Marcy Kaptur

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. The gentleman's words are so eloquent. And I am reminded that in the resolution that was passed this afternoon here in the Congress, one of those who lost her life on that plane was Anna Walentynowicz, who's the former dock worker whose firing in 1908 sparked the solidarity strike that ultimately overthrew the Polish communist government, and of course she was killed in the crash as well. And last August, when I traveled to Poland, one of the cities we visited was Poznan, and what was--there were many, many moments that were memorable, but I can remember standing near the town square and seeing very huge, huge crosses, metal crosses that had rope bonds around them, and underneath it, the years 1956 through the late fifties, through the sixties, through the seventies, all of the strikes and protests inside of communist Poland that ultimately, in 1980 and during the decade of the 1980s, then erupted. But the courage, the progressive courage, decade after decade after decade, at, obviously, threat to loss of their own life and loss of their own life, the people of Poland trying to build a solidarity movement to change life in that part of the world was an extraordinary story. It's a story of great heroism. And I think the gentleman reminds us of the price that has been paid by the people of Poland for their liberty.

Ms. KAPTUR. You know, Congressman Donnelly, when we think back to Poland's history during World War II, no nation lost a higher percentage of its people. Twenty percent of the population of Poland was eliminated. And the strength that it took to survive that and to endure, history should well note the dismembering of their nation and their ability to prevail and ultimately then, in the fifties and sixties and seventies and eighties, they come from a heritage of great suffering and great triumph.

Ms. KAPTUR. Congressman Franks, I want to thank you so very much. I know what a long day you have had. You began on C-SPAN this morning, I believe, and you have worked way over time today. And to join us here this evening and to pay tribute particularly with your responsibilities in the area of defense, I know that the people of Poland are listening and Polish Americans across this country and they are helped at this very, very weighty moment to be healed by your words, by the words of Congressman Donnelly. Today, we were all a part of that very, very important moment when the congressman from Chicago, Congressman Dan Lipinski, who co-chairs the Polish Caucus in the Congress, asked for a moment of silence, and Speaker Pelosi was at the rostrum, and the entire Chamber rose above partisanship. It was just the expression of the American people, as the Ambassador from Poland, Robert Kupiecki, was in the gallery, and we remembered those who'd lost their lives. And we prayed for the strength of Poland today, for the courage of her people to endure. As we were expressing that respect, I kept thinking to my last trip to Poland, which was last August, and I have traveled there for many, many decades when it was under Communist control, and I remember how the people--how their faces, their eyes, their expressions were. And then in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down, traveling to Poland and seeing this moment of possibility and the anxiousness at that particular period, and then to travel there last August and to see a new generation of Poland. I get pretty emotional thinking about it. And to see their eyes, the eyes of the young people who are going to be the leaders of the 21st century and they have been raised in a free country for the first time in over a century. And they have the same possibility as the Poles who right after World War I attempted to build a free country, and then it was taken away from them by Nazi and Soviet aggression. So this is really the first generation. And to see in 20 years the look of hope in those young people's eyes, I shall never forget it. And it told me that the world had progressed and that Poland had progressed and her deepest-held dreams lived in these young people. So I wanted to put that on the record tonight and also to mention that many, many Members, certainly the Speaker, the Vice President, Secretary of State, Members of our House, like Congressman Quigley, have worked their way to the Polish Embassy to sign the book of mourning that is at the Embassy for interested members and citizens. The Polish Embassy is overwhelmed with the outpouring of support and friendship of the American people. The street, 16th Street, just north of Dupont Circle, where the Embassy is located, the whole entire front is full of flowers and candles. Americans were walking by. They were attempting to gain entry to the Embassy to express their sorrow. It was quite a powerful sight to behold. And I know that there are memorials being held around the globe as well. President Obama has announced he will be leading America's delegation to Poland this weekend for the President's funeral. So the outpouring of love from the American people to the Polish people is a bond that will only be strengthened by this great tragedy. I wanted to also place on the Record, if I could, this evening a poem by Andrzej Wajda, who is a Polish filmmaker, about Katyn where the past generation and this generation of Poles has now paid the greatest price: ``There are no Great Walls there at Katyn, No towers leaning or not leaning, Declaring some king's success Or mocking another's failure, No gleaming cathedral where You can pray for forgiveness Or watch the cycle of shadows play Through the coolness of the day, And soon not even the names Of those who died will be remembered, Names like Skrzypinski, Chmura, Or Anthony Milczarek. Their harsh voices and tearing courage Are already lost in the wind, But their true monuments Will always be there, in the dust And the gray ashes and the mounds Settling over the bodies over which No prayers were ever whispered, No tears shed by a grieving mother Or a trembling sister.'' This team of Polish leaders journeyed to Katyn, Russia, in order to begin to unravel this story of where history lived that for seven decades, three-quarters of a century, was denied. And I have to say that the Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is to be commended royally for his attention to what happened and, in addition to that, for having the courage to look history in the eye and not be afraid of it and to know that we are living in a new millennium and to allow the film Katyn by Andrzej Wajda to be shown on television in Russia before the crash and then after. And so to make history right, and the President of Russia, Mr. Medvedev, to be able to move on and to work together with the deep heritage that our peoples all have together and to use our power to make the world a better place, what a moment for all of us to be living, and an opportunity, a set of opportunities that should not be lost. And I would like to yield back to my friend from Indiana (Mr. Donnelly).

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank you for your words and compassion; and, in a similar vein, wish to place in the Record two letters that have been issued relating to this tragedy. One is from Stefan Wisniowski, who is the President of the Kresy-Siberia Foundation. This particular foundation is trying to virtually tell the history of the millions of Poles who were relocated during World War II from the eastern half of Poland and sent to concentration camps and labor camps in Siberia and points east as the Red Army assumed control of the eastern half of Poland. There were lives, hundreds of thousands upon thousands of lives lost. And he writes the following: What has happened is a black day for Poland and for her children around the world, including all of us at the Kresy-Siberia Foundation who are working for the remembrance and recognition of our collective history. Those who perished were all leaders in the nation's quest for remembrance and identity. Many were close friends of the Kresy-Siberia Foundation, and among those we have lost are two of the honorary patrons of the Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum: Ryszard Kaczorowski, the last Polish President-in-Exile, and Janusz Krupski, Ministry for Veterans and Repressed Peoples. Our first important backer, Mr. Maciejski, who's President of the Inota Polska, which is the Polish Union Association, who had the courage and vision to be the first major sponsor of our virtual museum and whose organization now hosts our office in Warsaw. He also says, Janusz Kurtyka, president of the Institute for National Remembrance, who headed one of our foundation's most important partners, Andrzej Przewoznik, who's Secretary overseeing the Council for the Protection of Memory of Struggle and Martyrdom, an important friend and collaborator of the Kresy-Siberia Foundation, and of course he references President Kaczynski and his wife, Maria, who were both aware and very supportive of the foundation's efforts. And then he recognized the scores of leaders of the Siberian Association, the Katyn Families Association, the Golgotha of the East Foundation, and all our friends and colleagues drawn to the common flame of Katyn and all lost in the flames of the presidential jet crash. The tragic irony of this circumstance is not lost on us. Like the cream of the Polish nation murdered 70 years ago and who the presidential party was en route to commemorate at Katyn, an entire leadership group of our nation has been lost to us. Literally, the entire chiefs of staff of the Army, Air Force, Navy have all perished, along with scores of parliamentarians, government officials, religious leaders, and historical activists like us. We Poles will recover, for as a nation we always have, but we have lost a strong core of our most passionate and historically aware patriots. We are in shock and mourning. Our thoughts and prayers are with the nation and with the families of those who lost their loved ones. May Poland and all her children around the world rally in unity at this tragic blow. And I would hope that the United States of America would take up the gauntlet and help Poland continue the effort to remember, to restore her archival collections, to try to make and honor those who lost their lives under such horrendous circumstances over 70 years ago, and that the ground that now is sacred because of additional lives lost as well as those in the past has special meaning in the world today, and that we need to remember and we need to account for every lost life. America can help in this cause. And another letter that was sent from Alex Storozynski, who's president and executive director of the Kosciuszko Foundation based in New York writes: ``Dear friends, ``As we mourn the loss of President Lech and Maria Kaczynski and their talented delegation of leaders, we must make sure that these deaths were not in vain. ``After a coverup, the Katyn Massacre which lasted for decades, today the truth about Katyn was on television and page 1 news around the world. ``As the anthem says, `Poland has not perished while we are alive.' ``President Kaczynski and his Cabinet presided over a period of prosperity, and today Poland has the 18th largest economy in the world, a free press where people can speak their minds, and a stable democratic system where voters elect their leaders. ``These are great strides made by our fatherland over the past 20 years and we should all be proud. So wherever you are, go visit a Polish Consulate, a Polish church, a Polish club, or a Polish cultural center and share your condolences. But remember to count your blessings as well.'' I thought that was a beautiful call to action here in the United States and abroad. Congressman Donnelly, please.

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank my colleagues who are joining us this evening, including Congressman Joe Donnelly of Indiana, as we begin this special order commemorating the Polish Nation during its days of deepest mourning and the magnificent people of that country. As we speak here tonight in this hour, in my home district of Toledo, Ohio, the Polish community has gathered for a memorial mass that began at St. Adalbert's Catholic Church at 6:30 p.m. They and we here tonight are united in solidarity with our Polish brothers and sisters halfway around the world. The Americans gathered tonight here in Congress, and in my home community, and the 9 million Americans of Polish descent across our Nation, in places as far flung as Chicago, Detroit, New York, Toledo, Las Vegas, in places like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and indeed in Colorado and Texas, from coast to coast Americans are united in our mourning and in the encouragement that we wish to share with the people of Poland in these dark hours. Today the House passed unanimously House Resolution 1246, originally introduced by Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper of Erie, Pennsylvania, another community with thousands of Polish Americans. And for that passage, the ambassador from Poland, Ambassador Robert Kupiecki, sat in the gallery as each vote ticked off. And it passed overwhelmingly, with over 400 votes. That was an exceptionally emotional moment for me, as we as a Nation mourn the death and terrible loss of life that the Nation of Poland is bearing. The resolution expresses its deepest sympathies to the people of Poland and the families of those who perished for their profound loss. The resolution expressed strong and continued solidarity with the people of Poland and all persons of Polish descent, and expressed unwavering support for the Polish Government as it works to overcome the loss of many of its key officials. And we know that Poland will prevail. It is important to place on the record also that the plane that crashed in the Katyn Forest, an area that embraces the collective tragedy of Poland's precious leaders. In the most morbid of ironies, the doomed plane was flying to Russia to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, when more than 22,000 Polish officers, intellectuals, leaders from all walks of life were summarily murdered at the hands of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Army in and around Katyn Forest during World War II. Their bodies were buried and the truth hidden for seven decades. That is the truth of their slaughter. That history still must be made whole. And I know that on May 5, in a strange twist of fate, at the Library of Congress, with the help of the Kosciuszko Foundation, there had been planned a special all-day seminar, which will continue, on the Katyn massacre. I think that it will be even more well attended than was originally anticipated. We thank the Library of Congress, its director, James Billington, and the Kosciuszko Foundation from New York for their presence and their leadership in this effort. Before I turn to my colleagues who are on the floor tonight, let me just read a brief poem called ``Buttons'' by Zbigniew Herbert. What it talks about is the original Katyn massacre and how little is known about it in the outside world, and what a responsibility we have to document what happened there. The poem is brief, but it reads as follows: They come from depths upon the surface The only tribute on their graves. They are attesting God will count Extend his mercy upon them. But how to raise from the dead If they're a clammy piece of earth. A bird flew over, a cloud is passing A leaf is dropping, a mallow grows Heavens above are filled with silence The Katyn Forest smokes with fog. Only the buttons did not yield Powerful voice of silenced choirs, Only the buttons did not yield Buttons from coats and uniforms. I would like to yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Donnelly) who was proudly here today to cast his vote for the resolution for such time as he may need.

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentleman for his very, very heartfelt remarks this evening and for taking time after such a busy day to pay tribute to the nation of Poland and the people of Poland and citizens from his district and for sharing their grief and for offering a word of hope and encouragement for the future. We thank you so very much for your participation.

