Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. A former President once unfairly characterized a leader of this House as someone who couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time. The gentlewoman from West Virginia extends, frankly, that insult to the whole House. She suggests we can't do two bills in one night. She says we should work to try to help avoid foreclosure. I agree. That's the next bill which we will get to after all of this useless temper tantrum is over, we will get to it at 3 o'clock in the morning, but we will get to it. That bill will help avoid foreclosure. I know the gentlewoman agrees. She voted for that bill in committee although a majority of her colleagues were against it. But I do not understand how anybody could argue that doing this bill now interferes with that bill later. They are totally not in conflict. So the notion that this bill doesn't keep people out of foreclosure is true. It doesn't combat global warming. It doesn't get troops out of Iraq. It won't help me lose weight. There are a lot of things this bill won't do that I very much want to do. None of them are a reason to vote against a bill that doesn't do what it doesn't say it's going to do but does what it does. What it does is to go to the aid of cities that have been victimized by the deregulation run rampant, perpetrated by this administration, which has led to the subprime crisis. We have vacant property everywhere in these areas. Now the argument that this is going to award speculators and be an incentive to do foreclosures is also flatly wrong. This is $15 billion. People will tell you it's a lot of money, and it is. Do you know how much money this is? This is half of the money that this administration made available to buy up the debts of Bear Stearns. Now, I think they had to do that. I think they were forced to do it. But I think we have to do this as well. I do think that the whole country, under this administration's calculation, ought to get at least half of what Bear Stearns got. That's all that this does. Now, unfortunately, it's not nearly enough to buy up the property that's foreclosed. So anyone who says, I'm going to foreclose today because I want to get in on this, would be nuts because there is already property ahead of them. And even when this bill becomes law, if it does, there's a 60-day wait, and I hope it will be part of the stimulus. Property that was once paying taxes because of this subprime crisis now eats taxes. It bites neighborhoods. And, yes, some of the people who foreclose may benefit here. But we are telling the cities and the States to be careful with this money. They have to buy it for affordable housing. That will put limits on what they will pay. And you can say, well, why don't the cities do it on their own? Because the very cities that need help here have lost revenue because of this foreclosure. These properties are fire traps; they attract people who break the law; they attract sanitary nuisances. They lead to water hazards.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I always feel good when people make arguments against legislation that won't really deal with the legislation. The notion that the problem with this bill is that it doesn't help avoid foreclosure, when it was not the bill intended to avoid foreclosure, shows well, there's a dearth of arguments against it. The argument that it's going to reward the speculators, this will go to cities dealing with property that is causing them problems. Do we not trust the cities and States of this country to take this money and use it judiciously and wisely to prevent neighborhood decay? I don't understand the animus that motivates so many of my Republican colleagues that say, Oh, no, let's not have government intervention here. Well, we heard that a while ago, and people on the other side successfully blocked government intervention in regulating subprime mortgage origination outside of the banks. It was this religion of never intervening that brought us here. A limited intervention to undo the negative consequences is what this bill calls for.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. The gentleman is wrong to say that we evaluated everybody under CRA. We have evaluated banks and thrifts under CRA. Mortgage brokers, mortgage bankers were not evaluated----

