Paul Hodes

Mr. HODES

Mr. HODES. Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. HODES. Madam Chairman, first I want to thank the distinguished Chair of the committee, Mr. Skelton, as well as my cosponsors on this amendment, Congresswoman DeLauro and Congressman DeFazio. Madam Chairman, my amendment to H.R. 5658 addresses an issue of utmost importance to our Constitution and to the integrity of our government. And it will help restore the trust of the American people in their government. In a free and democratic society, our government should never use the public airwaves to propagandize our citizens. Recent media reports have alleged an organized effort by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Department of Defense officials to manipulate network news military analysts to promote administration spin on the war in Iraq, even though many of those analysts knew the information not to be accurate. Internal Pentagon documents obtained by the New York Times refer to these military analysts as message force multipliers, surrogates who can be counted on to deliver administration themes and messages to millions of Americans in the form of their own opinions. In fact, one analyst apparently referred to the efforts by the Pentagon as brainwashing. A report conducted by media watchdog Media Matters showed that from January 2002 these military analysts, many of whom have ties to the defense industry, appeared on network and cable news stations nearly 4,500 times. That's right, 4,500 instances. Imagine the millions of people who heard those impressions 4,500 times. The American people were spun by Bush administration message multipliers. They were fed administration talking points believing they were getting independent military analysis. Days after the news story appeared, the Pentagon suspended the program. The news outlets who hosted the programs and analysts have been remarkably silent. The Department of Defense Inspector General has already begun an internal review of the program, but given the possibility that the public, as well as decision-makers in this Congress, were misled about the war in Iraq, both in the run-up to the war and afterwards, I believe it is absolutely critical that a public investigation happen that is transparent to this body, as well as to the American people. Congress cannot allow an administration to manipulate the public with false propaganda on matters of war and our national security. My amendment will ensure that no money authorized in this act will be used for any domestic propaganda program within the United States aimed at U.S. citizens. It will require a report to Congress by both the Defense Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office on whether previous restrictions on propaganda have been violated and laws broken. It's finally time for the American people to know the truth. If we allow our government to lie to the American people, we lose the democracy and liberty on which our country was founded, and we risk becoming what generations of brave Americans have fought so hard to defeat. Let us today on this floor in this Congress say never again will we allow this to happen in our republic. I urge passage of this amendment, and today, we will say with one voice that the American people will not tolerate domestic propaganda. We will find the truth. We will correct any abuses of power. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HODES. Madam Chairman, perhaps the gentleman, my colleague, does not understand that this amendment prohibits lying. ``Be all you can be'' is persuasion. A concerted program of government-directed lies is propaganda. The amendment would simply codify language outlawing propaganda within the United States aimed at our citizens, and perhaps the gentleman is unaware that similar language has been included in congressional appropriations bills since the 1950s. And thus, this amendment does not represent any change in U.S. policy. Propaganda is narrowly defined as communications designed to influence the people of the United States, and it is limited to domestic programs within the United States aimed at U.S. citizens. With that, Madam Chairman, I yield to my distinguished cosponsor Mr. DeFazio for 2 minutes.

Mr. HODES. Madam Chairman, I'm afraid that my distinguished colleagues on the other side are laboring under a misapprehension. This amendment is very simple. First, it codifies long-standing policy prohibiting propaganda, domestic propaganda. Second, it calls for an investigation into whether or not the Pentagon had a concerted program to mislead the American public and this Congress. This amendment deals with what strikes at the very heart of our democracy: We must trust our military. We must have the truth. We make decisions of life and death in this Chamber when we send people off to war. The American people deserve the truth. This amendment will deliver the truth to the American people. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HODES. Madam Chairman, how much time do we have remaining on this side?

Mr. HODES. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HODES. Madam Chairman, at this time, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished Chair of the committee, Mr. Skelton.

