Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I want to begin with the schizophrenic attitude towards the Senate. The gentleman said a number of times that the Senate passed this unanimously. Yes, by avoiding conference, by making a deal. But he also continually said, correctly, that this bill was passed way too late. Why are we here now? The answer as to why we're here now, Mr. Speaker, it's the Senate that he was so admiring of. Yes, the Senate passed it without a vote, on November 16. We passed the bill on September 19. The House passed the bill with 3\1/2\ months left to go in the year. The Senate passed the bill less than a month ago. The Senate passed the bill, by the way, a different bill than ours, after we had adjourned for the recess. So the Senate, whom he extols for having managed to put everything under the rug and make one of their deals where nobody gets fingerprinted for anything, they sent us this bill, and the earliest we could have passed it was last week. So all this rhetoric about 6 months, et cetera, well, that's, Mr. Speaker, his friends in the Senate who caused that problem. If they had worked with us, we would have had several months. Now, we are going to pass a bill. We understand that. And we may well be able to pass only the Senate bill early next week. We have preserved our ability to do that. There is no chance of this expiring. The question is this: Should we acquiesce in a procedure by which the United States Senate waits until after we have adjourned for the Thanksgiving recess and sends us a bill and says, this is it, take it or leave it, or do we say, no, we don't like that and we're going to at least try to make you vote on things. Now, I know the gentleman from Alabama likes the Senate version apparently where you just have unanimity so-called. I prefer democracy. I prefer letting things get voted on. Maybe the Senate won't vote, but let's at least give them one more option. It may take us another 3 or 4 days. So the notion that we are somehow delaying this for 3 or 4 days, no. We waited from our bill in September to theirs in November. Two months later they passed it. Three days or 4 days isn't going to make any difference and we'll get the bill through. Here's what we want to do. We want to say that the point that the gentlewoman from Florida made that you should not arbitrarily cancel people's life insurance because they're traveling to a country that's on the State Department watch list, whether it's the nation of Israel or others that Americans want to travel to. Yes, if you can show that there's danger there, you can cut off their insurance. But don't say that we're just going to give up on that. Maybe we can't do it this year. Let's take the motion to recommit, then, because we're going to pass this bill soon, anyway, and we may have to pass the Senate version. Let's have a referendum on the freedom to travel provision. Let's have a referendum on whether or not we include group life or say that we insure buildings in this country but not life. Let's have a referendum on whether smaller insurance companies should be able to participate. Under our bill they can. Under the Senate bill they can't. And let's have that reset mechanism that the gentleman from Queens, New York, talked about so eloquently, which says we're going to rebuild and any place that's hit, we will rebuild them again. Let me say, we have a referendum on those issues. We may not be able to win this year, but I want to be able, as chairman of the committee, to go back early next year and say to our friends in the Senate, okay, your rope-a-dope tactics may have worked, but they didn't work on the merits. And we want to go back at you on small insurance companies and on group life and on the question of freedom to travel, and we want to bring it up again. And the last point, when we're talking about why is this being done now, it's supposed to be temporary? I never thought it would be temporary. Here's the point: If you go through the private market, it is paid for by the insured, ultimately. I do not think that those people who are choosing to do business in areas that may be singled out by the terrorists ought to have to pay the higher cost of insuring themselves for that. Against fire, against theft, against liability for someone falling down, sure, that's their responsibility. But defending ourselves against terrorism is not a market matter; it's a matter of national security. And the whole country ought to come together in a unified way and say you may not threaten New York or Chicago or Atlanta or Miami, or any other part of America, or Los Angeles, as they threatened the airport. You may not threaten us and make us pay more. You cannot make it more expensive to do business in one part of this country than another. We will come together as one Nation in this program and say, yes, you are responsible for insuring yourself against various dangers. But for insuring yourself against murderous thugs seeking to do harm to this country, this country will come together as one in a national program and rebut that, and we will not allow them to intrude. Now, again, it may be that in the end the best we can get is the Senate bill. But at this point, I urge the Members not to vote down, in principle, a reset mechanism that says, okay, you only get hit once and then you're gone, or the freedom to travel, or group life, or smaller companies. I hope the motion to recommit is defeated and that we let the Senate know that we will continue to engage in democracy in this part of the Capitol.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley).

