Keith Ellison

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of Reverend Dr. Noah Spencer Smith and to recognize his decades of service to the citizens of Minneapolis. Born in Marion, Indiana in 1908, Reverend Dr. Smith's parents enriched his childhood through music, art, and a lasting devotion to the African Methodist Episcopal church. After graduating high school in 1927, Reverend Dr. Smith's love of music led him to drum in a jazz band, touring and composing songs for many years. He later took a job as a railroad dining car waiter to support his family. Eventually settling in Minneapolis and joining St. Peter's AME Church, Reverend Dr. Smith was active in choir, Sunday school, and the Order of Service before answering his deeper calling to enter the ministry. In 1960, Reverend Dr. Smith was ordained as an Itinerant Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, receiving a pastorate at St. Mark's Church in Duluth, MN. He returned to Minneapolis in 1988 to serve the congregation of St. James' Church, the oldest black congregation in Minnesota, until reaching the mandatory retirement age of 90. Reverend Dr. Smith was among the oldest graduates from three separate Minnesota colleges. He earned an Associate of Arts degree from Minneapolis Community College at age 74, a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies from Macalester College at age 78, and a Master of Divinity degree from United Theological Seminary at the age of 81. An exceptional student, Reverend Dr. Smith received the Sidney Barrow Award in Religion during his time at Macalester, and in 2013 was bestowed an honorary Doctorate of Ministry from United Theological Seminary at 105 years old. Reverend Dr. Smith was widely admired and respected both in the Minneapolis community and in the African Methodist Episcopal Church worldwide. After his retirement from St. James' at 90, he tirelessly worked for 16 more years as a member of the Wayman Church ministerial staff where he continued to preach, helped found the Wayman Church Bible Institute, taught Bible studies, and mentored many members of the clergy. Reverend Dr. Smith's final ministerial act was September 6, 2015, giving a scripture lesson during service at Lily of The Valley Church in Apple Valley, Minnesota. Lily of the Valley African Methodist Episcopal Church is a church that he not only helped found, but was also the first AME church to open in Minnesota in nearly 80 years. Reverend Dr. Noah Spencer Smith passed away on September 24, 2015 at the age of 107. At the time of his death, Reverend Dr. Smith was the oldest active minister in the United States. His memory stands as an example for all in Minneapolis never to cease your calling. Through a deep dedication to his faith, he fostered a community that will blossom for years to come.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Chair, I want to thank the ranking member and the chair of the committee. I would also like to say that this is a situation where there are--and I have even seen myself--some closures of accounts, which I think were not adequately justified, but this bill doesn't just solve that problem. It solves a whole lot of problems that are not problems. So they take what could be a legitimate issue, and then they use that little hole in the tent to push in a whole bunch of other stuff that will literally weaken the whole system. My good friend from South Carolina, if that was all the bill said, it wouldn't be that bad of a problem, but that is not only what it says. In fact, it weakens financial protections and lets bad actors in the system off the hook. If we are concerned about small accounts being closed, we should focus on that issue, but this particular bill goes way beyond that. As Members contemplate how they want to vote on this bill, they had better think about and read this bill carefully because it goes far beyond just simply calling for a justification for arbitrarily closing accounts. That is why I oppose the bill. I oppose the bill, the Financial Institution Customer Protection Act, H.R. 766. This bill would do the opposite of what is asserted in the title. H.R. 766 would not protect customers of financial institutions actually. Instead, it would make it more difficult to hold financial institutions accountable, and it will achieve that goal in a bait-and- switch way by acknowledging what may be, in some cases, a legitimate issue of arbitrary account closures, but then coming in, sneaking in the back door, all this other stuff, to weaken the financial system. Many Americans, including those who saw the movie ``The Big Short,'' cannot understand how so few people went to jail for the schemes that caused the financial crisis. People made loans they knew would fail, sold those bad loans to investors, and caused the financial crisis that cost our economy $14 trillion. Twelve million people lost their jobs, and 11 million people lost their homes. Who went to jail for all this mortgage fraud? Well, I think there is only one person I have been able to find. I would be happy to find anyone else. Teresa Giudice from ``The Real Housewives of New Jersey,'' football player Irving Fryar, and straw buyers in Michigan, those are the only people I could find who went to jail for this. Other people who committed massive fraud, they paid fines, but they walked away. I am incredibly frustrated by the fact that the Department of Justice has not pursued more criminal prosecutions of people at the multinational corporations who caused the financial crisis. But the answer to that problem is stronger enforcement, not to take away the most important tool Federal prosecutors have to pursue financial fraud. There is this thing called FIRREA. I know people watching C-SPAN are like, what is that? These Congress people always speak in acronyms. It is the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act. FIRREA was specifically designed to hold bankers accountable for destabilizing the financial system with their fraudulent activity. This bill weakens that. In an Orwellian twist, it says that FIRREA cases cannot be brought when fraud is committed against a bank instead of by a bank. I will say it again. If this bill passes today, FIRREA cases can only be brought when fraud is committed against a bank and not by a bank. That is bad. It also limits law enforcement's subpoena power. Don't we want to be able to subpoena these guys? Why would we want to be able to weaken that?