Mr. HODES. Madam Chairman, at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished cosponsor of this amendment, the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. HODES. Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. May I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Mr. HODES

Mr. HODES. Mr. Speaker, with nearly 8,000 foreclosures being filed daily, there is no question that Americans continue to fear losing their homes. In my home State of New Hampshire, it is predicted that nearly 4,300 families will lose their home by 2009. This month, the House passed landmark housing legislation that will address the housing crisis directly, stabilize the housing market, and make a real difference for families at risk of losing their home. The bill will also help revitalize communities that have become vacant because of high housing foreclosure rates. We are also working to provide relief to families struggling under the burden of higher gas prices and soaring costs for food and health care. Mr. Speaker, we cannot fix our struggling economy until we address the housing crisis, but the Bush administration has ignored this growing problem for far too long. I hope that President Bush and his allies will reconsider their opposition to our commonsense housing package so we can provide hope to the millions of Americans struggling in President Bush's recession.

Mr. HODES

Mr. HODES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge my colleagues to support the rule on the farm bill. Chairman Peterson and Ranking Member Goodlatte have worked hard to put together this bipartisan bill that helps working class families struggling with the soaring cost of food. On balance it is a good bill for nutrition and for the small farmers of the Northeast. The bill will also help my home State of New Hampshire because it includes the Northern Border Regional Development Commission Act. I introduced this bill to help the struggling communities in the north country of New Hampshire and the region. The commission will help bring investment, leadership and focus to the north country's economic development efforts. Thirty-six counties in four States that would become part of this commission have poverty levels above the national average, median household income that is more than $6,500 below the national average, persistent unemployment fed by constant layoffs in traditional manufacturing industries, and a significant out-migration and loss of younger workers. The recent announcements of mill closures in Groveton, Gorham, Berlin and Littleton, New Hampshire, confirm a clear, persistent pattern of economic distress in this region and across the northern border. The people of the north country need a new start and more resources to rebuild their communities for a new economy. The northern border commission, coupled with other efforts, will help revitalize the region and rebuild communities which need our help. Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of this rule. The people of New Hampshire's north country, and the northeast northern border region are counting on us.

Mr. HODES

Mr. HODES. Madam Speaker, due to unavoidable circumstances, I missed one vote in a series of votes on Tuesday, May 6, 2008. I would have voted ``yes'' for the following vote: (1) Rollcall vote 248--To Table Motion To Reconsider.

Mr. HODES

Mr. HODES. Madam Speaker, there's no doubt that the housing crisis and the consumer credit crunch are getting worse. Last week, we learned that the number of homes facing foreclosure more than doubled from last year. In my home State of New Hampshire, foreclosures have increased nearly 96 percent. That is why it is so important that Congress pass the comprehensive housing package that is coming to the floor this week. The legislation is the most innovative and comprehensive solution to the housing crisis yet. It will give relief to the millions of working families struggling to pay their mortgage with the rising price of gas and food. It would help nearly 1.5 million Americans in need. Our package would also offer assistance to State and localities to purchase and rehabilitate foreclosed properties. Madam Speaker, our economy cannot rebound unless we act now to give relief to millions of Americans in need. We have a bold proposal to take this decisive action. I certainly hope that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle understand the urgent need and that we will receive bipartisan support for this proposal.

Mr. HODES

Mr. HODES. Madam Speaker, while many of us are standing up for tax cuts for working middle class families, there are some on the other side who want to continue to provide tax breaks to millionaires, billionaires, and even to big oil companies earning record profits. For the last 7 years, we've watched these record giveaways to the wealthiest people and corporations turn our budget surpluses into record deficits. The administration's fiscal mess is so bad that President Bush has borrowed more money from foreign countries than all 42 of his predecessors combined leaving our children in debt to unfriendly foreign leaders. American taxpayers are paying Iraq's bill while we have serious needs at home. Yesterday, in my home State, New Hampshire, gas prices hit record highs, and nearly 4,300 New Hampshire families may lose their homes to foreclosure. It's time to help middle class families caught in the economic squeeze. Now, I'm committed to changing the way Washington does business by giving tax relief to the people who truly need it. We can't fix our economy with the same policies that led to the economic slide.

