Virginia Foxx

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the Chair how much time each side has remaining.

Ms. FOXX. I yield the gentlewoman 30 additional seconds.

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to my colleague from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I yield Ms. Kaptur an additional minute.

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my colleague from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito).

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I now yield 3 minutes to my colleague from Illinois (Mrs. Biggert).

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. I want to thank all of my colleagues who are here tonight, to remember the millions of unborn children whose blood has been shed in the abortion mills of America. I especially thank my colleague from New Jersey who has organized this Special Order. Defending the defenseless is one of the most important duties that we have as Members of Congress. The pro-life cause has roots deep in the historic battles against all forms of injustice, brutality and equality and is today growing strong as we mark the infamous 36th anniversary of what one Supreme Court justice called an exercise in ``raw judicial power.'' Despite recent setbacks, such as the election of a stridently pro- abortion President, those who spend their days fighting for abortion on demand don't know what we know, that they are on the losing side. We are on the side of justice. We are on the side of the innocent and the defenseless, and we are on the side of equal dignity for every human life. So as we mourn the holocaust of abortion and the grievous toll it has taken upon our Nation, let us not forget whose side we are on. Though the battle to protect every life, from unborn child to disabled elderly will be long and hard, it is a battle worth fighting. As the late father Richard John Neuhaus, our dear brother and fellow soldier in this fight, said last year, ``We have been at this a long time, and we are just getting started . . . We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until every unborn child is protected in law and welcomed in life.'' And so today the fight continues. President Obama has promised the pro-abortion lobby that he will sign and support the Orwellian ``Freedom of Choice Act'' which, if it were to become law, would roll back almost every restriction on abortions in America and would even allow for taxpayer-funded abortion on demand. Such an act will take this country in the wrong direction and send absolutely the wrong message to the world. That message is that we do not value life. That is not the message we need to be sending from this country. I believe we do value life, and that's the message we should be sending.

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, while in my district in North Carolina we are blessed with excellent public schools, many districts across the country are not as fortunate. Some places, though, are fortunate to have the choice of having charter schools and Catholic schools. It is important that citizens continue to have these choices, particularly because of the excellent record that Catholic schools have in this country. Catholic education is a vital linchpin in America's education system. Catholic educators, with their emphasis on academic excellence, as well as the development of each student's character and spiritual well-being play a vital role in cultivating the next generation of leaders in the Nation. There are two Catholic schools with a strong reputation for education excellence in the Fourth Congressional District of North Carolina: Bishop McGuinness Catholic High School and St. Leo the Great Catholic School. Bishop McGuinness Catholic High School was founded in 1959, and has been recognized by the Catholic High School Honor Roll as one of the top 50 Catholic high schools in the United States. This coed college prep high school is located in Kernersville, North Carolina, in the heart of the Triad. St Leo's is a K-8 Catholic school located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, built in 1953. St. Leo's is the oldest Catholic school in Winston-Salem, and has a reputation for educating students who are not only academic achievers but also people of sterling character. It is an honor to represent these two fine schools in Congress, and I look forward to seeing the lives they change in the coming years through their emphasis on high quality Catholic education. It is a pleasure to join my colleagues here today in congratulating Catholic schools, students, parents and teachers across the Nation for their ongoing contributions to education and for the key role they play in promoting and ensuring a brighter, stronger future for this Nation.

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, much is being said about the proposed ``stimulus'' package that is being considered by the Democrats right now, but I think we need to talk a little bit about the facts of the matter. As others have said, the government, in this case the Federal Government, cannot give to anyone anything that it does not first take from someone else. So here are some of the facts about the proposed stimulus: It will cost each and every household in America $6,700 in additional debt paid by our grandchildren and children. This legislation will spend about $275,000 per job if the stimulus package creates or saves 3 million jobs. The average household income in the United States is $50,000 a year. The House Democrats' bill provides enough spending, $825 billion, to give every man, woman, and child in America $2,700. There are many more facts about this bill that need to be presented, and we will be doing that in the next few days.

