Christopher Dodd

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, there are at least one or two other Members who may come to the floor to talk about this bill or maybe even offer some ideas they intend to propose next week when we reconvene. I thought it might be worthwhile at the end of this week--which has been a busy week, obviously, and one where a lot of attention for the first time in a long time has been focused on the most critical economic issue we face, and that is the foreclosure crisis--to restate where we are. As many of my colleagues know, I began this process almost a year ago when we convened the stakeholders across the country on a bipartisan basis, I might add, in the Senate Banking Committee to talk about the foreclosure crisis--that was March of last year--resulting in a set of principles we adopted jointly that would make it possible for workouts of these mortgages that would make it possible for more Americans facing foreclosures to stay in their homes. That was the goal as we began last spring when this emerged as a growing problem. I felt then, and it has been confirmed over the last number of months, that this was not a minor issue, that it was not going to go away or likely to be contained very quickly. Unfortunately, that has proven to be just the case. Today, we are looking at economic statistics that point to a difficult time. We are in a recession. I know it has not been declared formally yet, maybe Washington hasn't called it that yet, but if you are out there trying to feed your family, put fuel in your automobile, pay your mortgage, pay your child's college tuition or anything else, you are watching inflation at the highest rates it has been in years, and we are watching unemployment numbers continue to rise. The fiscal picture of our country is the worst it has been in years, with the national debt now reaching some $9 trillion, a staggering sum of money accumulated over the last 5 or 6 years. The value of the dollar is the lowest it has been since we allowed our currency to float back in the early 1970s. Every major economic indicator points to what difficulty our country is in, and this crisis has been compounded and exacerbated by a foreclosure crisis. That is the center of this issue, the foreclosure crisis. So everything we should be doing should be designed to try to offer relief in that sector. If we do that, then I believe we can take a major step forward in getting us back on track again and, hopefully, this recession will not last long and people's confidence and optimism can begin to rise. This is the first time we have dealt with this issue in any comprehensive way at all in the last year. There have been a number of other bills that have been brought to the floor that have made some contribution to this issue. But this is the first time we have actually had a day or two to debate the housing crisis and to offer some ideas on resolution of that issue. I want to add, as quickly as I can, that anyone who thinks this bill is the end-all is making a huge mistake. This bill is a step in the right direction, it is a positive one and a good one, but there are key missing ingredients. Why is that the case? That is the case because, candidly, we weren't able to get any debate going at all unless we could develop some consensus around several provisions on which there would be little or no debate, some core issues, and then open the process for some additional ideas, as we have seen over the last few days, with various amendments that have been offered and considered already. But it is a step in the right direction. It does not include the kind of fundamental relief for those in foreclosure or about to go into foreclosure and offering them some escape from losing their homes. So while I welcome the steps we are taking, I would be the first to admit and tell my colleagues that we have yet to really address the underlying problem; that is, how do we keep people in their homes? In fact, we will have a hearing next week, Mr. President, on the very idea that has now been circulating over several months and that I proposed back several months ago--that has also been embraced, I might point out, by the chairman of the Financial Services Committee of the other body. I am pleased to say that there are a number of Members here, both Republicans and Democrats, who, while they have not signed on to a bill, have been extremely encouraging in terms of their support for this idea. So I hope in the coming days to be able to finalize a proposal and bring it to the floor that would, for the first time, offer some very meaningful direct relief to the people who are facing foreclosure--some 8,000 a day. We talk in numbers here of billions of dollars and millions of people, trillions of dollars. The language gets beyond the grasp of most people to understand. But I think everyone can understand when I tell you that almost 8,000 people a day are going into foreclosure. Over the last 2 or 3 days we have been debating this bill on the floor, some 24,000 of our fellow citizens are finding themselves in danger of losing the most important possession they have outside of their families, and that is their home. And every day we wait, every day we delay, every day we procrastinate, every day we talk about something other than the core issue affecting our economy, more and more Americans run the risk of being in that statistic of losing their homes. And it isn't just them, because for every foreclosure that occurs in a square block, the value of every other home in that neighborhood declines as well. So while people are saying: Well, I am not in foreclosure, I am not likely to be there, but my neighbors are, you are affected by it. We know that values decline by as much as 1 percent of median if one of your neighbors watches their property go into foreclosure, if it ends up being boarded up or in deteriorating condition. Crime rates go up. So there is a ripple effect to all of this, and hence the