Mr. ELLISON. It eliminates the bankers' regulators' ability to ensure safety and soundness of the financial system. We need to enforce the law, not wink at it. Members, they are dangling a shiny, little object in front of you by saying they are going to stop arbitrary account closures. This bill is way more than that. I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Speaker, this is the Progressive Caucus Special Order hour. I am so honored that Bonnie Watson Coleman leads our Caucus in this regard. It couldn't be more important tonight than to have an excellent leader guiding us in this discussion because, in my opinion, the Flint water crisis is one of the most stunning failures of the philosophy that you ought to run a government entity like a business that I have ever seen. Tonight the Flint water crisis that is in front of us is not a tsunami, it is not a tornado, and it is not a flood. It is decisions by people who have inflicted massive harm and damage on children and the community at large. When we say children, the damage to the children is absolutely incontrovertible, but what about our seniors? What about our people in the prime of their lives who cannot use the water in the city that they expect to use it in? I submit to you that this problem is the responsibility of Governor Snyder, who believes in running government like a business. The former leader of Gateway Computers promised outcomes and deliverables during his campaign, but he wasn't selling computers. You are supposed to be giving public services to the people. It is very different. Apparently, the deliverables that he wanted to deliver, delivered awful, horrible outcomes for the people of Flint. Before the Flint crisis, Mr. Snyder spent $1.8 billion in tax cuts for corporations, leaving very little for small, struggling cities like Flint. Of course, it is all based on the philosophy that if you don't regulate rich people and big companies and you give them all the tax breaks they ever want, then they are going to invest it all in the plant and equipment and wages and make it better off. What a stunning failure. It is a lie, an untruth, and a demonstrably false claim. To save money, the Governor has been appointing political cronies as financial managers to mostly Black, mostly poor municipalities around the State. When I say that folks in Flint are mostly Black, I want to say this. They are not all Black. There is a shared harm on White communities and Latino communities as well. I don't want people across America to think: ``Well, I am not Black, so it is not really my problem.'' No, it is your problem, if you are living in Flint and drinking water, no matter what your skin color or ethnic background is. In Flint, the emergency manager suggested switching the city's drinking water supply to the Flint River to save the city about $5 million. Thank you. It will cost billions to correct the damage that this perverted philosophy of money before people has resulted in. The conservative mantra says that cutting spending and shrinking government is the way to go. Well, he sure did that, and now we have this crisis on our doorstep. The government and businesses do not have the same bottom line, they should not have the same bottom line, and we should treat businesses like businesses and public services and government like that. They should not confuse one for the other. We have a crisis of democracy in Flint. Under the guise of fiscal responsibility--which we all know only applies to low-income people and never the well-to-do and the well-heeled--they are never asked to be fiscally responsible. For example, in Florida, the poor have to be fiscally responsible. They even have to be drug tested to get welfare. We give farm subsidies away--that is welfare, too--and nobody is asked to do anything. It is ridiculous. It is a double standard. Under the guise of fiscal responsibility, Governor Snyder used the State's emergency manager law to remove local power and appoint his own personal emergency managers to run the city of Flint and numerous other committees in Michigan, including my own hometown where I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. I am a proud Representative of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and its suburbs today, but I was born in Detroit. I can never--nor would I want to--disconnect my connection to this crisis. This is my crisis. This is the State where I was born and where my two older brothers and my parents and nieces and nephews live right now. My brother, Reverend Brian Ellison of Church of the New Covenant Baptist, was born in Flint. Of the 25 times that emergency financial managers have been appointed in Michigan since 1990, Rick Snyder has appointed 15 of them. In doing so, he has denied these communities their right to representative democracy. This kind of idea that when your town is in trouble, democracy and the voice of the people cannot be part of the solution, is offensive to anybody who cares about democracy. Instead, it turns over control to an outside dictator who reports only to the Governor, not anyone in the community. I want to talk about Flint by the numbers just for a moment: 8,657 is the number of children under the age of 16 exposed to lead poisoning--it may be more now; $5 million is the amount of money that Flint's emergency manager was trying to save by switching the water supply to the Flint River; $1.5 billion is estimated as what it would cost to now replace Flint's corroded water pipes; $100 is the amount of money per day it would have cost to treat Flint's water with an anticorrosive agent; 10 is the number of Flint residents who have died from a Legionnaires' outbreak in Flint that experts suspect could be linked to waterborne illnesses; Zero is the number of corroded pipes removed from Flint since the Governor decided to appoint this emergency manager. Now, as I close, I just want to say that there is another group of people who I just want to bring to light today, and that is a group of people in our society who live among us who clean hotel rooms, work on farms, and who really work superhard. These are people who may not have documentation to live in the United States. One of the stories that we have yet to really put a lot of light on is the fact that undocumented people are being, according to reports, turned away from services. You need an ID to get the water. There are cases where undocumented people have not been able to get the services that they need. I just want to say that Flint's undocumented migrants hesitated to request help during the water crisis. On this floor and in other legislatures around this country, conservative legislators are talking about the aliens and all this kind of stuff as if these people are from another planet, but my God, you deny them water? Come on. The fact of the matter is that this is a humanitarian crisis. It deserves the full attention of our government. The Progressive Caucus will offer an entry in our budget addressing this crisis and coming at it with the money. Yes, we think the health and safety of the children and the people of Flint are more important than somebody's tax cut. We do believe that to be true, and we are going to be standing firm for that. We also urge all of our Members in this body to say wait a minute. Anytime public policy says the only thing that matters is cutting taxes and we don't really care about public services, you are going to get a crisis like this. Now that we have seen what this abhorrent philosophy will bring, I think we can all say we need to slow down and ask ourselves the question: Isn't it worth a moment to spend time to deliver quality public services to all of the people of this country? Isn't it time to let government do what it is supposed to do, to protect the people?

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Chairman, if you are a company that is going public, if you are a company that wants to sell shares to retail investors, you are not a small business. You are a big business. You are in the big leagues. Along with the privileges comes some responsibility. If you are too small to report your data, then you are too small to be on the NASDAQ. If you can't run with the big dogs, you should stay on the porch. True, they could choose to report in searchable, structured data, but that would result in a fractured system. Some report by searchable data, some by PDFs. I want the people who review corporate financial disclosure documents to have the data that they need. They need to find corporate financial data faster, in more detail, and at lower cost. That is where eXtensible Business Reporting Language, or XBRL, comes in. XBRL is operating now. When the exemption was brought before the previous Congress, two witnesses testified to costs of $50,000 or more to file in XBRL. But these two companies appear to be outliers. The American Institute for Certified Public Accountants found that smaller firms pay, on average, $10,000 a year. Meanwhile, the group of companies that would be exempt under this bill paid more than $1 million in legal and financial banking fees in 2013 just to raise capital from investors. So the cost of XBRL is miniscule compared to the other costs of being a public company. This amendment is meritorious, and I ask for its support.