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank Congressman Donnelly for joining us this evening, and Congressman Franks from Arizona, Congressman Donnelly from Indiana, Congresswoman Kaptur from Ohio. To all of our colleagues from across this country, and certainly from the Polish American Caucus here in the Congress--Congressman Lipinski, Congressman Dingell, Congressman Chris Murphy, Congressman Mike Quigley of Chicago, Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland, Ohio, Congresswoman Marcia Fudge of the same region--all of us are united in our common grief as well as common hope that the future of Poland in this millennium will be very bright, and America stands with you at this very historic moment. This is a black day for Poland and for her children around the world, including all of us at Kresy-Siberia who are working for the remembrance and recognition of our collective history. Those who perished today were all leaders in the Nation's quest for remembrance and identity. Many were close friends of the Kresy-Siberia Foundation, and among those we have lost are: Two of the Honorary Patrons of the Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum; Ryszard Kaczorowski, the last Polish President-in- Exile, and Janusz Krupski, Ministry for Veterans and Repressed Persons. Our first important backer, Maciejski, President of the ``lnota Polska'' (Polish Union) Association, who had the courage and vision to be the first major sponsor of our virtual museum and whose organization now hosts our office in Warsaw. Janusz Kurtyka, President of the Institute for National Remembrance, who headed one of our Foundation's most important Partners. Andrzej Przewonik, Secretary overseeing the Council for the Protection of Memory of Struggle and Marytdom, an important friend and collaborator of the Kresy-Siberia Foundation. President Kaczyski and especially Mrs. Kaczyska, who we met in Warsaw last September, who were both aware of and very supportive of Kresy-Siberia. Scores of leaders of the Siberian Association, the Katyn Families Association, the Golgotha of the East Foundation, and all our friends and colleagues drawn to the common flame of Katyn and all lost in the flames of the presidential jet crash. The tragic irony of this circumstance is not lost on us. Like the cream of the Polish nation murdered 70 years ago, and who the Presidential party was en route to commemorate at Katyn, an entire leadership group of our nation has been lost to us. Literally, the entire chiefs of staff of the Army, Air Force, and Navy have all perished. Along with scores of parliamentarians, government officials, religious leaders, and historical activists like us. We Poles will recover, for as a Nation we always have. But we have lost a strong core of our most passionate and historically aware patriots. We are in shock and mourning. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Nation and with the families of those who lost their loved ones. May Poland and all her children around the world rally in unity at this tragic blow. Stefan Wisniowski, Foundation President, Kresy-Siberia Foundation.

Ms. KAPTUR. As we think about what happened in Poland, we also experienced during this period now a peaceful transition of government. According to their constitution, as the Speaker of their Parliament, Bronislaw Komorowski assumed the office of President. And we can see through the magic of television thousands of Poles paying their respects to their lost President and First Lady in front of the Presidential Palace, and it's all peaceful in that great liberty loving land of Poland. And as the gentleman from Indiana has well stated, freedom-loving people who saw their nation wiped off the map of Europe for over a hundred years and then during World War II their nation partitioned and then the great struggle that they endured beginning with labor strikes during the 1950s in places like Poznan to begin to try to roll back that Iron Curtain, we are just so proud to be an ally of this great Nation of Poland. I yield to the fine Member from Arizona, Congressman Trent Franks, a leader in defense issues and so many other issues, who has come to the floor tonight to pay tribute.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, thank you for bringing this resolution to the floor. Madam Speaker, on Saturday, I was emailed by Stanley Kobylak, a leader of the Polish community in the Toledo, Ohio/Rossford area, informing me of this tragic situation. I rise in support of this important resolution, offering sympathy to the liberty-loving nation and people of the Republic of Poland, our great ally. Poland is one of America's longest and most steadfast allies from the time of our own Republic's founding, made possible by the valiance of Polish Generals Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kosciuszko. Poland's highest leaders, including its President and First Lady, Lech and Maria Kaczynski, were among the victims of that terrible crash as they wended their way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre when over 22,000 Polish officers, intellectuals and leaders were murdered at the hands of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Army in and around that forest during World War II. The truth of that slaughter was hidden for over 70 years, and now the entire world knows of that sacred ground. Madam Speaker, please allow me to extend condolences on behalf of my constituents in Ohio to the friends and families of those who perished, to the people of Poland, to the nation of Poland, and to the people of Polish heritage throughout the world. Let this moment be one of recommitment to Poland's highest aspirations and full expression of its own history. So long as we are alive, there will be a Poland.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, our country observed Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, this past Sunday, which recalls the global tragedy of state-sponsored systemic annihilation and persecution of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators as well as millions more deaths of people who were of Roma extraction, the disabled, Slavic peoples, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and potential dissidents. I would like to include in the Record an article from the Toledo Blade in our district, a front-page story last Sunday entitled ``Survivors Urge World to Never Forget Horror,'' which recounts the story of some of the heroic survivors in our district in Ohio. In our country, 150,000 to 170,000 survivors remain today. The horror of the Holocaust has affected countless souls across this globe. Our district is home to persevering survivors like Mrs. Clara Rona, whose words I will place in the Record today, and so many others who never should have had to make this sacrifice, but she remains a woman of hope. [From toledoblade.com, Apr. 11, 2010] Survivors Urge World To Never Forget (By Ryan E. Smith) Living through the Holocaust was one thing. Remembering it is another. Clara Rona still remembers the smell of human flesh being incinerated at Auschwitz, seeing smoke wafting through the air and knowing it was somebody's mother. She won't allow herself to forget a moment--not the beatings, the hunger, or the baby who was killed in a toilet in her presence. At age 89, the West Toledo woman still talks openly about the horrors of which humanity is capable. And yet. ``I wish I had dementia,'' she says, pleading in her Hungarian accent. ``I don't want to remember.'' Between 150,000 and 170,000 survivors of the Holocaust probably remain in this country, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and there are fewer than a dozen believed to live in the Toledo area. All face the same dilemma: How to balance the responsibility of being the last living threads to the systematic killing of 6 million Jews with the pain of memory. Today is Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. Now and in the days to come people will gather at events to urge the world, ``Never again! Never forget!'' But Rena Mann won't be among them. The 83-year-old has never opened up to anyone--not her late husband nor her children--about what she endured in two concentration camps during World War II. Maybe it's because it hurts too much. Or maybe it's because she's afraid the world doesn't want to know. ``Do people care?,'' the Sylvania Township woman asked. ``On the one hand I don't want it to be forgotten, and on the other hand I feel that people are really, in the future, not going to care.'' Pain and suffering Born in Berlin, Mrs. Mann was 12 and living in Poland when the war began. After her mother died of blood poisoning and her stepfather was trapped in a newly formed ghetto, she was sent to stay with family in another town. This was no death camp, but already the terror had begun. She remembers being awakened in the night and sent to the market to watch Jews being hanged. Their crime? Baking bread, which was forbidden. ``As an example they were hung, and we all had to watch it,'' Mrs. Mann said. Before she turned 14, Mrs. Maim was sent away to a factory and forced into slave labor. It was hard work involving water and spools of flax that left her fingers and feet frostbitten. Mostly what she remembers is the hunger. There was a bit of bread that was supposed to last three days and some potato soup at night that might not have any potato at all. ``We got, like we used to say, too much to die from and too little to exist,'' Mrs. Mann said. Two years later she moved to another camp, where she slept in an abandoned factory with broken windows, no water or privacy, and vicious guards who would kick and push. A Polish song written by her girlfriends still resounds in her head. It concludes: Who knows if I'll ever see / My mother's tender home. / This is a song of despair, / Of Jewish pain and suffering. ``That song is always with me and I don't want to take it with me to my grave,'' Mrs. Mann said. She never talked about the four years she spent in camps before being liberated in 1945. No one really asked. ``I am actually a coward,'' she said. ``It's true. Because I am pushing it away, or have been pushing it away.'' Maybe now, though, after all these years, the pain is far enough behind her that she can let it out. Eyewitnesses Mrs. Mann isn't alone in her hesitation, according to Arthur Berger, senior adviser at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. But as survivors continue to die at a rapid rate, it becomes more and more crucial to record their stories--in print or on video but also in person, he said. ``Nothing compares to a real person telling you about their own lives,'' Mr. Berger said. ``No one can replace the survivors. No one, can replace the eyewitnesses to history.'' Rolf Hess, 75, of Holland was one of those eyewitnesses, but he never spoke of what happened during the war until last year when a granddaughter interviewed him for a school project about his experience as an immigrant. ``That sort of opened up a can of worms on my part,'' he said. ``It has been in the past, and it still is, a very difficult thing.'' The native of Germany was not even 5 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. Yet he has vivid, emotional memories of being separated from his mother after they were taken to a camp and split up from his father. ``We were at a train station, just my mother and I,'' he said, voice cracking. ``That I remember. And she gave me a little book that I still have with some pertinent information, with my birth date.'' To this day he doesn't know what happened to his family. All he remembers is rummaging through garbage at a children's camp looking for food and being scared to death, even after escaping to America in 1942 with other children as a refugee. ``I can remember in Cleveland where I was out in the backyard and I heard an airplane and I scurried underneath a bench for protection,'' he said. Only recently has he started investigating his own past to fill in the gaps of his memory. ``I finally have come to grips with the whole situation,'' he said. `Dying in slow motion' For Dr. Aron Wajskol, 85, of West Toledo, the question has never been whether to share his horrible story--the way his starving father died in a ghetto, how his mother perished at the death camp Auschwitz, how he nearly succumbed to the bone-crushing work of concentration camps. For him, the question was how. How do you make someone understand what it was like? ``Its like describing being on the moon,'' the retired anesthesiologist said. ``Hearing about the facts and truly understanding the facts are different things.'' The son of a textile factory worker in central Poland, Dr. Wajskol remembers the restrictions that went into effect within days of Germany invading his country. His father's job was taken away. His school was closed. Jews were forbidden from using public transportation and forced to wear Stars of David to distinguish them from non-Jews. ``Many families who could afford [to] fled Europe,'' Dr. Wajskol said. ``Mine couldn't.'' Within months, the city's Jewish population was forced out of its homes and squeezed into a tiny ghetto. It had no sewer system and little running water. People were dying in the streets of starvation--Dr. Wajskol calls it ``dying in slow motion''--and corpses went unburied for days. ``Even in death it was suffering,'' said Dr. Wajskol, who was 17 at the time. His father was among those wasting away, and he eventually died of tuberculosis. All the while, Jew were rounded up and deported. At first for work, later for extermination. When Dr. Wajskol was taken to a labor camp in 1944, hauling around 110-pound sacks of cement while surviving on bits of bread actually seemed like a reprieve. ``At least death wasn't surrounding us,'' Dr. Wajskol said. ``We knew they needed us. We were productive for them.'' To keep himself going, Dr. Wajskol imagined that there would be an end to all of this one day, that he could go back to school, that he would see his mother and sister again. His sister managed to survive but had to watch her mother be sent to the gas chamber. This continued for 10 months until he was evacuated to the Buchenwald concentration camp due to the Soviet advance. After spending five days locked up in a crowded cattle car with no food or water, where he had no choice but to sit on a dead body, he was released to something even more frightening: SS guards with skulls on their caps, terrifying German shepherds, and the skeletal faces of the prisoners. ``It looked like a nightmare,'' he said. Here he learned the pain of standing for hours in the penetrating cold of winter without socks or underwear. In a subcamp where his first job was to even out rocks for a steam roller, he came to understand the Nazi goal of ``annihilation through work.'' Before long, he was on the move again, this time on foot to escape the approaching Americans. ``This was a real, real death march,'' Dr. Wajskol said. They marched through patches of snow from dawn until the evening, always under the watchful eye of the SS, who were ready to shoot the slow or weak. Still, Dr. Wajskol and a friend managed to escape, dashing into the forest and running until they were out of breath. Dr. Wajskol will never forget how he felt once the war was over. ``Feeling free after 5\1/2\ years of slavery, playing with death constantly, I can't describe it with normal language,'' he said. But he tries. He has told his story to high school students and traveled to his old home in Poland with his wife and son. ``In the beginning it was very hard to revive all these things,'' he said. ``[But] I strongly believe that it's important to talk about it, make people aware of it, because of the enormity of what happened.'' Trinity of terror As director of the Ruth Fajerman Markowicz Holocaust Resource Center of Greater Toledo, Hindea Markowicz knows about the importance of preserving this history. As the daughter-in-law of Holocaust survivors, she feels it too. ``I have worries because history in the schools is being taught so differently,'' she said. ``It's lucky if they have a paragraph included in the history books.'' The resource center, housed in the offices of the United Jewish Council of Greater Toledo in Sylvania, on the other