importance of addressing the underlying issue of how do we keep people in their homes. A lot of what we are talking about in this bill is how to deal with the properties once they are foreclosed. That is not an insignificant problem, and I welcome the opportunity to do something about it. But it seems to me that if we really wanted to address the issue, instead of how much money we can spend to rehabilitate foreclosed property or how much money we can get to mayors or county supervisors to clean up neighborhoods and to put them in better shape for possible resale, or to come up with a tax provision that will make that foreclosed property attractive to some future buyer, why not spend as much time seeing to it that we keep people, where we can, in their homes? That is what we are going to be offering in the coming days. But there are some very good ideas in this proposal, so as we go into the weekend now, before we come back on Monday and Tuesday, I thought it might be worthwhile just to briefly encapsulate what has been accomplished and what is in this bill. First of all, we provide $100 million for counseling services to help people stay in their homes. That is in addition to the $180 million already appropriated last year. Senator Bond and I offered that language, and it was adopted, and it has been a real asset to these organizations out there that assist people every day. I had the privilege of meeting with some families in Connecticut a week or so ago who were facing foreclosure and would have been in foreclosure but for the intervention of these nonprofit organizations that were able to establish a workout with the lender and the borrower and have been able to keep people in their homes. So this is $280 million for this fiscal year. If you compare that to the $42 million that existed previously, it is a substantial increase. Would I like more here? Absolutely. My colleague from the State of Washington, Senator Murray, and Senator Schumer wanted $200 million. I am not going to ever tell them I disagree with that, but in trying to put together a package here, the only amount of money the majority leader and I were able to get in that negotiation was to cut the difference and get $100 million for counseling. I am hopeful we can add some more to that in time, but at this juncture we have $100 million for it. We have provided $4 billion to go to community development block grants specifically targeted to assist local governments to take a foreclosed property and put it in condition so it can be resold or used as rental housing. That idea is to try to make sure we don't end up with a lot more supply than we already have. One of the reasons the market is not necessarily addressing this issue as comprehensively as we might like is because the supply of housing vastly exceeds demand. When you end up with people in foreclosure, you are adding to that supply. One of the reasons we ought to keep people in their homes is you then reduce that supply, and the normal economic market forces then would begin to assist us. That is where supply and demand get closer together and the market can help resolve some of this problem. By having foreclosed properties that grow worse, become abandoned, fall into disrepair, the value of other homes begins to decline in the neighborhood, and it makes it far more difficult to address this problem in the near or long term. So the $4 billion in community development block grants is designed to go to those communities and specifically give them help to see to it that these properties can get back on their feet. The mortgage revenue bonds we are providing here as well, some $1.5 billion for mortgage revenue bonds, will help people refinance out of the lousy mortgages they got into. It is not as much as I would like, but it will assist people to get a better deal, a better mortgage than the one they have. That does make a difference for some of these people who are trying to come to a different economic circumstance than the one they are in. So it is not insignificant. I would have liked to have seen us do a bit more, but it will make a difference. So there is $1.6 billion in that area. Veterans. I want to thank Senators Kerry, Akaka, Sanders, and I think Senator Coleman as well, if I am not mistaken, who were all involved in trying to do what we could to assist our men and women serving in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan and who are already under tremendous pressure, to make sure their properties are not foreclosed on underneath them while they are off in a desperate condition serving our country. Whether you agree or disagree with our policies, don't ever blame the soldier, the airman, the marine, the sailor out doing their job, and least of all they shouldn't be losing their homes in the process. So we provided for that in this legislation as well, and I thank my colleagues for those ideas. We provided as well some assistance here for builders. I had some questions about this, I will be quite candid with my colleagues, and had I been writing this on my own, I am not sure I would have added those provisions. But there were those here who felt strongly about that, both Republicans and Democrats, and wanted to do something in the Tax Code to assist in these losses, to extend them over a longer period of time. It is in the bill. Again, I had some reservations about it, but, as my colleagues know, you don't write these things on your own, and if you are trying to put together a compromise package, the word ``compromise'' implies that you are going to accept some things you may not like and you are going to have some things tailored back that you want support for. On Federal Housing Administration modernization, here we have raised the loan limits from $417,000 to $550,000. We also require that the downpayments will be as much as 3\1/2\ percent. That is a lot more than I would like, candidly. I wanted 1\1/2\ percent. But in order to get that additional $230,000 increase over the