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, reserving the right to object, could the gentleman please tell us the committees. Is it just the Committee on Agriculture, Madam Speaker?

Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, I withdraw my reservation.

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, bad economic news dominates the headlines every day. But back in the Fifth District of North Carolina, there are still success stories. Last month, the Weyerhaeuser manufacturing facility in Elkin, North Carolina, was recognized for more than 1 million work hours with no accidents resulting in lost time. This is an impressive feat resulting in Weyerhaeuser executives giving the Elkin plant the Senior Management Gold Award--an honor bestowed only 20 times in the company's 108-year history. I am pleased to recognize the hard-working Elkin employees at Weyerhaeuser for their impressive accident-free safety record. This accomplishment is more than a milestone. It is a reflection of a commitment to putting employees and their safety first. That's why, in a time of constant bad news, it's my pleasure to highlight a story of success. Congratulations to everyone at Weyerhaeuser of Elkin, North Carolina, and I hope to be back here soon marking your celebration of 200 million accident-free hours.

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I suspect that every Member of this body would stand up here at some point and say that he or she lives in the best place in the United States or has the best district. I know that I have the best district in North Carolina, the Fifth District. It is a very diverse district, populated by many great people. The district has many, many attributes that people come to visit us for and come to live in the district. But I want to highlight tonight one of the very positive things that's happening in my district this year and to call attention to that because so often we're talking about negative things on the floor. It's not the best of times economically in our country. But I think we need to talk some about positive things that are happening, and I want to talk tonight a little bit about a very positive thing that's happening in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Winston-Salem, and it's two towns that came together many years ago, those two towns were settled in the mid 1700s by a group of very devout, hardworking Moravians, and many of their descendants still live in the area. What Winston-Salem has decided to do in the last couple of years is to work on building a new stadium, a new ballpark, for its minor league baseball team and also has been working on coming up with a new name for that minor league baseball team. Later this year we expect to see a new ballpark in downtown Winston-Salem, which will be a state-of-the-art facility, and the foundation of this ballpark area will develop into an entertainment district over the next few years. The new stadium will feature a 15,000 square foot kids' zone, full-scale restaurant, 16 luxury suites, and numerous additional components that will make it a showcase for the city. The ballpark is the result of a public-private partnership in not only the town of Winston-Salem but also in Forsyth County. Now, the people who own the baseball team thought that it might be an interesting time to consider a new name for the baseball team, and so they had a ``Name the Team'' contest in which they received over 3,000 submissions in just 2 weeks. After reviewing the suggestions and receiving over 70 submissions for one particular name, the people in charge selected ``Dash'' to be the new team name. The idea behind that is Dash is what brings the two words, Winston and Salem, together, and the vision of the owners is to make the stadium a family-friendly environment and gathering place for entertainment within the Winston- Salem community. Now, the Winston-Salem Dash is a minor league baseball team which dates back its franchise to 1945. They're a class high-A team in the Carolina league, and they have been a farm team of the Chicago White Sox since 1997. They'll begin playing in the new Winston-Salem ballpark beginning in 2009. With its family-friendly entertainment and plain old American style fun, I'm sure the Dash is going to be a great success. And just as importantly, the new name for the team and the new ballpark are going to be an anchor for future development as the team stadium is completed and the players take the field this spring. I'm looking forward to visiting a home game this spring to enjoy this most American of pastimes and support this addition to the Winston- Salem sports team. And I invite all my colleagues to join me there sometime and see that I live in the best district in the country.

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. The main goal of any democratic nation is to ensure the safety and prosperity of its people. As we all know, Israel has commenced defensive military actions in Gaza aimed at disrupting Hamas' weaponizing capabilities which are being used to terrorize Israeli civilians. Unlike the indiscriminate rocket attacks launched by Hamas, Israel's precision strikes are a defensive last resort necessary to protect her people. Considering that since Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza Hamas, with the help of Iran, has openly fired more than 6,300 rockets and mortars at Israeli population centers with more than 1,000 of these having been fired within the past month, it's clear that the Israeli Government is taking a measured response that any other responsible country would expect to take in defending its sovereignty. I think that we have to do everything that we possibly can in this country to lend our support to Israel in her defense of the people of Israel, and I want to lend my support to this resolution.