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I want to address both the procedural and substantive objections. First, procedurally, I understand there are some legitimate concerns about the second rule that we will deal with. But as to this rule, I will say categorically I was the ranking member on the Committee on Financial Services for 4 years. The rule today gives more scope to the minority's amendments than any rule under this committee's jurisdiction when they were in the majority. The gentleman complained about an amendment offered by the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite). There is an amendment on the subject of illegal immigrants and their benefits in this bill. There were four such amendments. One was made in order. Putting in order duplicative amendments serves no purpose. But when the Republicans were in power, we had situations where motions adopted in committee were changed by the Rules Committee, and we were not given an opportunity to vote an amendment and discuss that on the floor. That was on the GSE bill. There was never a time when, under the Republican rule, we had as much ability to offer ours. There are three substantive amendments offered here. Five were already adopted in committee. Now as to the substance. The notion that this helps lenders is bizarre. This is one that is strongly urged for mayors, Governors, police chiefs and municipal officials. Property already foreclosed used to pay taxes. It now absorbs taxes. There are fire hazards, there are nuisances, there are threats in terms of sanitation. The problem is that many of the cities that have this problem of foreclosed property don't have the financial wherewithal to buy up the property precisely because they have lost tax revenues. They are in a vicious cycle. We are offering this money, and it is a need-based formula. The money goes to where there is the most foreclosed property. Now it is true that it is $15 billion for the entire United States. We are in a terrible crisis, and this bill would provide $15 billion to elected local and State officials to buy up property. That's an awful lot of money. It is half what this administration offered to the counterparties of Bear Stearns. Now I thought that the $30 billion offer to the counterparties of Bear Stearns was an unfortunately necessary request. But how, Mr. Speaker, do people in an administration that gave $30 billion of taxpayers' money, put that at risk for the counterparties of Bear Stearns, object when half of that is made available to all of America to abate fire high hazards and to preserve neighborhoods from serious problems? The lenders don't benefit from this. In fact, we have a later bill in which we are going to be accused of not doing enough to put you into foreclosures. This bill says that when the property has already been foreclosed for at least 60 days, the cities and States may work with profit or nonprofit groups to make it available for affordable housing, to make it available for local employees. I guess when you don't have a serious argument, you just make things up. This one is totally unconnected to reality. We have been asked by local officials and worked with them. There is a great deal of property that has been foreclosed upon. By the way, to anyone who says this is an incentive to foreclose property, there isn't enough money in this bill to begin to buy up all that's already been foreclosed. No one who hasn't yet done it is going to get any benefit from this, but let's get back to the basics. Thirty billion dollars of public money has been made available for the counterparties of Bear Stearns, I think, of necessity, to avoid greater danger. But how, having done that, do you denounce half that amount of money for the whole country to cities and States to buy up foreclosed property that is blighting neighborhoods? Then the gentleman from Washington said, well, why should the rural areas be forced to deal with this when it's a city problem because there is foreclosed property in many places? But that kind of rhetoric that sets one against the other, I don't think is very productive. I guess I would say this: Why should the people of Detroit and Cleveland pay subsidies to farmers who make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year? We are going to pass an agricultural bill that's going to ask people in the cities to pay for agricultural subsidies. I don't think it is very sensible to start this kind of thing. We are going to bring forward housing dealing with rural housing. America is in a terrible financial situation brought about by irresponsible economic activity unchecked by reasonable regulation. This is one small piece of dealing with it, and it is far less expensive than other pieces these people have supported.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam speaker, on Monday, April 28th, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, an organization that fights against prejudice based on sexual orientation and gender expression throughout the world, announced its posthumous recognition of our late colleague Tom Lantos for his extraordinary work on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender victims of bigotry. The IGLHRC awarded our late colleague its OUTSPOKEN Award, in recognition of ``the leadership of a global ally to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex community whose outspokenness . . . contributed substantially to advancing the rights and understanding of LGBTI people everywhere.'' Madam Speaker, I know how well deserved this award is, because I frequently turned to our greatly respected and much missed friend for help in combating anti-LGBT prejudice