Dennis Cardoza

Mr. CARDOZA

Mr. CARDOZA. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of Mark Phelps who passed away on June 22, 2010. Mark was a resident of Stockton, CA where he served as the Executive Director of the Children's Home of Stockton since 1985. The Children's Home, established in 1882, is a nonprofit, private facility providing educational services and residential treatment to emotionally disturbed children and their families. Mark was born August 13, 1947 in San Francisco, CA. After serving with the Volunteers in Service to America program, he attended Ft. Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Master of Arts in Psychology from the University of Northern Colorado. Prior to serving as CEO of the Children's Home, Mark served as a Mental Health Staff Psychologist, worked as a Probation Administrator in Colorado for ten years, and was appointed by Kansas Governor John Carlin to the Superintendency of the Kansas State Juvenile Correctional Facility. He also served as an adjunct faculty member at several State and private colleges and universities, and sat on numerous State and local boards for various private and public human service organizations. Among his many honors, Mark was named ``Kansas Public Administrator of the Year'' by the American Society of Public Administration in 1985, ``Administrator of the Year'' by the California State Council for Exceptional Children in 1986, and was Executive Director of the Children's Home of Stockton when it was honored in 2004 by the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate with its national award for exemplary children's services, the ``Angels in Adoption and Foster Care'' award. Mark is survived by his wife, Susan, and their two children. He will also be greatly missed by the countless children, families, and friends whose lives were blessed by his benevolent work. His life was filled with compassion and service to others and his work will leave a lasting and positive impact. It is with greatest pleasure that I honor his life, his work, and his commitment to changing lives here today.