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, we have been dealing with economic challenges for several months. Last fall it was called a bailout. Now it's being called a stimulus or sometimes an economic recovery plan. But I think it's important that we talk about the facts of what we're discussing. The stimulus being discussed now could range from $800 billion to more than $1.3 trillion. This will likely be the largest single spending bill in history. Now, what will this do to our deficit which we heard so much about for the 2 years before the Democrats took power? Nonpartisan budget experts are now predicting a deficit for 2009 of almost $1.3 trillion, triple the current year's deficit. That would equal 9 percent of GDP, which is a 50 percent increase over the World War II record of 6 percent. We may be paying a premium rate to foreign investors like China to borrow this kind of money. And what's going to be included in that package? $350,000 for a fitness center, $4.5 million to bottle water with recyclable bottles. Mr. Speaker, we need more of the facts, not just words.

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. I thank my colleague for giving credit to that great area where I live. I drive GM cars. Everybody in my family drives GM cars. My daughter has Ford cars. So we are very sympathetic. I have a lot of great friends who are automobile dealers, and I love them. They have been very kind to me over the years. We are good friends. But, folks, this is the wrong direction to go. We do not need to be bailing out the domestic auto manufacturers. And I am opposed to this same-day rule. There is an old saying: ``Act in haste and repent at leisure,'' and that is what we are going to do. We had another bailout here a couple of months ago. It was misunderstood, I think, as the only option that we had, and people said you got to vote, you got to vote, you got to do it. That bailout has turned out to be a disaster because we were pushed into it. Things didn't go through regular order. We didn't have time to debate. We have alternatives here. As my friend from Georgia said, let the companies go bankrupt. Let them reorganize. This is not a bailout of the domestic automobile manufacturers so much as it is a bailout of the unions. And they are not the only manufacturers.

Ms. FOXX. My colleague from Michigan so eloquently stated that we won World War II because of the strong manufacturing base we had in this country. But these domestic car manufacturers are not the only base that we have. We have a great manufacturing base. And I am opposed to the Federal Government creating the czar position too. When in the world has the Federal Government ever done anything better than the private sector? Never, that I know of.

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, earlier this fall I had the privilege to visit Zimmer Manufacturing in Statesville, North Carolina. During my visit to Zimmer's Statesville facility, I witnessed a thriving company committed to producing high quality surgical products. But as impressed as I was with Zimmer's Statesville plant, I was more impressed with the company's dedication to its employees and their safety. This summer the Zimmer plant logged more than 1 million safe hours with no injuries or illnesses that resulted in lost work days. That is nearly four straight years of providing a flawless safety record. So I was not surprised when I found out later that Doug Pond, the supervisor at Zimmer, won first place in the annual North Carolina Statewide Safety Talk Contest hosted by the North Carolina Industrial Commission in Greensboro, North Carolina. I congratulate Zimmer of Statesville for its impressive safety record and for its commitment to providing an accident-free workplace. During these uncertain economic times, it's good to talk about a company that is doing something right.