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ELLISON

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

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentlewoman, Ranking Member Waters, and Chair Hensarling for their leadership on the committee. Mr. Chairman, too many people are excluded from the financial mainstream. Fifty million Americans lack a credit score. Either they have no credit file at all, or they have too few trade lines to establish a credit score. There have been some real innovations in helping these people we call ``credit invisibles'' to build an accurate score. FICO, which has a large presence in my State, has been a real leader in building more inclusive and accurate scoring methodology. But credit scoring agencies cannot score information they don't have, and they tend to have late payment information but not on-time payment information. In other words, Mr. Chairman, if somebody doesn't pay a bill, probably it is scored. If they do pay it, probably it is not. This is the case for HUD residents. That is why we need to make it easier for firms to provide customers' on-time payment data. My amendment specifically aims to help some of the 3 million people who live in HUD-assisted housing. By law, families, people with disabilities, and the elderly who receive HUD assistance pay 30 percent of their income for rent. I want to see them get credit they deserve for paying their rent on time. These folks pay their rent on time, yet it never shows up in their FICO score. Why are we not reporting their on-time rental payment? Because the law requires each tenant to provide prior written consent before having their on-time rental payment information reported, but it does not require the same information to report late payments of rent. So they can get hit for late payment, no credit for on-time. The prior written consent is mandated by the Privacy Act of 1974, which I believe was a well-meaning and good piece of legislation-- except it needs to be updated. This piece of legislation, the Privacy Act of 1974, wants to protect the privacy of affordable housing residents, which is good, and I support that. But in this case, it is causing more harm than good. Requiring each resident to grant written permission and then have the housing provider manage all those forms is a burden. We have empirical evidence to show that such rent reporting helps tenants. Recently, Credit Builders Alliance led a Rent Reporting for Credit Building pilot in eight communities. The Rent Reporting for Credit Building pilot reported rent payments of 1,255 low-income residents who lived in assisted housing. The research found that credit-invisible residents who participated in the pilot were able to build a high nonprime of 646, or prime score of 688 with the inclusion of their rental payment history. Even if they don't want to borrow money, their scores are going up, meaning that they apply for, perhaps, lower interest rates, apply for jobs, and have a better situation all around. To repeat: from credit-invisible to credit scores above 646, and some much higher. Even those who had a credit score already saw it go up. Seventy-nine percent--a vast majority--saw an increase in credit scores. This was an average increase of 23 points. Credit Builders Alliance and other researchers want to expand their efforts to help more residents. Another pilot program is pending. HUD is partnering with Experian; FICO; LexisNexis; the Policy and Economic Research Council, PERC; and TransUnion to evaluate the impact of reporting rental payment history on credit scores of subsidized housing residents and the general population. The Privacy Act requirement has hindered their effort. Already overworked housing staffs struggle to maintain the paperwork necessary to report renters' on-time payment. Housing staffs find that it is difficult to set up automated payment data transmission between property managers and the credit bureaus with an always changing database. My amendment includes language from H.R. 4172, the Credit Access and Inclusion Act. H.R. 4172 has 20 cosponsors. Ten are Republican. Seven of the ten Republicans serve with me on the Financial Services Committee. In conclusion, please support this amendment because it would do a number of very important things: It would help credit invisibility for hundreds, if not thousands-- millions, even, and that is not an exaggeration--of very low-income people. It makes it easier to provide predictive data of someone's ability to pay and willingness to repay. And based on solid empirical evidence, that rental payment data can move people from unscoreable to prime or near prime. We should help HUD-assisted tenants enter the financial mainstream. Let's implement rent reporting on a large scale. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, during rollcall vote No. 44 on January 13, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.'' Personal Explanation

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I take the floor today to congratulate the fans of the Seattle Seahawks. You see, I talked with my good friend Congresswoman Suzan DelBene and told her that the Minnesota Vikings were for sure going to beat the Seahawks.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to say, please, Members, vote ``no'' on this resolution. It is a very bad idea. What is happening here, for the folks listening, is that the EPA has come up with a rule that is going to strengthen protections for drinking water for 117 million people. Our Republican colleagues have brought forth a resolution to disapprove of the rule, leaving people vulnerable to the status quo. This comes out to about one in three Americans across the country and perhaps one in five Minnesotans in my home State. Now, I am critically concerned about all of America--I am a U.S. Congressman--which leads me to the situation in Flint. The fact is that, by clarifying that waters are protected under the Clean Water Act, the rule would reduce the amount of pollution entering major rivers and waterways. This would mean less corrosive water, which is part of what led to the water crisis being seen in Flint, Michigan, right now. When the highly corrosive water of the Flint River passes through Flint's service pipes, it leaches lead out of the pipes and into residents' drinking glasses, bathtubs, and swimming pools. The water crisis in Flint reminds us that failure to step up and protect our water supply puts the lives of the public in danger. Eight thousand children are now facing poisoning because of this nasty situation. In Flint, residents were forced to pay for water that was poisoning them, by an unelected emergency manager. A mother and Flint resident, Lee Ann Walters, started bathing her children with bottled water, as she learned that her children were showing signs of lead poisoning and that the lead levels in her tap water were seven times higher than the minimum safety standard. The entire city has been exposed to dangerous lead levels, including as many as 8- to 10,000 children. If this does not compel us to stand up and fight for clean water, I don't know what will. We absolutely need to say ``no'' to this resolution that would expose us to dirty water.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. I thank the gentlewoman, who has done an awesome job holding down the Progressive Special Order Hour. It has been to the benefit of everyone who listens. Mr. Speaker, it is important for all of us involved in this debate and every American to understand a concept known as starve the beast. It is a conservative concept. And what it really means--and I would like everybody to be clear--is that the conservative wing in our country wants to shrink the size of government so that a big multinational oil company will never have to worry about an EPA regulator because the government will have so little money, they won't have an EPA regulator. The starve-the-beast concept means that a big bank won't ever have to worry about a bank regulator saying: Hey, Mr. Banker, you cannot do that with the American people's money. You have to be fair; you have to be proper and right with the people's money. Because we will shrink the government to be so small and so weak that there won't ever be that regulator who will say to the big banks: You cannot do that. Starve the beast means that the largest private sector elements in our country can escape the accountability the government provides through the people who inspect the water, the people who inspect the meat, the people who inspect the air quality. It is the people who inspect all these things. And when the public interest runs afoul of the private gain, the private gain will prevail because the public won't have the wherewithal and the resources to say no, or you have to readjust this, or you have to operate at a higher standard of quality, or anything like that. Now, how do you get this starve-the-beast strategy in