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. The gentleman has raised a red herring. There is no chance of it expiring, and the fact that he would talk about a nonexistent threat of expiration seems to me to be an indication that there's nothing substantive to talk about. In the end, we would retain the vehicle to pass this bill. But we will not give up talking about issues prematurely, and that's why we will not allow the Senate's unanimous consent agreement, very hastily done, to shut off debate here. But there is no chance of this expiring and the gentleman from Alabama knows that. I yield now 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott), a member of the committee.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the House passed a version of the terrorism risk insurance program by a large vote, 300-something to 100-something, earlier this year. It happened after a very open process at the subcommittee and committee level. We had a very good set of meetings. There were concerns raised. I think there was general agreement that terrorism insurance had to go forward, but there were some very legitimate debates about how to do it. Not all of them, obviously, have been resolved. We had, unusual for our committee and I think maybe for other committees, a full markup in subcommittee followed by a full markup in committee. The bill that emerged was much closer to a consensus product, although obviously not unanimous. There were amendments offered by both sides. There were bipartisan compromises worked out. We came to the floor. It wasn't as open a process as I would have hoped, but it still represented, we thought, a fairly good piece of legislation, and, of course, it got well over 70 percent of the House Members voting for it. Then it went to the Senate and nothing happened for a very long time, and I regret that. We had hoped that we could continue this process and in fact have a conference. The Senate did not act. Finally, the Senate acted and sent us a bill which was an extension of the current program, better in my view than the current program, not as comprehensive as the bill we passed. And we were told by the Senate, as we have been from time to time this year: This is all we can do. Take it or leave it. That seemed to me to be a problem and, now, not so much for substance as for institutional concerns. Members have asked, well, in the end we may just have to accept what the Senate sent us. That is possible, and we have preserved the option to do that. Let me be very clear, Mr. Speaker. We are here dealing with a new bill that we introduced. The Senate bill still sits at the desk. It will be available if the Senate continues to refuse to act in any kind of a bicameral manner. But I am not ready to give up yet, Mr. Speaker, on some important issues, the most important of which is the institutional one. It is simply not in the spirit of the United States Constitution for one of the Houses to say, this is it, take it or leave it, especially when you contrast the way in which the two Houses acted. We had subcommittee and committee markup and debate on the floor. The Senate had one of their not very open processes. The bill emerged from some quiet conversations among the senior members of both parties and went to the floor, no amendments, no votes, here it is. As I said, I regret that. We may not be able to prevent it from happening in this instance. I do think it is important for us to send the message that we do not want to see this sort of procedure repeated. So what we did was to in effect have a virtual conference. We looked at the Senate bill, we looked at our bill, and we came up with what I think might well have resulted had there been a conference. The bill we passed had a 15-year extension. The reason for a long extension is that we are talking here about building projects. We are talking about the need for terrorism risk insurance if we are to get large commercial buildings, or residential, but especially commercial buildings built in our big cities. You can't get those buildings obviously without bank loans and you can't get the bank loans without insurance. That is why the Chamber of Commerce scores this as an important bill, why the real estate industry, the cities, a whole range of business and urban interests tell us this is important. And you need to have some assurance of a timeframe in which to build. We thought 15 years. The Senate said 7 years. We didn't here come with a split-the-difference. We have accepted the Senate's 7 years. We were told at the last minute that there was a PAYGO problem in a calculation by the Congressional Budget Office that I still do not understand, but we have no option but to abide by it. We came up with a PAYGO solution which was not a very good one. The Senate came up with, and I give them credit here, a much better PAYGO solution. They had more time to work on it, but they did it well. We have accepted the Senate PAYGO solution. So we accept that term of years, we accept that PAYGO solution. We had also broadened this from simply being in case a building was destroyed to include group life insurance and protection against what sadly we cannot rule out, nuclear, biological, chemical, or radiological attacks. The Senate rejected both of those. We split the difference. We accepted their rejection of nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological attacks. We did feel that group life insurance should be in. I should say that including the group life provision is something that was called to our attention on a bipartisan basis from Members from Florida which says that you should not have your life insurance cancelled if you go to Israel. That is basically what we are talking about, or maybe some other areas where the insurance companies think there is a problem when there isn't one. And we checked, and the number of payoffs they have had to make of people who died going to Israel or other countries on their list is negligible, zero, from what we could tell. So we included a provision in our bill that was overwhelmingly supported by both sides, to say that there were rules; not that you couldn't deny someone life insurance if they were going to a hazardous area, but that you had to have a rational process by which you defined that. We put group life back in. Members will remember that