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, last December, I joined 99 of my House colleagues in opposing H.R. 6, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2008 which authorized a $25 billion bailout for the automobile industry. Nine months later, I voted against H.R. 2638 which designated $7.5 billion in emergency funding for the bailout. Now Detroit is asking for an additional $25 billion as Democrat leaders line up to deem this industry ``too big to fail.'' When will it stop? What means of production are next in line for seizure by our centralized government? Detroit automakers' management and labor unions have created a toxic combination of poor decision-making that has led to this mess. I understand that prepaid pensions decreased by $16.6 billion or 82.1 percent to $3.6 billion on September 30, 2008 from $20.2 billion on December 31, 2007 and by $15.3 billion or 80.9 percent from $18.9 billion on September 30, 2007. These decreases are due to: (1) losses of $6.3 billion on the hourly and salaried pension plan asset portfolio; (2) recording a $2.7 billion liability related to the Settlement Agreement; (3) recording a $2.7 billion liability due to the increase in the monthly pension benefit paid to salaried OPEB plan participants as compensation for the elimination of post-65 healthcare benefits; (4) the transfer of $2.1 billion of Delphi pension liabilities to GM; and (5) recording a $2.0 billion increase due to the 2008 UAW and IUE-CWA Special Attrition programs. There are some who believe that this means that after combining General Motor's cash losses, and with the losses disclosed in GM's most recently filed SEC 10Q form, it totals about $23 billion. Therefore a $25 billion bailout is little more than a three month band-aid. The accompanying Wall Street Journal editorial outlines the perils of pursuing this latest bailout. It is my hope that Congressional leaders will reject this latest misguided effort to bailout industries that have made poor decisions at the expense of those who have not. November 10, 2008. Nationalizing Detroit In the Washington mind, there are two kinds of private companies. There are successful if ``greedy'' corporations, which can always afford to pay more taxes and tolerate more regulation. And then there are the corporate supplicants that need a handout. As the Detroit auto makers are proving, you can go from being the first to the second in the blink of an election. For decades, Congress has never had a second thought as it imposed tighter emissions standards on GM, Ford and Chrysler, denouncing them for making evil SUVs. Yet now that the companies are bleeding cash, and may be heading for bankruptcy, suddenly the shrinking Big Three are the latest candidates for a taxpayer bailout. One $25 billion loan facility has already been signed into law, and Senator Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) wants another $25 billion, this time with no strings attached. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid met last week with company and union officials, and they later sent a letter urging Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to bestow cash from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp) on the companies. Barack Obama implied at his Friday press conference that he too favors some kind of taxpayer rescue of Detroit, though no doubt he'd like to have President Bush's signature on the check so he won't have to take full political responsibility. We hope Messrs. Bush and Paulson just say no. The Tarp was intended to save the financial system from collapse, not to be a honey pot for any industry running short of cash. The financial panic has hit Detroit hard, but its problems go back decades and are far deeper than reduced access to credit among car buyers. As a political matter, the Bush Administration is also long past the point where it might get any credit for helping Detroit. But it will earn the scorn of taxpayers if it refuses to set some limits on access to the Tarp. If Democrats want to change the rules next year, let them do it on their own political dime. A bailout might avoid any near-term bankruptcy filing, but it won't address Detroit's fundamental problems of making cars that Americans won't buy and labor contracts that are too rich and inflexible to make them competitive. As Paul Ingrassia notes nearby, Detroit's costs are far too high for their market share. While GM has spent billions of dollars on labor buyouts in recent years, they are still forced by federal mileage standards to churn out small cars that make little or no profit at plants organized by the United Auto Workers. Rest assured that the politicians don't want to do a thing about those labor contracts or mileage standards. In their letter, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid recommend such ``taxpayer protections'' as ``limits on executive compensation and equity stakes'' that would dilute shareholders. But they never mention the UAW contracts that have done so much to put Detroit on the road to ruin. In fact, the main point of any taxpayer rescue seems to be to postpone a day of reckoning on those contracts. That includes even the notorious UAW Jobs Bank that continues to pay workers not to work. A Detroit bailout would also be unfair to other companies that make cars in the U.S. Yes, those are ``foreign'' companies in the narrow sense that they are headquartered overseas. But then so was Chrysler before Daimler sold most of the car maker to Cerberus, the private equity fund. Honda, Toyota and the rest employ about 113,000 American auto workers who make nearly four million cars a year in states like Alabama and Tennessee. Unlike Michigan, these states didn't vote for Mr. Obama. But the very success of this U.S. auto industry indicates that highly skilled American workers can profitably churn out cars without being organized by the UAW. A bailout for Chrysler would in essence be assisting rich Cerberus investors at the expense of middle-class nonunion auto workers. Is this the new ``progressive'' era we keep reading so much about? The car makers say that bankruptcy is unthinkable and ``not an option.'' And bankruptcy would certainly be expensive, not least for Washington itself, which could be responsible for 600,000 or so retiree pensions through the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. In that sense, the bailout is intended to rescue the politicians from having to honor that earlier irresponsible guarantee. But at least that guarantee would be finite. If Uncle Sam buys into Detroit, $50 billion would only be the start of the outlays as taxpayers were obliged to protect their earlier investment in uncompetitive companies. If our politicians can't avoid throwing taxpayer cash at Detroit, then they should at least do so in a way that really protects taxpayers. That means handing a receiver the power to replace current management, zero out current shareholders, and especially to rewrite labor and other contracts. Anything less is merely a payoff to Michigan politicians and their union allies.