play? Well, one thing that you do is you have unpaid-for tax cuts. You get these tax cuts in place and they are all good if you say: Isn't this great? Don't you want to escape paying taxes? Who likes paying taxes? Nobody. So people say: Okay. Good. We are going to get out of having to pay taxes. How nice. But then you don't pay for them. Then what happens to the budget? Well, you have got a big hole in the budget because the revenue you were counting on is not there. Then you use the public relations to say that raising taxes is just the worst thing anyone could ever do at any time in their life. They say this three-letter word of taxes--really, a four-letter word--and I will let your imagination go from there--and then, because they have made raising revenue utterly radioactive, all we can do is cut. And so what do we do? Well, we cut education funding. We cut Meals on Wheels. We cut the National Institutes of Health. We cut, cut, cut all this stuff that ordinary citizens rely on until we get to the next rounds of tax cuts. By the way, when it comes to tax cuts and conservatives, if the economy is doing really well, they need a tax cut. If it is doing really bad, the solution to that is what? A tax cut. And if we are just doing average, well, why not have a tax cut? It is almost always unpaid for. And if you look at it over time, there is this pattern of irresponsible tax cuts, deficits, cuts to fix it, more tax cuts, deficit, more cuts to fix it. Never do we raise the revenue we need in order to meet the needs of our society. Who gets hurt? Not the country club set. It is people who need the government to function on their behalf or people who drink water every day and who need an inspection of it, people who like to breathe clean air, people who might want to eat some meat that has been inspected, people suffering from a serious disease like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's who might need the National Institutes of Health to put forth a grant which will help. So what does that all have to do with this discussion? Well, today, we just passed a bill that gave $600-some billion worth of unpaid-for tax cuts and made them permanent. We created a structural deficit that is even worse. Now, they are going to give it back a little bit. A little bit. We give away $600 billion, they give us $30 billion, and voila, we are supposed to be happy about that. There is a concept known as Stockholm syndrome. Your captor holds you in control. After they have held you a little while, they give you a few little chits. Then they make you think that when they give you even a little drop of water, they are so benevolent. I will never forget that we never should have had sequester in the first place. We never should have had sequester. We had a hostage- taking situation where Republicans were literally threatening to default and renege on the full faith and credit of the United States by busting the debt ceiling. And if we did not give them back all kinds of cuts and concessions, they would bust the debt ceiling. So then we entered into this deal where we had some cuts in the beginning, and then they said: We are going to set up a special committee, three Republicans in the House, three Republicans in the Senate, three Democrats in the House, three Democrats in the Senate. And this committee was supposed to come up with some targeted cuts to reduce the deficit, which they said then was just the worst thing in the world, and that is to ever have a deficit. Then they got in that committee and instead of upholding their pledge to protect and defend the United States, they upheld their pledge to not raise taxes to certain political figures in our landscape. The whole committee failed. And it was contemplated that if this committee cannot come up with targeted cuts, then there will be across-the-board cuts on both sides, also known as sequester. You know what? That committee really never had a chance. I wish we would have known then that that committee was always a sucker deal, because they were clinking the champagne glasses when that committee failed because they knew it was going to be across-the-board cuts. They said: It is going to be domestic discretionary, which you liberals like, and there are going to be cuts to the military, which us conservatives like--which is a sort of a gross overgeneralization and not exactly accurate, but that was the rough approximation. What we never accounted for is that in 2001, the U.S. military budget was already about $290 billion. By the time we got to sequester, it was about $700 billion. They could stand some cuts, but the programs that the average citizen needed that were going to be ravaged could not. And so that you know, no sooner than the sequester went into effect, we had people saying: Oh, we can't do these military cuts. It can't happen. It won't happen. They had their friends and their advocates, even though they had been getting fat for years, but what about Meals on Wheels and education funding and environmental protection? That was attacked. So what does that mean about today? What it means about today is this: We have seen more taxes, more things given away. I definitely think that some of the things that were made permanent today are good tax treatments. I am for research and development. I am certainly for child credit and the EITC. But they should be paid for, because if they are not paid for, they are going to come out of another part of the budget next year. Oh, and by the way, how come tax extenders don't have to be paid for, but anything that regular people need must be paid for? Why do we have to find offsets for unemployment insurance, but not for things that Big Business needs? It is utter hypocrisy. I just want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, for the folks who are listening, that there is a very important thing that Speaker John Boehner said when the Republicans took over a few years ago. They came out with this big, ugly budget to cut all these things that Americans really rely on to prosper and grow, and we wouldn't pass their House bill. And so Speaker Boehner said: If they won't take it one big loaf at a time, they will take it one slice at a time. And boy, if that promise has not been kept. We absolutely have to turn around and say no to this starve-the-beast philosophy. We have to turn it around and start meeting the needs of the American people. Taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society. If you don't like taxes, move to Somalia, where you won't have to pay any. Good luck. But in America, where we pay taxes that pay for schools, that pay for more clean water, highways, police, and fire, we have got to stop and stand against this false claim that there is something wrong with taxation. Let me just wrap up on one point. I know we have got to move on--we have got other great speakers who I actually want to hear from myself-- but I want to make one very quick comment as I listen to my colleagues and prepare to take my seat, and that is about one of the things we are going to be dealing with tomorrow. Now, we talk about this tax extender thing and the omnibus as if it is two different things. It is actually one big thing. That is the truth. One of the elements of the omnibus tomorrow--which is pretty ugly--is lifting the oil export ban on crude oil. According to the Energy Information Administration, lifting the ban will increase oil industry profits by more than $20 billion annually. Now, the big companies that make all these extra profits, I think they have their favorites in the House of Representatives. And not too many of them sit over here. Probably a lot of them sit over there. I will also say that it will cut refinery jobs, it will make us more dependent upon foreign oil, and it will increase more fossil fuel. This is absolutely the wrong thing. The only virtue of it is that a small, tiny, select number of people are going to get $20 billion. And I am disgusted by it. By the oil industry's own expectations, this action will lead to more than 7,600 additional wells being drilled each year and more fossil fuels. According to the report from the Center for America Progress, repealing the ban would result in an additional 515 metric tons of carbon pollution each year, roughly equal to 108 million more passenger cars or 135 coal-fired power plants. It will cost jobs in refineries. It will do real damage to Americans. And yet this is what is on the docket tomorrow. Now, are there good things on the docket tomorrow? Yes, there are. I will leave it to other people to decide whether it is worth it to pass a monstrosity like this. So I will say: Always know that sometimes when you are in the game, somebody else playing has an overall long-term strategy, and if you are just playing minute to minute, you are going to be no match for them. Understand starve the beast. Don't play the game.