loan limits, where some 19 States, I might add, would have been disadvantaged--higher cost States or at least part of their States in higher cost--we had to agree on a compromise here and raising that number to 3\1/2\ percent. But that $550,000 under FHA will make a huge difference for many people who are looking again to refinance or to get mortgages they can afford. So it is a very valuable addition to this bill, and I welcome the opportunity to include that as well. Those are some of the major provisions of what we have packaged. There will be additional amendments offered on Tuesday that will add to this, some of which or all of which may be adopted either by voice vote or recorded votes, but it is a step again in the right direction. It is action. It is movement on this issue. Again, as I said, the bill doesn't in any way go far enough, in my view, to help the distressed borrowers, those who are living under the monthly threat of foreclosure, in fact the daily threat of foreclosure on their homes. So it is hardly a final action, but it is a first step and a major step in the right direction. There was an idea that I had hoped to include in this bill and that I couldn't get agreement to bring as part of the bill. The danger of bringing it up as an amendment, Mr. President, is that I am concerned, because it is complicated, it might not carry, and therefore, with negative votes, it would be harder to bring it back. But as many will tell you here, the effort to try to restructure these mortgages could make a huge difference. One of the problems we are having, of course, is that capital has seized up. It is not moving. How do you begin to get capital to flow in these markets? One certain way is to get some clear ideas of where the bottom, where the floor is in the residential mortgage market, and that is unclear as I speak. As long as it is unclear where that bottom is, then you are going to find people very reluctant to move capital into this area, or others, for that matter. This problem has spread far beyond the housing issue. It is now into student loans, car loans, and every other aspect of our economy is being affected by this. So the idea--and it is not a new one; actually, it has been used in the past--is to try to see if we can come up with a scheme that would allow us to reduce or write down the value of these mortgages to some degree, thereby the lender would be getting less than they anticipated when they made the original mortgage, but they would end up getting something rather than a foreclosed property and nothing coming back. Secondly, the borrower would have to pay the insurance to FHA, which would guarantee this mortgage. They would also have to stay in the home. These residences would have to be owner occupied. It is a voluntary program both for the lender and the borrower. To the extent that value in the property increases, then money would come back to the Federal Government as a result of financing, through insurance, this instrument. That is a rough idea of what it would do. The real value of it, aside from obviously helping people stay in their homes, is establishing that floor and that bottom. Anyone who is paying any attention to this issue at all will tell you that unless we address that issue--address that issue--we will be back here month after month after month in the coming years dealing with the effects of the problem, and that is money going to our cities to help them make foreclosed properties look better, and we will be doing things we can to help out people to somehow get through all of this. But if you really want to address the issue, then you have to confront the problem, and that is that capital is not moving. The one thing we can do, of course, is to provide this kind of floor. You need to have enough transactions to determine that, but I believe that if we act quickly enough around here, we can make a difference in that area. And I will hold a hearing on this in the Banking Committee next week. We will have one additional hearing, at the request of Senator Shelby and others, to examine this issue and fine-tune it. I am pleased a number of people here and outside of this body have indicated very strong support for this idea, cutting across the normal ideological lines that too often divide us, as something we ought to do. I invite my colleagues to take a good look at this, or their staffs, over the weekend. I will submit, at the end of these remarks, a copy of the bill and its proposals, and I would strongly invite people to take a look at it, and any thoughts and ideas they have to strengthen this or improve it, I welcome. No one is claiming exclusive authorship of this idea. As I mentioned, it was tried during the Great Depression. In those days, the Federal Government actually purchased these very distressed mortgages at a very discounted rate and then arranged for that owner-occupied resident to stay in the home at a new rate. The Government actually made some $14 million on that program back in the Great Depression. We are not suggesting anything quite like that, although there are some similarities to it as a way of keeping people in their homes. Anyway, I invite people to look at that idea because I think it does go right to the heart of what we are talking about. There are other ideas as well to try to strengthen this situation, but unless we do something like what I have suggested here, actually dealing with the 8,000 people a day who are falling into foreclosure, then this problem is only going to grow in its magnitude and the ability to provide some relief for people is going to grow far more expensive than it already is. That is the reason I am urging my colleagues to take a look at this idea to see if we can't, in the coming few days, complete a markup in the committee and then bring a bill to the floor that would really provide some meaningful and direct assistance to those who are facing this problem. Look, I am not talking about speculators, Mr. President. That