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I don't think any vote in the Congress has had as much attention in recent years as the vote we took on Monday and the vote that we took today. I think that is good for the American people to have had their focus placed on the Congress in the midst of all that's being said about the presidential debates, the presidential race. In fact, not just because I'm a Member of Congress, but because of what Congress does in relationship to the Presidency, I think it is important that there be more balance in the focus on our branches of government. I think there is not enough about what happens in Congress, and I hope that what happened this week will cause more people to pay attention because every day that we pass a bill, we have an impact on people's lives, and folks can either be proactive or reactive to what we do. But I think the vote that we took Monday and the vote that we took today was one that everyone--I know in my conference, in the Republican Conference--took extremely seriously. And I have confidence that everyone who cast a vote made a careful decision based on their conscience, and that's the way it should be for every vote that we take. But now that this bill has passed the Congress, we must work together in a bipartisan way to hold those accountable who got us into this mess. We had many groups this week that worked in a bipartisan way to try to effect this bill. Unfortunately, we were not given a chance to do that because the process promised to us by the Democratic majority has never materialized. We were promised open rules, we were promised debate, we were promised the ability to offer amendments, that was not allowed today, that was not allowed Monday. We could have made a very bad bill better had we had that opportunity. I do believe that my Republican colleagues who worked on this bill got some good things into the bill, but it was still not a good bill, in my opinion. We have reckless financial institutions, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and those others who are at fault must be held accountable, and we must have meaningful reforms so we don't find ourselves in this situation again. The problem we're facing now began in the 1990s, when the Federal Government decided to put pressure on mortgage lenders to make loans to high-risk borrowers in order to increase homeownership in America. Increased homeownership is a noble goal and a piece of the American dream, but pushing homeownership for people who could not afford the payments that come with homeownership was a fatally flawed approach. This created a new market for lenders who soon rushed to make heaps of money by inducing people who could only afford small houses to buy large ones instead. In other words, this crisis has its roots in a failed government botching an attempt to do something good. This is not a crisis of the market. Capitalism works. Our market system works. This is a failure of our government. Congress must address this underlying problem, in the subprime lending glut that stemmed from Fannie and Freddie's reckless underwriting of subprime lending. Both of these government-sponsored enterprises were ringleaders in the subprime circus, heading up the move into risky lending and even backing much of the financial industry's shaky mortgage loans. By backing the excesses of subprime lending, Fannie and Freddie fed the monster that today threatens our economic strength. And nothing in the bill that was just passed does anything about that, and that's one of the many flaws of the bill. And today in Congressional Quarterly, we read that there is not the oversight that we need to have, and we need that oversight for this legislation. Mr. Speaker, I share the belief of my predecessor here: I go to sleep tonight praying that those of us who opposed this bill were wrong and those who supported it were right.