Mr. CARDOZA

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 1495 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I understand that the gentlelady and her party don't understand what's happening in Middle America. They don't appreciate what's happening to folks like in my district. They may not hang out in places like my family's bowling alley, where a person who loses their job, and 20 percent of my constituents are nearly out of work, there isn't jobs around every corner. She may have plenty of jobs in her home State. She may not have to worry about that for her constituents. But in my world, Mr. Speaker, when someone who comes to our bowling alley loses their job, they have nothing else. They don't have the Wall Street bonuses. They don't have the big pension, retirement systems, and the big 401(k) set-aside. They don't have the situation that so many of us need. We have to provide a safety net for these people, these hardworking Americans. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to respond to my colleague from California by saying that the gentleman is once again talking about the long-term questions--whether we need tax cuts or whether we need to have more stimulus. All of those things are open to debate. What is not open to debate is the fact that 1.7 million Americans today and over the next 3 days and over the last few weeks have lost their unemployment benefits. That is an emergency. That's why we have emergency spending provisions. We have to take care of those Americans who will not be able to feed their families, pay their mortgage payments. That's why we have an unemployment insurance compensation program, to protect those Americans when they find themselves in this kind of a situation. We can have the other debates on other days. And we certainly have had and we will have. But on today's question of whether we're going to extend those benefits, we need to have the Republicans join us in supporting the American people, in supporting those out-of-work folks. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett), a member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, as we all know, our country is facing enormous troubles like we have not seen since the Great Depression. At the national level, there is clear evidence that some of the actions that the Democratic Congress have taken are, in fact, working. The economy is again growing, and employers are starting once again to hire. In 2009, we saw the Nation's GDP grow by 2.8 percent in the third quarter, representing the biggest 6-month turnaround in our economy since 1980. In each successive quarter, we have continued to see positive GDP growth. Since the end of 2009, we have created jobs every single month; and in the last 3 months alone, we have created an average of over 300,000 jobs per month. This is a dramatic change in direction from when President Obama took office and the economy had previously been shrinking at minus 5.4 percent and we were losing jobs at an average of 726,000 jobs per month under the Bush administration. However, although our economic indicators continue to show that we are making significant progress towards recovery, this does not mean that we are out of the woods yet by any stretch of the imagination. We know that all too well in many pockets of the country, including my own district in the Central Valley of California, the recovery continues to lag well behind the national economic picture. In far too many areas of the country, businesses continue to shed payroll, job losses continue to mount, and hardworking families across America continue to struggle. Mr. Speaker, as I said, we have not seen times like this since the Great Depression. These are extraordinary circumstances, and they call for extraordinary measures. Despite what my friends on the other side of the aisle may say, what people who are struggling right now need is a hand up; and this Democratic Congress, despite all the obstacles from the other side of the aisle and the other body, will continue to reach out and try to assist Americans with that hand up. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 5618 would retroactively restore the emergency unemployment compensation benefits and restore funding for the extended benefits program through the month of November of this year. It would also ensure that States do not cut the level of regular unemployment benefits when they receive these extended Federal benefits, and it would protect workers from having their benefits cut if they experience intermittent earnings which requalify them for regular State unemployment benefits. Without the sort of help provided by this bill, more people will lose their homes, fall behind on their bills and be unable to feed their families. There is a very real risk that the economic crisis could get worse, not better, if we pull the safety net out from under the 1.7 million Americans that are facing these economic conditions right now. Mr. Speaker, never before in our history has Congress allowed extended unemployment benefits to lapse when the unemployment rate was anywhere close to 10 percent; yet here we are again trying to extend this critical program to keep food on the table for millions of households, including millions of American children across this great Nation simply because the other side of the aisle repeatedly can only say ``no.'' The current emergency unemployment compensation program began to phase out at the end of May, and many of those now losing benefits have only received 26 weeks of regular State-provided unemployment compensation or one of the first tiers of Federal benefits. This means individuals exhausting their 26 weeks of unemployment benefits are not eligible for emergency unemployment benefits at all. This bill will retroactively restore those benefits and continue them and the program through November. Without this extension, as I said before, an estimated 1.7 million individuals who have lost their jobs will lose their unemployment benefits by July 3. Mr. Speaker, that's no way to celebrate America's independence holiday. This includes well over 300,000 people in California, where our unemployment level is over 12 percent, well above the national average of 9.3. In my own district, the unemployment rates are much higher than even that. In fact, we have numbers that are near the 20 percent mark; and I have in my district the fourth, fifth and sixth highest unemployment rates in my counties in the country. Nearly every economist will tell you that cutting off unemployment benefits will undermine the economic recovery by suppressing consumer demand at a critical time when we should be enhancing it, and by exacerbating problems, like the home foreclosure crisis that plagues many areas of our country. I want to thank the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) for bringing this bill forward and for his steadfast commitment to America's hardworking families. It is vitally important that we pass this bill and provide the much-needed help that our constituents need during these trying times. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx). All time yielded during consideration of the rule is for debate only. General Leave

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on House Resolution 1495.

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 1495 provides for consideration of H.R. 5618, the Restoration of Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act of 2010, under a closed rule. The resolution provides 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means. The amendment printed in the Rules Committee report shall be considered as adopted. The resolution waives all points of order against the bill as amended. The resolution provides one motion to recommit with or without instructions. Finally, the resolution allows for certain resolutions reported from the Committee on Rules to be considered the same day they are reported. The resolution applies the waiver to any resolution reported through the legislative day of July 3, 2010. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I look at today's Hill newspaper and I look on page 31. And I oftentimes believe that cartoons and political satire speak much more clearly than the words that we can use in big long speeches. And in today's cartoon, although I can't say that it's very funny to the American people who are being affected by it, you see an American citizen bungee jumping off an unemployment benefit bridge. And the elephant in the cartoon, signifying the other party, snips the line as the American's jumping off. And the comment in the caption reads, ``Don't worry, I'm sure you will land on your feet.'' I think too oftentimes we have this situation where we just expect that Americans are going to land on their feet, and we don't care about those who get left behind. That's what my discussion was today. The gentleman just referred to the President's comments in Wisconsin about Mr. Boehner. And I would just refer to those comments that Mr. Boehner equated the financial bill that we passed yesterday, the regulatory reform bill that so many Americans are yearning for, he said it was a nuclear weapon to be used on an ant. The problem was an ant. Well, my constituents certainly don't think they were ants until they started being walked over by Wall Street. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I would like to inquire how much time each side has remaining.