is a different crowd altogether. I feel bad that they have lost money, but we bear no moral obligation to help out a speculator. And I am worried about those who should never have gotten into a mortgage in the first place, but there is probably not a lot I can do about them except to help them in some ways. We are talking about that large constituency in the middle, who were lured into very bad deals, were lured into arrangements they never could afford at the fully indexed rate. You could say they bear some responsibilities for having gone into those deals, and I do not disagree with that, but if you only were going to look at the foreclosed property you might draw that conclusion--we bear no responsibility to deal with the individual caught in those circumstances. But let me make a case to you if you are harboring those thoughts, why you might want to think differently about this. If you live in that neighborhood, if you live next-door or you live down the block or if your child does, in a new home, one they just bought, the value of every other property declines with one foreclosure in a neighborhood. That doesn't help anybody. We are watching housing values decline two consecutive years in a row. This is the first time that has happened since the Great Depression; sales are way off--all the related economic problems associated with a massive downturn in the housing area. We may have as many as 50 million homes adversely affected by foreclosure. The number of foreclosures could be somewhere between 2.5 and 3 million homes in the country, but the number of homes affected by it is vastly in excess of the number of actual foreclosures. Those numbers on foreclosures may be low. It may be higher than that. We are hoping it will not be. But even if not, the ripple effect is going to be felt by everyone else in the area. If you are harboring the notion I don't care about my neighbor, I am sorry they got themselves into that mess, I feel badly for them, but I don't think we have any obligation to do anything about them at all, I remind you it will affect you--it affects all of us; hence, the necessity to address this issue and do everything we can to keep people in that home if we can. We are all going to benefit from that. Our economy clearly would also benefit in a very specific way; people who live within that neighborhood will be benefited by our efforts to try to stabilize this situation and have better financial arrangements for those who otherwise are going to lose their homes. That is where we are as we complete our business at the conclusion of this week. This bill has been a good week, I would say. This bill is not one that has everything we would like to have in it, but the good news is this: The Senate, for the first time in a year, is comprehensively trying to address this housing crisis. While you may not agree with everything we have done--you may be disappointed, as I am, that we do not have some provisions in here I would like to see included--the fact is we are debating, discussing and coming up with ideas and adopting them, to provide some relief for people in this area, as it should be. I am grateful to Senator Shelby, my colleague from Alabama, the former chairman of the Banking Committee. I am very grateful to the majority leader, Senator Reid. When I talked to him last week before we came back, we both agreed this was an issue we had to pursue. He agreed and went out and sought out Senator McConnell and created the kind of arrangement that allowed for Senator Shelby and I to spend over 24 hours to package a proposal that could serve as the core coming forward. So we owe a deep debt of gratitude to the majority leader for insisting this be the debate this week, that we move forward next week and try to conclude our business, get together with the other body and resolve these matters and then come back with other ideas on how we can provide some real relief in this area. I conclude by thanking him and his staff as well as our own staffs on the Banking Committee who worked through the night to try to come up with some compromises in these areas. It is always difficult to do it when you have 50 Members in a body with very strong ideas on where things ought to be. These people don't often get the recognition they deserve for spending the long hours and putting together these kinds of packages. I am grateful to the Senate Banking staff, Democrats and Republicans, for their efforts. My hope is next week we can conclude this and then come back again with some additional ideas that can truly make a difference. I thank everyone for their involvement. I know there are several other people who want to come over and be heard on this subject matter, but in their absence, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding adoption of amendment No. 4406, as modified, the amendment be further modified with the changes at the desk.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, there will be no rollcall votes during Monday's session of the Senate. However, Senators should be prepared to vote Tuesday morning.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the adjournment of the Senate, the Record remain open until 1:30 p.m. for the introduction of bills, statements, and cosponsorships.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 2 p.m., Monday, April 7; that 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 there then be a period of morning business until 3 p.m., with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each; that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 3221, the vehicle for the housing debate, and that Senators have until 3 p.m. Monday to file first-degree amendments.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. I am going to be here all afternoon. So anyone who wants to offer amendments, I will be here to consider any amendments and debate anytime they want. We are not going anywhere. We have no more votes. We certainly are offering amendments.