Mr. HODES

Mr. HODES. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm glad to be here tonight. I will soon be joined by a number of my colleagues in the historic class of 2006, the Majority Makers. And we are here tonight to talk about the economy. There certainly is a lot to talk about. We've come back recently from 2 weeks at home in our districts where we've all made observations and talked to our constituents, talked to the people we represent. We've gotten out and visited people in their homes. We've been out shopping, we've been to the malls, we've been all over and hearing the way the sorry state of the economy is having an effect on middle-class families and working-class families, and things are not right. Hard times are here, and unfortunately, those hard times may be with us for a while. Some have been seeing this coming, and I would like to say that certainly my Democratic colleagues, including people I serve with on the Financial Services Committee, have been seeing this coming for quite a while. We have been working on it, talking about it, passing legislation to deal with these issues. Others have come a little bit late to the table and are just beginning to see that middle-class families in this country are facing rising costs, difficult times. We've had a feed-the-rich policy and a squeeze-the-middle class, and it's time that we did something about it. I recall that about a year ago, maybe a little more than a year ago, when I had just joined the Financial Services Committee, I had the opportunity to talk to the Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke. He came before our committee and testified about the state of the economy. Now this was before we'd seen the mortgage crisis and the credit crunch and the bailout for Bear Stearns and all of the other things that are now making headlines in what are fairly arcane policy matters but now take up the front pages of our newspapers. And we asked Mr. Bernanke about the state of the economy and what he saw then, and it was very interesting. At the time, he was reporting that corporate profits were in good shape, that corporate productivity was in good shape. In other words, that corporate productivity was on the rise. Corporate profits seemed to be okay. It meant that people who were working were working a lot harder and helping the corporations earn profits, and their productivity was good. But we saw troubling signs. Back then, we saw that real wages in income for middle-class families were stagnant or had been slipping backwards in real dollar terms. We saw that we had had a record trade deficit, $758 billion. We've seen tax cuts for 7 years under this administration which mostly benefited the very wealthy. In fact, last year, the 500 top wage earners in this country earned about $18.8 billion and paid about 17 percent of their income in wages. That's not what they were supposed to pay, apparently, according to the tax rates, but that's what they've ended up paying. They're doing pretty well. So while middle-class families were experiencing slippage in their real wages and income going backwards and facing ever-increasing costs, we had gasoline prices rising, home heating oil was about to start zooming up that winter, costs for education were going up. We asked Mr. Bernanke whether or not the increase in corporate profits and the higher rates of corporate productivity necessarily were the best indicators of the health of the economy. Because we also pointed out at the time there was a troubling issue on the horizon, and the issue was that there had been many loans made to people over the past few years, let's call them subprime loans, which meant loans that were given to people with rates that started out being very good but then kind of rose precipitously and that we saw a problem with these subprime mortgages which may not have been given with the right kinds of appraisals which had been given to people who couldn't pay them back, whose incomes weren't sufficient to own homes, whose assets weren't sufficient, for whom there were no requirements to put money down like there used to be in the old days. We took all of this in, and many of us had just come to Congress. We asked Mr. Bernanke whether or not that was a true measure of the health of our economy. And I do have to report that Mr. Bernanke is an expert economist and a very smart man who runs the Federal Reserve. He's the chairman, and his job, along with the other members of the Federal Reserve board, is to help control the money supply, among other things, in this country. It's like turning on the spigot for money that flows into the economy and helps make more credit available and deals with interest rates, and they deal with whether or not to cut interest rates or raise interest rates which then affect consumers who want to borrow money for mortgages on their houses or second equity lines, as many people have, also, on their houses or credit cards or to buy a car. So that credit and the flow of money, in large part, is controlled by the Federal Reserve. His answer was he thought things were in pretty good shape. Well, unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, today, the chickens have come home to roost on 8 years of this administration's fiscal policies. I just pulled this off of the AOL service before I came down here to speak about these matters, and today, for the first time, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged that the U.S. could reel into a recession from the powerful punches of housing, credit, and financial crises. Yet, he didn't have much to say at this time about what the Federal Reserve is going to do next. I have to tell you, after a couple of weeks at home, Mr. Bernanke doesn't have to tell us that we are in a financial crisis. There are neighborhoods in some of the cities in New Hampshire where you go on a street and we are seeing four and five houses foreclosed. We are seeing the ``bank owned'' signs. And what that means is there is nothing worse to a family than losing a home. And what happens when a family loses its home is not only are they in peril, are they in distress, but whole neighborhoods are in distress. Because when homes are foreclosed in a neighborhood, it puts pressure on the housing prices in the neighborhood, it puts pressure on the other financial indicators in the whole community. So there is a huge ripple effect from what has turned into a housing problem. At home in New Hampshire we are seeing it. In fact, by the end of 2009, Mr. Speaker, we anticipate seeing more than 4,900 foreclosures in the small State of New Hampshire alone. That's a huge rise. In some places we are seeing a hundred percent foreclosures. We've seen mill closings up north. We are seeing the job market beginning to soften in New Hampshire and around the country. Things are getting tough. Rising costs, credit problems, home mortgage foreclosure crises, the war in Iraq goes on at the rate of $12 billion a month. Nobody has to tell the middle-class families of this country who have been squeezed by 8 years of this administration's policies that we are having hard times. So tonight we are going to talk about what those hard times are, how we got there, and what we are doing in Congress, what my colleagues are doing, what we are trying to do here, especially on the Democratic side, to deal with these crises, and how we got here; and we are going to hear about what is going on in some of the other parts of the country as well. I'm joined tonight by my other colleagues, as I said, from the Majority Makers, the class of 2006, Mr. Speaker, of which you are a part, which we are very proud of. And I would like to introduce now and turn it over to my distinguished colleague from the State of Florida, the Sunshine State, where things are, frankly, much warmer than they are back home for me in New Hampshire where there is still snow on the ground and people are still digging out from a record snowfall. So I will turn it over now to my distinguished colleague from Florida (Mr. Klein).

