Jim Himes

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. And this is another good example of common sense. At the core of what we are trying to do is to make sure that no institution ever gets bailed out again with taxpayer dollars, that we never again see an institution too big to fail. So what are we saying? Are we coming up with something new and radical? No. What we're saying is that if you are large and interconnected and create some systemic risk, you will be more closely scrutinized by the regulators than if you're just a small community bank. You will be required to hold more capital against your activities. Commonsensical stuff. And maybe most important--and this is where we get to doing away with the concept of too big to fail--if you make bad decisions, if you as a systemically important institution are in danger of failing, we're not going to do something radical; we are going to do something that this country has been doing for 70 years, unwinding, in an orderly fashion, the operation of that bank. The FDIC has had resolution authority and has been unwinding failed banks in a calm and orderly way for decades. And now we are saying, if you blow it, you fail, but you're going to do it in such a way that there is no risk that you bring down the financial system. That is hardly anything other than a nod of our hats to what has been so successful in this country for decades.

Mr. HIMES. So many of the ideas that are incorporated into the legislation that we have been working on are fundamentally commonsense ideas. This notion that you should be able to sell a mortgage to someone who doesn't have an income or who is unwilling to show you the documents that verify his or her income, what flavor of insanity is that? Why is it controversial that a consumer finance protection agency should take a hard look at that? This is common sense. You know that derivatives, which so few people understand, but people know that derivatives, credit default swaps at AIG were a huge contributor to the meltdown. AIG was writing contracts, making bets that it didn't have a prayer of honoring when things went bad. So you look at that and you say, gosh, they didn't have a regulator, nobody was looking at it. And there are whole swaths of financial services that didn't have regulators. There were plenty of areas that did, but there's AIG writing credit default swaps without any oversight. So in the derivatives bill--and for the life of me I don't understand why that one became a partisan issue. We didn't say you can't do derivatives; we didn't even put limits on the amount of derivatives that you could assume. We did say, however, that if you're going to buy yourself derivatives, you're going to clear those derivatives on a clearinghouse if the clearinghouse will take it. You're going to trade them on an exchange so that there is transparency, so that we know who's doing what to whom, what the price is, what the volume is, so we get to see and the regulators get to see and the markets get to see who's taking what kind of risk. This is a fundamental notion of a market economy, transparency and good information, which is at the heart of that derivatives bill, and somehow that was opposed. Common sense, critical to the markets--going to be awfully important to making sure that an AIG never occurs again-- and yet it was controversial.

Mr. HIMES. That is such a critical point. I would just like to emphasize that is such a critical point. There has been so much discussion about the irresponsibility of some homeowners who bought houses they couldn't afford, who had mortgages they knew they couldn't repay sold by people who knew there wasn't a chance that they were going to get repaid. Many of those criticisms are exactly right, and we have a whole other conversation to have about how we make the American household more responsible, save more, take on less debt, be more responsible like our grandparents were. That is a whole other conversation that we need to have. But the point is so important that this isn't just about individual irresponsibility; this is a public community problem. As the gentleman says, when you see a foreclosure on a block, every other property value on that block goes down. This has been shown time and time again by the economists. So irresponsibility, if it was that, affects the neighbors. And there is no way that this Congress, when faced with that kind of a problem to the community, should stand silent and watch people's property values go down and neighborhoods crumble, dark houses, lack of commerce. We have to stand up and say we have to put a stop to this.