Mr. DODD. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I underscore the point the Senator from Montana has just made, and I say this in the same spirit in which he has expressed his remarks. This is a housing bill. We have 8,000 people a day in foreclosure--8,000. Just as we started this debate, 24,000 of our fellow citizens have lost their homes--24,000 people lost their homes. Now, I agree energy independence is critically important. But this isn't a Christmas tree. There are ways of doing these energy bills in other matters. I was under the impression we wanted to get a housing bill out that could make a difference in people's lives. Why are we taking up matters that run the risk of tying this up for weeks on end in a conference with the House on matters they disagree with, that are not paid for, that may get a Presidential veto, and as a result we watch even more people lose their homes? It is a housing bill. It is a housing bill. So with all due respect to the authors of this amendment, I am going to oppose every one of them from here on out so we can get this bill done. We have more to do. This is not an all-inclusive bill. A lot more needs to be done. We are, frankly, not doing enough for people in foreclosure, in my view, and I have made that speech for a year now on this matter. We have finally gotten to a point where we have come together in a bipartisan fashion to deal with housing, and all of a sudden I find myself dealing with every other issue in creation because we haven't had bills that have moved along for whatever reason. But we shouldn't make people who are losing their homes, with our economy suffering, pay the price because we haven't dealt with these other issues. This is housing. The Senator from Montana is absolutely correct, and I intend to stand with him. We may lose. I hope we don't because we run the risk of having this one effort to make a difference on housing fall apart. With all due respect to the authors of this legislation, and I agree with all of them on the substance, this is not the place and time for this issue. We need to deal with housing.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I have great respect for my colleague from Florida and the Senator from Minnesota for their work on this effort, having been involved years ago in the creation of Individual Retirement Accounts going back to the early 1980s, recognizing the value of encouraging people to set aside hard-earned income for retirement, for health care, for education as the motivation. Let me mention one concern I have while both Senators are on the floor, and I don't question at all the motivations behind it. There is nothing in this amendment that would require a writedown. What we are trying to do is get the lenders to write down the size of these mortgages, to work out different arrangements so the borrower could afford the mortgage. What concerns me here is, while we are using this retirement income or these savings accounts to help meet these obligations, there is no commensurate responsibility on the part of the lender to try to reduce the cost. At the end of 2 years you may end up at exactly the same level. The money goes into the pockets of the lender, but at the end of the 2 years we are still faced with the size mortgage we had before, and the homeowner is in the same position they are in today. I don't have any quick idea here for you to tie this together to see if we can't incentivize that lender on that mortgage to also write down the cost of part of that or to restructure it in a way so that person facing foreclosure would be able to handle this. These moneys would be of tremendous help to them. But if you don't do anything about the size of the mortgage or conditions of it, all you have done is kicked the can down the road for 2 years and then also watch that retirement income get exhausted. You can put it back in, but it seems to be defeating the very purpose of trying to get workouts. We started a year ago with the stakeholders and set up a set of principles for writedowns. Unfortunately, according to Moody's, only 1 percent of the lending institutions have done that in a year-- tragically, in my view. We would be in a very different position had they done otherwise. So I am very suspicious about their willingness to do this, and merely providing additional resources to them coming out of people's hard-earned money, although you have a good idea putting money back in. I would like to find a way to incentivize the lender so the people can use these resources to stay in the home. That is merely an idea to consider in the next couple of days as we go forward.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, before the Senator from Louisiana leaves, first of all, let me commend her generally. All of us at one time or another have faced natural disasters in our State, but I can't recall anything, at least in recent memory, that would compare to what the Gulf State have suffered and particularly what the State of Louisiana has suffered. I know some may say: Well, every time there is a bill up, that Senator from Louisiana has an amendment to help her folks in Louisiana. That is how it ought to be. They are very fortunate indeed to have a fighter such as Mary Landrieu in their corner. As she said, this wasn't any disaster. This was devastating. For those of us who have been there, as I was, and as one who has been there on several occasions since then, it still is stunning