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would like to take this time to correct the statistics and the statements that we just heard from my colleague from North Carolina. My colleague forgets that in the Clinton administration we created-- not ``we,'' because I wasn't here--but the Democrats and Mr. Clinton created 22 million new jobs for America. Mr. Bush, when he took over, did not, in fact, inherit a recession. That recession happened after he was in office, and it was a severe one. We started to come out of that. Again, the Bush administration policies caused a second recession. When you look at Mr. Bush's term of office, there were some jobs created; but they were not private-sector jobs, as the gentlelady is so fond of talking about. In fact, if you look at the statistics, there were no new private-sector jobs created during the Bush administration. When Mr. Bush left office, he left a recession that was shedding 750,000-plus jobs a month. When the good lady from North Carolina talks about the fact that there have been job losses during the Obama administration, many of those are the carryovers. You don't turn around the economy overnight. Mr. Obama can't flip a light switch and create the jobs overnight. It took time to get the policies in place to start bringing the country out of the Bush recession. In fact, in the last 3 months, we have averaged 300,000-plus jobs instead of losing 750,000 a month under the last few months of the Bush administration. This rewriting of history, this total denial of the economic policies that got us into this mess, is something that, frankly, the American people understand very well. The 20 percent of the population which are unemployed in my district right now understand that very well. The 30 percent of my constituents who have lost their homes to foreclosure understand who got them into this situation. I think that we will, in fact, see a situation where the American people will judge what is going on here. We will have to work hard to create more jobs in the future. As I said before, we are going to debate those policies. There have been discussions on tax cuts and on the stimulus. The statistics tell us that the average American has not paid this low of a percentage of his taxes in quite some time, since Mr. Truman was in office, I believe it is. So I believe that there are significant facts that we need to set straight here, facts which represent a positive side of the ledger to my party and to the policies we are advocating. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CARDOZA. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I would like to close today by discussing a little bit of what the gentlelady just talked about with regard to PAYGO. I'd like to point out that I'm quite sure that the gentlelady from North Carolina did not vote for the PAYGO resolution in the House rules that we passed at the beginning of this Congress, nor did she vote for statutory PAYGO. They have always talked about tax cuts as the answer to all of America's problems. We could take the tax cut to zero and my, wouldn't we pay for government well? The reality is that they only want to pay for things that affect common folks--the common Americans that get up every day, put their shoes on, and just want a job to make a living and pay for their family, pay for their home, and earn a better life. They don't want to pay for the tax cuts for the Wall Street big shots. They never want to pay for that. They don't want the PAYGO rules to apply to them. As I said before in this debate, I grew up in my parents' bowling alley. I saw firsthand what happened to those folks--those hardworking American folks that would come into my parents' establishment just wanting a little bit of fun on a Friday or Saturday night. I saw what happened when they lost their job. They lost their home, they couldn't feed their family. Families disbanded because of the stress and tension under those economic situations. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle voted against, for the most part, the financial regulatory reform bill. They were protecting their friends on Wall Street, the very people that got us into this calamity. Thirty percent of my constituents--around that--have lost their home to foreclosure because of the financial collapse that was caused by the greed on Wall Street. Yet my colleagues on the other side of the aisle continue to defend them. But, for the most part, they will not vote for emergency funding to put food on unemployed workers' tables or to allow them to keep their homes in this time of crisis. I say that it's not all of them because on June 29, 2010, 30 courageous Republicans voted with the Democrats--the 231 Democrats--to extend unemployment benefits and to protect those workers who have lost their job in this economic situation. Mr. Speaker, I can't sit here today and tell you that every policy that we've put in place since Mr. Obama has been in place has worked as well as I'd like. Frankly, I've been critical on a number of issues that I thought the administration could have done a better job. But I will tell you that when it comes time to taking care of Americans who are in an emergency situation, who have lost their job for no fault of their own but for the fact that the economic situation was a tsunami that swamped them, it is our party who is standing up to make sure that those workers can survive for another day. And for those workers, this absolutely is an emergency. Mr. Speaker, no one can legitimately doubt that the situation we face right now is an emergency for the American people who are unemployed. And until our economy is firmly on track and moving forward, I believe we must provide help for those unemployed workers to pay their bills and feed their families. If not, we risk falling further into a further economic crisis and we risk leaving way too many families behind. Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to support this rule and to support the underlying bill. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question, and on the rule. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution. The previous question was ordered.