Mr. HIMES. I thank the gentleman from Ohio, Steve Driehaus, for yielding and for organizing this discussion on this important topic, which is how we restore prosperity to the U.S. economy, how we generate jobs to replace those that have been lost in this, the most challenging recession that we have seen in decades. I am glad that the gentleman from Ohio talked about foreclosures. I represent Bridgeport, Connecticut, which is a wonderful city that also happens to have the highest density of foreclosures in the State of Connecticut. Bridgeport is a city full of people who were on the verge of becoming middle class homeowners, who were nurses and teachers and scraped together the money to buy their first home. And now we talk about these foreclosures. These are families that find themselves having lost the money that they scraped together to become American homeowners, and worse, having lost their homes. If you don't have a stable home, you do not have the foundation that you need to access the American Dream. Our home is that spot that determines where we work. It determines the community in which we are a member. It is just about everything in terms of building that foundation for economic prosperity. And as we saw, there were far, far too many shenanigans in the mortgage market. The gentleman from Ohio and I have been working very hard in the Financial Services Committee on something that is technical, it is esoteric, it is unglamorous, it is never going to appear on a campaign bumper sticker, but it is terribly, terribly important, and that is reforming this Nation's financial services regulatory regime which failed us miserably. It failed us absolutely miserably in the last 10 years. This is technical work. We are talking about really toeing a very tough line here between making sure that our banks and our financial services institutions are here, employing Americans, paying taxes in cities like Stanford and New York City and Chicago and Los Angeles, innovating, being a world beating industry, but of course never again putting us in the position that we find ourselves in today, millions of jobs lost and billions of dollars of taxpayer money brought to the table in the last Congress to bail out these institutions because had they not been bailed out, we would have seen a global financial meltdown. People forget what it felt like 9 months ago when we really worried that the major financial institutions of this country and of the world, frankly, could go under. Think about what that means. A major bank simply goes under. That bank is a lender to small businesses that make payroll. Except when the bank goes under, all of a sudden the payroll money is not there, and the workers of that small business go to the ATM and there is nothing there. That is global financial crisis, and that is what, obnoxiously, this government had to bail out. So how do we prevent that from ever happening again? The gentleman from Ohio and I, we have spent hours and hours listening in Financial Services, listening to the minority party tell us what we are doing is going to cost jobs, that this is the end of capitalism, that this is not a market economy, and they are dead wrong about that. They are dead wrong about that because they forget about something critical to our entire financial services business. They forget that without the faith of the American consumer, the American investor, the American bank customer, without that faith, we do not have a banking sector. I have been sitting in Financial Services now hours and hours and hours listening to this, this is the end of capitalism, this is going to kill jobs. We have seen this movie before. We have seen exactly this movie with exactly this script with exactly the same players. It happened in 1933 and 1934 when this government, the government of the United States, last set about to rise from the wreckage of an economic catastrophe caused by, amongst other things, financial irresponsibility, and this House was left to pick up the pieces. This House put in place in 1933 and 1934 the fundamental legislation that came to be what governed our banks and our securities companies for the next 70 years. And if you look at what was said in 1933 and 1934, you could be here today. You would have heard about the death of capitalism and how this didn't make sense in a market economy and about how jobs would be lost; and they were wrong then, as they are wrong now. In fact, in 1933 and 1934 when regulatory laws were passed, with which I am deeply familiar, having spent some time in the banking sector, when those laws were passed, we created that thing which is necessary for a robust capitalist system to survive. We created a level playing field in which your average American family, your average American business could have confidence. And what happened after 1933 and 1934, after seeing decade after decade of financial crisis, every 7, 8, 9 years, starting in 1933 and 1934, we saw, and the regulations that this House put into place contributed mightily towards the single longest period of prosperity in American history and in human history. Why, because people had faith. Why, because until regulations were loosened, there were no mortgage brokers saying you have no income, you have no job, no problem, we have a mortgage for you. We didn't have securitized products whereby you took paper that you knew was questionable and you bundled it all up, you got yourself a AAA rating and you sold it down the road. It's like musical chairs, right? You get paid, and it doesn't matter because the problems, the time bombs are in somebody else's portfolio. These were things that developed as our regulatory apparatus failed to keep pace with changes in the financial services industry. What we are doing now, if we do it right--and I have confidence that we are doing it right--we will restore that faith, we will restore that confidence and once again set us up for the kind of prosperity that we saw for decades after 1933 and 1934. What are we talking about here?

Mr. HIMES. You know, there's a point that can't get lost here, and I'm conscious, as we're having this discussion, that we're all fathers. You know, there is blame everywhere to be had for where we are today, and we, day to day, are focused on what we can do better as a government--to better regulate, to better create opportunity, to make these products more understandable to people so that they can make good decisions--but it does at some level come down to good decisions, and we shouldn't let that point, particularly as fathers, go away. I reflect, as we sort of not just take up financial regulatory reform but as we talk about energy policy and as we talk about health care, if we as families had the same kind of values that our grandparents had-- saving and shying away from debt. Of course, we can help on this stuff, right? We've made it awfully easy in this country for people to get into debt without ever knowing about it. Yet, if we were healthier, if we were more responsible about how we used energy and if we were more responsible about when and how we took on debt, like the other problems I've been talking about, we would take huge problems, and we would make them, Mr. Speaker, much more addressable problems. I'm very interested in this question: How do we as legislators assist in that process? I don't know that there is a good answer. I do know that, as fathers, there is a good answer. We as a country, I think, need to look back at our grandparents' generation and say, You know what? They got some things right. We need to work with our own families and with our own communities to just say basic things: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. You'd much rather have some money in the bank than have to go into debt. That's a key point that we, I think, need to get right in this country as well. I notice that we're joined by our colleague from Virginia, Congressman Perriello.