hand, features hundreds of books and other educational materials. There are videos of local survivors and a book written by her father-in-law, Philip Markowicz, called My Three Lives, which includes his experiences during the Holocaust. It's one thing to read about these events in books, quite another to hear about them from someone in person. That's why Mr. Markowicz, 86, of Sylvania has told his tale and why Sylvania Township resident Al Negrin speaks to students in Florida, where he spends the winter. ``I talk because I want people to know what was going on, so they have a chance, if something happens again, to prevent it,'' said the 86-year-old from Greece. Mr. Negrin--whose mother, brother, and sister went with him to Auschwitz but were immediately sent to the crematorium-- recalls a trinity of terror: the German guard who stood threatening with a rifle butt, the civilian supervisor with a whip, and the fellow inmate in charge of the group armed with a stick. ``Everybody was yelling `Arbeit! Arbeit!' Work! Work! Work! If you stop for a while to take a breath, one of those three objects will come over your head.'' It was not sustainable and his father eventually succumbed while moving to another camp. It was just a week before the group was liberated. ``My father was weak, could not walk. I tried to get him with my shoulders but the German guard said `No, you can't do that because after a while then you'll be weak,' '' Mr. Negrin said. ``I left him in the side of the street. I kissed him good- bye, and that's the last time I saw him.'' `He never talks about it' Norman Gudelman, 78, went about sharing his story in another way. He wrote it down. It took more than six decades and some prodding from his wife, but he finally took his suffering and made it tangible. The result is a sprawling letter to his children on the occasion of his 75th birthday. It covers everything from his youth in modern-day Moldova to his escape to Palestine after the war to his arrival in America. Mr. Gudelman of Sylvania Township remembers being carefree as a youth, despite the anti-Semitism that was prevalent around him. His restaurant-owning parents shielded him from the world's hate, at least until the Soviets arrived in 1940, arresting and executing Jews and banishing others to Siberia. When Romanian forces returned in 1941 with the Germans, things were no better. ``Romanian soldiers came to our house, and ordered all the Jews out,'' Mr. Gudelman wrote in his letter. ``Start walking. Leave the home, the business, our possessions and go.'' He was 10 years old then. Today, Mr. Gudelman is happy to talk about his experience during the war, but there's a sense he'd prefer to defer to his written statement than relive-- yet again--what happened in too much detail. ``He never talks about it,'' said his wife, Fanny. ``I don't ask questions. I want it [to] come from him.'' When he does speak, Mr. Gudelman can tell you about how the group marched endlessly from one camp to another, begging for food when there was a chance to slip away. In the camps, they crowded into windowless rooms and slept on cement floors. ``They wanted to get rid of us,'' he said. It worked. He and his sister were orphaned within a year or two That may be what saved them. When the Soviets returned and chased the German and Romanian armies out, orphans were sent to ghettos to stay with Jewish families, Mr. Gudelman said. From there, he eventually made his way to the future state of Israel. Thanks to a relative in Toledo, Mr. Gudelman ultimately came here and became president of State Paper & Metal Co., Inc. He decided to write all this down for posterity, he said, because, ``sooner or later I'm going to forget, or sooner or later I'm going to pass away.'' His letter's massage is simple: ``Maybe in your lifetime you will read books about the unbelievable cruelty of those times. Believe them.'' Finding hope Then there's Mrs. Rona, who insists on picking away at the scabs of the past. ``I want to remind myself,'' she said. ``They say I'm a masochist--my friends, my psychologist.'' Her reminiscences rarely come without a few tears, but maybe it's for the best. ``When I'm crying, really it's good for me,'' she said. The only child of a butcher in Pecs, Hungary, Mrs. Rona wanted to be an art teacher, but those plans were scuttled when the Germans invaded. Her family was relocated from its large house, and at one point they were living in a stable. Later they were among those taken to Auschwitz, 80 people squeezed into each rail car. Mrs. Rona was 23--tough, young, and strong--but also naive. All she brought was a change of clothes and a bottle of cologne, which she used to wash her mother when she fainted. Mrs. Rona still regrets that she never traded the latter for water despite her mother's pleas. ``I feel guilty,'' she said. ``I cannot forgive myself.'' It was night when they arrived and they were divided into two lines. Her mother and aunt went to the left--``straight to the gas,'' Mrs. Rona said. Her father was transferred to another concentration camp and later died. Mrs. Rona divided her time between several camps and remembers it as a dazed experience. ``You think about food, but nothing else. You become like an animal,'' she said. ``One spoon of soup means one day's survival. ``There was electric wire. Some people ran into it because they couldn't take it and they got killed,'' she continued. Mrs. Rona, who found out after the war that she could not bear children, is certain that it is the result of her treatment during the war. None of the women in the camp menstruated, she said. When one woman gave birth to a child in the camp, Mrs. Rona said she was forced to be present as it was put in a toilet by fellow prisoners. Otherwise, both the mother and baby would have been executed, she said. When the camp was evacuated in April, 1945, as the end of the war approached, Mrs. Rona said she was in no shape for walking. Desperate, she and another woman hid in the rain under some bushes and simply waited for the group to head off before dawn. When she finally made her way to safety in Prague, Mrs. Rona estimates that she weighed about 50 pounds. She went back home hoping to find her father, but he was gone forever--along with more than 50 other family members. Only three cousins survived. ``I was so angry,'' she said. ``Still the anger, it's burned me.'' Even as she left for Palestine and made her way to Toledo, where she worked with children at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Toledo, that anger never left. How could it when there were mass killings in the former Yugoslavia? Rwanda? Darfur? ``I thought after, when we got freed, the world will be so beautiful. They'll learn,'' she said. ``They didn't because it's repeating the same things somewhere else in a different way.'' And yet. Mrs. Rona still speaks, making public her private hell. She does this because 65 years after the Holocaust she still has something that can offset the pain: Hope.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, this past Saturday, one of America's longest and strongest allies, the Republic of Poland, suffered a horrendous loss. A plane carrying 97 passengers crashed in Russia, including Polish President Lech Kaczynski; First Lady Maria Kaczynski; Ryszard Kaczorowski, who led a government in exile during the Communist era; Jerzy Szmajdzinski, the Deputy Speaker of Poland's Parliament; Aleksander Szczyglo, the head of the National Security Bureau; Adrrzej Kremer, the Deputy Minister of foreign affairs; Franciszek Gagor, the Army Chief of Staff; along with the president of Poland's National Bank, and a host of other public servants, including Anna Walentynowicz, the brave worker and opposition activist whose dismissal at the Gdansk shipyard in 1980 started the strike that led to the formation of solidarity. All modern leaders of the Polish nation, they were mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, proud Poles all, now lost to this life but not to history. But yet again, the Katyn forest embraces the collective tragedy of Poland's precious leaders. In the most morbid of ironies, the doomed plane was flying to Russia to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, when more than 22,000 Polish officers and leaders were murdered at the hands of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Army in and around that forest during World War II. Their bodies were buried and the truth hidden for seven decades. That is the truth of their slaughter. That history still must be made whole. As the former President of Poland, Lech Walesa, stated, the crash marked ``the second disaster after Katyn. They wanted to cut off our head there, and here the flower of our nation has already perished,'' he said, ``Buttons,'' a poem by Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert, written in memoriam of the Katyn massacre, contains one stanza which captures this modern-day tragedy as it does this Polish tragedy of 70 years ago for which it was originally penned. ``When only the metal buttons of the soldiers remain as they work their way to the Earth's surface from below, after decades where history has been masked. Now again a bird flew over, a cloud is passing, a leaf is dropping, a mallow grows, heavens above are filled with silence; the Katyn forest smokes with fog.'' However, as the smoke and fog clears the Katyn forest this time, Poland will stand and prevail as a stable democracy. After this tragedy, Poland again will be led by valiant Poles and will not be occupied by foreign nations. After an unimaginable loss of leadership such as this, a lesser country would crumble, but not Poland. As the Polish expression reminds us, ``So long as we are alive, there will be a Poland.'' The nation of Poland is free and strong today. Against a backdrop of oppression, partition and heartbreak, it has emerged as one of the most freedom-loving, vibrant countries in Europe. The United States stands in solidarity and support of her ally during this time of sorrow and mourning. The House of Representatives will honor the souls who were lost last week and remember those who were killed 70 years ago with a Special Order tomorrow. We extend our condolences to the friends and families of those who perished, to the people of Poland, to the nation of Poland, and to the people of Polish heritage throughout the world. This is a terrible catastrophe that brings to mind the many tragedies that have befallen Poland in the past. Yet, as we mourn, we must remember and honor what the Polish people have endured and overcome. They will do so again. We hold them in highest respect. And even through our tears, we can see clearly that Poland's best days are still ahead.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of affordable health insurance for all Americans. I rise in support of this historic legislation because affordable health care is really about life--about a healthier and more secure life for all Americans. This is about life--the life of a senior who can't afford prescription drugs, or a mother carrying a new life waiting to be born. This legislation says every American has the right to the dignity of a healthy life. Nothing more, nothing less. Its promise is true for all citizens, of all ages, from all walks of life. In that respect, it is profoundly American. It is most certainly about the millions of citizens in our nation who run small businesses and about their employees--who after all these years comprise over half the uninsured in our nation. These businesses embody the hopes and dreams of life in America. They are the engines of job growth, but after all these decades, they are treated like second class citizens. This bill is about women and children--the millions of women who have no health care and the millions of children who are born frail and weak because their mothers have no access to prenatal care and their fathers have no insurance. The March of Dimes tells us that every year, more than half a million American children are born underweight, one out of every eight children born premature, malnourished, and so many with disability. That should not happen in America. Our nation's insurance programs aren't meeting the market nor the promise of America. This legislation will help millions of women obtain health coverage and thus reduce abortion by enhancing broad coverage options for women's and children's health. It will vastly improve preventive care, more than double funds available to community health centers (including obstetric and gynecological care), and move America fully into this 21st century. No woman, no woman--including poor women, pregnant women, working women, single women, and nursing women--will be denied health insurance coverage. Mr. Speaker, the best anti-abortion bill we can pass is one that gives women and children a real chance through health insurance coverage that allows fragile life to come to term. This bill does that. It gives hope, to every family, to every woman to every child yet to be born. It says you have a right to be born. It provides for prenatal care during a woman's pregnancy, preventive care for newborns, funding to help pregnant and parenting teens and college students with assistance for basic necessities, as well as adoption tax credits. No family, no mother, no father will ever have to question again whether they can afford to bring a conceived child to term This bill is about a better life for seniors, too. By closing the doughnut hole, it makes sure they can afford the medicine they need to live healthy, independent lives. As the costs of insurance have risen, emptying the wallets of our neighbors, almost one in three Americans (87 million of our fellow citizens) went without health insurance for some period last year. We can do better in America. There is so much shifting in the marketplace, it is becoming less stable and reliable. Thousands more of our citizens are losing their insurance because they have lost their jobs as the unemployment epidemic rages throughout our nation. Even those with insurance, no matter how expensive or robust it might be, learn their coverage is not guaranteed nor continuous nor quality. Millions of hardworking Americans are denied coverage; charged an impossibly higher rate, or discriminated against because of a pre- existing condition. Family employer-sponsored health insurance increased 119 percent over the last decade. Small business premiums alone have risen 129 percent. Without reform, rates are projected to increase to $23,842 on average by 2020. This simply cannot continue; the system is broken. I can identify with the tens of millions of our fellow citizens who have no health insurance, over half of whom are either small business owners or their employees. When my brother, Steve, and I were growing up, our beloved, hardworking father, ``Kappy,'' had three heart attacks. He made the gut-wrenching decision to sell our small family market to go to work in an auto plant for one reason: to get health insurance for his wife, Anastasia, and their two children. He didn't even care about himself. I shall never forget that piercing experience: it is the story of millions upon millions of our fellow citizens excluded, priced out or eliminated from the insurance market place. In our parents' memory, the best jobs bill I can vote is one that takes the health insurance anxiety off the backs of small businesspeople across our nation. I do so today in our parents' memory. I have listened closely to the concerns of citizens in Ohio's Ninth Congressional District. There is passion on both sides. Some claim this legislation is unconstitutional. I respectfully disagree. To accept that argument is to say that Social Security is unconstitutional, or Medicare is unconstitutional, or veterans' benefits are unconstitutional, or the interstate highway system is unconstitutional. I believe that argument would tear apart the fabric of our Republic. Affordable health insurance reform is necessary to provide greater competition among available plans to cut the costs of doing business, reduce the share of government expenditures spent on health care, help our companies to be more competitive in the world market, unleash the entrepreneurial talents of the American people, and give peace