Mr. HODES. Thank you, Mr. Yarmuth. I really appreciate hearing from both of you about your perspectives about what's going on. And the discussion we've had brings to mind a quote that I read by Abraham Lincoln, who was a good Republican. Today he might not be a Republican. Today he might be a Democrat. And it really addressed some of the fundamental underpinnings of the debates that we are having about how to fix things. What Abraham Lincoln said was that ``the purpose of government is to do what the free markets cannot or will not do so well for themselves.'' And today in Congress and around Washington and around the country, we are beginning a debate at one level about what kind of changes we need to make and what kind of help we need to offer to struggling middle-class families. And those are two separate questions really. One of the questions is, what kind of changes do we need to make to the regulation of our financial systems? That integrated big financial system that, as Mr. Klein pointed out, deals with banks. It deals with stocks. It deals with housing. It deals with real estate. It deals with insurance. It's a complex system that is now regulated in Washington. It's regulated at the State levels because there are regulators in the States who regulate all these industries. And Washington, what we are now seeing is that we've had Depression-era regulatory systems that really took their eye off the ball over the past 8 years certainly. While things for the middle class were squeezing tighter and tighter and tighter and those at the very top were doing okay, the regulators didn't seem to notice. And a lot of people are asking questions: Well, why not? The interesting thing here is to hear how the tunes of some people in this Chamber have changed. It used to be that some of our colleagues across the aisle who were saying don't regulate, deregulate, and that was a huge push for this administration and many of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and, in fact, many have said just let the free markets take care of it. Well, what we are seeing in this boom- bust cycle is that the free markets need some control from government. It's got to be balanced, of course, because you don't want to go too far with the free market. But what we have seen, for instance, just in the housing crisis is this: When I go home to talk to my community bankers in New Hampshire, what they tell me is that their foreclosure rates aren't really any different than they were before we got into the crisis we are in. They're not seeing a huge spike in foreclosures. They are regulated very closely. They have to follow strict standards. And they have been making loans the way they always have. They've been requiring down payments. They've been asking people what are their incomes? They've been verifying those incomes. They have been appraising properties accurately. They have been making sure that the loans they make in their communities are the kinds of loans that a lot of people are familiar with. Unfortunately, there were a lot of lenders who weren't regulated in the same way and they were making loans to people who probably shouldn't have loans, maybe people who were speculating. And then what was happening was those loans were being packaged. And they were going to Wall Street where they were being packaged into huge kinds of packages of loans and sliced and diced into securities with very odd names and securities that many of us don't even understand: ``Credit Default Swap Exchange Opportunities,'' not listed on any stock exchange, traded sort of desk to desk on Wall Street, essentially where people were taking air and risky loans and slicing them up and selling them around the globe because we're in a global economy. There are global markets, especially on the financial side. So I read articles where pension funds from municipal employees in towns in Norway were going underwater because of the mortgage crisis here. And so one of the fundamental questions that we have got to ask is how are we going to fix this regulatory scheme? Because really if you think about it, over the past 8 years, we have had the Bush tax