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I do support the fact that we are looking at the Visa Waiver Program. However, after scrutinizing this bill, I think that it is not the right bill and I don't plan on supporting it. It is not that I can't support any part of it. There are key things that I cannot abide, but I urge the parties to keep on working on it because I think the effort is proper. Here is what I think is specifically wrong with this. If it were to change, I might reconsider my position. The categorical stripping of the Visa Waiver Program privileges from all Iraqi and Syrian nationals I think is problematic. I think it is overbroad. I don't think it is necessary. Number two, I think there should be exemptions for people who do clearly recognized legitimate work, such as journalists, researchers, human rights investigators, and other such professionals. Number three, I think the 5-year sunset is too long. I think it should be shorter. I do think 3 years would work just fine. I just want to say that the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 does contain, as we stand here, discriminatory elements, which I don't believe will effectively stop terrorism. In fact, I think it sends a wrong message to dual nationals and Iraqi and Syrian tourists. This bill bars people who are dual nationals from Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Sudan from participating in the Visa Waiver Program even if there is no evidence that they are a security risk. I think our focus should be on behavior, not just country of origin. This bill would also end visa waiver eligibility for people who traveled to Iraq or Syria in the last 5 years. For example, this bill would make an elderly French citizen who is a dual national of Syria go through an often lengthy visa approval process simply because she wanted to travel to the U.S. to attend a wedding or a birthday or something. What does this provision mean for a Swiss doctor who traveled to Iraq to work in a refugee camp providing medical care, but wants to come to the U.S. for a conference or something like that? While this bill does not restrict entry to the U.S., it creates additional barriers. It should be worked on a little more to fix these problems. I do thank the parties for working in a bipartisan way to bring greater safety to our country.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, Republicans are willing to shut down government in a battle to protect riders that hurt working-class Americans. During these budget and appropriation debates, Republicans have fought tooth and nail to cut investments in important programs for working families, yet they are willing to spend billions on tax expenditures for wealthy corporations. On top of that, Mr. Speaker, they want to add riders that gut consumer protections, labor rights, environmental protections, and a woman's right to choose. A recent poll found that nearly seven in ten Americans agree with the following statement: ``I feel angry because our political system seems to only be working for the insiders with money and power.'' As Members of Congress, I urge colleagues on all sides to come together and heed the American people's wishes and to put their interests up front. We need to make sure that we can pass a budget bill that isn't loaded up with policy riders and more things that would confuse the basic issues. Mr. Speaker, we cannot abide proposals attacking the National Labor Relations Board and a worker's right to organize. We cannot abide efforts to undermine the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is helping Americans meet their financial needs. Mr. Speaker, we must stand up for the American consumer. I urge all parties to come together to reach these important goals.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, due to pressing matters of public safety in my district, I missed the following roll call votes: Roll call No. 638. I would have voted no. Roll call No. 639. I would have voted no. Roll call No. 640. I would have voted yes. Roll call No. 641. I would have voted no. Roll call No. 642. I would have voted yes. Roll call No. 643. I would have voted no.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, Minneapolis is fortunate to be the home of the American Swedish Institute (ASI). It is a non-profit organization that serves as a museum and a cultural center. Bruce Karstadt has served as the President and CEO of the American Swedish Institute for the past twenty-five years. He is also the Honorary Counsel General of Sweden for the State of Minnesota. Mr. Karstadt has helped promote trade, diplomacy, and he serves as a conduit between Minnesota and the nation of Sweden. His steadfast leadership has led to several significant and positive changes at ASI. The campus and museum have nearly doubled in size since his tenure began and it has become a favorite destination for residents and tourists to Minneapolis. He has transformed ASI into an influential organization with an inclusive atmosphere that works to involve all cultures in the Twin Cities area. Located in a very diverse neighborhood on the South side of Minneapolis, ASI teaches visitors about the past, and how early Swedish immigrants lived in Minnesota, while serving as a modern gathering place for all in our increasingly diversified community. Today, ASI focuses on the future and provides much inspiration to recent immigrants to our community. Mr. Karstadt and his staff draw visitors to the historic Turnblad Mansion and motivate them to think about connecting the past with the bright future of Minnesota. I congratulate Mr. Karstadt on his twenty- five years of service to the American Swedish Institute, to Minnesota, our increasingly diversifying community and our visitors from Sweden and the Nordic region.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. I want to thank the gentlewoman for the time. The ranking member has been an outstanding advocate for American consumers, and I thank her. I rise today to ask people to vote ``no'' on this piece of legislation and to alert the American people of another attempt to make it easier to overcharge you when you make a purchase. Today's threat to Americans' wallets occurs when you try to buy a car. Most people need to take out a loan to buy a car or a truck. They frequently get their financing through an auto dealer. Car buyers don't realize that some dealers can raise the price or the interest rate offered by the partnering bank to make an additional profit. For years, there has been a concern that African Americans and Latinos, despite negotiating harder and having good credit scores, pay a higher interest rate than white car buyers, charging some people 2 or 2.5 more percent than others, based on skin color. It is also a violation of the law. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibits discrimination in the financial marketplace. Lenders who partner with auto dealers have a responsibility to ensure that borrowers receive fair treatment. That is what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is trying to do. The CFPB issued guidance recommending that the auto industry establish flat-rate pricing and some other approach to ensure that they are not discriminating against their customers. This makes sense to me and would be beneficial to consumers. This bill, on which I urge a ``no,'' nullifies the CFPB's guidance. It requires the bill to jump through a number of hoops that open the Bureau up to litigation before the CFPB can establish new guidance. The National Association of Minority Auto Dealers opposes this bill. They say: ``To date, the recent consent orders between the CFPB, DOJ and financial institutions and captive finance companies to settle discrimination claims have not resulted in any negative outcomes or loss of revenue for minority dealers. We are convinced that this matter should and, more importantly, can be resolved with a nonlegislative fix.'' Mr. Chairman, I say thank you to them. When people are overcharged or treated unfairly in the marketplace, it harms their ability to build wealth and fully participate in this economy. If you want to do something about income inequality, you must say ``no'' to this bill. Join the National Association of Minority Auto Dealers, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Center for Responsible Lending, the Consumers Union, Consumer Action, the National Council of La Raza, Americans for Financial Reform, American Association for Justice, ColorOfChange, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Human Rights, the Urban League, and more to vote ``no'' on this legislation. I include in the Record the National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers' letter opposing this legislation and the NAACP's letter opposing this legislation. I just want to point out that discrimination in this country has been fought long and hard for centuries. Let's not stop now. National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers, Largo, MD, November 13, 2015. Hon. G.K. Butterfield,

