Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, March is National Eye Donor Month. In fact, it's the 25th anniversary of that proud tradition. Each March since 1983, the eye donor community has gathered to celebrate the gift of sight, to honor past donors and their families, and to raise awareness about eye donation. I want to thank those who have given this amazing gift and to encourage more Americans to become eye donors. Eye donation is an incredible thing. Precious corneas harvested from donated eyes can restore vision that's been lost to disease or injury or infection. Most of us take our vision for granted. We read our books, watch our children grow, and find our loved ones in a crowded room--and don't give it a second thought. But what if you lost that ability, that gift of sight--or never had it at all. An estimated 11.4 million people have severe visual problems that are not correctable by glasses. Eighty million people suffer from potentially blinding eye disease; 1.1 million people are legally blind. But there is hope. Through the miracle of transplantation, it is possible to restore sight. Each year, 44,000 sight-restoring corneal transplants are performed. Eye banks like the Central Ohio Lions Eye Bank change people's lives. Shirley Jacobs knows this first hand. Shirley was living with Fuchs dystrophy, a genetic degenerative corneal disease. The disease robbed her of clear vision. It limited her independence and her ability to do her job. Then she received a corneal transplant at the Central Ohio Lions Eye Bank. Her first words after the surgery were, ``This is a miracle! I can see you, I can see you!'' That is amazing. But so many more people are waiting. In Ohio alone, 1,600 people each year could have their sight restored through corneal transplants. But there aren't enough organs available. We need to get the word out and reach people who would donate if given the choice. We must raise public awareness of the need for eye donors and the ways to sign up. I encourage my colleagues to work with their local eye banks and the Eye Bank Association of America to promote the precious gift of eye donation. I also encourage Americans to consider designating themselves as organ donors on their driver's licenses. It is the best way to make your end-of-life wishes known and to give the gift of sight. I urge my colleagues and fellow citizens to consider becoming an eye donor. Thousands of people around the country are waiting for it.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the budget resolution before us this evening. Governing is about choosing. This budget makes the right choices and at the same time maintains fiscal discipline. Over the past year, I have held some 85 roundtables of 20 or 25 people each in communities across the State. I have held them in some 55 of Ohio's counties, listening to workers and business leaders, listening to teachers and sheriffs, listening to people running social service agencies and people served by those social service agencies. In every town I visited, Ohioans have asked to work together with the Federal Government, not for a handout, not necessarily for assistance, but to work together with the Federal Government in attacking the problems of our small towns, our rural areas, our inner-ring suburbs, and our big cities. I have heard from employers who have good jobs that go begging because we have not trained or retrained people in the skills they need. I have heard from county commissioners, worried that their crumbling bridges may fall and that their water and sewer infrastructures are not sound. I have heard from doctors who think we can do a much better job of providing access to health care through their offices and their examining rooms rather than through the emergency room, and not just for the 47 million Americans without health insurance, including 9 million children, but for the millions of people in this country with inadequate health insurance. Last month we saw the priorities of the Bush administration when he sent his budget to Congress. The Bush budget proposed to cut funding for job training and technical education. Today I met with people from Wayne County and Butler County, from Geauga County and Cuyahoga County, and all over my State, to talk to people who are teachers and administrators, and superintendents and students, who depend on vocational training, technical education, and who provide training for so many in our State. The Bush budget proposed to cut the community development block grants by more than 20 percent. As big cities and small towns face the impending problems that are in the midst now of these problems with foreclosures, the Bush budget proposed to cut health care for seniors and for children, and these are the choices of the Bush administration. They are the choices of an administration that has gone in the wrong direction year after year after year. They are the choices we must reject. Our budget, by contrast, will increase Federal efforts to educate and train our citizens, young and old. Our budget will increase funding for economic development and for rebuilding our Nation's infrastructure. Our budget will improve the health care of families and of children. Our budget will help to create good-paying jobs here in America. This administration either doesn't care or doesn't understand what it is doing to the middle class and what is happening to the middle class. Up until last summer--in front of the Presiding Officer in the Banking Committee--the Secretary of the Treasury and others in the administration assured everyone the economy was doing fine and the housing crisis was contained. Senator Menendez and so many others here spoke up for Federal involvement in trying to help the many people in New Jersey and Ohio and across the country who were threatened with this foreclosure problem in their homes and in their neighborhoods. But when the problems were mostly on Ohio's main streets, the main streets of Zanesville and Steubenville, the main streets of Toledo and Dayton and Lima and Marion, the administration was indifferent. They said the problem would go away. But when the problems migrated from main street Mansfield and main street Springfield to Wall Street, suddenly the problems became important to the administration. But even then the response of the Bush budget to economic troubles and to the problems of foreclosure across our country speaks volumes. It proposes to cut taxes for the wealthiest people in the country, offset by cuts in Medicare. They want to pay for their tax cuts for the richest people in the country, but they do it by making cuts in Medicare. They propose to reduce benefits under the Social Security system while pushing a privatization program that generates big fees for Wall Street at