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, I submit the following articles for the Record: Overseers Plan for Unprecedented Task (By Joseph J. Schatz and Phil Mattingly) If the House clears the financial bailout package, the federal government within weeks will be wielding new authority to buy hundreds of billions of dollars worth of mortgages. And thanks to provisions added by lawmakers during the past two weeks, Congress would be ready to effectively oversee the program. At least that's the plan. But in order to work, both the program itself and the oversight entities that are supposed to hold it accountable might require a significant infusion of financial markets expertise--perhaps from firms that have collapsed during the recent turmoil on Wall Street. The process of managing, implementing and contracting out a huge program--in many ways akin to an investment bank located in the Treasury Department--would present Congress with a unique oversight challenge. Some suggest lawmakers would be hard-pressed to keep track of what's going on. ``It's almost a retail operation, and you can't constantly be coming back to some congressional board for oversight or something like that,'' William Gale, director of the Brookings Institution's economic studies program, said during an Oct. 1 discussion on the bailout package. ``Mainly what's going to happen, is Treasury is going to do it, and they'll report back to the public now and then. But I just don't see a strong role for oversight in all this, despite what people say.'' If the House follows the Senate's lead and clears the package, the Treasury Department wants to begin buying financial institutions' shaky assets ``as quickly as possible.'' White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Thursday. ``It's a complicated thing that they'll be trying to put in place, and I'll let them explain it. . . . I think it's at least weeks.'' At its core, the bill would set up a Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) at Treasury with authority to purchase mortgages or mortgage-related securities. As requested by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Palson Jr., Treasury could decide whether those purchases occur through an auction process or directly from a financial firm. ``There's a lot to work out and plan in terms of managing that process,'' said Paul Wachtel, an economics professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University.'' Developing a bureaucracy that can do so well is not a simple problem.'' ``I think whomever is elected [president] in a month or so ought to designate his secretary of the Treasury pretty quickly,'' House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D- Mass., said Thursday on CNBC. Outside Help Needed The Treasury Department might contract out a great deal of the work to stressed financial institutions--a possibility that some watchdogs see as raising conflicts of interest. The legislation would waive the normal federal contracting process. ``For all of the oversight, there may not be much in the form of accountability,'' said Gary D. Bass, founder and executive director of OMB Watch. ``You have to consider the possibility that some of the people who got us into this in the first place are the people who will be getting these jobs. Does it mean Goldman Sachs is now going to be arm-and- arm with the federal government?'' And as it assembles its oversight operation, Congress might also need to bring in help from Wall Street. The legislation passed by the Senate and awaiting House action would set up three oversight functions. The first would be a board composed of the Treasury secretary, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Housing and Urban Development secretary and the Federal Housing Finance Agency director. That panel would review such things as appointments, how the Treasury Department determines which assets to buy and how the purchases are made. The bill would also create a bipartisan panel of two House members and two senators that would submit reports to Congress on the program's transparency, effectiveness and market impact. But most of the oversight responsibility would fall on the Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress. The bill would empower the GAO's top official, the comptroller general, to set up an office within Treasury at Treasury's expense to conduct detailed oversight including yearly audits. The CAO would have access to all records, books and accounts. That oversight office would be an enormous undertaking likely to require a large number of new personnel with significant financial acumen. All three oversight bodies would issue reports to a newly established inspector general appointed by the president. That person would have a $50 million budget and would coordinate all audits and investigations. ``You would have to hire people with the kinds of expertise [the government agencies] do not have at the current time,'' said NYU's Wachtel, noting that could mean an influx of Wall Street finance experts. ``The kind of people who understand the structure of these securities would be helpful,'' Wachtel said. ``That understanding is not widespread. . . . That's one of the reasons we got to where we are.'' Some outside observers are impressed by the accountability Congress has tried to write into the legislation. ``They tried to build some accountability into this process while still allowing for some free-form experimentation with the program itself because they're not sure exactly how it's run,'' Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at Brookings, said at the Oct. 1 roundtable.