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for the time. Mr. Speaker, I just want to say that the fact is that 2008 was a horrendous time here in Congress, but it was even worse across America. You can go into neighborhoods not just in my district in Minnesota but all over the country--Florida, Arizona, and California--all over the country, and the foreclosure crisis was wreaking havoc from sea to shining sea. Why? Because of poor underwriting standards. Why else? Because we didn't require much of anything to prove that people could pay a loan back. I remember these days, and I remember them so well that I am not really one to want to return to them right away. I think Congress has a duty to protect homeowners and protect consumers from predatory lenders. I vividly recall panic. I vividly recall the loss in property values, and I vividly recall the exploding unemployment numbers. I remember the calls from homeowners in my district facing foreclosure. In Hennepin County, which is the county in which Minneapolis is located, we had more than 35,000 foreclosures since 2007. In many cases, these home buyers were sold loans with predatory terms even though they qualified for better mortgages. They were literally steered to bad mortgages. I have talked to people both young and elderly, people who had English as a second language, and people who have been born speaking English their whole lives, in fact, a diverse group of people who were steered to cash-out refinancing that stripped them of their wealth and left them homeless. We acted to stop these predatory practices, and I am proud that we did. Dodd-Frank was good legislation to try to stop these irresponsible practices. We passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and created a standard mortgage, one that we call a qualified mortgage. This is a good step. It was wise to create a nice, boring mortgage loan product. It was a good idea. Qualified loans must not at the time of origination be interest only or negatively amortizing, have a term longer than 30 years, be a no- income, no-documentation loan, also known as liar loans, be a balloon loan, have a cap on fees and points, and leave the borrower with a debt-to-income ratio of greater than 43 percent. These are commonsense requirements, and if you get a loan like this, it is probably going to be fine. These commonsense requirements are going to enable sustainable homeownership and allow people to maintain that American Dream that they have been hoping for and saving for for so long. The fact is, we remember when we had yield spread premium. We remember no-doc, NINJA loans. We remember these interest-only loans and negative amortization. These things were ruinous and harmed the American working and middle classes. These commonsense requirements-- these commonsense requirements--are what we should do. Here we are today. H.R. 1210 seeks to repeal these protections. They want to take us back in time. They want to put us at risk and tender mercies again. The fact is, it is a huge mistake. H.R. 1210 would allow banks with assets up to $1 trillion to seek mortgage brokers to issue the kinds of exotic products which caused the financial collapse. Even before the ink on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform bill was dry, there were people trying to undermine it. Even before we even implemented the rules, all the rules from Dodd-Frank have not even been in place yet, we are trying to change it and undermine it, really to kick the door open so that the American working and middle class can be at the tender mercies of unscrupulous lenders again. That is not to say that all home lenders are unscrupulous. Many are good. But it doesn't take that many to really ruin the industry. These changes that H.R. 1210 proposes would encourage lenders to make loans that are not in the best interest of the home buyer, and this I have to stand against. But I am not by myself. Not only does our ranking member know that this is a bad idea--and many Members of this body--but also the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, is well aware this is bad legislation. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights knows it. Americans for Financial Reform knows it. And the Consumer Federation of America and dozens more are opposing this piece of legislation. Some argue that because these loans will be held in the portfolio of the lender, they will be high quality loans. This is not true. This is a faulty assumption, and it is wrong. They miss the whole point of the qualified mortgage rule enacted in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Mortgage rules are designed to provide safeguards that would create a safer mortgage product for the borrowers. Simply keeping a loan in a portfolio is not necessarily a substitute for the type of sound underwriting mortgage rules are designed to establish. There is ample evidence that predatory loans can and have been held in portfolio. Some of the largest mortgage lenders that failed during the financial crisis were large portfolio lenders like Countrywide, Washington Mutual, and Wachovia. These lenders can still make money on defaulted loans. During the 3 years before the crisis, 70 percent of subprime loans were refinanced loans, Mr. Speaker, not purchased loans. With refis, borrowers bring the equity to the table. If the bank charges upfront fees and recovers the money from a foreclosure, predatory loans can be profitable even if they default. The same is true for predatory purchase loans when home values aren't falling. And that is why we are going to stand here and protect home buyers. Mr. Speaker, I want to urge all Members of this body to vote ``no'' on H.R. 1210. And just remember, it has only been a few years since we passed Dodd-Frank. It has only been not even a decade since the financial crisis that really, really caused tremendous havoc to the American working and middle classes. After the Great Depression of the 1930s, at least it took them a couple of decades before they tried to dismantle all the financial protections. They haven't even taken a single decade. They are back at it again and fighting tooth and nail to leave the American working and middle class at the tender mercies of people who have nothing but the profit motive in mind. Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to vote ``no'' on this piece of legislation. It is not worthy, and I urge a strong ``no'' vote.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I am very proud of my record in support of tribal sovereignty. I have been a member of the Native American Caucus since 2012. I supported the legislative fix to Carcieri v. Salazar, a Supreme Court decision that overturned 75 years of Federal Indian policy. I cosponsored the Non-Disparagement of Native American Persons or Peoples in Trademark Registration Act, and I have actually stood out in the street calling for the Washington football team to change its name because of the ugliness of what that represents. And, of course, I was proud, proud to be a sponsor and a supporter of the Violence Against Women Act, which authorized tribal governments to exercise special domestic violence criminal jurisdiction over any individual that commits domestic violence, dating violence or any kind of violence, and to protect men and women on the tribal areas. In short, I am a person who is very proudly and affirmatively for tribal sovereignty and tribal rights. However, the right to form and work in a labor organization and the right to have rights on your job is also a very important right, and I cannot see why we cannot fashion legislation which protects both tribal sovereignty and the right of labor. This bill unfortunately takes rights away from some in order to purportedly give them to the other. I urge my friends who are tempted to vote for this legislation to ask themselves what they are giving up and what they are getting. We could fashion legislation to look out for tribes. We could work together. But, instead, what we are doing is simply using a wedge issue to try to divide two very important principles, labor rights and tribal rights. I am going to vote against this. I hope that all Members do. I hope that people who believe in tribal rights and sovereignty know that this is not about not supporting sovereignty, because I support it. But I believe that this Tribal Labor Sovereignty Act is going to do something very damaging to all workers, including tribal members. We should be supporting all people, including tribal members' right to form unions, to be in a labor organization, which is their very best shot at getting into the middle class. We know that union members earn $207 a week more than nonunion counterparts. This is why some business interests, not all, hate unions, because they just don't want to have a fair economy. They want to hoard the wealth of the company for