the expense of seniors and disabled people in our country. While families are struggling to afford the cost of sending their children to college, it proposes to cut Federal support for student loans. One of the greatest accomplishments of this new Democratic majority, right off the bat, is what we were able to do to increase Pell grants and what we have been able to do to bring down interest rates for student loans, and what the Governor of my State, Governor Strickland, has done by freezing college loans. The Bush administration, it seems, as I said, either doesn't know, doesn't understand, or doesn't care about these middle-class kids who are struggling to go to college. My wife was the first in her family to go to college. She got loans, she got grants, and she graduated with a debt of only a couple thousand dollars. That was almost 30 years ago. Today, it is very different, because the Federal Government has simply shrugged its shoulders and said, that is the problem of these middle-class students. I am proud that our budget charts a much different course. Most importantly, we invest in America. We invest in its people and in its communities. And most importantly, we invest in America's future. The President likes to tout the length of the economic recovery, but he seldom mentions its breadth or its depth, and for good reason. During the last 7 years, median weekly earnings have actually fallen, after adjusting for inflation. Most Ohioans make less today than they made when George Bush took office, in real dollars. Job creation has been the worst since the Hoover administration. And if you look at private sector jobs or manufacturing jobs, the picture is even worse. As bad as job creation and job growth has been, as I said, it has been even worse in the private sector and even worse yet in the manufacturing sector. If there is a recovery, as the President likes to trumpet, heaven help us in a recession. Middle-class families are being squeezed by toxic mortgages and by gas prices that have doubled in the past few years. The President didn't know that gas prices had exceeded $3 and were approaching, in some places, $4 a gallon. Middle-class families are being squeezed by increases in the cost of food, education, and the cost of health care. Our budget will extend tax relief to these families. The Democratic budget will prevent the alternative minimum tax from reaching millions of middle-class families. Senator Baucus's amendment, which I am cosponsoring, will provide further relief by extending the tax credit, the child credit, the dependent care credit, and other provisions, including several important provisions to our veterans and to our active duty military personnel. At the same time, unlike the President's budget of the last 5 years, we maintain a path to a balanced budget. The Senator from New Jersey and I, and others, participated in the 1990s in passing a balanced budget under President Clinton. We moved toward a balanced budget, unlike what President Bush has unraveled in the last 6 years. This is an important difference between our budget and the President's. Once upon a time, our Republican colleagues were concerned about balancing the budget. That was then. Now, this administration has piled up trillions of dollars of debt that our children and grandchildren will be forced to repay--a sorry legacy indeed. The public debt stood at $6 trillion--actually less than $6 trillion--when President Bush took the oath of office in 2001. By the end of this fiscal year, the debt will have grown to $10 trillion. That is a 4,000 billion dollar growth, from under $6 trillion to more than $10 trillion. Even at a time of low interest rates, we will spend $260 billion next year to pay interest due on that debt. Many of my Republican colleagues have changed their tune because they do not seem so interested in balanced budgets anymore. They will say the cost isn't that great when measured against the size of the economy. But they ignore the opportunity cost. Think of that $260 billion and what we could have done with that money. Think of how it could be used to expand opportunity for better health care, for education, for roads, for bridges, for research, for infrastructure. Instead, we write checks to bondholders, many of them big contributors to my Republican colleagues, whose addresses are more and more often found, in some cases, in China and in the OPEC states and in the offshore banking centers. The hundreds of billions in Federal debt financed by foreigners is swamped by the even larger size of the trade deficit, which has roughly doubled under the Bush administration, to more than $700 billion last year. Every day in this country, every single day of the year, we buy almost $2 billion in goods, importing more into this country than we export--almost $2 billion every single day. That translates into lost jobs, it translates into stagnating wages, it translates into communities that are, in many cases, devastated. Places particularly hard hit are smaller towns and industrial centers that have been hard hit by plant closings. Our manufacturing sector has in too many cases been hollowed out. Companies that have been in business for centuries, surviving challenges from the Great War to the Great Depression, have been unable to weather this administration. The response: The Bush budget eliminates funding for one of the Government's most effective programs to help small business, the Manufacturing Extension Program, which assists American manufacturers to adapt to changing technology. We can do better, and the Democratic budget does do better. Over the weeks ahead, in working with our colleagues in the House, we will write a budget that pays attention to the voices of the middle class and responds to the needs of the middle class. We will write a budget that increases funding for education and for health care, one that gears tax policy to the needs of struggling families and small businesses, and one that builds a foundation rather than undercutting that foundation for our future and doesn't take a mortgage out on it. As an Eagle Scout many years ago, I was taught you should leave a campground better than you found it. I think that is not a bad description for our role as Senators too. Let us make the choices that will leave the country's fiscal situation better than it is today. Let's help the middle class, let's help working families and end the red ink. Let's invest in our future. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak before Senator Coburn, my colleague from Oklahoma.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H. Con. Res. 306 received from the House and at the desk.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I yield the floor to my colleague from Oklahoma, Senator Coburn.

Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1593 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent that all time during this period of morning business be charged equally against each side on the resolution and that morning business now be closed and that the Senate resume consideration of the budget resolution, and following the remarks of Senator Coburn, who was generous with his time this evening, and I am grateful for that, and the remarks of Senator Sanders, that the Senate stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Tomorrow, the Senate will resume debate on the budget resolution. Senator Bingaman is expected to be here to offer the next amendment.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9:30 a.m., Wednesday, March 12; that on Wednesday, following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day and that the Senate then resume consideration of H. Con. Res. 70, the concurrent resolution on the budget.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 479, which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid on the table.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 2516 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent that the Mikulski substitute amendment, which is at the desk, be agreed to; the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed; the motions to reconsider be laid on the table, with no intervening action or debate and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 390 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid on the table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of H. Con. Res. 270 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. BROWN. I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, and any statements relating to the measure be printed in the Record.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I say to the Presiding Officer, it seems as though every day in your State of Pennsylvania and my State of Ohio and across the country the news brings us more evidence of the length and the breadth of the housing crisis in this country. Yesterday, the Mortgage Bankers Association released statistics on the fourth quarter of 2007, and the news is grim. The rate of foreclosure starts and the percentage of loans in the foreclosure pipeline are the highest ever. My State set a record for foreclosures last year of more than 83,000 foreclosures, according to the Ohio Supreme Court. That is more than 200 every day--Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday--more than 200 every day, and more than 300 a day for every day the courts are in session. Every week, 1,500 families in Ohio--just in Ohio--lose their homes-- week in, week out. Four percent of home loans in Ohio are in foreclosure, the highest rate in the Nation. And the end is nowhere in sight. In Ohio, there are another 120,000 home loans that are delinquent. Nationally, one of the ratings agencies is now predicting a 50-percent--nationally, a 50-percent--default rate for subprime loans made in the fourth quarter of 2006. That means the rates for those loans will reset in the fourth quarter of this year. Think about that: One of every two subprime loans made in the fall of 2006 will go bad. That is not lending; that is gambling with somebody else's home. The losses on these loans to lenders are substantial--on the order of 40 percent nationwide and about 65 percent in my State. That means only 35 cents on the dollar is preserved, if you will. We have sheriffs' sales in Ohio that are attracting no bidders whatsoever. And the trend lines have been straight down. Congress must act in the face of this crisis. Majority Leader Reid, to his credit, brought legislation--of which the Presiding Officer is a cosponsor, and many others of us--before the Senate that would take several steps to help homeowners faced with foreclosure and the communities in which they live. The needs of communities are critical because this crisis has an impact far beyond just the people--as large a number as that is, as tragic as it is for them--an impact far beyond just the people who lose their homes. Whenever a home goes into foreclosure, the value of neighboring properties is reduced. It is not confined to our large cities or to our small towns. It is rural areas. It is inner ring suburbs. It is outer ring suburbs. In many areas, criminals move in quickly in these abandoned homes to strip the copper pipe and aluminum siding from a home. A copper processor in northwest Ohio told me the other day that copper prices are now exceeding $3 a pound, which just encourages more and more vandalism of these homes. Crime goes up just when property tax revenues are plunging and the resources of a city or town are stretched to the limit. So Senator Reid's bill would include $4 billion in funding for the Community Development Block Grant Program so communities that have been hit hard could renovate or rebuild or, in some cases, raze those properties. This legislation would also provide another $200 million for supporting the efforts of nonprofit agencies across the country to counsel homeowners on how to work with a lender to stave off foreclosure. That part is so very important. Senator Casey, the Presiding Officer, Senator Schumer, and I, a year ago, on the Banking Committee, began to try to get money appropriated, which the President initially vetoed, to these counseling agencies, these not-for-profit groups in our communities that help people stave off foreclosure--no bailout, no Federal dollars to pay the mortgages, but simply to help them find a lender and trace their mortgage and help to restructure their payments so they can pay it