Marcy Kaptur

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I rise today on the special occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Voice of America's first Ukrainian-language broadcast. As Co-chair of the Ukrainian Caucus, it is my honor to recognize this day. In the darkest hours of the cold war, Ukrainians behind the Iron Curtain have received VOA broadcasts of accurate, balanced and comprehensive news and information. The VOA reports that Ukrainian dissidents imprisoned in Siberian camps and human rights activists who worked clandestinely to avoid arrest say they drew strength from its broadcasts. As the Communist system began to fissure, VOA notes it continued to provide Ukrainians with the news and information that their own censored, government-controlled media would not provide. Through the decades VOA was there to tell Ukrainians stories about the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968, the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s, the cover up of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant explosion in 1986, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the Ukrainian independence and democracy movement which played a key role in the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1991. Through Ukraine's struggles with independency, VOA was a vital source of accurate news and responsible commentary. Today, VOA continues to reach millions of Ukrainians each week. The radio broadcasts that began in the early cold war period have been replaced with daily television broadcasts and reporting on VOA's web site. Ukrainians still look to VOA not only to hear about the Washington perspective on what is happening in Ukraine, but also to comprehend America's story--its foreign policy objectives, national politics, social challenges, culture, arts, educational opportunities, business successes and achievements in science, technology, and medicine. The United States continues to serve as an important example for Ukrainians on maintaining a vibrant, prosperous, pluralistic society. Through its strict adherence to journalistic excellence over the past 60 years, the Voice of America's Ukrainian Service has been a key institution in U.S. public diplomacy. Today, its mission remains critical as ever, and we proudly mark this milestone anniversary.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the life's work of George Kline, a librarian in our Federal Depository Library Program. Mr. Kline, with long and distinguished service in providing U.S. Government information to the citizens of the 9th District of Ohio has retired after providing U.S. Government information to the citizens since he started as government documents librarian in 1971. In 1981 he became coordinator for the library's federal depository collection, which is one of the more than 1200 Congressionally designated Federal Depository Libraries nationwide, and one of the four depository libraries serving our region. Mr. Kline has been an active and dedicated promoter of the use of government information, and has served with distinction on numerous committees and as president of the Government Documents Round Table of Ohio, which recently honored him with its ``Clyde'' award for achievement and service. Daniel Webster said, ``Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.'' In his nearly forty year career in service to our nation's government as he carefully kept record of our documents and made them available to all, George Kline has upheld this ideal. We wish Mr. Kline a retirement much deserved, traveling this new road of his life's journey with those for whom he cares and doing that which he enjoys.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker. I rise to recognize The Arms Forces, a nonprofit organization recently created in our region of Northwest Ohio. The Arms Forces develops and maintains a network of volunteers who provide assistance to service men and women who have returned from combat with a traumatic brain injury or PTSD. Life Navigation Coaches are trained to help veterans define, access, and navigate existing supportive services and benefits. Through the group's ``Inspirational Listening Tour,'' wounded warriors are met in their home communities and share their challenges. Volunteers of The Arms Forces are personally attuned to the suffering of TBI and PTSD and understand the impact of these injuries on our veterans. Through the volunteers' efforts, the enable wounded warriors to reach their highest potential and improve the quality of their lives. The Arms Forces members are passionate and committed in their service. I am proud to share their story.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Stupak-Ellsworth- Pitts-Smith-Kaptur-Dahlkemper Amendment that maintains existing Federal law on the compelling issue of abortion. For 34 years, citizens of conscience on all sides have weighed in on this important moral and legal question. Lawmakers have attempted to accommodate very divergent views, even on the meaning of life itself. Many lives must be considered--the life of the mother, the life of the child, including the unborn but conceived, and in my opinion the rarely mentioned responsibilities of the father as well. Our legislative struggle to do what is proper is rooted in interrelated moral, scientific, legal, and yes, theological dissonances. What is right? What should be legal? And what will lead to a just and responsible society for all? I continue to approach this deeply moving issue as a representative from a widely diverse Congressional district in northwestern Ohio, an area of our Nation comprised of people from many different ethnicities, races, faiths, denominations and belief systems. My representation of these varying views embodies the deepest respect for all our people, and for the integrity with which they have arrived at their values. This amendment reaffirms longstanding, existing law, and nothing more. It represents the broad consensus of the American people after decades of consideration on the issue. Recent Gallup polls show that 51 percent of Americans consider themselves ``pro-life'' on the issue of abortion. But, this amendment does not resolve all moral questions that face pro choice, prolife, and non-aligned Americans on this issue. All it does is restate existing law. It states that no Federal funds ``authorized under this Act may be used to pay for any abortion, or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion,'' except in the cases of the life of the mother, rape or incest. Effectively, the precedent setting Hyde amendment--which has been in effect for 34 years in our Nation--will apply to the public option, and to any Federal plans which include elective abortion. The amendment does no more, and no less. Further, with the added coverage for all Americans that this bill provides, perhaps the abortion choice will become less attractive for those faced