cuts, which advantaged the very rich; and as you said, Mr. Yarmuth, pay for CEOs has gone through the roof, 350, 400 times what the average person is making. So while we had tax cuts that were advantaging the very rich and the middle class was being squeezed, we were spending $800 billion on the war in Iraq. And while that was going on, the Federal Reserve was keeping interest rates very low. And mortgages were being handled in a different way, packaged, sliced and diced into stocks, and sold by unregulated lenders. So with very low interest rates, what people were lulled into thinking was that the prices of their houses would just keep going up and up and up and up, and people began to treat their houses like it was a revolving ATM machine. I know that I got calls from people offering to rewrite my loan. I have a 30-year fixed loan. I'm very glad about it now. They were offering to rewrite my loan. They gave me all kinds of incredible deals. They were so incredible that I couldn't understand them, and I figured if I can't understand them, thank you very much but I'm going to stick with something simple. They were talking about a rate here and then in 3 years the rate would go there, and don't worry, when the rate goes up and if it goes up, you won't have to worry. Don't worry because your house will be worth more, and when your house is worth more, you will be able to refinance it again. So for the past 8 years we have seen that spiral. What happened was when the housing market crested and began to come down, everything began to unravel down the line, not only housing prices but then the credit crunch. It meant that people couldn't borrow for their businesses. They can't borrow to get out of their problems with their housing prices. We have seen at the same time a huge rise in energy prices. Jobs are now under real pressure in terms of people losing their jobs. And this has exploded into a crisis that we now have to deal with in Congress. But we haven't been silent about it. Some of the things we have done, I am just going to talk really briefly, then hand it over to you, Mr. Klein, we took action. One of the things we did was we expanded affordable mortgage loan opportunities through the Federal Housing Administration for families who are in danger of losing their home by increasing the loan limits that the Federal Housing Authority administration could make to help with the fact that house prices have gone up. It's a very important part of the economic stimulus package which this Democratic Congress passed to put money into the hands of consumers through rebates that will come when people file their tax returns this year. Instant money. We address the housing piece, and we also helped small businesses in lots of significant ways. So we haven't been sitting around. We are working on helping people. That was just a one-time shot, a shot in the arm for the economy. We are going to do other things because this is really once in a lifetime, in some way, kind of a problem. People are using words like recession and other words like that. But as Mr. Klein said, let's just say that hard times are here. They are hard times that we haven't really had to face in this country in this way in a long, long, long time. And we are going to take action to make sure that we are helping squeezed middle-class families and hurting working families to get on their feet. We are going to offer a hand up. It's not going to be a handout, but it's going to be a hand up of the kind that the American people expect. The last thing I will say before I turn it over to you, Mr. Klein, is that so far, the administration at the other end of the mall on Pennsylvania Avenue has set up an 800 number for homeowners. But so far, I am not sure that the administration really understands and is really feeling the depth and breadth of what our folks are facing back at home. I would say Mr. Bush ought to get out a little more and maybe he would see that some steps are necessary to help the middle-class families and working families. Because we are going to have to soften the hard landing that's coming. With that, I will turn it back over to Mr. Klein.

