcall 422 and “yea” on rollcall 423.

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, I think my comments may shed some light on the last speaker and some of what he said. Imagine, if you will, if you heard news from home that they had built a casino next to your house, and, worse than that, they had invited your kids over to gamble in the casino which was built next door. You would say that was about as bad a news as you could receive. But it is actually worse than that. Sitting right on the computer desk in your home, or better still up in your child's bedroom, is a computer. On that computer today, there is a child-accessible casino, because we have got 1,500 offshore, and they are offshore, this may address the last speaker's concerns, because it is against the law in all 50 States to operate these Internet gambling sites. It is against the law in all the States, so they are all offshore. Your child could go in, he could turn on his computer, and he could gamble. Mr. Speaker, I have five children. I knew nothing about this. We ought to thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach) and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte). It is also, I think, fortuitous that the gentleman from Iowa sits on the Committee on Financial Services and the gentleman from Virginia sits on the Committee on the Judiciary, because I know that the gentleman from Virginia will continue to do what he can in the Committee on the Judiciary, and this bill which the gentleman from Iowa has offered is going to go a long way. What about the demographics? What did we hear? We heard that in the over-65 age group, only 1 in 10 senior citizens in that group uses a computer as a hobby or to pursue their interests in an active way. We heard that 7 out of 10 in the 18-to-24 group use a computer. American Demographics, a study 2 years old, 7 out of 10 18-to-24-year-olds are on the computer. A survey for Public Participation in the Arts did a study about 5 years ago, and they said that the average teenager or college student is spending 4 hours on the computer. What else do we know about college kids? Eighty percent of them have credit cards. What do they need to play on the Internet? All they need is the use of a computer, which they are on 4 hours a day, and a credit card. They have that. Are they doing it? You bet they are doing it. The NCAA came to us and told us testimony about students losing $10,000, $5,000. Gambling addiction by college students as a result partially of Internet gambling on these illegal sites is reaching epidemic proportions. I guess the most chilling testimony, and I will close with this, is what Dr. Howard Shaffer at Harvard University said. He said, I would compare what this illegal Internet gambling is doing to our youth in the gambling spectrum to what we saw with the introduction of crack cocaine, where it changed the drug experience and caused millions of people to become addicted within a year or two. He said the same thing is happening today with illegal Internet gambling. We have got to move against it. I commend the gentleman from Virginia. I commend the gentleman from Iowa. This bill shuts off the money. That is what these people are there for, the money. If we shut off the money, we shut off the sites.

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday, September 25th I missed rollcall votes 411, 412, 413, 414 and 415 due to a family emergency. If I had been present I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall 411, ``yea'' on rollcall 412, ``yea'' on rollcall 413, ``yea'' on rollcall 414 and ``yea'' on rollcall 415.

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Speaker, on Thursday September 19th I missed rollcall vote Nos. 396, 397 and 398 due to chairing a hearing on terrorism with FBI Director Mueller testifying. If I had been present, I would have voted ``aye'' on each of these votes.

Mr. BACHUS

Mr. BACHUS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I am not sure whether I am sort of tan or yellow or whatever I am, but whatever I am, I want to agree with the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) about one thing. She has outlined a number of abuses. She has argued about a number of people that are being ripped off. I agree. But what she is saying has nothing to do with this bill, because this bill absolutely increases consumer protection. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sandlin) to close, one of 24 Members of the Committee, after 4 days of hearings and markup, who voted overwhelmingly for this bill.