to me to go down and see the devastation still exists. In most disasters, within weeks or months after the occurrence, it is amazing how recuperative areas are; however, despite the Herculean efforts of many in her State and others, the devastation still persists. Certainly, those who have lost their homes suffer the most devastating impact of all, in many ways, because that is the center of a neighborhood, it represents the ability of a family to survive and stay together. All the elements and qualities we like to attribute to being an American family are associated with our homes. The fact that so many have been destroyed as a result of these disasters is something all of us are mindful of, and if we are not, the Senator from Louisiana reminds us of it on a daily basis. We thank her for that. We are certainly going to do everything we can to accommodate and be supportive of this effort. As she points out, it doesn't expand the program financially. It operates within the financial constraints as the amendment has been crafted. Right now it is focused on the Gulf States, those areas that were adversely affected. My inclination is to keep it that way. That is not to suggest other States may not have had similar occurrences, but I think because of the uniqueness of what happened there, we need to recognize that in this effort. I would be a little uneasy about expanding it. Not that that is without merit, but I think particularly in this case, with this one occasion we are talking about a particular compelling case which has been made. So once again, I thank her for fighting on behalf of our fellow American citizens who happen to be her specific constituents. We thank her for it. Over this weekend, we will take a look at it, and if there are any questions we have about it, I will get back to her, but I will be urging Senator Shelby and others to be supportive of this idea.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, let me commend my fellow New Englander for this idea. You wonder how something such as this persisted as long as it did. I wish to commend our colleague for discovering it and finding it out. Senator Shelby is not here this afternoon, but his staff is around, and we have been talking with them. I think this will overwhelmingly be accepted. This should not require a recorded vote. I was telling the staff I am one of six children. My oldest sister Carolyn was born legally blind. When I arrived at the House of Representatives in the mid-1970s, I remember as a freshman I discovered you couldn't be a foreign service officer if you were legally blind. We managed to change those regulations. How silly a rule it was. Unrelated or related, I guess, to some degree here, but I thank my colleague from Vermont for raising this. I appreciate his kind comments about Senator Akaka. Senator Kerry and Senator Coleman offered some ideas as well on the veterans housing issues also. I am told by Senator Shelby's staff he is very supportive of this as well. This isn't a large amount. It may not be a banner headline for some, but the Senator from Vermont is going to make a difference in the lives of some families and some individuals. It may not be thousands. Even if there are a few hundred, it makes a difference. So at a moment such as this, on a Friday afternoon, when most people have headed off for home, let the Record record and history record that the Senator from Vermont made a difference in the lives of a handful of people with this amendment. I thank him.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I am told, and I could be corrected, but I think we have probably completed any amendments to be offered on this legislation at this juncture. I will wait for instruction from the leaders on how they want to proceed, and while we are doing that, I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DODD

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

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, let me, first of all, begin by thanking the majority leader, Senator Reid, and the Republican leader, Senator McConnell. We would not be where we are at this moment without their leadership. So any discussion of where we are on this matter begins with them and their staffs for helping us organize the effort over the last number of hours, beginning earlier this week, as we returned from the 2-week Easter break, to try to fashion together a proposal, at least on matters with which there was common agreement. As the leader has pointed out, there are many matters here with which there is significant disagreement. They are not part of the pending substitute. Senator Shelby and I and our respective staffs, along with many others--certainly the Finance Committee, because there are portions of this that are exclusively the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee--have worked over the last 2 days to find those issues upon which there was common agreement, or at least levels of spending on which there was common agreement, to move forward on as the centerpiece, with the full understanding our colleagues will offer various other ideas either to increase amounts of money or to add additional provisions to this bill. What is important here is we are finally working on this issue. As I pointed out earlier this week, we have close to 8,000 foreclosures a day occurring in this country, not to mention, of course, the residual effects spreading across the economy of our Nation--the contagion