after the 2001 mass murders of so many innocent Americans by vicious thugs, we adopted a very expensive program to compensate people. A better way to do that would be to have this group life insurance as part of the terrorism risk insurance. And at the request of smaller insurance companies, we lowered the trigger from $100 million to $50 million per incident, because small insurance companies said to us: We would like to be able to insure some of these buildings. Our colleagues from some of the smaller States brought this to our attention. But if it is $100 million that you have to absorb before this kicks in, we can't do it; we can do it at $50 million. So we accept the Senate version on 7 years versus our 15. We accept their version of PAYGO. We accept their rejection of nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons. We do ask that group life insurance be kept in with the travel provision I mentioned, and that the trigger go from $100 million to $50 million. Finally, there is the reset provision, which says that if you have once been attacked and you have to deal with it, should that same area be attacked again, the clock starts again. That is, you would not be in a position where, having been attacked once by these vicious murderers, you would be unable to get full insurance if they did it a second time. Those are the differences. As I said, we have no guarantee that the Senate will do this or pay even serious attention. We have retained a vehicle in case they don't. But I don't want, and I said this earlier, we are not debating preemptive strikes here. We are debating preemptive surrender. I don't want to have a situation where the United States Senate passes legislation, sends it to us and says, You may not even think about changing things. We are prepared to compromise. But I think inclusion of group life and that travel protection is important. We think that the smaller insurance companies had a legitimate concern. We think the reset provision is legitimate. We are asking the Senate again to consider them. We can't compel that. But I think it would be a mistake for us to set the precedent that, when they confront us with these ultimata, that we simply cave in. Let me repeat, because I got it right now. I was quoting before the lyric from ``MacArthur Park.'' What the Senate tells us is, Look, we were able to do this, but we can't do it again. You just have to accept it as it is. And the theme song apparently is, if people will remember; I will say it because I sing something awful. ``Someone left the cake out in the rain. I don't think that I can take it 'Cause it took so long to bake it And I'll never have the recipe again.'' If someone in the Senate tells us, we left the bill out in the rain, or at least they are telling us that if we were to try to get them to change it, it would be leaving the bill out in the rain, and they couldn't remake it because they don't have the recipe. Mr. Speaker, I think it's time to send the Senate back to their recipe books and ask them to keep track. I understand in the end we may not be able to change things, but I do not want this House simply at this point to say, Okay, you gave us an ultimatum, we accept it. I would hope, and we are going to be here obviously next week, that the small life insurance companies, people interested in the ability to travel to Israel and others would then at least go to Senators and say, Can't we at least even have a vote on this? Can't you even consider this? And that is why I ask that today we send this bill back over. We retain a vehicle if the Senate remains impervious, but I think it's worth a try. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I would just say the gentleman from Alabama appears to have the Senate's preference for conflict avoidance confused with genuine consensus. There weren't 100 votes for that. They didn't have a roll call vote. They're barely able to act, and so a couple of Members worked out a deal and the rest of them waved it good-bye. But the notion that that comes with some great significance clearly misunderstands what's happening, and it certainly shouldn't keep us from legislating. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Sires).

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, there are times when we will have arguments across the aisle. I don't think there is any need for us to engage in that now because our differences are across the building, not across the aisle. Let me begin by saying to the gentleman from Texas, we agree, we will not let this program die. And as the gentleman from Texas knows, he has had to sit through this on the Rules Committee three times this year, twice this past week, because we did originally think about taking the bill the Senate had passed, amending it, and sending it back. I am disappointed to say that we heard from all points that if that happened, the Senate might be so unable to function as to kill the program. The United States Senate has perfected something I call ``the strength of weakness.'' They labor to do anything whatsoever, and having done it, tell people that if we ask them to change one bit of it they will collapse in a heap. It's like the song from ``MacArthur Park,'' someone left the bill out in the rain, and they won't be able to remake it because they will never have the recipe again. That's what we keep hearing. But, on the other hand, and here's where I do disagree with my friend from Texas, I know we've had some disagreements here about the role of preemptive strikes in foreign policy. Here our disagreement is on the role of preemptive surrender in interbranch negotiations. I agree that if all else fails and the Senate does not act on this bill, we will have to acquiesce. I regret that. I think it would be much less good public policy than we could do if we had the normal legislative process. But I have spoken to the Senators from New York. They report to me that the Governor of New York and the mayor of New York, and