Mr. HIMES. You're right about that. There was so much hysteria about the discussion around compensation, that somehow the U.S. Government is going to start determining what people should be paid. And the reality is, in all honesty, this House from time to time contributes to that kind of hysteria. But here's another example of just pure common sense. All we're saying, and I think all the Federal Reserve and the Treasury and those who are concerned with compensation, all we're saying is this: we're saying exactly the same thing that shareholders and owners of every company believe to the core, which is, if you're an executive and you create good value in the long term, you're a long- term value creator, get paid well. That's the American way. But you don't get to be paid well for failure. You don't get to be paid huge for taking enormous risks that look good on day two, but which bring the system down on day 10. The interest of this institution has been exactly the interest that shareholders have: let's make sure that the system is set up to reward people for good, long-term value creation. People get very concerned about the TARP and the compensation within the TARP. Very special case. And I know that everybody in this Chamber hopes that we never see another TARP again. The TARP of course made the government a major shareholder in many institutions which, of course, as I have been saying, gives you a pretty significant vote on compensation. But again, common sense going forward, let's make sure our executives are rewarded for that which benefits the shareholders, good long-term value creation.

Mr. HIMES. Thank you, my good friend from Ohio, my two good friends from Ohio and Virginia. It's a pleasure to be out here tonight with you. We have talked about a lot of important issues, and one of the reasons I feel proud to be in this Chamber with you and with our colleagues is because we are in a moment of crisis, no doubt about it. We were called in a moment of crisis to lead. When you lead in a moment of crisis, you lead constructively. You take some risks. You acknowledge, as I know that each and every one of us does, that we won't get this perfect. Very little of what has been produced in history in this room has been perfect; but it has been done constructively, it has been done with the spirit that we will get it right over time, and it has been done by people taking some risks. In a moment of crisis, it is not leadership to say no. It is not leadership to simply snipe at those who are trying to solve the problems, the problems that affect every American family, the problems that mean that families don't have jobs. They worry about whether their kids will be educated. These are the things that we are trying to address, and it is just a fine moment that we have been called upon now to push these things to try to restore the opportunity that is so important to American families and to the sense of the American Dream.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, we are treated this afternoon to a steady stream of people rising, despite what they say, in opposition to fundamental health care reform. This long line of speakers, what do they have in common, apart from their party affiliation? They have really good health care, and they have got jobs guaranteed until January of 2011. What about the millions of Americans who find themselves without jobs today and who, as they think about what the future holds, also think about and worry about and are terrified by the fact that their child may not be able to see a doctor when that child needs to? We should talk about tort reform. We should talk about interstate competition of insurance. But only the bill being discussed now, not in secret, only the bill being discussed now provides for the coverage of those many millions of Americans who have lost their job in this recession. That is serious business, and that is what this House should continue to focus on.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Madam Chair, I rise today in favor of the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act which has been included in the base bill of the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2009. It is expected that more than 12 million Americans will take a cruise vacation in 2009 alone. Passengers on cruises have an inadequate understanding of their potential vulnerability to crime, and those who may be victimized lack the information they need to understand their legal rights or to know who to contact for help in the immediate aftermath of a crime. Cruise ships, which operate under foreign flags of convenience, are not required under U.S. law to report crimes that occur outside of U.S. territorial waters. Travelers on water deserve the same protections as travelers on land, and taking a few extra measures to protect passengers will lead to more enjoyable, safer trips and better results for victims of crimes. To enhance the safety of cruise passengers, the owners of cruise vessels need to upgrade, modernize, and retrofit the safety and security infrastructure on their vessels. They need to install peep holes in passenger doors, raise standard ship railings, install security video cameras and limit access to passenger rooms. In addition, passenger vessel crew members must be trained on the appropriate methods for prevention, detection, evidence preservation, and reporting of criminal activities. In the event that a crime should occur, it is of utmost importance that the crime scene or any potential evidence is not tampered with before the FBI can begin its investigation. I would be remiss if I did not take a moment to mention my predecessor, the Honorable Christopher Shays, and the fight he began to improve safety on cruise ships and protect cruise ship passengers years ago. Congressman Shays took on this charge after one of our constituents, George Smith, was the victim of a crime in international waters while on his honeymoon in 2005. The investigation surrounding Mr. Smith's disappearance remains open to this day. Had the safety improvements and post-incident regulations mandated by the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act been in place in 2005, this horrible tragedy might have been prevented. I proudly stand alongside the Smith family and the Cruise Victims Association as they continue their fight for justice every day. Together, we work to honor Mr. Smith's death so no family will ever have to suffer again from this type of tragic crime.