of mind to the middle class, our seniors and others that everything they have worked for will not be taken away if they get sick. I have been touched by stories from constituents and I rise today in support of this historic bill for them: David owns a small business. In 1999, he offered health insurance to his 15 employees. Over the course of the next decade, his insurance premiums skyrocketed and he had to let some employees go. By 2007 he was down to three employees and could no longer provide insurance for them--or himself. Now uninsured, he recently suffered a heart attack. Health care expenses forced him to file for bankruptcy. Sad to say, his case is not all that unusual--health care costs are the leading cause of bankruptcy in America. Jeff changed jobs and was required to obtain different health insurance while his wife was mid-term in a pregnancy. The pregnancy was high risk, the birth was problematic, and the insurer, a ``health maintenance organization,'' an HMO, denied coverage not only for the mother's labor and delivery, but also their baby's conditions at birth. Lillian will reach her allowable Part D private drug plan coverage in March. She cannot afford to pay for her medicines, so she never climbs out of the ``doughnut hole'' to obtain coverage again. As a result, she will quit taking her prescription drugs for nine months, until the new year starts. As a result, she has been hospitalized. Mary has suffered from bipolar disorder since her twenties. She is now in her fifties. She is married, with a family. She has experienced many exacerbations of her illness and resulting hospitalizations. She reached the insurer's lifetime maximum when in her early forties. Since then, her family has had to pay her expenses. Susan is the director of a nonprofit organization that serves homeless families. The organization offers health insurance to employees, but the premium increase this year was 49%. Now the agency must choose between dropping insurance as an employee benefit or reducing services to the vulnerable families it serves. Meanwhile, the insurer posted record profits last year. Bob and Catherine were married for 53 years and raised six children. Catherine developed a chronic debilitating illness which worsened over time. Bob took care of her at home for nine years, using all of their savings and having to sell their house. Cassandra is a12-year-old girl with juvenile diabetes. Since her diagnosis as a toddler, her parents have been unable to obtain health care coverage even though they could afford to pay for it. They must pay all her health expenses out of pocket. They live in a small apartment. Aaron is 14. He has a failing liver and has needed a liver transplant for five years. His mom could not work because she had to care for him. The family has no health care coverage. Though the hospital absorbed much of the cost for his care and treatment, the family held fundraisers through the years to pay for his transplant and the health care which has subsequently followed. All of us are familiar with the spaghetti dinners, and benefit dances, and silent auctions to help families in similar circumstances. Heroic compassionate people rise to the occasion in communities across our nation, but often it simply is not enough. For too long, the health of our nation has dwindled--indeed the U.S. ranks behind over a dozen major nations in health outcomes--while the pockets of the insurance giants have thickened. Insurance companies raise rates and deny coverage to pay their CEOs excessive salaries and bonuses. WellCare and Aetna's executives, for example, received between $18 and $23 million dollars alone in 2008. Despite wanting to increase premiums recently for individuals by 39 percent, WellPoint's executives, which is an insurance provider in the state of Ohio where I represent, received over $8.6 million. Our seniors have compromised prescription drugs for necessary groceries, while the insurance and pharmaceutical industries have made record profits. Hard working families have watched their savings plummet and their homes foreclosed after unexpected illnesses. Women with breast cancer, men with heart disease and children with leukemia or childhood diabetes have been flat-out denied health insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions or reaching insurance policy caps. With the mounting economic strain on American families and the rising costs of health insurance to workers, businesses and the federal budget, the status quo has proven itself unsustainable, fiscally irresponsible and morally unacceptable. The time has come for this historical change. The bill before us pays for itself and actually brings revenues back to the health system as a result of the combination of added competition and better use of the health dollar. I stand in support of its promise to the American people--the promise of a better and healthier life for all in this blessed land.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentlewoman from California, Congresswoman Woolsey, for calling us together tonight on such an important topic and rise to speak for decent health insurance for all of our people as essential to respecting life, to preserving life, and to protecting life from the very beginning to the very end. The health system we have now does not adequately respect, protect, or preserve life. In fact, America doesn't even rank in the top 12 of global nations in terms of the quality of our health care. That is truly shocking. Yet we spend enormous amounts of money, and yet so many people are left out. There's not time to talk about all of them tonight in 5 minutes, so I am pleased to join my colleagues in focusing on women and children of this great Nation who need health care reform. In our country, every year, more than a half million, 530,000 babies, one out of every eight, are born premature in our country. Premature birth is the leading cause of newborn death and a major cause of lifelong disability. These outcomes are morally wrong, and they are ultimately very expensive, very expensive to our society, most expensive to those children. The March of Dimes reports that, in 2008, more than 20 percent of American women of childbearing age, more than one-fifth, 12.4 million American women, were uninsured. They also report that uninsured women receive fewer prenatal services and report greater difficulty in obtaining needed preventive care than women with insurance. Ohio, the State that I represent, is among the worst States for its premature birth rate. The primary reason for this is because we have among the highest rates of uninsured women. If we think about some of the most gruesome aspects of what happens, in 2006, which was the most recent study conducted in the United States by the Centers for Disease Control, in our country, 846,181 abortions were reported. Studies have shown that for approximately three out of four women who have an abortion, their belief is they cannot afford a child, and that was one of the key reasons for having to make that life-changing decision. Economic hardship, lack of access to health insurance and to health care, and even the lack of medicines all play a part in the gruesome number of abortions and premature births in our country. The women of our Nation, the children of our Nation, all people of our Nation deserve a better chance. The bill that's working its way to the floor will ban preexisting conditions and help expand coverage and access to women's health care, prenatal health care, to all of our people. It provides financial assistance surely to women who want to bring their baby to term or put the child up for adoption but fear they simply cannot afford it. What a terrible choice that must be for any woman. We know that the bill before us will improve community health clinics. In so many of our communities, they are the only lifelines to any health care at all. Importantly, the bill that is moving to the floor intends to leave no one out, even the smallest among us, even the most voiceless among us. The bill we will soon consider has some fine points yet to be perfected. There is no question that for women and children, finally, all will have access to decent health care coverage, and it will be a great day in America when that will be possible. All of us have situations in our own families where we have seen relatives grow older. This was certainly the case in our family, and without Medicare our grandmother would have had a very different end. Lyndon Johnson gave her dignity. All the Democrats and some Republicans who created that program in the House back in those days made the end of her life one with dignity. We would hope that that would be the case for all of America's families, the beginning of life to the end of life. I thank the women of the House and Congresswoman Woolsey for making this evening possible.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, man of the House. The passing from this life of legendary Pennsylvania Congressman and Defense Appropriation Chairman and Marine Colonel John P. ``Jack'' Murtha truly represents a seismic shift in this Congress and in our Nation's history. His acumen, brass-tacks style, and man-of-his-word reputation are so rare. As the longest-serving woman in the current U.S. House, I came to know Jack Murtha well, serving with him for 28 years. In early February, he became the longest-serving member of the Pennsylvania delegation in U.S. history. No one had his grasp of our Nation's defense or his dexterity at ushering the complicated Defense Appropriation bill, the largest in Congress, with nearly unanimous bipartisan support. Jack put the soldier first. Each branch of the service, plus the Guard and Reserve, owe Jack great gratitude. He was indefatigable in their cause. Jack Murtha respected the awesome power of the U.S. military, but he also knew its limits. I have never served in this Congress when Jack Murtha wasn't here. Properly, a U.S. flag flown over this Capitol has been placed on his chair in the Pennsylvania corner where he anchored his work on the floor of this House that he loved. His knowledge, leadership, measure, and tutelage remain timeless gifts to those who shared his path. As the first Democratic woman to serve on the Defense Subcommittee of Appropriations, I can attest, it never would have happened but for his support and encouragement. For his faith in me, I shall always be in his debt as I try to emulate his acuity, his range, and his concern. We, his subcommittee colleagues, who had the privilege of serving most closely with this giant of a man shall miss him greatly. When my constituents ask me to describe him, here's what I try to say in his cadence: Man of the House. Marine. Chairman. Colonel. Dean. Authentic. Patriotic. Semper fi. Fearless. Keen. Optimistic. Jovial. With an unforgettable glint in his eyes. Alive. Devoted husband to Joyce, and proud and caring father and grandfather. To his family, we send our deepest sympathy and our abiding prayers and friendship. Son of Johnstown. Rough hewn. Battle tested. Two Purple Hearts. A Bronze Star. Not blow dried nor cosmetic. Fiercely loyal to his district and Pennsylvania. In command. Extraordinarily hard working. Kept Marine hours, rising early, arriving early. Always building others. Trusted. Never gave a word he would break. If he said, I'll talk to you about it later, the subject was closed before you knew it. Acute judge of character. Revered counselor to dozens and dozens and dozens of Members and friends. In few golden but choice words, he advised, critiqued, led. Don't mess with him. Absolutely loved politics. A ticket maker and analyzer. Lots of real friends. Some really cruel enemies. Always had a good word. An author. Well-traveled, too, often to war zones. Visited the wounded and bore that pain close to his heart. New ideas and insights captivated him. Razor sharp mind. Don't tangle with him unless you know your subject. Memory that could recall votes 10 years ago, and who voted which way. Master of the rules. Wielded the gavel with authority and certitude. Attentive to the floor at all times, even when you thought he wasn't paying attention. Possessed all the attributes to be Speaker, except he came from the working class of people and didn't hail from a financial or government enclave. Madam Speaker, he instinctively knew how to build a majority. He had lived war, and his heart was always with the soldier. A giant tree has fallen in the forest. A lion is now at rest. How fortunate we are to cherish his friendship and service. America's defense is the best in the world because Chairman Jack Murtha lived to leave that legacy. The passing from this life of legendary Pennsylvania Congressman and Defense Appropriations Chairman and Marine Colonel John P. ``Jack'' Murtha truly represents a seismic shift in our Nation's history. His acumen, brass-tacks style and man-of-his-word reputation are so rare. As the longest-serving woman in the current U.S. House of Representatives, I came to know Jack Murtha well, serving with him 28 years. In early February he became the longest-serving Congressman in Pennsylvania history. He took it upon himself to guide young Members of Congress, particularly if their districts mimicked the hardscrabble nature of his own. As representative of the Ninth Congressional District of Ohio, which extends along the Lake Erie shoreline from Toledo almost to Cleveland, I had invited Jack to our job-challenged region many times. In fact, he was scheduled to open the national rifle matches at Camp Perry this spring. Jack Murtha was legendary. He never forgot where he came from. He tirelessly served his district and his constituents. He grew to serve our Nation and his reach was global. No one had his grasp of our Nation's defense or his dexterity at ushering the complicated defense appropriations bill, the largest in Congress, with nearly unanimous bipartisan support. Jack put the soldier first. His unheralded visits to military hospitals to visit the sick and wounded were not designed as photo ops but as heartfelt expressions of appreciation for those who served on the front lines and sacrificed for us. Every soldier knew he understood. Each branch of the service, plus the Reserve and National Guard, owes Jack Murtha a debt of gratitude. He was indefatigable in their cause. In Toledo, our 180th F-16 Fighter Wing is genuinely the best in the world. Why? Because Jack Murtha helped to build its capability. I daresay he attended to all 435 congressional districts with the same diligence. Our Guard and Reserve units were modernized with improved pay and benefits because he knew their importance: he advised America cannot conduct successful operations without them. America's blood supply is more robust and deliverable because he fought for it. New weapons, materiel, and technologies are underway in every service branch because Jack knew that some generals tend to fight the last war, so he purposely worked in the future. Jack Murtha respected the awesome power of the U.S. military, but he also knew its limits. I have never served in Congress when Jack Murtha wasn't here. Properly, a U.S. flag has been placed on his chair in the ``Pennsylvania Corner,'' where he anchored his work on the floor of the House of Representatives and will remain unoccupied by those who held him in esteem. His knowledge, leadership, measure, and tutelage remain timeless gifts to those who shared his path. As the first Democratic woman to serve on the defense subcommittee of Appropriations, I can attest it would never have happened but for his support and encouragement. For his faith in me, I shall always be in his debt as I try to emulate his acuity, range and concern. We, his subcommittee colleagues, who had the privilege of serving most closely with this giant of a man, shall miss him greatly. When my constituents ask me to describe him, here is what I say in his cadence: Jack. Authentic. Patriotic. Man of the House. Marine. Chairman. Colonel. Dean. Semper fi. Fearless. Keen. Optimistic. Jovial. With an unforgettable glint in his eyes. Alive. Devoted husband to Joyce and proud and caring father and grandfather. Son of Johnstown. Rough hewn. Battle Tested. 