New York is not the only entity covered by this, and indeed, some of these things, they're all universal. But people are concerned, and so we have reluctantly agreed not to endanger the chances of this if the Senate is unable to act. On the other hand, and here's where I differ, I am unwilling at this point to let it end without the Senate once again being given a chance to function on several issues. The gentleman from Vermont just talked about the smaller companies. The reduction of the trigger from $100 to $50 million was done unanimously, I believe, or overwhelmingly, by our committee at the request of small insurance companies who wanted to be able to insure. The argument is, if they do not have the smaller trigger, many of them would not feel able to bid on insurance for these building projects. So, I think that's important. We had the inclusion of group life insurance. I am afraid that in the Senate version, this is kind of the analog of the old neutron bomb. Remember the neutron bomb; it killed people and left the buildings standing. The Senate would have us have a provision that ensures buildings but ignores people. Well, people die in these terrorist attacks. We all remember that this Congress, in 2001 or 2002, passed a program that cost us billions of dollars to compensate those who lost their lives. Why should we not allow that to be done to the insurance system? That's another thing we would like to have in there. And as part of the life insurance, as has been noted by a colleague, there is a provision that was not contested in our committee that would prevent discrimination against people who are traveling to places that some companies might think inappropriate to travel, particularly Israel. There is a provision in here that says you're not going to be penalized for, and this was brought to our attention by some of our colleagues from Florida. Now, all of those are in the bill we want to send back. Also, a reset mechanism that, obviously it applies to New York where they've already had a terrorist attack, would apply nationally so that you don't get only one bite at the apple if the terrorists choose to strike again. And I think the major reason for doing TRIA is to neutralize the effect that murderous thugs who wish this country and its people ill can have on our policies. That's why we want terrorism insurance. This is part of national defense. This is to make it a government program as part of our defense against this activity. But there are other parts of this where we have accepted this. Frankly, this looks like what a conference would look like if we were in a rational world where we could have a conference. We said 15 years, they said 7. We've accepted 7. By the way, I will say that in the prior Congress, we only had 2. The reason for a longer term is that this is important if people are to be able to build in our large cities and other areas which are threatened by terrorism. Because you cannot get the building without a loan, you cannot get the loan without insurance, and a 2-year timeline is obviously too short for major building projects. We accepted that. We wanted protection against nuclear, biological, chemical, radiological attacks. No one thinks that's out of the picture. The Senate said no to it. We accepted that. So, we compromised with them. And finally, a PAYGO issue arose at the last minute. We didn't do it well here, and the Senate did it well, and I congratulate them for that. It was good legislating. So we accept their term of 7 years. We accept their version of PAYGO. We accept their jettisoning of nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological. But we would like to include group life, and we would like to accommodate the smaller companies, and we would like to have the reset mechanism. In the end, as I said, we understand we can't compel them, but we believe it is worth another try. Passing this bill will in no way jeopardize our ability in the end, if nothing else fails, to accept the 7 years that the Senate sent us. But I appeal to the Members here out of an institutional concern. Let's understand that in the end, if the Senate refuses to do certain things, they may have an advantage. But let's not make it easy. Let's not continue a process by which Senators can avoid tough issues. Maybe some Senator will raise some of these issues. Maybe, I know it's ``maybe'' in a land of fantasy, the Senate would vote on some of them and Senators would have to decide if they wanted to say no, it's okay if you can't travel to Israel with your life insurance, it's okay if the smaller companies are kept out, it's okay to insure buildings but not people. Maybe it won't work, but no harm will be done. I would also add this: In terms of the rule, nothing in the bill that we are proposing today is new except for the Senate PAYGO, and the Senate PAYGO, we all agree, I believe, is superior, given the need to do a PAYGO. This is a bill that was voted on in subcommittee and in committee and came to the floor. It was amended in various ways. It was a bipartisan product. In the end, the vote was something like 300-plus to 100-plus when the bill passed here in the House; not unanimous, obviously, but with a lot of bipartisanship. Everything in the bill today, with the exception of the Senate PAYGO, has already been through subcommittee and committee and the floor. But we are saying to the Senate there are important issues here, on group life, on the reset, on travel, on smaller companies. And we are simply, I hope, not ready to say to them we roll over and play dead without giving them another chance to address these issues.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I would only ask to amend one thing. It is not the majority. Here we wanted a conference, and in the Senate, it was both parties that refused. It was not the majority. Indeed, there was objection more from the minority side. So I would only differ with the notion that it was somehow a majority decision. We asked for a conference, and we were told on a bipartisan basis over there they wouldn't give us one.