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, there is a song ``The Day the Music Died.'' I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say this may be the day America died. I am not alone in feeling that what the Congress is about to do today is a very, very serious, consequential thing for this country. I want to quote from an article from Investor's Business Daily today. ``After years of faking it, the Federal Government has finally hit bottom or, depending on how you look at it, ascended to its level of maximum destructive incompetence.'' ``Through its power over education and communications, Washington already influences the creation and dissemination of knowledge. Once it takes over the financial industry, nothing will be left standing in the way of the Federal Government's dominance. States and localities are mere administrative units and disbursing agents for Washington. Government has won its war against religion, sidelining churches.'' ``American capitalism is not just an economic theory. It is a way of life where rewards are based on achievement, not identity or class, and is therefore inextricably bound up with individual freedom and American exceptionalism.''

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, today I want to highlight some good news from the Fifth District of North Carolina. Last month, the State of North Carolina recognized Elkin City Schools in Elkin, North Carolina for having the best graduation rate in the entire State. By graduating nine out of ten seniors this past school year, Elkin City Schools is blazing a trail of high academic standards in Northwest North Carolina. Elkin's efforts to make sure its students cross the finish line will pay real dividends for the Elkin community in the future. An outstanding high school graduation rate not only has a stabilizing effect on the social fabric of the community, but it also lays a foundation for young adults ready to take their place as community leaders and productive members of society. Congratulations to Elkin City Schools, its many graduates, their parents, faculty, and staff. You have set the standard for excellence.

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, many people know the famous speech from Henry V called: ``We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.'' So, with apologies to William Shakespeare, I want to say that I believe there will be a band of patriot Representatives here today and tomorrow who will resist being led into making an egregious mistake for this Nation. Neither September 28 nor 29 is a particularly significant day, but we will long remember what we do on these days. We face a challenge to our country and to our way of life if what has been told to us is presented on this floor for a vote, and I urge my colleagues not to be fooled by it. We will not be a happy few if we are presented a plan that takes $200 billion to $700 billion from our taxpayers to try to solve a problem caused primarily by other Members of this body who simply do not understand fundamentally what has made this country great, but we will be right. The very people in both the House and Senate who helped create this problem, including the chairmen of the respective committees in the House and Senate, gave Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the authority to abuse our system, and they are now crafting the bailout. They blame others, but there are hundreds of articles that suggest otherwise, including the one here from Calomiris and Wallison, which I submit for the Record. I urge my colleagues not to be swayed by this siren song that we have no choice but this choice. We have other choices, and the choice we make today will set the tone for our country and, perhaps, for the rest of the world for the foreseeable future.