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. CARDOZA

Mr. CARDOZA. Congressional Republicans threaten to take us back to the failed policies that created the economic crisis, siding with special interests, i.e., the Wall Street investment banks. These economic and fiscal policies created the Bush recession, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, with job losses of nearly 800,000 a month and nearly doubling our national debt. Democrats in Congress will continue to take America in a new direction, creating good American jobs, lowering taxes for the middle class and for small business, and building a strong new foundation for the economy and for Main Street instead of Wall Street.

Mr. CARDOZA

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I want to again thank my colleague from Oklahoma for his gracious advocacy on behalf of this issue. And to my colleague from Florida, if your media were to be without the products of these bees, that really, truly would be a news story, Mr. Hastings. I want to thank you for your tireless advocacy on behalf of pollinators and on behalf of agriculture generally. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 1460) recognizing the important role pollinators play in supporting the ecosystem and supporting the goals and ideals of National Pollinator Week.

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of House Resolution 1460, recognizing the important role that pollinators play in supporting the ecosytem and supporting the goals and ideals of National Pollinator Week. Approximately three-quarters of the world's 250,000 flowering plants require pollinators to facilitate reproduction. In addition, nearly 130 different crops that provide more than $15 billion per year in farm gate value would cease to exist without our pollinators. In California alone, some 1.3 million beehives pollinate over 600,000 acres of almond trees. There is no doubt that without the healthy population of pollinators that we currently have, our Nation's farmers will not be able to continue to grow many of the high quality and nutritious foods that we enjoy today. The House Agriculture Committee has paid special attention to the issue facing pollinators, holding several hearings in recent years to review the status of pollinator health issues and including funds in the 2008 farm bill to conduct much-needed research on pollinator health. I'm proud to support this resolution brought by my colleague today, which recognizes the importance of pollinators supporting diverse ecosystems and the crops that produce so many of the foods grown across this great Nation. I urge my colleagues to support this resolution. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Oklahoma, my good friend, for his support of this resolution. At this time, I yield such time as he may consume to the author of the resolution, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), who, without his help, we would not have been able to pass the farm bill in 2008. He has been continuously an advocate for pollinator research and for making sure that specialty crops get their due day in the sun.

Mr. CARDOZA

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. CARDOZA. I yield myself such time as I may consume. In recent weeks we have seen a small but slow and steady improvement in the national housing market while other parts of the country, like my congressional district in the San Joaquin Valley, have continued to deteriorate. I have repeatedly explained to the administration that their programs are not doing enough to stem the problems of the rising tide of foreclosures in areas like the Central Valley in California. As this economic devastation continues, we must redouble our efforts to help our constituents as we work to improve the fundamentals of the economy and hopefully eventually pull ourselves out of this situation. We must ensure that we are doing everything that we can to help those who are suffering the most. Counseling services are just one component of this comprehensive approach that we need to deal with this ongoing crisis. People must know their options when faced with foreclosure so that they can make informed decisions based on their own personal circumstances. Navigating these options is often difficult, stressful, and confusing to those who have never had to deal with such issues. Counseling can help some people find ways to stay in their homes while it offers others a path to resolve an impending foreclosure and get back on their feet. If we are going to incentivize mortgage servicers to provide third- party counselors to borrowers who are behind on their mortgage payments, then we ought to make sure we give priority to those areas who are hurting the most. My amendment would prioritize foreclosure counseling services to areas of the country that have been the hardest hit by the housing crisis. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this amendment and to refocus our efforts on those who need the help the most. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CARDOZA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlelady for her comments and her support of my amendment. It is very important that we do move in this direction. At this time, I yield 1 minute to the chairwoman of the subcommittee, a true champion for those who are trying to remain in their homes, and she's done so much to try to help us alleviate the challenges that we face in my district and throughout our State, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).