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, the good news is that I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3526) to include all banking agencies within the existing regulatory authority under the Federal Trade Commission Act with respect to depository institutions, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, this is a bill that was broadly supported in our committee that we believe will enhance the ability of the Federal bank authorities to provide consumer protection. It's a little bit of a complicated story. Congress passed an amendment to the Federal Trade Act that gave the Federal Reserve System the right to promulgate rules which defined what were unfair or deceptive practices engaged in by banks. The Federal Reserve has, for many years, declined to exercise that authority. The issue was first brought to my attention when I was ranking member of the committee by a very distinguished public official who, sadly, died earlier this year, Ned Gramlich, who was the Federal Reserve Board Governor in charge of, among other things, consumer protection. And here's how it played out. The Comptroller of the Currency and the Director of the Office of Thrift Supervision a few years ago promulgated very strict rules preempting State rules and State laws and regulations regarding the activities of national banks. As a result of that ruling, which was challenged but upheld by the courts, States have virtually no authority over the banking practices of national banks. Only the national bank regulators may regulate. The problem is that there were, in many, many States, most of the States from which we here come, consumer protection laws which were invalidated by that. In fact, the preemption said even when there were rules of general application that were covering the banks, the ability of the States to enforce them was limited. They had to go through the Federal regulators. So we then went to the Federal regulators, but many of us were opposed to that. We were critical. And on a bipartisan basis there was criticism of it on the Financial Services Committee. Our former colleague, the gentlewoman from New York, Mrs. Kelly, who was chairman of the Oversight Committee, was a very strong critic of what she believed to be excessive overregulation. But that has been upheld, and there is no realistic chance of undoing it. So the second best for us was to have the Federal bank regulators able to provide the consumer protections that were lost when the State rules were invalidated. I spoke with the Comptroller of the Currency, and his response was, Well, here's the problem. Under the Federal Trade Act, the Federal Reserve has the right to promulgate the code of unfair deceptive practices. He indicated to me that he would like to do that, in fact, two Comptrollers said we would like to do this, but we don't have the authority to promulgate the rules. The Office of Thrift Supervision, which preempted, interestingly, does have the authority to promulgate the rules. Now, what motivated our colleagues of an earlier era to give the Federal Reserve the right to make the rules for the Comptroller of the Currency and to give the Office of Thrift Supervision the right to make the rules only for themselves? I do not know. I can't speculate. Based on most recent experience, it was probably the Senate's fault, because almost everything that goes wrong these days is. But I don't know that for sure. On the other hand, it's our job to try to correct it. What this bill does is to say to two of the Federal bank agencies, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation through its depository institutions has some authority over both national and State banks since it insures the deposits in both, we take away in this bill from the Federal Reserve System the power they have refused to use to promulgate a code of unfair and deceptive practices and give it, instead, over to the Comptroller of the Currency and the FDIC, either jointly or concurrently, and it comes with their support. The Fed said they didn't like it, but they weren't using the power. The Comptroller of the Currency, he is, after all, a defender of this preemption. He has maintained the preemption. This is not an effort to undo the preemption. He acknowledges that in presiding over this national set of rules, it would be helpful to him to have this code of unfairness and deceptive practice, and what the code does is give some notice to the banks as to what are prohibited practices and what aren't. So this bill does nothing in terms of substantive promulgation of the code, but it gives to the active agencies, the Comptroller of the Currency, who promulgated the preemption, and the FDIC, the ability to put into effect what we think should have been put into effect before. It comes with the support of those agencies, and I think that if we get this done, they will proceed to do it. I should note that the Office of Thrift Supervision, which already has the authority to promulgate such a code, is in the process of doing so. No legislation is needed. But they have put out a proposed rule in that regard. We have, many of us, encouraged them to go forward with it. And as a result of what OTS is doing under its authority and what this bill would give the Comptroller of the Currency and the FDIC by early next year, we should have in place rules that will tell people what are unfair and deceptive practices. And as I said, I would have preferred that the preemption would not have been so far reaching, but it's a fact of life. This will then empower the Federal bank regulators fully to be available to provide consumer protection when it's appropriate in lieu of the State laws that were cancelled. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Yes, yes, yes. I feel like I am in Ulysses here.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Yes. And also, the total cost of the loan has to be the same.