2 Purple Hearts. A Bronze Star. Not blow dried nor cosmetic. Fiercely loyal to his district and Pennsylvania. In command. Extraordinarily hard working. Kept Marine hours, rising early, arriving early. Always building others. Trusted. Never gave a word he would break. If he said, I'll talk to you about it later, the subject was closed before you knew it. Acute judge of character. Revered counselor to dozens and dozens of Members and friends. In few golden but choice words, he advised, critiqued, led. Defended his subcommittee's prerogatives. Don't mess with him. Absolutely loved politics. A ticket maker and analyzer. Lots of real friends. Some really cruel enemies. Always had a good word. Liked bright colors on others. Extraordinarily gifted. Well read. An author. Well traveled too, often to war zones. Visited the wounded and bore that pain close to his heart. Quite curious. New ideas and insights captivated him. Capable of independent views. Razor sharp mind. Don't tangle with him unless you know your subject. Memory that could recall votes from 10 years ago, and who voted which way. Master of the Rules. Wielded the gavel with authority and certitude. Attentive to the Floor at all times even when you thought he wasn't paying attention. A coach. Possessed all the attributes to be Speaker, except he came from the working class of people and didn't hail from a financial or government enclave. Not a trust fund baby nor into the cocktail circuit. Self made. Fair. Precise. Garrulous. Politically savvy. Strong, Unflinching. Always humorous, throwing his head back with a sincere laugh, and ``is that so?'' A brusque manner that didn't suffer fools gladly. Regularly reached across the aisle. Consistently passed his bills with nearly unanimous support. He instinctively knew how to build a majority. Lived war. Heart always with the soldier. Loyal disciple of Speaker Tip O'Neill and the common man. Soul buddies with twinkles in their eyes. Cussing occasionally. But a good word always. A giant tree has fallen in the forest. A lion is now at rest. How fortunate are we who cherish his friendship and service. We loved him and will deeply miss him. America's defense is the best in the world because Chairman Jack Murtha lived to leave that legacy.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the economic pain in the Midwestern region of our country is not subsiding in any meaningful way. Approximately 600,000, over half a million Americans, are out of work in just our State alone and over 20 million Americans across our country. In our district, one county, Ottawa County, is suffering from an unemployment rate that exceeds 17 percent, and just yesterday another one of its largest employers, Silgan, announced it would close its plant. There have been approximately 27,000 bankruptcies in just one county in my district. Bankruptcy is a desperate act, an act taken only when you see no other alternative. Today's New York Times talks about desperate measures that homeowners across our country are now taking. The front page article describes the growing number of Americans who are ``under water'' on their mortgages and the steps they are taking to cope with that situation. Being under water means you owe more on the house than it's worth. More and more homeowners who are under water are taking the desperate act of walking away from their homes, even in the winter. When the real estate market started sinking in the middle of 2006, almost no Americans were under water on their mortgages. Now 3 years later, an estimated 4.5 million homeowners have reached what The Times calls ``the critical threshold'' where the home's value had fallen below 75 percent of the mortgage balance. Frankly, as I predicted, the mortgage workout programs hastily adopted by this Congress are not working for the majority of Americans. Some would say this is purposeful to allow the five big Wall Street megabanks to further gain ownership over huge segments of the U.S. real estate market. The New York Times cites recent data that suggests the real estate market is stalling again, and the number of people who have fallen below this critical threshold is projected to climb to a peak of 5.1 million people by June. Mr. Speaker, the figure would represent 10 percent of all Americans with mortgages: one in 10. This is unacceptable in America. And without improvement in the housing market, America is unlikely to see improvement in the overall economy because housing always leads us to recovery. All of us are anxious to see more economic growth. The most recent gross domestic product showed that the American economy overall had grown at the fastest pace in 6 years, certainly better than the lost jobs of the Bush era. But now economists are saying that we're headed for a jobless recovery. That is unacceptable. Economist Peter Morici states that we will need 5 to 6 percent growth over the next 3 years to replace the jobs that have been lost during the recession, and Raymond Hodgdon, in his economic report out of Chicago, suggests the same number. Our Nation got to these desperate times through the financial crisis. Our economy essentially functions on credit, and much of our credit was created through the securitization of loans which should lead to a discussion of the shadow banking system, a secretive, opaque netherworld where fraud can thrive even as it devastates the entire country. Equally in the shadows is the Federal Reserve. Last week we had a hearing in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee with Secretary Geithner of Treasury on his role as president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank during the AIG bailout. The Secretary stated he had recused himself from such activities as the bailout of AIG once he was nominated as Secretary of the Treasury. But when I asked him for his recusal agreement for the record, he stated that there was no documentation. No recusal agreement exists--nothing legal, no waiver, nothing. He made decisions, and only he is accountable for them. There was a gasp in the room. Beyond the shadowland of our Nation's financial system, our small community banks are struggling as bad loans from commercial and residential real estate continue to plague our financial system. The small community banks that have survived are trying to lend to small businesses which are the main engine of our economy, but they cannot do so if the big banks are holding credit hostage. And turning to TARP is not the answer for our community banks because it isn't Treasury's job to pick winners and losers in the commercial marketplace. That should be a market function. The end result is that small businesses are dying too. The small community banks cannot loan to local small business. Without access to credit, small business is letting people go, too; and they're becoming unemployed. And meanwhile, the Wall Street banks are just getting bigger, using Federal money to gain an edge on their competition. Mr. Speaker, this situation is simply unacceptable, and it's time for Congress to rework legislation to allow people to stay in their homes and to begin creating jobs in this country so we can actually bring the deficit down as people pay their taxes to the Treasury of the United States. [From the New York Times, Feb. 3, 2010] No Help in Sight, More Homeowners Walk Away (By David Streitfeld) In 2006, Benjamin Koellmann bought a condominium in Miami Beach. By his calculation, it will be about the year 2025 before he can sell his modest home for what he paid. Or maybe 2040. ``People like me are beginning to feel like suckers,'' Mr. Koellmann said. ``Why not let it go in default and rent a better place for less?'' After three years of plunging real estate values, after the bailouts of the bankers and the revival of their million- dollar bonuses, after the Obama administration's loan modification plan raised the expectations of many but satisfied only a few, a large group of distressed homeowners is wondering the same thing. New research suggests that when a home's value falls below 75 percent of the amount owed on the mortgage, the owner starts to think hard about walking away, even if he or she has the money to keep paying. In a situation without precedent in the modern era, millions of Americans are in this bleak position. Whether, or how, to help them is one of the biggest questions the Obama administration confronts as it seeks a housing policy that would contribute to the economic recovery. ``We haven't yet found a way of dealing with this that would, we think, be practical on a large scale,'' the assistant Treasury Secretary for financial stability, Herbert Allison Jr., said in a recent briefing. The number of Americans who owed more than their homes were worth was virtually nil when the real estate collapse began in mid-2006, but by the third quarter of 2009, an estimated 4.5 million homeowners had reached the critical threshold, with their home's value dropping below 75 percent of the mortgage balance. They are stretched, aggrieved and restless. With figures released last week showing that the real estate market was stalling again, their numbers are now projected to climb to a peak of 5.1 million by June--about 10 percent of all Americans with mortgages. ``We're now at the point of maximum vulnerability,'' said Sam Khater, a senior economist with First American CoreLogic, the firm that conducted the recent research. ``People's emotional attachment to their property is melting into the air.'' Suggestions that people would be wise to renege on their home loans are at least a couple of years old, but they are turning into a full-throated barrage. Bloggers were quick to note recently that landlords of an 11,000-unit residential complex in Manhattan showed no hesitation, or shame, in walking away from their deeply underwater investment. ``Since the beginning of December, I've advised 60 people to walk away,'' said Steve Walsh, a mortgage broker in Scottsdale, Ariz. ``Everyone has lost hope. They don't qualify for modifications, and being on the hamster wheel of paying for a property that is not worth it gets so old.'' Mr. Walsh is taking his own advice, recently defaulting on a rental property he owns. ``The sun will come up tomorrow,'' he said. The difference between letting your house go to foreclosure because you are out of money and purposefully defaulting on a mortgage to save money can be murky. But a growing body of research indicates that significant numbers of borrowers are declining to live under what some waggishly call ``house arrest.'' Using credit bureau data, consultants at Oliver Wyman calculated how many borrowers went straight from being current on their mortgage to default, rather than making spotty payments. They also weeded out owners having trouble paying other bills. Their estimate was that about 17 percent of owners defaulting in 2008, or 588,000 people, chose that option as a strategic calculation. Some experts argue that walking away from mortgages is more discussed than done. People hate moving; their children attend the neighborhood school; they do not want to think of themselves as skipping out on a debt. Doubters cite a Federal Reserve study using historical data from Massachusetts that concludes there were relatively few walk-aways during the 1991 bust. The United States Treasury falls into the skeptical camp. ``The overwhelming bulk of people who have negative equity stay in their homes and keep paying,'' said Michael S. Barr, assistant Treasury secretary for financial institutions. It would cost about $745 billion, slightly more than the size of the original 2008 bank bailout, to restore all underwater borrowers to the point where they were breaking even, according to First American. Using government money to do that would be seen as unfair by many taxpayers, Mr. Barr said. On the other hand, doing nothing about underwater mortgages could encourage more walk- aways, dealing another blow to a fragile economy. ``It's not an easy area,'' he said. Walking away--also called ``jingle mail,'' because of the notion that homeowners just mail their keys to the bank, setting off foreclosure proceedings--began in the Southwest during the 1980s oil collapse, though it has never been clear how widespread it was. In the current bust, lenders first noticed something strange after real estate prices had fallen about 10 percent. An executive with Wachovia, one of the country's biggest and most aggressive lenders, said during a conference call in January 2008 that the bank was bewildered by customers who had ``the capacity to pay, but have basically just decided not to.'' (Wachovia failed nine months later and was bought by Wells Fargo. ) With prices now down by about 30 percent, underwater borrowers fall into two groups. Some have owned their homes for many years and got in trouble because they used the house as a cash machine. Others, like Mr. Koellmann in Miami Beach, made only one mistake: they bought as the boom was cresting. It was April 2006, a moment when the perpetual rise of real estate was considered practically a law of physics. Mr. Koellmann was 23, a management consultant new to Miami. Financially cautious by nature, he bought a small, plain one-bedroom apartment for $215,000, much less than his agent told him he could afford. He put down 20 percent and received a fixed-rate loan from Countrywide Financial. Not quite four years later, apartments in the building are selling in foreclosure for $90,000. ``There is no financial sense in staying,'' Mr. Koellmann said. With the $1,500 he is paying each month for his mortgage, taxes and insurance, he could rent a nicer place on the beach, one with a gym, security and valet parking. Walking away, he knows, is not without peril. At minimum, it would ruin his credit score. Mr. Koellmann would like to attend graduate school. If an admission dean sees a dismal credit record, would that count against him? How about a new employer? Most of all, though, he struggles with the ethical question. ``I took a loan on an asset that I didn't see was overvalued,'' he said. ``As much as I would like my bank to pay for that mistake, why should it?'' That is an attitude Wall Street would like to encourage. David Rosenberg, the chief economist of the investment firm Gluskin Sheff, wrote recently that borrowers were not victims. They ``signed contracts, and as adults should also be held accountable,'' he wrote. Of course, this is not necessarily how Wall Street itself behaves, as demonstrated by the case of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. An investment group led by the real estate giant Tishman Speyer recently defaulted on $4.4 billion in debt that it had used to buy the two apartment developments in Manhattan, handing the properties back to the lenders. Moreover, during the boom, it was the banks that helped drive prices to unrealistic levels by lowering credit standards and unleashing a wave of speculative housing demand. Mr. Koellmann applied last fall to Bank of America for a modification, noting that his income had slipped. But the lender came back a few weeks ago with a plan that added more restrictive terms while keeping the payments about the same. ``That may have been the last straw,'' Mr. Koellmann said. Guy D. Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance magazine, says he does not hear much sympathy from lenders for their underwater customers. ``The banks tell me that a lot of people who are complaining were the ones who refinanced and took all the equity out any time there was any appreciation,'' he said. ``The banks are damned if they will help.'' Joe Figliola has heard that message. He bought his house in Elgin, IL, in 2004, then refinanced twice to get better terms. He pulled out a little money both times to cover the closing costs and other expenses. Now his place is underwater while his salary as circulation manager for the local newspaper has been cut. ``It doesn't seem right that I can rent a place somewhere for half of what I'm paying,'' he said. ``I told my bank, `Just take a little bite out of what I owe. That would ease me up. Isn't that why the President gave you all this money?' '' Bank of America did not agree, so Mr. Figliola, who is 48, sees no recourse other than walking away. ``I don't believe this is the right thing to do,'' he said, ``but I've got to survive.''