whenever such matters came to my attention in various other countries. Much of the time when I came to him I found that he was already hard at work in trying to address the particular injustice because no one here did more to fight for fair treatment in this regard internationally. Drawing on his considerable prestige throughout the world, and his unmatched record as a fierce defender of human rights everywhere, Tom Lantos was an invaluable ally in our fight against prejudice. Madam Speaker, I ask in recognition of just one aspect of the extraordinary work of this extraordinary man with whom we had the pleasure and honor of serving be printed here. [April 28, 2008] IGLHRC Honors The Late Representative Tom Lantos The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) announced today that it is presenting a posthumous OUTSPOKEN Award to Representative Tom Lantos, the 14-term Congressman who lost his life to cancer on February 11, 2008. IGLHRC's OUTSPOKEN Award recognizes the leadership of a global ally to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community whose outspokenness has contributed substantially to advancing the rights and understanding of LGBTI people everywhere. ``We are so deeply grateful for Representative Lantos's unwavering commitment to human rights,'' said Paula Ettelbrick, IGLHRC's executive director. ``Throughout his life, Representative Lantos waged a steadfast fight against injustice. His voice, vision and compassion will be sorely missed by all of us in the LGBTI community.'' During his fourteen terms as a member of Congress, Representative Lantos, who rose among the ranks to chair the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, was a strong and consistent voice for the rights of the disenfranchised. As the founding co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, Lantos used his prestige as an internationally respected leader on human rights to hold the very first congressional briefing about the global persecution of sexual minorities. He was the author of the International Human Rights Equality Resolution, which he introduced in the 106th and 107th Congress, condemning human rights violations against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people throughout the world. Representative Lantos regularly challenged the abuses meted out by individual countries to their LGBTI citizens. For instance, along with key congressional colleagues, he protested the arrests of allegedly gay men in the United Arab Emirates, and the stoning to death of a Nigerian gay man. He also asked Congress to ``withhold any support for a U.S.- Egypt Free Trade Agreement'' in light of the roundup, conviction and re-conviction of reportedly gay Egyptian men, and issued a strongly worded statement asking the Nigerian Government to consider the implications of passing the Same- Sex Prohibition Act, which would have severely compromised the rights of the LGBTI community in that country. Congressman Lantos was also a staunch ally of LGBTI Americans. He opposed a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage, worked to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to allow U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents to sponsor their ``permanent partners'' for U.S. residency, and introduced a bill, with Representative Baldwin, to extend basic employment rights to same-sex partners of federal employees. He campaigned for adoption rights and marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples, and supported hate- crimes legislation and anti-discrimination protections in the workplace. This is only a small part of his astounding legacy of work in support of LGBTI rights. Born in Budapest in 1928, Congressman Lantos was the only Holocaust survivor to serve in the United States Congress. He was a teenager when the Nazi's invaded Hungary in 1944 and started rounding up Jews. After being sent to a labor camp, and escaping twice, he returned to Budapest where he joined the resistance, lived in a safe house established by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and secretly distributed food to other Jews in hiding. At the war's end, he discovered that most of his own family had perished in the Nazi death camps. Miraculously, he managed to locate his childhood friend, Annette Tillemann, whom he later married. He first came to the United States on an academic scholarship in 1947. He earned a Master's Degree in economics from the University of Washington in Seattle and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, teaching economics at San Francisco State University for several years before being elected to Congress in 1980. ``Representative Lantos's legacy has meant so much to our community,'' said Ettelbrick. ``We are truly grateful for his unwavering commitment to human rights. We send our deepest condolences to his wife and family, and are honored to pay tribute to his extraordinary legacy on LGBTI rights by posthumously presenting him with our OUTSPOKEN Award.''