effect affecting students loans, car loans, people who are current in their mortgage but are watching the value of their house decline because their neighbor's house is in foreclosure, watching home sales drop. This is in the midst of an economy that is stumbling along, to put it mildly, with a fiscal situation in dire straits. The dollar has been weakened. Inflation is rising. Unemployment rates are increasing. Consumer confidence is at a low point, the lowest it has been in years. So it has been critical, in my view, aside from the specifics which you will hear about over the coming days, that we do everything possible to remind the American people that in this body Democrats and Republicans can come together to try to take intelligent steps to move against the flow of the economy heading in the wrong direction. This proposal we bring to you as a substitute this morning on behalf of myself and Senator Shelby, along with the leadership, is that first major step. Is it the end game? Absolutely not. Are there ideas I would love to have had included in this bill? Absolutely. Are there matters here the Senator from Alabama would like to have included or excluded? Absolutely. But we realized we were not going to be able to do that in this discussion over the last 2 days, that we needed at least to come up with a core group of issues around which there was general agreement, and then from that move forward. That is the good news. A month ago, we had a cloture motion on going to a housing debate. It was defeated. You could not even get to a debate on this housing crisis. That now is behind us. There are matters that occurred over the last several weeks that I think probably had a lot of influence on what has caused us to come here this morning. The Bear Stearns, JPMorgan situation, which we will be hearing about later this morning in the Banking Committee, was certainly one. I suspect the other major event was the fact that we went home for a couple weeks. There is nothing like going home and to get a message. Members went back home--Democrats and Republicans--and they heard from their constituents. They watched what happened on Wall Street in New York when all of a sudden there was an arrangement, which I think was the right one, probably, with some minor differences, that saved a major collapse in our financial institutions. But they asked the very legitimate question: If it was good enough for people to get together to solve a problem on Wall Street, what about the problem on Main Street? What are you doing here to see to it that I can stay in my home, that our neighborhood is not going to collapse--that our taxes and properties and neighborhoods are not going to further deteriorate? So I suspect more than anything else going home made a big difference, and we are here this morning to then talk about what we can do. Two days ago, the majority leader and the Republican leader asked Senator Shelby and myself to put together a consensus package to move this process forward, and I am pleased to say we have complied with the wishes of the two leaders in crafting a compromise proposal that we believe merits the full support of this body. Again, I thank the majority leader and the Republican leader for their leadership and support in this effort. We worked very intensely through Tuesday night until yesterday evening to put together this package that is before us. This effort built on the considerable time that we have spent in the Banking Committee over the past 15 months, I might add, in hearings, meetings, and briefings, on the causes of and remedies to the current economic crisis. Senator Shelby and I said yesterday that at times of crisis such as this, inaction is not an option. With more than 7,000 Americans going into foreclosure every single day, true leaders cannot simply turn passively away. Our agreement takes important action to address symptoms of this crisis in a constructive and sensible manner. I would be remiss if I did not also mention Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley, who did very good and important work in the Finance Committee over this same period of time, the fruits of which are also reflected in the package that is now before us in the substitute. This package includes a number of important provisions: Foreclosure mitigation fund--$4 billion for towns and cities to acquire foreclosed and abandoned properties, renovate them, and put them in the hands of qualified home buyers or turn them into rental housing as the local markets dictate. That is important because when you have a foreclosed property in the neighborhood, every other property in that neighborhood declines in value immediately. So trying to do something about foreclosed properties to put them back on the market and get them back with people living in them, either by purchase or rental, which will also benefit the neighbors in that community, not to mention property taxes, services, and the like--it is a major provision, one which I am glad is included. Foreclosure prevention counseling--$100 million of additional funding in fiscal year 2008 to bring borrowers and lenders to the table to work out terms that will prevent foreclosures. This brings the budget for foreclosure prevention counseling to $280 million for this fiscal year. That is up from $42 million last year. Now, would we have liked to have done more? Absolutely, we would have liked to have done more. Senator Schumer and Senator Murray