Ms. FOXX

Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, I submit the following article for the Record. [From the Wall Street Journal, 23 Sept. 2008] Blame Fannie Mae and Congress for the Credit Mess (By Charles W. Calomiris and Peter J. Wallison) Many monumental errors and misjudgments contributed to the acute financial turmoil in which we now find ourselves. Nevertheless, the vast accumulation of toxic mortgage debt that poisoned the global financial system was driven by the aggressive buying of subprime and Alt-A mortgages, and mortgage-backed securities, by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The poor choices of these two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs)--and their sponsors in Washington--are largely to blame for our current mess. How did we get here? let's review: in order to curry congressional support after their accounting scandals in 2003 and 2004, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac committed to increased financing of ``affordable housing.'' They became the largest buyers of subprime and Alt-A mortgages between 2004 and 2007, with total GSE exposure eventually exceeding $1 trillion. In doing so, they stimulated the growth of the subpar mortgage market and substantially magnified the costs of its collapse. It is important to understand that, as GSEs, Fannie and Freddie were viewed in the capital markets as government- backed buyers (a belief that has now been reduced to fact). Thus they were able to borrow as much as they wanted for the purpose of buying mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. Their buying patterns and interests were followed closely in the markets. If Fannie and Freddie wanted subprime or Alt-A loans, the mortgage markets would produce them. By late 2004, Fannie and Freddie very much wanted subprime and Alt-A loans. Their accounting had just been revealed as fraudulent, and they were under pressure from Congress to demonstrate that they deserved their considerable privileges. Among other problems, economists at the Federal Reserve and Congressional Budget Office had begun to study them in detail, and found that--despite their subsidized borrowing rates--they did not significantly reduce mortgage interest rates. In the wake of Freddie's 2003 accounting scandal, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan became a powerful opponent, and began to call for stricter regulation of the GSEs and limitations on the growth of their highly profitable, but risky, retained portfolios. If they were not making mortgages cheaper and were creating risks for the taxpayers and the economy, what value were they providing? The answer was their affordable-housing mission. So it was that, beginning in 2004, their portfolios of subprime and Alt-A loans and securities began to grow. Subprime and Alt-A originations in the U.S. rose from less than 8% of all mortgages in 2003 to over 20% in 2006. During this period the quality of subprime loans also declined, going from fixed rate, long-term amortizing loans to loans with low down payments and low (but adjustable) initial rates, indicating that originators were scraping the bottom of the barrel to find product for buyers like the GSEs. The strategy of presenting themselves to Congress as the champions of affordable housing appears to have worked. Fannie and Freddie retained the support of many in Congress, particularly Democrats, and they were allowed to continue unrestrained. Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass), for example, now the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, openly described the ``arrangement'' with the GSEs at a committee hearing on GSE reform in 2003: ``Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have played a very useful role in helping to make housing more affordable . . . a mission that this Congress has given them in return for some of the arrangements which are of some benefit to them to focus on affordable housing.'' The hint to Fannie and Freddie was obvious: Concentrate on affordable housing and, despite your problems, your congressional support is secure. In light of the collapse of Fannie and Freddie, both John McCain and Barack Obama now criticize the risk-tolerant regulatory regime that produced the current crisis. But Sen. McCain's criticisms are at least credible, since he has been pointing to systemic risks in the mortgage market and trying to do something about them for years. In contrast, Sen. Obama's conversion as a financial reformer marks a reversal from his actions in previous years, when he did nothing to disturb the status quo. The first head of Mr. Obama's vice- presidential search committee, Jim Johnson, a former chairman of Fannie Mae, was the one who announced Fannie's original affordable-housing program in 1991--just as Congress was taking up the first GSE regulatory legislation. In 2005, the Senate Banking Committee, then under Republican control, adopted a strong reform bill, introduced by Republican Sens. Elizabeth Dole, John Sununu and Chuck Hagel, and supported by then chairman Richard Shelby. The bill prohibited the GSEs from holding portfolios, and gave their regulator prudential authority (such as setting capital requirements) roughly equivalent to a bank regulator. In light of the current financial crisis, this bill was probably the most important piece of financial regulation before Congress in 2005 and 2006. All the Republicans on the Committee supported the bill, and all the Democrats voted against it. Mr. McCain endorsed the legislation in a speech on the Senate floor. Mr. Obama, like all other Democrats, remained silent. Now the Democrats are blaming the financial crisis on ``deregulation.'' This is a canard. There has indeed been deregulation in our economy--in long-distance telephone rates, airline fares, securities brokerage and trucking, to name just a few--and this has produced much innovation and lower consumer prices. But the primary ``deregulation'' in the financial world in the last 30 years permitted banks to diversify their risks geographically and across different products, which is one of the things that has kept banks relatively stable in this storm. As a result, U.S. commercial banks have been able to attract more than $100 billion of new capital in the past year to replace most or their subprime-related write-downs. Deregulation of branching restrictions and limitations on bank product offerings also made possible bank acquisition of Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch, saving billions in likely resolution costs for taxpayers. If the Democrats had let the 2005 legislation come to a vote, the huge growth in the subprime and Alt-A loan portfolios or Fannie and Freddie could not have occurred, and the scale of the financial meltdown would have been substantially less. The same politicians who today decry the lack of intervention to stop excess risk taking in 2005-2006 were the ones who blocked the only legislative effort that could have stopped it.