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Yes. I would say, and let me just read the language at the bottom of page 4 of the manager's amendment. Those payments ``do not vary based on the terms of the loan or the consumer's decision about whether to finance.'' So we have tried to make it very explicit: Flexibility in method does not in any way reduce the prohibitions that have been stated against an incentive to charge more. And if it is necessary for us to say that again more clearly, as some people may think it is, we will find new ways to say it.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Will the gentleman yield me 15 seconds out of his time?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to another member of the committee, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I now yield to another member of the committee who has been active on this issue, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy), for 2 minutes.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Clerk be authorized to make technical corrections in the engrossment of H.R. 3915, to include corrections in spelling, punctuation, references to line numbers, section numbering, and cross- referencing, and the insertion of appropriate headings.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that during further consideration of H.R. 3915 in the Committee of the Whole pursuant to House Resolution 825, amendment No. 16 may be considered out of sequence.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. We have, from time to time, debated the issue as to whether or not we could make sure that no one who is not a legal resident or a citizen could qualify, but that's not what we're debating today. Let me read from page 2. There are four kinds of identification that you must show. By the way, the mortgage industry and the real estate industry will not like the further paperwork here, but listen to this, lines 14 and 15, ``You must show a passport issued by the United States or a foreign government.'' Now, what makes anyone think that people who are in the United States with a foreign passport are here legally? They have foreign passports from other countries. I think the problem is some on the other side have taken the word ``alien'' too literally, that is, they think an alien is someone who's not from the Earth. Because someone who is in America illegally who is from the Earth might have an Iranian passport or a Venezuelan passport or a Burmese passport. So understand, what I think is happening is this. I've been seeing these a lot. I do a lot of recommits; it's a heck of a way to spend your life, but that's my job. This foreign government passport is new. I think what happened was this. I think the real estate industry, this is literally my speculation, the real estate industry said to the Republicans, Hey, wait a minute, we make a lot of money selling houses to foreigners. Don't cut out the foreigners. But you forgot to say legal foreigners. This is what this bill says. So you may have some Americans who don't have all this ID, who don't have a passport, who don't live in a REAL ID State. They may not have this. They may have a driver's license that they can use and it's not a REAL ID State. An American in a REAL ID State who doesn't have a passport can't make it. But an Iranian with an Iranian passport, Welcome to my home. Here's your mortgage. Now, I understand the impulse to prevent illegal aliens from getting predatory mortgages. That's a very kind thing that the Republicans want to do for them. But they don't do it competently. Read the bill. It says if you have a foreign passport, you qualify. You vote for this and you will be favoring people from other countries who are here illegally over Americans who don't have a passport and don't live in a REAL ID State. Now, that's irrefutable. In your desire to further the profitability of the real estate industry, and a lot of them are my friends and I have nothing against their profitability, but why would we want to vote for a recommit that elevates a foreigner who has no legal right to be in the United States and say they can qualify under this recommit, but an American who doesn't have a passport and doesn't live in a REAL ID State, has a driver's license and therefore didn't think they needed something, they wouldn't qualify. So we say to Americans, if you happen to be American, you had better get a passport and, now, it could be a Venezuelan passport, could be a Canadian passport, we don't care where it's from, just get a passport. I am baffled by this and I just think somebody didn't think this one through. The point is that this recommit says nothing about restricting the mortgage process to people who are here only legally, because if you really think that people who are here illegally don't have a foreign passport, then you don't understand the situation. So I say let's reject this effort to elevate foreign passports from people who may be here illegally over Americans who happen to not live in a REAL ID State and reject this recommit. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Let me take back my time. The gentleman raised that issue. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Marchant) raised an issue on renter protection. So you cannot be the homeowner being foreclosed upon and then get the rights of a tenant. The gentleman from Colorado had a further point, which is in those cases where there was a very specific prohibition in the loan against rental, that should not be overcome by what we do. I would yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I send to the desk a privileged concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 259) and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, would adoption of the motion to recommit promptly have the effect of suspending any of the committee or House rules which require certain numbers of days before action can be taken?