wanted $200 million. My colleague from Alabama will tell you there was not a lot of appetite for this proposal here, to put it mildly, so we compromised between $200 million and virtually zero and got it to $100 million. I am told by the nonprofits that there are adequate funds here now in the calendar year to assist in the counseling effort, which can make a huge difference. FHA modernization. The bill also includes the FHA modernization legislation which passed this body 93 to 1 last fall, with some improvements. For example, we increased the FHA loan limits from the current $362,000 to as high as $550,000. This will make FHA more available and usable to people who live in higher cost States. It would also strengthen the solvency of the FHA fund. FHA can help an awful lot of people seeking safe, solid, affordable, fixed-rate mortgages. We think it is a very important component to our comprehensive strategy. Better disclosure. Senator Jack Reed has included a provision in the legislation that improves disclosure. It updates penalties for lenders who fail to make disclosures. These kinds of disclosures might have helped prevent some abusive lending if they had been in place in years past. I would point out that I think another Senator also had disclosure provisions in this bill, and this is a compromise between Senator Reid and a Republican Senator who was also interested in disclosure language. Tax provisions. Senator Baucus and Senator Grassley worked out a package of tax provisions as well. I will mention them briefly and let them describe the provisions more fully themselves. They include a home buyer tax credit to incentivize the purchase of foreclosed properties, the Isakson-Stabenow-Cardin proposal. No. 2 is a property tax deduction to help people offset rising mortgage payments. We will provide a modest tax cut to middle-income families of $100 to $250 who don't already itemize their deductions. Senator Bayh and Senator Baucus offered that idea. Mortgage revenue bonds to help communities raise resources to invest in affordable mortgages and rental housing--it goes right to the heart of the problem we are talking about. Net operating loss carryback will help businesses ride out the current downturn. This package is a good start. I wish to thank as well Senator Kerry, Senator Akaka, and Senator Norm Coleman for talking about veterans and making sure those serving our country in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere are not going to have their properties foreclosed in the midst of all of this. There are other provisions as well that I am not going into here, but needless to say, again, these are items upon which we could agree, both Democrats and Republicans, to serve as the core of the coming debate. Our action today does not preclude, as I have said, further legislative action by the Senate. In fact, I am committed to going forward and doing more. In fact, I will hold a hearing next week on the home preservation idea that a number of Democrats and Republicans are attracted to. Senator Shelby, to his credit--I appreciate his willingness to be a part of that debate and discussion during the coming days. There was a reluctance, and I would have loved to have included that in this package. There is resistance to that idea at this juncture, but I am still determined to do everything I can in the coming days to have that included as well, to see to it that we really get a floor and a bottom on this issue as quickly as we can. My colleague from Alabama is here. We are both going to be going over to chair a hearing, so I want to give him some time to discuss this. Let me thank Senator Reid and Senator Durbin for their efforts. They will be offering ideas as well to improve and strengthen this legislation. Some of these ideas we will welcome, others we will oppose. Senator Shelby and I will consult with each other in that process to determine how to go forward, but we want to stick with this core idea if we can. Other ideas that come to the table we will certainly consider and may, in fact, be added to the package, but I think we want to try to keep this core package whole and together if we can, rather than having it unravel. So with that, I thank the majority leader, the Republican leader, and I thank my colleague from Alabama. He and I work closely together. Last year, we did 35 hearings and 17 bills in the Banking Committee, half of which became the law of the land, and some others are still pending here. Our committee is a good committee with good working members who care about these issues, and we are determined to make a difference. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. May I also just request that Members let the staff know how much time they may need. It would help us to inform other people about when their amendments are coming up. So if you need a half hour, 15 minutes, or whatever to explain your amendment, we can let others know about coming over and offering their amendments in a timely fashion.

Mr. DODD. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, I see my colleague from Montana is here, and we need to see the amendment, first of all. I have no idea what the amendment is.

Mr. DODD. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, the Senate is not in order.

Mr. DODD

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

Mr. DODD

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Con. Res. 73, introduced earlier today by Senator Wyden.