Mr. HODES. It's very interesting to think about. One of the great things about the Financial Services Committee under Mr. Frank is that very often we are able to work in a bipartisan way in the kind of spirit that the people of this country really are hoping that we will take to deal with these complex financial matters. Because while we are dealing with try to fix the regulatory scheme and figure out exactly what measures, which we will talk about, are the kind of measures are going to help people on the ground who are losing their homes, it's really important that we are able to come together. So there may be different philosophical approaches. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle on the Republican side, Mr. Bush in the White House may say, no, no, no. They may say to keep hands off. Let the free markets do everything. But now people I think are beginning to come along and see that this is exactly the kind of situation where some appropriate government intervention to fix fundamental problems in the financial schemes and help with this mortgage crisis are going to be necessary. I am hoping that the President is going to come along. I am hoping that he is going to come on out of the Rose Garden. I am hoping that he is going to see that we need more than a 1-800 number, 1-88 I AM IN TROUBLE. I am hoping that Secretary Paulson will continue to have what I think has been a pretty good dialog with the White House about what we have to do and that we are going to see the cooperation between the regulators, Mr. Paulson, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the President to move things forward.

Mr. HODES. Thank you for that really important point. I know my mother and others who lived through the Great Depression and its aftermath would be very interested to hear the analysis and the parallels, because they are not lost. Our job is going to be to try to deal with the 21st century realities and make the landing softer than it was then. I would now like to turn it over to a distinguished colleague and an extraordinary leader, Mr. Ellison, from Minnesota, who serves on both the Judiciary Committee and serves with us on the Financial Services Committee, someone who has been a leader in his commitment to protecting consumers, dealing with the problems that people are facing every day in their lives, who understands that hard times demand from the Congress imaginative action, and has a way of addressing things in a head-on way that has been a great example for all of us here in Congress. With that, I am very happy to yield to the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).

Mr. HODES. 1929.

Mr. HODES. Thank you very much for that perspective. Before I introduce another colleague from the class of 2006, The Majority Makers, I do want to point out that we have not been quiet about what we think is necessary. Some of the things that we have done here in the House of Representatives, back in November we saw what was coming. We have been ahead of the curve. We saw what was coming on this mortgage crisis and we passed the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act to strengthen consumer protections against risky loans. We wanted to make sure that going forward, the kind of lending practices that we have seen causing this mortgage and housing crisis would not be repeated. That bill is sitting now somewhere across Statuary Hall, across the Rotunda on the other side of this building in the United States Senate, hopefully going to be passed by the United States Senate. But it is being held up there, like much legislation that we have passed here in the House to help middle-class families, to help working families, which has been held up in the Senate. So I am hoping our colleagues are going to see the wisdom of making sure that we have loan standards in this country that really help to ensure that people who shouldn't get loans aren't getting the loans, that lenders who are taking advantage of people aren't taking advantage of them when they make the loans. It goes along with what we have done to expand affordable mortgage loan opportunities for families in danger of losing their homes through the FHA reform. That is also being held up over in the Senate by Senator Shelby, who apparently is upset about the economic stimulus package and has taken it out by refusing to deal with that loan. We have strengthened Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase their loan limit size. We are hoping that that goes through. And we have increased the supply of affordable rental housing to address the current shortage with the bill you talked about, the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which we have to get through the Senate, across the way. It has to go up the Mall to the President. We have got to pass these kinds of measures. We have done our job here in the House on those kinds of measures to help middle-class families and working families and people who are being struck. There are some other things that are coming from Mr. Frank and the Financial Services Committee in a couple of days as we hold hearings and pass things through. But now what I would like to do in about the last 10 minutes that we have got is to introduce another colleague and turn it over to my esteemed, distinguished colleague from New York, a gentleman who understands small business, a gentleman who has been working hard for veterans, a gentleman who understands the problems that he is seeing in his community in Upstate New York, the distinguished gentleman from New York, John Hall.

Mr. HODES. I thank the gentleman for his cogent and eloquent remarks. I am going to turn it over to the distinguished gentleman from Kentucky for some closing thoughts.