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, this year we remember the 65th Anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by U.S. Armed Forces. After Auschwitz opened in 1940 the Nazi army wasted little time in rounding up Polish prisoners for imprisonment at this killing field. Auschwitz-Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, was the largest killing center of all. SS authorities established it in the spring of 1942. It was not subordinated to the regional SS, but was part of the SS Economic-Administration Main Office. ``Block 10'' was where the Nazis, including Mengele, the ``Angel of Death,'' conducted unspeakable medical experiments on prisoners and ``Block 11'' was where people were lined up against a wall and shot. Before the death camp's liberation on January 27, 1945, almost a million Jews from Poland and adjoining nations died there along with 21,000 Roma (gypsies) and countless homosexuals, communists and Soviet and Ukrainian POWs. At least 75,000 Poles were summarily executed. When all acts of horror ceased, the Nazis had murdered 1.1 million people at this site. Mr. Marian Wojciechowski, a constituent and lifelong friend of mine, is a survivor of Auschwitz and Block 11. He served as an officer in the Polish cavalry and bravely fought Nazi tanks as they rolled into his homeland of Poland near the Czech border as World War II began on September 1, 1939. He and colleagues in his unit fought with such valor against the invaders they were awarded Poland's highest military medal, the Virtuti Militari. On September 17, 1939, while in battle on the eastern front against the Soviet Army, he received a bullet wound to the head--but Marian survived. For two years, Marian joined as a member of the Polish Underground Resistance (Armia Krajowa), which worked closely with British and Polish intelligence to defeat the Nazis. Their bravery and sacrifice made them a prime target for the German Gestapo. He was captured and taken to Auschwitz when a letter from a member of the Underground Resistance addressed to him was intercepted by the Germans. While a prisoner at Radom and then Auschwitz, Marian was brutally beaten, tortured, and subjected to nightmarish conditions. He became very ill and survived serious illness, even typhus. At times, he was beaten so severely that he would lose consciousness. The Nazis would revive him by pouring buckets of water on his head, and once he regained his senses, the Nazis would beat him some more to gain information about the Underground--but miraculously Marian survived. Marian, now 95 years of age and commissioned as Lieutenant in the Polish Cavalry this past August during WWII commemorative ceremonies at Mokra, Poland, has described some of the horrific acts that he witnessed in that horrible place. Amazingly Mr. Wojciechowski did what 1.1 million innocents were unable to do--he survived Auschwitz. He has taken it upon himself to be a keeper of the flame of historical remembrance as contained in the book, ``Seven Roads to Freedom''. His is a story of exceptional resilience, strength and the triumph of the human spirit, and love of liberty. As we reflect on the horrors of World War II, the Holocaust, and the Auschwitz concentration camp we honor and remember stories like his, mourn the stories which were never told, and reflect on the price of freedom.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the single most important concern for Americans throughout our Nation is the vast and growing rate of joblessness. This is not difficult to understand. Bob Herbert asked in a recent New York Times column, ``How loud do alarm bells have to ring?'' More than 15 million Americans--more than 1 in 10 people--are out of work. Another 15 million people are underemployed or have quit looking. That means that over 30 million Americans want to work but cannot find the job they want. More people join their ranks every single day. Worse, 4 in 10 unemployed workers have been jobless for 27 weeks or longer. Yes, we have a jobs crisis in our country, and it's everybody's number one issue. That's why I joined with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to form the Congressional Jobs Now Caucus, to keep the focus where it needs to be. That's why I sponsored bills to create jobs in America to stem our rising trade deficits and to bring justice to Wall Street, which has shut down normal lending across this country, contributing to the jobs crisis. Job creation is not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue. We are all in this together. Last month, Toledo, a city I represent, lost an additional 1,200 jobs. Added to the yearly tally, more than 38,600 individuals, or 11.8 percent of the city's population, are without work. The unemployment rate in the adjoining rural Ottawa County, also in our district, is now over 17 percent. Again, these are official numbers which did not include those who have part-time jobs and need more hours or those who have simply given up because there are no jobs to be had. Job creation is not just an urban issue. The damage has spread to the suburbs of our country, and no one is safe from the jobs hemorrhage. In fact, a recent study by the Brookings Institute, as examined by Mr. Herbert in his article, found that the largest and fastest-growing population of poor people in the United States are in the suburbs. The number of poor people in our country grew by 5.2 million when President Bush was President between 2002 and 2008, and more than 90 million Americans--90 million; that's a third of our country--are living on less than $21,834 for a family of four. The alarm bells are roaring. At the same time, the basic goodness and generosity of the American people remains one of our greatest strengths. Through it all, the American people remain compassionate and caring. Last weekend, a local television station in our region organized a telethon for relief to Haiti. Even with double-digit unemployment and great economic uncertainty, the people of our community opened their hearts to the people they've never seen in a country most of them have never visited and donated tens of thousands of dollars to that end. For our community and our country, the first alarm bells started ringing with the empty promises and rapid failure of NAFTA as it outsourced jobs everywhere, certainly to Mexico. The next alarm bell rang every time another trade deal came down the pike that took more of our jobs that used to exist in this country and doled them out to every undemocratic place in the world. You can't make televisions in our country anymore--not a single one is made here--or clothing, or cars, or electrical parts, or even toys. More and more, even our food is being imported. You mean we are falling behind in even that? There was plenty of warning, but big business and big money insisted on the right to seek out the lowest common denominator in the most undemocratic places, and they found it in China, in Mexico, in Bangladesh, in Pakistan, in Guatemala and every poor, undemocratic place where penny-wage workers are treated like the expendable pieces of equipment that they work with. In our country, now we need those jobs because people without jobs can't pay mortgages. They can't pay their health insurance. They can't buy cars. They can't plan for their children's future or even get enough food and clothing to meet their families' needs. Unemployment also means our Federal deficits rise as people can't pay their way forward. Unemployment and COBRA benefits are running out. State funds are depleted. Our private charities are overwhelmed. The American people need work and they need good jobs. It's really that simple. We simply can't rest until we get our economy back on track and create jobs for everyone who wants to work. I hope it is to this subject--the economy and job creation--that President Obama will direct his address tomorrow night. We know that under President Bush we were hemorrhaging 734,000 jobs when he left at the end of his term, and though we haven't been losing as many jobs, now is the time during this fiscal year where we need to do more for our people to put them back to work, to use that productive energy to help pull our country forward rather than allow her to continue to fall behind, and that begins with work for every single American who needs a job.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, here is something that will grab you. It was reported this month that Goldman Sachs, the favored Wall Street firm that has way too much special access in this city and that got bailed out by the American people to the tune of billions and is now handing those over in bonuses to their executives, has paid a net effective tax rate of 1 percent. You heard me right--1 percent, Goldman Sachs. When most small businesses and corporations in this country are paying at a 35 percent tax rate, Wall Street's elites still don't carry their fair share. Imagine that secretaries, nurses, firefighters, cleaning crews--the middle class of this country--pay at a higher rate than Goldman Sachs. Meanwhile, the chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Lloyd Blankfein, harvested over $140 million in salary as head of that firm. When he was asked, Well, isn't this a bit too much? His answer was that he's doing God's work. I call that blasphemy. This is fundamental economic injustice in America, and the American people know it. They're voting their frustration. They expect Congress to listen to them, not to continue to reward Wall Street's overprivileged scions at their expense. Bill Moyers Journal (By Bill Moyers) The ancient Romans had a proverb: ``Monday is like sea water. The more you drink, the thirstier you become.'' That adage finds particular meaning today on Wall Street, which began this New Year riding a tidal wave of bonuses in a surging ocean of greed. Thanks to taxpayers like you who generously bailed banking from the financial shipwreck it created for itself and for us, by the end of 2009 the industry's compensation pool reached nearly $200 billion. And despite windfall profits, the banks will claim almost $80 billion in tax deductions. And nearly $20 billion of those deductions will go to just three institutions--Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs. Ah, yes--Goldman Sachs, that paragon of profit and probity--which bet big on the housing bubble and when it popped--presto!--converted itself from an investment firm into a bank so it could get your bailout money. Now consider this: In 2008, Goldman Sachs paid an effective tax rate of just one percent. I'm not making that up--one percent!--while their CEO Lloyd Blankfein pulled down over $40 million. That's God's work, if you can get it. And, believe me, Wall Street bankers know how to get it.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the first hearing of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was held last week, and the four biggest bank chief executive officers were brought in for questioning, from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. The American people expect these men to be held accountable for what their banks did to our country. They came away with no sweat on their brow. The bankers in the photo are, from left to right, Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs who says he's been doing God's work. He has been showering himself just since 2006 with $157.3 million in compensation. I often ask myself, What do they do with all that money? Jamie Dimon, next to him, of JPMorgan Chase last year officially took home $19.7 million on top of $95.7 million he raked in from 2005 to 2007. That brings him in at $115.4 million. John J. Mack of Morgan Stanley paid himself $78.9 million over the last 5 years, and Brian T. Moynihan of Bank of America is new to his position at that bank, but he pocketed $10 million in 2007 when serving as president of the Global Corporate and Investment Banking at the Bank of America. Can you imagine what he'll make now? As they took America to the cleaners, the average worker in our country hasn't had a real wage increase in over a decade, much less a real increase in buying power. Meanwhile, Americans are being made to feel like they can't enter this debate because lots of fog is being generated by fancy terms that these bankers use, like basis points or collateralized debt obligations or securitization. And I'll tell you what, Americans might not know what those words mean, but they can recognize a lineup when they see one. The average person often is cowered by the world of finance and turns away in fear and confusion. They can't see a path forward for our country, which they love so very much. And they are very worried. Congress must provide the clarity of that path forward to not only hold these bankers accountable but to get the administration to act to save people's homes and communities. The administration's current plan to fix the foreclosure crisis has been a dud. It is a dud because it has not addressed the root cause of the collapse. It continues. The wrongdoers, they aren't good at risk at all, but they're putting economic recovery at risk across this Nation as more people fall into foreclosure. According to an analysis done by the Associated Press, almost a year later, only a handful, a fraction, of the 4 million Americans and counting, who have been foreclosed, have been able to complete Treasury's application process to try to rework their mortgage. Some might call that approach ``doomed to fail.'' With a national unemployment rate of over 10 percent, people are not getting the economic change they want. The current approach to the economy here in Washington is failing millions and millions of our citizens every day. People's financial futures are ruined. Their futures aren't ruined; they're getting rewarded. Our people are getting hurt by unemployment, home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies. They're not going bankrupt. Their banks didn't go bankrupt. We bailed them out. I didn't vote for that, but a majority of people in here did. RealtyTrac Inc. reported last week that in 2009 a record 2.8 million households were threatened with foreclosure, which is up, not down, more than 20 percent since 2008. The more borrowers who can't be helped, the more foreclosed properties will be on the market across this country. Tragically, RealtyTrac expects another record number of homes to be threatened with foreclosure this year. This is not acceptable in America. The administration's foreclosure prevention plan says it's going to help borrowers in financial trouble by making their payments more affordable and extending the repayment period. However, out of the millions and millions of people being affected across this country, just 7 percent of those who have signed up have completed the Treasury Department's program to try to rework these loans; and more than 49,000, or just 5 percent, have dropped out of the program entirely. Thousands more remain in limbo. But the biggest bank in the program, Bank of America, has completed modifications for fewer than 2 percent of the 200,000 borrowers they claim to enroll. Its big-bank buddies are in the same boat when it comes to modifying our people's mortgages. The people paying their bills and paying for their salaries aren't having their mortgages reworked. What's just about that? In fact, it's clear, Wall Street bankers have no interest in modifying mortgages. They are making millions off other people's misery, and that's just fine with them. This Nation needs a national foreclosure prevention program that compels these bankers to act, not nicely request their assistance. As they conspire to avoid the consequences of their actions, here are two key findings by the Center for Public Integrity. At least 21 of the top 25 subprime lenders were financed by these same banks that received the bailout money through direct ownership, credit agreements or huge purchases of loans for securitization. They're all tied together. And 21 of the top 25 subprime lenders have closed, stopped lending or been sold to avoid bankruptcy. Most were nonbank lenders. They didn't go bankrupt. They're letting the American people go bankrupt. Bailed out, getting bigger and bigger, they now have over 40 percent of the deposits in this country. These four banks plus one more. Think about that. What's happening to our country? And they're not being held responsible. Say, that's not bad work if you can get it. Wall Street bankers create these unsavory schemes, reap huge profits from our people and advantage their companies while driving our economy, home prices, and the Nation's housing stock and the American people into the ground. My colleagues, take a look at this lineup. Isn't it over time for Congress to finally hold Wall Street accountable?