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. I thank my colleague and friend from New Jersey (Mr. LoBiondo) and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would like to begin by thanking Chairman Oberstar and Chairman Thompson for their very diligent and intense work on this very important bill touching so closely to the topic of national security and making sure that our borders are secure and people are safe. We have taken great strides in the last few years to ensure that our coasts, our rivers, our bridges, our tunnels, our ports and ships are safer than perhaps they were before. But the reality is that they are, as we all know, still vulnerable to attack. With more than 95,000 miles of shoreline, more than 290,000 square miles of water and approximately 70 million recreational boats in the United States, the United States Coast Guard and local first responders simply cannot protect our Nation's waterways on their own. Individual citizens are often in the best position to notice suspicious activities that may be early indicators of terrorist activity. Any observations of suspicious or unusual activity could be extremely valuable to our national security, so we need a system in place to train volunteers to report their findings. The amendment that I offer this evening strengthens, streamlines, and improves the national effort to engage local citizens in the fight to protect our waterways through the America's Waterway Watch Program. This program is an essential step toward improving our national maritime and homeland security outreach and awareness strategy, educating industry and the public on the need to be vigilant and to report suspicious activity. The amendment aims to develop a system to collect and share these reports. My amendment would authorize full funding for this program for the very first time, allowing the Coast Guard to fulfill the promise of the program by providing resources, training support and awareness of best practices to our Nation's small vessel owners, recreational boaters, tugboat operators, fishermen and marina operators, those people who are day in and day out closest to where activity is likely to occur. In the spirit of national security and with the support of the United States Coast Guard and the House Homeland Security Committee, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HIMES

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

Mr. HIMES. I would like to thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hall) for his support. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I'd like to begin by thanking Chairman Gordon for his excellent work on this very, very important bill guiding us towards where this country needs to be in energy in the coming years and generations. I rise today to offer an amendment which I think is about a topic at the forefront of everybody's minds right now, which is jobs, jobs, and jobs. This bill is about the creation of good, high-paying jobs for American workers and, in the process, restoring our competitiveness in one of the most important industries of the next century. Mr. Chair, every new solar panel system we install in this country creates new business for roofers, for electricians, for engineers, and for construction workers. But I'm most excited about what solar power can do for America's manufacturing. I refuse to believe that America's days as a world leader in manufacturing are over. An industry report by Duke University found that by 2016, only 7 years from now, solar manufacturing could replace 500,000 jobs that have been lost, say, in the auto industry; 500,000 jobs, the manufacturing sector of the 21st century, if we make the right investments now. Back when very few of us were talking about solar power, the U.S. was quietly leading the world in the production of solar technology. Well, through the 1990s, no country on Earth invested more in solar than we did. So how is it that here in 2009, only 5 percent, 5 percent of the world's solar panels are made in America? There's a one-word answer to that question, and that word is ``investment.'' Look at China. Through their Golden Sun program, the Chinese Ministries of Finance, Science and Technology and the National Energy Administration are subsidizing half of the construction and connection costs for on-grid solar power plants and 70 percent of the cost of off- grid installations from now until 2011. And American companies are following these investments. First Solar, of Tempe, Arizona, recently signed an agreement to build a 2-gigawatt plant, 2 gigawatts, one of the largest solar plants in the world, in Ordos City in Inner Mongolia. Now, I have nothing against Mongolia, but I, for one, would prefer to see those jobs in Bridgeport or Stamford or any of the other American cities that saw their manufacturing sectors decimated in the last 50 years. I'm especially excited about this bill because solar power is creating jobs right now in my district. Opel, Inc., of Shelton, Connecticut, is making and installing some of the most advanced solar technology anywhere on the market, and technology that is the subject of my amendment today. Concentrated photovoltaic or CPV systems employ lenses and tracking systems to focus sunlight into a small beam concentrated on a photovoltaic surface. This relatively new technology is already showing dramatic potential. In May 2008, IBM demonstrated a prototype CPV using computer chip cooling techniques to improve an energy density of 2,300 suns. As we accelerate our efforts to raise the efficiency and lower the cost of solar power, it is worth pointing out that CPV systems provide greater power production--20 to 40 percent more kilowatt hours--with lower costs and less land usage than any solar technology science has yet produced. CPV technologies are an ideal source of scalable, utility-grade solar electric power production that will move solar energy faster toward grid parity costs. My amendment merely clarifies that these leading- edge technologies will be included among those funded as part of the solar road map. The global race to a clean energy economy is on, Mr. Chair, and millions of new jobs are on the line. We may have fallen behind a bit, but this is our chance to catch up. I thank Mr. Gordon for his committee's excellent work, urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Finally I yield 1 minute to my colleague and a great leader in the area of financial literacy, the distinguished gentlelady from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson).