themselves. Workers who are in the union are far more likely to have retirement benefits, paid sick leave, and other medical benefits. Workers who have organized at their casinos have turned low-wage service sector jobs into good-paying jobs with benefits. This legislation would take those jobs away. Therefore, I must oppose it, and I urge all my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, securing a lasting peace between Israel and Palestine requires a commitment to humanizing the experiences of both peoples. Divisive rhetoric dehumanizes people and undermines the prospect of long-term peace. This resolution is divisive. Incitement by either party, including Palestinian Authority leaders, is a serious issue and deserves to be condemned. But when we denounce the Palestinians and leave no mention of divisive rhetoric by the Israeli government, we do a disservice to Palestinians and Israelis. Just two weeks ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said ``Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews.'' He laid the blame for the Shoa at the feet of a Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Al-Husseini was a virulent anti-Semite. But Prime Minister Netanyahu's blaming the idea of the Holocaust on a Palestinian, and by implication Palestinians, deserves to be condemned by this body just as Palestinian incitement does. I oppose this resolution, not because the Palestinians are not inciting, and not because I believe this incitement should not be condemned. I oppose this resolution because any resolution that attacks one side while ignoring the other can only further tension and violence. If Congress wants to be considered a legitimate arbiter of peace between Israel and Palestine we must pursue a balanced approach that calls for an end to incitement on both sides and both leaders to live up to their obligations under the Oslo Accords.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the time. I plan on voting for this bill, but I am not here to pound and celebrate that. It does things that are good. It lifts the debt ceiling and puts us in a position where we don't have to fear defaulting on America's debts. It avoids ruinous cuts in Medicare part B, and disability insurance benefit cuts won't go down. But the fact is no one here, no one in this room, can say that this piece of legislation that we are looking at now is going to advance America, bring us progress that we actually really need. Do you know that, since 2012, we have seen 640 fewer National Institutes of Health grants? We haven't been making the investments we need in embassy security, housing, health care, education. We are not advancing America. This is not a progress budget. This is a survival budget. And we need to survive; so, I'm going to vote for this piece of legislation. But we must come to the moment in time when we are looking to advance our country, to move forward and offer real leadership to the world, rather than just obsessing over how much we can cut and how much we can take. The fact is that the Progressive Caucus offered a budget. It meets our minimal conditions, but it doesn't advance our real progress that we need. We have principles that we have been talking about that are about pushing this country forward: child nutrition, affordable care, college education, housing, transit. This is what is going to make our country strong. This budget keeps us above water, keeps us from defaulting on our debts, and that is a good thing. But can't we do more?

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. I would like to thank the gentlewoman for yielding. I also would like to thank the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Watson Coleman) for her tireless support of the progressive message and her long work in New Jersey, but also here in Congress. Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Speaker, Working Families Day of Action, the day when we came together to talk about the agenda for working people, is a far cry from what my Republican colleagues like to talk about on a daily basis. But working people in this country need an advocate; they need somebody in Congress to care. I want to tell a quick story about a young lady in my district. Her name is Randa Jama, and she is a member of SEIU Local 26, who took a job as a wheelchair attendant at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Airport last fall with AirServ, a Delta Airlines subcontractor. It was supposed to be a full-time position, but her employer suddenly cut her hours to only 12 hours a week. She explains to me: ``They told me that you are working only Saturday and Sunday from now on.'' Her supervisors would still sometimes ask her at the last minute to stay late or do an extra shift, but she can't work at such short notice even though she needs the hours because it is hard to get access to babysitters. She is a young mom. Now, on behalf of Randa Jama and many other people, I just want to make a few reflections here today, and that is that things are absolutely out of balance. They are out of balance, and the gap between rich and everybody else is wider now than it has been in decades; and working people, consumers, and environmental advocates are starting to come together to demand good jobs and shared prosperity. The story today is not necessarily about income inequality. We all know that. But what we may not know is how Americans all over this country are moving, shaking, and doing what they need to do. Whether it is the workers of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers or whether it is WorkingAmerica or whether it is the people in the labor movement, the Fight for $15, people all over this country--Americans--are not taking this situation lying down. We are here today to talk about what working families need and what they are doing. They face stagnating wages and struggle to balance the demands at home and on the job. I am very pleased that when it was announced that Paul Ryan, our colleague, was considering accepting the role of Speaker of the House, he insisted that he would have proper work-life balance and was not going to give up home time. I hope that is a signal that we can pursue a shared agenda of the work-life balance for all families all across America. Too many lack access to paid sick leave and affordable child care. For workers who don't have a reliable work schedule, it is often impossible to plan and to pay for child care, rent, transportation, and groceries. People are not working enough hours in many cases, and when they get those hours, they often have to choose between leaving their kids at home or taking the hours that they so desperately need. Workers are seeing their right to organize erode. Here is another opportunity to tell you a good story, which is true, about a friend named Kipp Hedges. Kipp Hedges worked as a baggage handler for 25 years for Delta. He did an awesome job day in and day out and was a member of his union. The people at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Airport said: Hey, we want to form a union. The people who pushed the wheelchairs, the folks who drive the disabled around the airport, and the folks who clean up the airport wanted a union. He said: Well, that is a good effort, and I want to support it. He got fired. He got fired. A lot of people who try to organize unions today get fired for engaging in union activity. That is wrong, and it is against the National Labor Relations Act, but people get fired for it anyway. The fact is it takes them a long time to ever get any kind of satisfaction. In the mid-1950s, you should note that the percentage of workers belonging to unions was about 33 percent. But between 1973 and 2007, private sector union membership plummeted all the way down from about 33, 34 percent down to about 8 percent for men and about from 16 percent to 6 percent for women. It is a devastating situation. We all know that when people are in unions they make more. People of color in unions make more than people of color not in unions. Women in unions make more money than women not in unions. Even White men in unions, working men, make more money than White men not in unions. The union factor makes a big difference. The decline is estimated to explain at least one-third of the growth in wage inequality among men and one-fifth of the growth in wage inequality among women. The decline of union density has resulted directly in Americans of all backgrounds having less money in their paychecks. Now, the American economy is growing. This is the richest country in the world, and it is actually doing pretty well. But the share of that growth has only been going to the very richest few, and it has not been distributed equally. This is a pivotal moment in our history, and Americans are stepping up to do something about it. We can see clearly now that tax cuts for big corporations won't help working people. We hear all the time, day in and day