Mr. HODES. Thank you, Mr. Yarmuth. I appreciate the time we had, Madam Speaker, to talk about the economy. In the coming days, the Financial Services Committee will be presenting two very important proposals to help more on the mortgage crisis. One, we will provide some loan-ability and guarantee-ability through the Federal Housing Administration to lenders who are willing to write down loans and help people who are facing foreclosure and who may be in distress on their homes in order to make more money available to prevent foreclosures, and to help those, say at least 1 million, perhaps up to 2 million people who have been in foreclosures. The second thing is we expect to propose a program of loans and grants to help States and cities acquire properties that have been foreclosed and facilitate returning them to the rolls as owner-occupied or rental units. Taken together, these initiatives are going to be very important. They are going to allow millions of families to avoid disasters, they are going to help hard-pressed jurisdictions avoid the cascade of deteriorating neighborhoods and abandoned houses that follow the kind of crises we have seen, and they are going to help stem the steep and destabilizing decline in house prices that led to and is intensifying the financial crisis, because we cannot allow this crisis to continue unabated. This Congress is ready to act. We are going to help middle-class and working families out of this hole. I thank my colleagues for joining me tonight, and I thank Madam Speaker for her indulgence in allowing us to go over a short amount of time.

Mr. HODES

Mr. HODES. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. I also thank Mr. Capuano for his leadership on this matter. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this bill and in strong support of accountability and transparency in all public service. For years the former congressional leadership eroded the faith of the American people through corruption, dishonesty, and abuse of power. I came into office pledging to restore the people's trust; and as stewards of the public trust, we must hold Congress to the highest standard and end the abuses of the past. This legislation before us is an important step in restoring the trust of the people we serve in this body. It puts ethics violations in the hands of an independent, nonpartisan board; and that is the right way to give the American people the confidence that any corruption will be investigated fairly and thoroughly. I have also stood with my colleagues Mr. Murphy of Connecticut and Mr. Space of Ohio to cosponsor an amendment that would allow this body to have subpoena power in order to give the board the real teeth an outside investigative body should have. In my judgment, I would have preferred that the leadership and the Rules Committee had allowed this amendment to reach the floor for consideration. In the fullness of time, I believe we will see the wisdom of giving this new independent ethics body all the tools it needs to investigate alleged violation. However, even without this added power, I will support this bill because the perfect must not be the enemy of the good. Let there be no mistake, Mr. Speaker. This bill has had bipartisan input, and the bill was even pulled from the floor to make sure that on a bipartisan basis suggestions for improvement were heard, reviewed, and incorporated. I was sent to Congress by the people of New Hampshire to clean up Washington. This legislation may not go all the way, but it goes a long way towards helping restore trust in the people's House.

Mr. HODES

Mr. HODES. Mr. Speaker, the people of Gorham, New Hampshire are hurting. Over 160 workers will lose their jobs at the Fraser Paper Mill next month. Decades ago, the paper industry was thriving throughout Coos and Grafton Counties in New Hampshire. But with new trade policies that ship our jobs oversees, these jobs are disappearing faster, and towns across northern New Hampshire are hurting. In February, Fraser Paper announced that it will lay off 167 jobs from their facility in Gorham. The news broke just months after the Wausau Paper Mill closed its doors in Groveton and left 303 workers without jobs, and nearly 2 years after Fraser Paper shut down its Berlin site, which resulted in the loss of 250 jobs in the region. I will visit Coos County this Friday to meet with workers in Gorham, Groveton, and Berlin to hear their stories. I am working to take action to stand up for these working families and their communities. We have already helped with the bipartisan economic stimulus plan that puts more money in the hands of working families, and boosts our economy, but the people of Gorham and the surrounding communities and workers in America need additional help. I plan on submitting legislation to keep mills and business and jobs like these in New Hampshire. I urge my colleagues to stand with me and stand with our working men and women.

Mr. HODES

Mr. HODES. Madam Speaker, due to a misunderstanding on the floor I missed one vote in a series of votes on Thursday, February 14, 2008. As a co-sponsor of the bill, I would have voted ``yes'' for the following vote: H. Res. 963--Supporting the goals and ideals of National Salute to Hospitalized Veterans Week, and for other purposes.