Mr. HIMES. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. HIMES. Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield myself such time as I may consume. I'd like to begin by thanking Chairman Miller and Ranking Member Kline for their leadership on this very important bill. Madam Chair, the next century belongs to the Nation which best educates its citizens today. If America wants to compete in the world economy, we need an educated workforce; yet, the single greatest barrier to higher education can be summed up in one word: cost. College tuition has gone up more than any other good or service in the last 20 years. The Department of Education tells us that students hold a staggering $714 billion in outstanding student loan debt. If we want students to succeed in the classroom, we need to help them manage the financial commitments that got them there. And so as Congress acts today to bring higher education within reach for millions more Americans, we must promote access to the financial education that students need to make what is usually the most important financial decision of their young lives. The need to enhance our outreach here is enormous. Recent reports estimate that between 30 and 40 percent of first- and second-year students will be put into default at some point during the life of their loans. At the same time, a financial literacy survey taken by Harris International in 2009 said that 47 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 give themselves C's, D's or F's on their knowledge of personal finance. The amendment I offer today with my colleagues, Congresswomen McCarthy and Schwartz, makes several technical changes to the underlying bill which, at no additional cost, will help to ensure that States, nonprofits and private loan servicers who benefit from the new investments in college attainment and completion made by this bill do their utmost to include high-quality financial literacy training in their efforts to help keep more of our kids in school and in the postsecondary degree of their choice. The Himes-McCarthy-Schwartz amendment enjoys the support of the National Association of College Admissions Counseling, the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, the Corporation for Enterprise and Development, and the Institute for Financial Literacy. I encourage my colleagues to vote in support of this amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HIMES. Madam Chair, I first yield 1 minute to my colleague and fellow sponsor, the distinguished gentlelady from New York (Mrs. McCarthy).

Mr. HIMES. I next yield 1 minute to my colleague and fellow sponsor, the distinguished gentlelady from Pennsylvania (Ms. Schwartz).

Mr. HIMES. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Madam Speaker, the great debates in this Chamber often center around the question of whether and how much government can do to address a particular problem. There is one thing, though, that we can all agree on, which is that if our families act more responsibly on just about everything--education, energy, health--we are all much better off. Madam Speaker, September is Emergency Preparedness Month, and as a member of the Committee on Homeland Security, nowhere is this more true than when we think about our health and our security. Our families can do some simple things to make them safer and healthier: have a plan in the event of an emergency, have a place to meet, know how to contact each other. As we think about facing the H1N1 threat this winter, there are some simple things we can do as families. We can wash our hands often. We can sneeze into a tissue. We can stay home if we feel ill. If we do these small, small things, we can take what is potentially a large problem and make it much, much smaller.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 556) recognizing the 75th anniversary of the passage of the Federal Credit Union Act and the vibrant Federal credit union community that was created as a result of this important piece of legislation.

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.