out, that if you cut taxes for the wealthy and you don't make them obey any health and safety rules, then they will use all that extra money to start businesses, buy inventory, start plants, and buy equipment, and that will give the rest of us jobs. That kind of philosophy has a name. It is called trickle-down economics. It doesn't work now, and it didn't work then. It never works. As a matter of fact, Americans all over are starting to see that a tax cut for a big corporation or a wealthy individual and allowing them to abandon health and safety rules is not going to benefit anybody but them. In fact, it is going to hurt us quite a bit. Mr. Speaker, we know that deregulation won't help consumers, and we know that it is not going to help the environment. It will leave our consumers at the tender mercies of the business community, and it will leave our communities at the tender mercy of polluters. We can't afford that. Things are radically out of balance, and working people, consumers, and environmental advocates need to band together to push back for shared prosperity. We in Congress need to stand with them. One thing we can do is support policies and priorities outlined in the Day of Action. One thing we can do is stand in support of the policy priorities outlined in this Working Families Day of Action, #workingfamilies. We in Congress need to stand with them. Today we are highlighting bills that would: one, raise wages; two, protect the right to unionize and organize; three, increase access to paid sick leave, family leave, and affordable child care; and, four, promote fair scheduling at the workplace and fight workplace discrimination. Let me just mention a few steps before I turn it over. On the issue of fair scheduling, this is a big deal. There are more than 23 million workers in low-wage jobs, and two-thirds of these workers are women. Workers in these jobs often face schedules that are rigid, unpredictable, and unstable, which can make it impossible to successfully juggle responsibilities on and off the job. I just want to say to any small business who worries about fair scheduling: We want to be in conversation with you. We want to talk it out and work it out. We know that sometimes things do come up in unexpected ways. But for sure, we can discuss, as Americans, how to work out a schedule that is a family-friendly schedule and that meets the needs of the business. What we have now is a completely unpredictable environment where people are left either choosing between leaving their kids at home or abandoning those hours that are available. I also want to mention something about unions. A typical union worker makes 30 percent more than a nonunion worker. This is a fact. The companies they work for are thriving and growing. There are tons of union companies all over this country that are making a lot of money. The question is: How big is the CEO's bonus? If we can have some union representation, the company can thrive, but the workers can share in that thriving. Right now, workers are eking a living hand to mouth and paycheck to paycheck, and the CEO bonuses are out of control. Unionized African American workers make 36 percent more than nonunionized African Americans. Unionized Hispanic women make 46 percent more than nonunionized Hispanic women. Let me just wrap up with a little quick story because this really is about people, Mr. Speaker. It is about people. It is not just about the stats. It is about people. This is a worker who was required to have open availability and still can't get the hours. She is required to get open availability and still can't get the hours. Her name is Jill, and she works for JCPenney. She writes: My name is Jill Ernst. When I interviewed at JCPenney in Minnesota, part of how I got the job was that I had to have a very flexible schedule. I was open all 7 days of the week, but now they only give me less than 35 hours. If they give me less than 34.5 hours, it's a struggle to pay rent and my bills. If they put me on the schedule for 28 hours, I have to figure out how to convince my manager to give me more hours or find someone who is willing to give up hours. My schedule is so inconsistent that, if I need to take paid time off for 1 day, I know that I'll have to take the entire week off or I'll be scheduled a bunch of short days and not be paid for that 1 day off. Mr. Speaker, we need to stand up for working families, who had a day of action yesterday: #workingfamilies. We know there is inequality. We know the wages have stagnated. We know that it is tough out there for working Americans. But working Americans aren't sitting around taking it on the chin. They are out there demanding a fair share of this economy, and Congress should stand there with them.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, allow me to congratulate the Minnesota Lynx Basketball Team. This wonderful basketball team has won three titles in 5 years. This is the great sports story of our time. I would like to just let the Minnesota Lynx, their coach, and all their fans know that we are incredibly proud of them. We celebrated, and we had a victory parade. We had all those things happen, but the truth is that this is women's basketball. It is high quality, and it is excellent. It shows girls that women are excellent athletes, and it shows boys the same thing. This is great for our whole country and great for our community in Minnesota. We are proud of the Minnesota Lynx. Do you know what? I want to know if they can win another one next year. I wouldn't put it past them. Go Minnesota Lynx.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, if you look at the headlines, words like ``dysfunction'' are being thrown around and there is a whole lot of drama focused on the Capitol today. But people all around this country are not focused on that. They are focused on their families and their lives. If they are focused on Congress, it probably has something to do with the expiring pieces of legislation that are so important, things like transportation, things like funding the government, all these critical questions in front of us, yet the distraction of this leadership fight seems to be capturing our attention, but it is not capturing the attention of the American people. I look forward, Mr. Speaker, to return to the real business of governing. We work for the public trust of the American people, and this thing here is a useless distraction away from the real business. Let's pass the legislation we are sent here to pass, and let's refocus on what the bread and butter issues are for the American people.

Mr. ELLISON

Mr. ELLISON. Madam Speaker, I thank the ranking member of the committee for her hard work on this. I urge Members to vote ``no,'' and the reason why is that we have been considering and considering and trying to implement Dodd-Frank for such a long time. Every step of the way we have seen delay. Every step of the way we have seen things that just couldn't happen now for all these good reasons. But the fact of the matter is that what brought us to Dodd-Frank were serious abuses in the financial industry, and this bill and all the rules associated need to be implemented. Now, the Know Before You Owe rule is a huge victory for home buyers. It is a good thing for home buyers to know exactly what is going on before they execute on a home loan. Anyone who has bought a home remembers the anxiety of wondering if they are going to have enough cash to close, to cover all the expenses. They also remember feeling bewildered by all of the various fees of $100 or $200, all these surprises. Home buyers need access to clear disclosures in plenty of time to comparison shop and challenge junk fees. The bill we consider today would remove the legal right of homeowners to seek legal redress if they do not receive accurate disclosures until February 2016. The consumer protections are already in place now. We shouldn't postpone them. If we really want to ``assist'' home buyers--and this bill is ironically called the Homebuyer Assistance Act--don't postpone what is already in the law today. Home buyers should get a clear home estimate when they apply for the loan. Home buyers should get their actual closing costs 3 days prior to settlement. And if a home buyer is mistreated in the closing process, the home buyer should retain the right to go to court and seek a remedy. I remain concerned that home buyers are overcharged at closing. Not all; I am not one of those who paints with a broad brush. I believe many of our folks in the industry are excellent, but there are enough exceptions to that to concern all of us. I strongly oppose a lot of lenders, mortgage brokers, builders who receive a financial benefit for a referral. Affiliated business arrangements and reverse competition are not good for home buyers. Consumers need information to protect themselves from overcharges and kickback schemes. Please stand up for home buyers and vote ``no'' on H.R. 3192.