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, on May 16 there will be a very important event in New Bedford, Massachusetts: the ribbon cutting for the newly renovated Corson Building, which will be dedicated on that date as a key component of the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park Visitors Center. I look forward to being joined at the ceremony by my colleague Senator Edward Kennedy and many other people who have played an active role in both the initial establishment of the National Park and in the preservation and restoration of the Corson Building, an important historical structure which was nearly destroyed by fire in 1997. Through a combination of Federal, State and local government financing, along with non-profit funds and efforts, the building, now attached to the existing Visitors Center, will serve as a major educational facility with valuable public meeting space that will be available for both National Park programs and community meetings. Among those who will be recognized at the celebration on May 16 for their efforts in making the Corson project a reality, there is one individual whose contributions over the years were crucial and deserve special mention. I speak of New Bedford native Tony Souza, who was the long-time Executive Director of the Waterfront Historic Area League, WHALE, the city's leading historic preservation organization. While Tony and his wife Elsie (who did great work as the Deputy District Director of my Congressional office) moved a couple of years ago to Florida to pursue other opportunities, it is his vision for both the National Park and the Corson Building that we will to a large extent be honoring at the ribbon cutting event. A little known aspect of Tony's efforts to restore the Corson Building and convert it into an educational facility is that he took much of his inspiration for that work from his late son, Christopher Souza, who had been a member of Senator Kennedy's staff. Chris, who shared his parents' commitment to both improving New Bedford and preserving its wonderful historical legacy, sadly passed away at the age of 26 in 1994. This was of course a tragic loss for his family, but it was also a loss to the broader community because we were deprived of the talents of a young man who had chosen to dedicate himself to public service. Despite his grief over his son's passing, Tony gave some thought to steps he might take to honor Chris as an individual and also as someone who exemplified the next generation of young leaders. This consideration led ultimately to the idea of establishing the Corson Building, once it was rebuilt, as a facility with a primary focus on education, so that it could, among other purposes, play a key role in helping tell the young people of New Bedford the remarkable history of their city. Like many complicated projects involving older structures and various levels of government--not to mention both the vagaries of the Congressional appropriations process and the National Park Service's property management regulations--getting the Corson Building to where it is today involved a slow series of steps with numerous detours. Along the way, it was necessary to stabilize the building after the fire; develop the necessary design for the renovation; and begin to assemble the requisite funds, all of which took time. Tony was consistently the driving force behind the efforts to overcome the obstacles that emerged, and I know that his desire to see the project completed was to a large extent a reflection of his love for his son. Indeed, he only decided to seek new challenges outside Massachusetts when it was clear that his vision for the project was well on its way toward completion. So, the Corson Building ribbon cutting ceremony will be both a physical and a much more personal homecoming for Tony and Elsie. I join with Senator Kennedy, and the elected officials, National Park Service representatives and area preservation activists and residents who will also be attending the event, in paying tribute to Tony Souza's vital contributions to this important accomplishment, and to his son Christopher, who was such an important inspiration for his father's work on the project.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. If the gentleman would yield one more time. And I appreciate, as I said, we had a bipartisan approach at the committee level. Partisanship took over at the recommittal process. I was glad to cooperate with the gentleman in correcting that. And I would just say to the gentleman, in the words of the song, ``It's his party and he can cry if he wants to.''

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Well, I hope that's the case. The gentleman mentioned the 24 countries. But if any of those countries emulates Iraq and perhaps buys oil from Iran, they won't get the debt relief under this recommittal. So I hope we can also correct that error.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, it is important for the membership to understand what we have here, a need for the House to correct sloppy legislation, a use of the legislative process to score political points rather than to achieve public policy goals. This is not a problem caused by the ranking member of the full committee, the gentleman Alabama. If you want to look at this as one big circus, today is the day that the gentleman from Alabama gets to clean up after the elephants. And I mean elephants. What we have here, Members may have read this a week ago, there are people who specialize in writing recommittal motions that are not, in my judgment, constructive contributions to the legislative process but are ``gotchas.'' And what happens is we work in committee, as we did on this bill to provide debt relief to poor countries, the gentleman from Alabama has been a stand-out advocate for debt relief for poor countries when his party was in the majority and now. We worked together and came up with a very good bill. In fact, a large number of the groups that support fair treatment for the poorest in the world are