off. This is no easy task. Once upon a time, you took out a loan with your local bank to buy a home. You knew the people at the bank. They knew you. They had just as much interest in you paying off your loan as you did in paying off your loan and staying in your house. Today, especially for subprime loans, that doesn't happen. So help in navigating this mortgage maze is essential. Senator Reid's bill also provided bankruptcy judges the ability to modify mortgage terms on a primary residence in the same way--get this--that the judge today can modify a mortgage on an investment home or vacation property or a boat. I heard one of my Republican colleagues today talk about this whole issue of bankruptcy and how that is going to be a problem, and that is why they seem to oppose this bill--because of the bankruptcy provisions. But they never really answer the question: Why can't a judge modify a mortgage in bankruptcy for a home, for a personal home, when under the law they can on a vacation home in Florida or Arizona? They can on a boat, they can on an investment property. Lenders and their servicers cannot keep up with the flood of foreclosures they are facing. Much has been made of the number of loans that have been changed as a result of voluntary efforts. That is a good thing; I don't discount those efforts at all. But tacking late fees and penalties on the back end of a loan doesn't do much to help a family make their monthly payment. One woman who called my office recently reported a loan modification she had gotten to reduce the interest rate on her loan from 11 percent to 10 percent. With the late fees and the penalties folded in, her monthly payment barely changed. Modifications such as these simply aren't going to help. It is essential that we permit bankruptcy courts to serve as a backstop. So with the housing crisis spreading across the country and Senator Reid's proposal before us, what did the Senate do? My colleagues in the minority again chose to filibuster--filibuster again and again. Fifteen hundred families in Ohio every week are losing their homes, and over 100,000 are facing foreclosure. Multiply this all over the country, and almost half the Senate chose to filibuster. What could possibly be the reasoning for this decision? The administration threatened a veto of the bill because it believed it was too costly and that the bankruptcy provisions were unwise. I don't agree, but can't we have a debate on that to make those decisions? I would love to discuss why we can afford to spend $3 billion a week on the war in Iraq--$3 billion on the war in Iraq--but we can't find $4 billion in 1 year, $4 billion in 1 year to help the towns and the cities, including Burlington and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and Cleveland and Steubenville and Erie--why we can't find $4 billion in 1 year to help communities in this country that are being carpet-bombed by foreclosure. We can spend billions of dollars on Halliburton to rebuild Iraq, and we can't spend a few billion dollars on local businesses in my communities in Ohio to rebuild our communities. My Republican colleagues apparently think it is OK for a bankruptcy judge to modify the mortgage on a multimillion-dollar vacation home, but it is not OK to provide the same relief to a family facing bankruptcy in a $100,000 home. When lenders are recovering only 35 cents on the dollar in my State--the national average is higher but not a lot higher--35 cents on the dollar on a foreclosed property, I don't think they have anything to fear from an alternative process supervised by bankruptcy courts that may result in avoiding foreclosure. The bankruptcy provisions are a significant change in our law, to be sure, but they are a responsible reaction to some extraordinarily irresponsible underwriting. I understand the importance of protecting contract rights, but think for a minute about the contracts that are in question. The vast majority of subprime loans went to refinance homes, and they were designed to do three things: generate fees, strip out equity, and quickly become unaffordable. That is what they were designed to do. That is why so many people were able to take the money and run--the mortgage brokers--and, unfortunately, that is what happened. Do we really want to take the position that those contracts should be beyond the reach of a bankruptcy judge? I may have answered my earlier question. I guess maybe a filibuster would be easier for my friends on the other side of the aisle than an actual debate on these issues. I know lenders want to avoid becoming real estate owners, but they don't have the capacity to deal with the problems that their lax underwriting standards have created. They are obviously not in the business of rebuilding the communities this crisis has devastated. That is why Senator Reid's legislation is so important. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will reconsider their tactics and will allow us to proceed on the legislation the majority leader has introduced and which I am proud to cosponsor. Maybe we will not have the votes in this body. In a fair and full debate, maybe we will not have the votes to maintain all of the provisions. Maybe there are alternative approaches. I am open to that. I want to see this solved. But let's at least vote, and let's do it quickly. Every day we delay, 200 people in my State--200 people--twice the membership of this body--every single day 200 people in my State lose their homes. They deserve more from us. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWN

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank the senior Senator from Vermont for his courtesy.