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, as an original cosponsor of this resolution, I stand in full support and in strong friendship of Ukraine and her people. In a region which struggles to produce a stable democracy, Ukraine is poised to become a shining example of a strong and viable democratic state. Upon establishment of its independence in 1991, Ukraine moved towards becoming a free society through the creation of democratic institutions and a fledgling market economy. More recently, the Orange Revolution of 2004 showed the Ukrainian people's desire for a more open, free, and prosperous country--for a resolute democracy. Since its independence, Ukraine has been an ally of the United States. The signing of the United States-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership in 2008 expands our already existing cooperation on defense, energy, democratic development, and cultural exchange. However, obstacles exist which threaten to derail Ukraine's progress. The global financial crisis has taken a harsh toll on the country, causing the government to seek international assistance. Ukraine must take the difficult internal steps necessary to maintain her financial independence, to ensure that she is not beholden to outside financial institutions and interests. It is imperative to the future of Ukraine that this month's elections be free, fair, and transparent. Without elections that accurately express the will of the people, Ukraine's democracy cannot, and will not, achieve its full potential. Given the determination of Ukraine to maintain itself as a democratic nation, it is more important now than ever for the United States to support Ukraine's continued political and economic development. We stand by Ukraine as she continues her endeavor to become a standard bearer for democracy. In strong support of Ukraine and her people, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this resolution.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the conventional wisdom flowing through the media to our Nation is that without the Wall Street bailout, America would have gone into economic depression and many banks would have failed. Well, the bailout passed. But think about it, then America fell into depression. Unemployment skyrocketed, and since January of last year, 141 banks have failed and been resolved through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation with more to come. Yet the biggest banks that did the damage were rescued rather than broken up and held accountable. These big banks gambled wildly, taking huge risks with our money and our mortgages, and now they are transferring their trillions of dollars of mistakes to our taxpayers for generations to come. What's wrong with this picture? The public's anger is rising, rightly. That can make a difference because that will affect elections. Yet the powerhouses of Wall Street who took TARP money within a year are earning the strongest profits in America compared to every other business, and they are handing themselves exorbitant bonuses, over $150 billion and counting. Clearly what Congress did was incorrect. America has fallen into a deepening depression, more unemployment, with projections for a jobless recovery, with rising trade deficits, which weren't supposed to happen because of the value of the dollar. Why? Because the financial crisis was resolved in the wrong way. The financiers who created this house of cards are still rewarding themselves and doing a reverse Robin Hood--taking from others to reward the privileged few. That doesn't sound like the America I know. Credit remains frozen across our country. Credit being frozen means no more jobs. It means jobless recovery, because businesses cannot make payroll. They cannot buy supplies. They cannot maintain their inventories. When five megabanks in our country control nearly half the deposits of the American people, that is too concentrated. It is too unaccountable. And it is too much of a transfer of power from the many to the few. That isn't what America is about. Alone, or joined together in groups, these big banks successfully lobbied Congress to weaken financial regulatory reform and defeat one of the most powerful and necessary reforms rebuilding the protective walls between regular, prudent commercial banking and speculation. Financial reform should have deconstructed the too big to fail firms that caused this economic crisis, but the bill that whizzed through this Congress a few weeks ago did exactly the opposite. It enshrined them, it grandfathered them. I introduced H.R. 4377, called the Return to Prudent Banking Act, which would restore the Glass-Steagall protections, which were overturned a decade ago in a bill called Gramm-Leach-Bliley that sailed through this Congress. Our bill would restore the barriers between commercial banking and speculation, not allowing this transfer of power to the abusers. I look forward to working with my other colleagues, like Congressman Maurice Hinchey of New York, such a leader on this issue, to combine our bills, to return our financial system to a prudent banking system, one in which credit is no longer seized up because we fixed what is wrong with the fundamentals. Our citizens demand a more competitive banking system, one that is less concentrated, and without the systemic risks our current one encourages. The momentum is building for real change, and I am glad there is an election this year. Because despite the work of the megabanks to enshrine themselves, we still have hope because more Americans are paying attention. There is an article in the Wall Street Journal today by Thomas Frank entitled Bring Back Glass-Steagall. He is right. The so-called financial regulatory reform bill that moved through this House too quickly last year before examining the root causes of this crisis has a bottom line. The House bill basically grandfathered the megabanks, which set the stage for a future meltdown in our economy because the Federal Government becomes the open arms for Wall Street's high risk future behavior. The big banks of course will fight any effort to reform the current system, but speculators shouldn't be given free rein. They have to let the American people know that in fact if they are high risk, hey, you are on your own. But those firms should not be allowed to gamble with regular commercial banking. The American people should think about how to restore normal credit flows, because until we do that this economy is not going to heal.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of Ruth Arden, the longtime Executive Director of St. Paul's Community Center. Ruth was a passionate advocate for the homeless, the impoverished, and for the welfare of the entire Toledo community. She first became involved with the center in 1975, when, as the outreach director for St. Paul's United Methodist Church, she took on the role of the center's first director. Although the job was initially supposed to have been temporary, Ruth's innate kindness, combined with the state of Ohio's decision to close mental hospitals, meant that her stay at the center turned out to be much longer than expected. Those discharged from the hospitals ``hovered into the doorways'' at the center, noted St. Paul's co-director Marcia Langenderfer, and in the face of such pressing need, Ruth simply could not turn people away. Over the next 34 years, Ruth transformed St. Paul's from a small operation in a church basement into a $1.2 million organization that served 100,000 meals annually and supervised 12 transitional apartments as well as a 30-bed homeless shelter. ``I think she would have worked forever,'' Ms. Langenderfer said, adding that Ruth ``was very strong- willed and always determined to help this population.'' Yet Ruth's desire to make this world a better place was not limited to those whom she served at St. Paul's. An enthusiastic art lover, she participated in the Toledo Museum of Art's Children's Program and, from 2003 to 2007, served on the board of the Toledo Artists' Club. Additionally, Ruth belonged to the Rotary Club of Toledo and was on the board of the Coalition for Housing and Homelessness in Ohio from 1983 to 2003. In 1991, Inc. Magazine named her a finalist for the publication's prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year award. I first met Ruth in 1983, and was floored by the way in which this remarkable woman seized every opportunity to remind others to be both grateful and kind. ``We would go to church,'' her daughter Kimberly Arden Chandler recalled, ``and on the way home, she would drive us through neighborhoods where people didn't have as much as we did and told us how lucky we were.'' It was a valuable lesson for Kimberly and her two siblings, and Ruth dedicated her life to teaching it to everyone she encountered. Yet she never asked for praise. She helped others not for her own self-satisfaction or for recognition from the community, but because it was simply the fair and noble thing to do. The size and success of St. Paul's Community Center is a shining testament to her perseverance, her zeal, and her overwhelming compassion. Ruth amazed me as a freshman Congresswoman, and her achievements continue to amaze me still. It is only right that she should now receive America's wholehearted gratitude and appreciation for her outstanding accomplishments and extraordinary life. Ruth will be greatly missed in Toledo: she grew up there, raised her children there, and spent decades working to improve her hometown. A graduate of Waite High School, the University of Toledo, and Baldwin- Wallace College, Ruth was preceded in death by her son, Kris Kontak. We offer our heartfelt condolences to her daughters, Kimberly Arden Chandler and Karen Kontak; son, K. Reynold Kontak; seven grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and her dear friend Jim Gottron. I know that Ruth's family and friends are deeply comforted by the legacy she left behind and the memories they share. She helped so many people over the course of her rich and full life, and her efforts are ones for which all of us are profoundly grateful. May she be blessed with a restful peace, and may we always remember the life and good deeds of Ruth Arden. Her achievements on behalf of our community benefited others too often forgotten in our technologically pigeonholed society. She painstakingly bestowed on our community a lasting endowment of vision and institutional capacity to serve the homeless and forgotten in the heart of Toledo. Indeed, Ruth gave this community heart. What was even more amazing was that she was of a position in life where this pursuit was not necessary to her existence. Her conscience and spiritual mission impacted thousands of people for the better. Her life stands as a bright star whose light points the path for those wise enough to follow its gleam.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the job market is bleak. A major reason is that bank credit is frozen in this country still. Business can't get loans to hire and function. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation reports that lending has declined for the last five consecutive quarters. This chart amply demonstrates that. It was in the Washington Post yesterday. Credit in the real banking sector has dried up. I'm not talking about the political TARP bailout fund banking sector being managed by Treasury. I'm talking about the impact of that on the rest of the banking system where credit is simply not being lent across this country. Businesses are clamoring to get loans, only to be rejected from coast to coast. The normal banking sector is not functioning. TARP destroyed over $600 billion of real bank capital as the Treasury moved itself into the driver's seat of picking winners and losers. Wall Street banks literally, and the way they've been handled, have blunted real economic recovery as businesses cannot get loans to conduct their affairs, to hire new employees, to pay current employees or buy equipment because they simply don't have access to credit. Sadly, what's happened over this period of time is our local banks and the non Big 5 banks in the country have tried to compete in this economy. The Big 5--the ones that got the TARP funds from the taxpayers--have gone from holding 30 percent of the deposits in this country to 40 percent. They're getting bigger, which means it's even harder for the other thousands of banks across this country to compete. Our financial system started seizing up after TARP was passed when normal banks refused to lend to each other in overnight transactions, and this has just gotten worse ever since. They lost confidence in the banking system itself. So, where does small business go to get operating loans? The Washington Post gave us a little insight on that yesterday, and I wish to place that article in the Record. Some of what it says is: ``The administration's options continue to be constrained by the belief of many officials that meddling in the details of banking is counterproductive.'' Well, what do they think the TARP is? It's ultimate meddling. It's total meddling. And, in fact, it prevents normal lending from being restored as banks across this country see that some banks get a special deal if they go to the Treasury and others get thrown aside or merged. A lot of those big banks have used the money to buy other banks, making our banking system much less competitive, much more concentrated. While the White House has raised the temperature of its rhetoric in recent weeks about what's going wrong, their policy measures simply have not followed. Indeed, they extended the TARP for another year. Now there are some activists across this country calling on the President to do much more. One of them, Reverend Jesse Jackson, left a meeting in Atlanta on Monday with ministers and others who are facing foreclosure even on their churches and homes. The Reverend Jackson, as the article reports, called on President Obama to use future Federal fair lending laws to force the banks to help struggling communities. He said, and I quote, ``Banks got Federal money at zero interest, but homeowners and churches are paying pre-TARP prices for their losses. The banking system must be made accountable. The Attorney General should have been in that meeting as well.'' I agree with Reverend Jackson. ``The banking industry,'' the article says, ``has reduced lending''-- as this chart demonstrates--``for five consecutive quarters, even as it has regained profitability thanks to vast public aid from the people of the United States. The amount of money on loan from banks fell by about $600 billion, or 7.2 percent, from September 2008 to September 2009, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.'' This is not a recipe for economic recovery, not in the real economy. This is the second time the President has convened bank executives to urge their increased lending. The first was in March. But you know what the article says, it did little to slow the slide. There are two actions that immediately could make a difference. One deals with the President meeting with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Accounting Standards Board and looking at mark-to-market accounting, which has destroyed over $600 billion of capital in our financial system. Credit is frozen. The very banks we have bailed out have decreased their lending over these five quarters that I've talked about, and Treasury, who is in charge of the TARP, literally is picking winners and losers. We need reform of mark-to-market accounting, and we need somebody in the administration to look at the Making Home Affordable program to make sure that we allow people to remain in their homes so we don't have increasing foreclosures, particularly over these winter months. The problem is that they can't see the forest because the big trees, the big five, are blocking their view of what is happening across this country. [From the Washington Post, Dec. 15, 2009] In White House Meeting, Obama Calls on Banks To Increase Lending (By Binyamin Appelbaum and Michael A. Fletcher) President Obama exhorted the nation's biggest banks on Monday to make ``extraordinary'' efforts to increase lending, even as some of those firms are racing to distance themselves from government control. The nation's most powerful bankers sat in the Roosevelt Room at the White