going to celebrate that bill tonight. Fortunately, because we were able to fix this, they have something to celebrate. We almost ruined their celebration. Because what happened was after all of the collaborative efforts in the Committee on Financial Services, as we finished the legislative process, after we adopted several amendments, including a manager's amendment that was predominantly constructed for the Republicans' concern, a Republican amendment offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher), one offered by the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), we got a recommittal motion. Now the way things have unfortunately worked around here, no one got to see, on our side, the recommittal motion until minutes before we had to debate it, and we have only 10 minutes. It was a policy statement that said no debt relief should go to anyone whose government has business interests with Iran. By the way, Condoleezza Rice just came back from meeting with the Gulf Council, in which she was urging them to give debt relief to Iraq; and they don't want to give debt relief to Iraq apparently for a number of reasons, but one of them, you can read it in today's Washington Post and yesterday's New York Times, is Iraq has too many dealings with Iran. Now they weren't technically covered by our bill, but if you are going to set forward the principle for the United States Congress that you don't give debt relief to people who do business with Iran and other people apply that principle, you won't get debt relief for Iraq because they have those relations given their proximity, the religious commonality, et cetera. But to go back to this request and the need for it, the recommittal motion was so badly drafted that it knocked out many parts of the bill. In fact, the House took three votes last week: Two to adopt the Republican amendments and then one to adopt a Republican recommittal that killed the two Republican amendments. I thought, well, maybe they didn't notice that we had amendments, but as the Parliamentarian had pointed out to us, this amendment was so sloppily drafted in the urge to score political points and not consult with anybody, I think, on either side in terms of committees, that it also killed some parts of the bill. It didn't simply do the amendment. You might say, well, they drafted to the bill and didn't look at the amendments. It killed parts of the bill. I am going to withdraw my reservation, Mr. Speaker, because this is an important bill. But will no one learn from this? Can we not stop this process of ambush and last-minute recommittal motions that are not part of a constructive legislative process but are drafted purely to make political points and drafted badly and drafted not in consultation with any substantive knowledge? So we are here today to undo much of the effects of a recommittal motion. We are here today because of ``gotcha'' politics that the minority leadership played, not the committee leadership, but the minority leadership. And so I would hope that they might have learned from this. And let me be clear, Mr. Speaker, my original intention was not to agree to this because I thought they just killed the Republican amendments. Luckily for them, they were even more incompetent in proposing that than I had thought they were, and they killed vital parts of this bill that we both need. So I am constrained to help them undo their own mistake. And I would express the hope, probably in vain, that instead of continuing to use the recommittal motion in a way that has no constructive legislative purpose, but is truly to try and advance partisan agendas, that we can get a collaborative effort. That doesn't mean the recommittal motion shouldn't really put issues into play, of course they should; that's partly what it's for. There's no need to hold it until the last minute. If we had had an hour's notice, we could have found that error. I found the error, but by the time I found it it was too late, we had already wrote it. So I hope out of this--I don't have a lot of hope, but I do hope--that those who have sort of taken the legislative process hostage by their need to politicize recommittal will learn from this. And I hope this is the last time we have to come here and correct this. And I will just as I close predict again, it wasn't just badly drafted in the technical sense, I will predict that we will hear that if the United States Congress adopts as a principle that no debt relief goes to a country that has business with Iran, it will undercut Secretary Rice's efforts to get the Gulf Cooperation Council to give debt relief to Iraq. And I believe that we will not only have to correct this procedurally, we will have to correct it substantively. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I know I am taking the time in opposition. I am not so much in opposition, but I am about as close to it as anybody we are going to find here, so I think I qualify. I agree very much. On a case-by-case basis, I believe the gentleman from California and I would agree at each instance. And so I hope the amendment is adopted. I would make one point, as I thought about it. It does reinforce the point that we should not be imposing on the recipient government's policy choices that a democratic government ought to make. The flip side of a commitment to democracy is recognizing the validity of those decisions. I also agree with the gentleman. His wording is better than the wording I put in here for the future, permits free and fair elections, although there is always, when you are talking about the future, some weasel word. I will work with the gentleman going forward. I am going to suggest to him maybe later that we might empower them to do a moratorium for a short period of time on payments in the following situation. We have had cases where bad governments were overthrown by people who are democratic. East Timor is an example. There is Ghana, where Jerry Rawlings overthrew a government and then had an election. His party is now in the opposition. Uganda. The gentleman is right. Ordinarily it may not take that much time, but things could be so chaotic, like in Liberia, when the new government came in there with some bad people. Maybe a year would be too little. I will be talking to him later. I hope this amendment is adopted. Perhaps we could provide a temporary moratorium for a government that took over in those circumstances for perhaps 6 months or a year. But that's something we might work out. The gentleman seems to agree that that is something that, while no commitment is obviously made, that we could work on. I hope the amendment is adopted. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. No, I'm sorry. Here's the response. The minority had the right to offer this in a way in which we could debate it. They didn't choose to do that. They chose to do it in this limited fashion. So it does look to me like you are having problems here that does the Government of Iraq have business interests with Iran. I know there are close ties between the Governments of Iraq and Iran. There's interchangeability. I think this is a pretty sketchy way to go forward. I'm not sure that there are any other countries. I think Iraq may be one of the few that doesn't. It's fairly narrowly drawn, but that's of great concern. And I couldn't get a direct answer, and I don't know if anybody really knows it.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I will take back my time because I'm trying to get an honest answer. We are setting policy here, not just for this week. We are saying here that if you do business with the government, if your government has business interests with Iraq, you're ineligible. I think it is fair to ask whether Iraq, if it were to become eligible in other ways, would be covered. That's not a trick question. Would this have the effect of excluding Iraq from such a program in the future? I yield for an answer.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Yes.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Yes.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. So the gentleman is telling me that the Government of Iraq has no business interests in Iraq?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I understand that. Iraq is not currently there, but here's the deal. This is not just for now. It is conceivable to me that Iraq will end up owing us money. I hope it will, because we've sure given them a lot, and if they don't owe us any money, it's a big gift. So the question is going forward, if in the future, because there is no current list of countries, we're talking about an eligibility criteria. Would this prevent debt relief from the United States or the International Monetary Fund, to the World Bank, to Iraq going forward? I would yield to anyone who would answer.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I believe the gentleman wants me to finish up, so I will yield to one of the congressional leaders on affairs on Africa from the Foreign Affairs Committee, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne), for 3 minutes. (Mr. PAYNE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the instructions of the House in the motion to recommit, I report H.R. 2634 back to the House with an amendment.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Biggert) alluded earlier to this amendment. We reject the kind of conditions that try to set tax policy or education policy or resource policy within a country, because if you go with democracy, you allow the countries to make them. But we did have a right, we thought, to set some conditions that affect us. We set forth some conditions involving democracy and openness, in consultation with the minority. We were reminded of some other conditions. So this adds to the conditionality. If this amendment is adopted, there will be conditions requiring that people assuage terrorism, that they work with us on immigration, and that they avoid any participation in human smuggling. I believe that these are agreed on, and in fact in some cases were put forward at the request of the minority. In some cases we thought they were clear. But one of the things I learned when you are legislating is never object to redundancy. It is better to say it twice than to have some ambiguity about whether you offered it at all. So I offer this amendment I believe on behalf of the leadership and the membership of both sides of the committee. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. No. I'm asking the question, does the government--

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds by way of introducing our next speaker. Last Tuesday, I was very pleased to go to a dinner of an organization called the Bank Information Center. And it was a gathering of representatives all of the groups fighting hard to relieve poverty in much of the rest of the world, especially Africa. And they particularly wanted to celebrate the anniversary of an amendment that was successfully authored by a then very junior Member of the House of Representatives that mandated that in international financial institutions due attention be paid to matters of the environment and human rights and decent standards for individuals. And we have come a long way there. That was then known as the Pelosi amendment, because the author of it is now the Speaker, she has continued that leadership, and I yield her 1 minute.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I will finish by saying the gentleman from California was gracious and said I had been fair and he talked about my not being partisan. I want to congratulate him for his lack of partisanship, because having served the majority of his time here under Republican administrations, he retains a deep distrust of the State Department, including the current State Department, and apparently his point is he cannot trust the current State Department to enforce democracy. I am inclined to appreciate his point. And while we have some differences, I did want to give him credit for his very bipartisan skepticism. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.