House and nodded as the president spoke, but some executives and industry officials said afterward that increasing lending is largely beyond their ability. Meanwhile, Citigroup and Wells Fargo announced plans Monday to spend billions of dollars--not on lending, but to repay federal aid. Citigroup chief executive Vikram Pandit missed the White House meeting to rally investor support. Bank executives say they itch to make profitable loans, as many as possible, but are struggling to find qualified borrowers. They also say that the administration is asking for increased lending even as it pursues financial reforms that will limit the ability of banks to make loans. Some note that a recession caused by an orgy of lending must be solved in part through greater restraint. Obama has come under increasing pressure to demonstrate his concern for the plight of Americans caught in a rising tide of joblessness, even as the larger economy appears headed to recovery. The White House portrayed Monday's meeting as a chance for the president to channel the anger of Americans who think federal programs intended to revive the broader economy have succeeded only in restoring Wall Street's profitability. ``America's banks received extraordinary assistance from American taxpayers to rebuild their industry,'' the president said after the meeting. ``And now that they're back on their feet, we expect an extraordinary commitment from them to help rebuild our economy.'' Obama added that he expects not just effort but ``results.'' Some administration officials privately conceded that borrowing always declines during recessions, and that they are struggling to find effective ways of spurring new lending. Furthermore, the administration's options continued to be constrained by the belief of many officials that meddling in the details of banking is counterproductive. The administration also is surrendering a measure of leverage over the industry as banks repay federal aid provided under the Troubled Assets Relief Program--although officials are eager to shed the political baggage of aiding big Wall Street firms. With the announcements Monday by Citigroup and Wells Fargo that they would repay federal aid, all of the nine major banks that got money late last year will be on track to pay it back. As a result, while the White House has raised the temperature of its rhetoric in recent weeks, policy measures have not followed. Some activists are calling on the president to do more. Just after leaving an Atlanta meeting Monday with ministers and others, some of whom are facing foreclosure on their churches and homes, the Rev. Jesse Jackson called on Obama to use federal fair-lending laws to force the banks to help struggling communities. ``Banks got federal money at zero interest, but homeowners and churches are paying pre-TARP prices for their loans,'' Jackson said. ``The banking system must be made accountable. The attorney general should have been in that meeting.'' The Congressional Black Caucus and other Democrats, who are concerned that administration efforts to slow foreclosures have come nowhere near meeting their stated goals, have also been pressing for additional steps to help distressed homeowners. The banking industry has reduced lending for five consecutive quarters, even as it has regained profitability thanks to vast public aid. The amount of money on loan from banks fell by about $600 billion, or 7.2 percent, from September 2008 to September 2009, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The White House initially portrayed the meeting with bankers as an opportunity to discuss strategies for increasing lending. But the president set a sterner tone over the weekend, telling the CBS show ``60 Minutes'': ``I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat-cat bankers on Wall Street.'' One day later, the president was more temperate, saying that he did not intend to ``vilify'' any company or industry and that he appreciated existing efforts to increase lending, such as reviewing rejected applications to see whether loans can be approved. The president suggested Monday that banks should review applications three and four times if necessary. Bankers also emerged from the meeting in a conciliatory mood, saying they share the administration's goals. ``Every bank in that room talked about adding many, many small-business originators and setting very aggressive goals for small-business lending next year,'' said Richard Davis, chief executive of US Bancorp. Bank of America plans to increase small-business lending by $5 billion next year. J.P. Morgan Chase has committed to an increase of $4 billion. ``This is simply what a bank should do,'' J.P. Morgan chief executive Jamie Dimon said in a statement released before the meeting. This is the second time the president has convened bank executives to urge increased lending. The first meeting, in March, did little to slow the slide. The president said Monday that he continues to get ``too many letters from small businesses who explain that they are creditworthy and banks that they've had a long-term relationship with are still having problems giving them loans.'' But the White House on Monday defended the value of the rhetoric. ``I think that the bully pulpit can be a powerful thing,'' said press secretary Robert Gibbs. Obama said he also discussed the need for financial reform, urging the bank executives not to lobby against proposals such as the creation of an agency to protect borrowers from lending abuses. And the president said he once again urged moderation in executive compensation. ``I made it clear that it is both in the country's interest and ultimately in the financial industry's interest to have updated rules of the road to prevent abuse and excess,'' Obama said afterward. ``I have no intention of letting their lobbyists thwart reforms.'' Bank executives, however, say that they strongly favor reform--they just differ with the administration about some of the particulars. The guest list for the meeting included the top executives of 12 of the nation's largest banks, but there were three late scratches. Goldman Sachs's Lloyd C. Blankfein, John Mack of Morgan Stanley and Citigroup's Richard Parsons participated in the meeting by telephone because the flight all three had planned to take from New York to Washington was delayed by fog.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, this week President Obama held yet another White House meeting to jawbone Wall Street bankers. Just a few months ago, in September, he traveled to New York to speak with them. Most of them didn't even have the courtesy to show up at Federal Hall. Then last week his Treasury Secretary called again on Wall Street's big banks to work out mortgage loans for the over 6 million Americans who have fallen into foreclosure since 2007. Wall Street didn't do it. They're just laughing all the way to the bank. They'll pocket over $140 billion in bonuses this year for themselves. Yesterday, the President vowed to recover every last dime of taxpayer money that was bestowed on these giants, which now control 40 percent of deposits in our country. Five banks, 40 percent of the deposits. But you know it's important to ask the President which taxpayer money is he talking about. Just the TARP money? That would be about half a trillion dollars. But that figure does not include the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars doled out by the Federal Reserve, which is not a Federal agency, right to the big banks. What about all the damage those giants continue to do to our mortgage markets and property values despite what they've been given? How do we get all that money back? The big banks aren't doing mortgage workouts of any significance despite the President, despite his Secretary of the Treasury, despite those bills that Congress passed. Surely you've noticed the big banks tiptoeing through those mortgage tulips all over the country quite adeptly. What about all the smaller banks they've driven out of business? Do those investors get the same deal as Wall Street? What about the community bond ratings that have dropped across our country? How do we get that money back for our communities? What about all the Americans who have lost pensions and 401(k) plans? How do they get their money back? What about all the unemployment? What about the cost of that and food stamps and health care for those who have been hit hard by the economy Wall Street brought us? How do they get their money back? The President is looking through too narrow a keyhole. What the White House advisers fail to admit is that their approach isn't working. The TARP should never have been passed by Congress. It protected the wrongdoers, and now the Treasury Secretary just extended it for another year. TARP turns the banking system into a political chessboard by putting the Department of the Treasury into the driver's seat picking winners and losers, rather than using the independent financial regulatory agencies, as has always been done throughout our country. If you've got the wrong regulators, replace them, but be independent about it. So the entire credit system of our country remains frozen up as TARP and Wall Street have sucked dry the confidence of prudent banks in our credit system. Meanwhile, the value of your home is dropping. Inflation is rearing its ugly head, today announced a 1.8 percent inflation increase, double what it was anticipated and the biggest increase in a year. And why wouldn't it rise, as the fundamentals are all out of whack? When TARP passed, the Bush administration said it would save America from depression, but then the Dow fell over 2,000 points from October 1 to March 9 of this year. Our Nation fell into a depression anyway, and now 27 million Americans are either out of work or are working part- time jobs when they want full-time jobs. The trouble is, when you don't fix something right in the first place, the problem only worsens. Here is what should have happened instead of TARP. In order to not bankrupt our country, the SEC should have reimposed regulations on short-sellers, and it should have suspended mark-to- market accounting using fair value. The FDIC should have declared a financial emergency and proclaimed all depositors and creditors of banks protected if those banks failed, and it should have used its emergency power to restore capital in banks. That wasn't done in time. Even now, we need to separate prudent banking from speculation, and we need to restore and to strengthen normal banking regulation, and not depend on the overly politicized Treasury Department to pick winners and losers. Yes, we have to increase capital reserve and liquidity requirements to eliminate pro-cyclical rules, and we have to strengthen the SEC and increase congressional oversight with the Financial Accounting Standards Board while strengthening the FDIC. I have some other bills, including recouping the over $140 billion in bonuses that Wall Street will take this year. I have another bill to authorize the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the SEC to be fully funded, with investigators to uncover and prosecute the white collar criminals responsible for this fraud. I have another bill to reform the Federal Reserve system and to give each region in the country an equal voice so that the New York Fed doesn't overwhelm the rest of the country. Madam Speaker, America needs more than rhetorical flourishes from this administration or from the last to restore sanity to our financial markets. It is time to take the political manipulation out of banking regulation in our country.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, maybe someday real banking reform will be considered by this Congress. Real reform means breaking up the big banks. Real reform means empowering community banks and local capital accumulation. Real reform means separating speculation and investment. Real reform means restoring prudent lending. Real reform means restructuring troubled housing mortgages. Real reform means rewarding institutions that play by the rules and don't over-leverage. Real reform means prosecuting financial white-collar criminals and keeping them out of finance permanently. Real reform means directly connecting executive pay and bonuses to the performance of the company and recouping the $145 billion in unwarranted bonuses for the American taxpayer. Real reform means regulating all derivatives openly and clearly. Real reform means limiting interconnectedness between large financial institutions. Real reform means independent supervisory and regulatory agencies that do their job--independent supervisory and regulatory agencies. The bill that will be considered tomorrow, as it was today, merely bunts at wrestling casino capitalism to the ground. This bill, like so many before it, will simply lead to more abuse, more risky behavior, and more reward for the most hazardous and imprudent characters. Wall Street needs our help in rescuing them from their own bad behavior, not because Wall Street deserves it or is worthy; they need to be disciplined because our natural interest is more important than Wall Street. Let's dissect America's economic predicament and what Congress has passed to fix it. In the fall of 2008, Congress passed the ``Wall Street bailout.'' It told America that the TARP would work to steady the housing market. It not only didn't steady the housing market, but its purpose was totally changed by Secretary of Treasury Paulson, who gave the money to the biggest banks in our country whose risky behavior caused the meltdown. And Congress, it just looked the other way. Now the housing foreclosure crisis has worsened coast to coast; 2 million Americans have lost their homes, and another 6 to 12 million are projected to lose their homes. Meanwhile, the biggest perpetrators of this disaster--the Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs--have gone from controlling 30 percent of all deposits in this country when this mess began to 40 percent now. The big 5 are just eating us up and taking bigger bonuses too. It is estimated they will reward themselves with that $145 billion in bonuses this year. Credit remains frozen across our country until today, seizing up economic recovery, and this bill calls itself the ``Wall Street Reform Bill.'' This bill, like those before it, will not meet the serious challenges crippling our financial system and it surely will not give a good signal to the future. Congress said the TARP bailout would save us from depression, but TARP passed, and the American people went into depression. Only the big banks were saved. The bills passed by Congress today protect Wall Street and their shareholders. Main Street pays the price. Is this bill a reform bill? No. It will not break up the big banks. It will not create a strong, independent financial institution regulatory agency. It will not separate speculation from investment activity. It will not require loan workouts to stem rising foreclosures. It will not recoup undeserved Wall Street bonuses to help pay for this economic mess and put America back to work. In fact, the bill merely asks for nonbinding votes of shareholders. It will not rein in nonbanking firms, but instead provide them with a golden sandbox. It will not rein in the power of the Federal Reserve. It will not regulate all over-the-counter derivatives. It will not provide the requisite number of FBI agents and prosecutors to put behind bars the financial world's white-collar criminals whose fraudulent behavior caused this mess. It will not bring to justice the wrongdoers at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. There are bills in this House to do that; they're not included in this bill. And it places the Treasury Department, a politically appointed superstructure, so much a part of the problem, in charge of the Finance Services Oversight Council. Importantly, it fails to institute and strengthen independent financial regulatory and supervisory agencies. The political appointees on this oversight council are surely clapping in the wings. This bill gives more power to the opaque Federal Reserve. You know, you would think that after all the damage that has been done in the Republic, this Congress would have the guts for real reform. This bill isn't it, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on final passage.