with such a life wrenching choice. This amendment will not bar any one from purchasing their own private supplemental rider. Our language is the same that applies in current law on Medicaid, Medicare, the Children's Health Insurance Plan, and the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan, FEHBP, itself which offers many private insurance plans. The FEHBP is a model for how this language will be applied. It has been tried, tested, and proven. The inclusion of this amendment clarifies the bill's language on the potential fungibility of premium dollars deposited in Federal accounts that could result in federally sanctioned insurance paid for by taxes, premiums, or Federal subsidies diverted to pay for abortions by those who do not agree with the procedure. Importantly, for the first time, the base measure itself will help vast scores of women to obtain health coverage and, by so doing limit abortion by enhancing broad coverage options for women's and children's health. The rate of infant mortality, which is fueled by shamefully high rates of premature birth in the United States, shows us that we are not addressing the needs of mother's and their babies. Providing the necessary support for women is the answer. This bill will vastly improve preventive care, 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, unemployed women, working women, single women, and nursing women--will be left out of health insurance coverage. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the Affordable Health Care for America Act will strengthen America and offer greater security to our workers, families, seniors and businesses. It will enhance our Nation's health care system, placing American healthcare consumers where they belong: at the heart of it. H.R. 3962 will improve quality, choice and competition, while cutting down fraud, waste and abuse, and lowering costs over the long term. It will strengthen Medicare, eliminate the Part D ``donut hole,'' improve access for lower income citizens so that Medicare is affordable for ALL seniors, and create new consumer protections for Medicare Advantage Plans. Discrimination for pre- existing conditions, dropped coverage, and yearly or lifetime caps will no longer be tolerated. Co-pays and other cost-sharing for preventative services will be eliminated and annual caps on what an individual or a family pays out-of-pocket will be established. Since 1987, the cost of the average family health insurance policy has risen from 7 percent of median family income to 17 percent. Family premiums are projected to increase an average of $1,800 each year and in 2007, 60 percent of bankruptcies were reported to be related to medical costs. With this bill, no American family will go bankrupt because they get sick. Sixty percent of our Nation's entire uninsured population are small business owners and their employees and families. This equals at least 28 million uninsured Americans. Small business premiums have risen 129 percent since 2000. In 2008, 38 percent of small companies offered health coverage, compared with 41 percent in 2007 and 61 percent in 1993. For too long, the health of our Nation has dwindled while the pockets of the insurance giants have thickened. Our seniors have compromised prescription drugs for necessary groceries, while the pharmaceutical industry has 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. Under the House Plan, the Ninth Congressional District of Ohio, the region I represent, will benefit immensely and in very specific ways: 386,000 residents will see improved employer-based coverage 167,000 households would be eligible for credits to help pay for coverage 38,000 uninsured citizens just in our region would be eligible for insurance under a reformed system 14,500 small businesses will be allowed to obtain affordable health care coverage and 12,400 among them will receive tax credits to help reduce the costs of health insurance 102,000 beneficiaries will benefit from an improved Medicare program 7,600 seniors will benefit from closing the prescription drug donut hole, starting with $500 of cost forgiveness in 2010 1,700 families will be protected from bankruptcy due to unaffordable health care costs $120 million in savings will be seen by hospitals and health care providers as a result of reductions in uncompensated care. Under this bill, immediately, the uninsured and seniors will receive relief through a temporary insurance program. Individuals receiving COBRA will be allowed to keep their coverage until a more customer friendly, one-stop marketplace for health insurance, known as the Exchange, is created. The Exchange will offer affordability credits and tax credits for individuals and businesses that need them. Health plans will be required to allow young people until their 27th birthday to remain on their parents' health insurance policy. Moreover, insurance companies will be subject to public review and disclosure of insurance excessive rate increases. Much needed investments will be made right away in training programs designed to increase the number of primary care doctors, nurses, and public health professionals. Not-for-Profit purchasing collaboratives, such as the FrontPath Health Coalition from Northwest Ohio, will be strengthened to achieve careful plan management and cost-savings, and encouraged as a central provision of Title I. Community Health Centers will see an increase in funding to allow for a doubling of patients over the next 5 years. A $10 billion fund will be created to finance a temporary reinsurance program to help offset the costs of expensive health claims for employers that provide health benefits for retirees age 55-64. The well being of individuals and our nation will benefit from these reforms. From an economic standpoint, healthcare costs have stifled the vitality of American businesses and their ability to compete in the global marketplace. The 129 percent increase since 2000 in small business premiums alone have smothered their potential and destroyed their ability to cover employees, resulting in an astounding 60 percent of our Nation's entire uninsured population. Affordable health insurance reform is necessary 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 and our seniors and others that everything they have worked for will not be taken away if they get sick. As someone who grew up in a small business family, I watched our father forced to sell our small family grocery when he became ill. He needed health insurance for our family and took a job at a local auto assembly plant to obtain it for his wife and children. I promised myself when I was elected to Congress that passing legislation to cover small business would be one of my top priorities. Finally, it has become possible to vote on a bill that will do this for millions of our fellow citizens. With the mounting economic strain on American families and the rising costs of health insurance to workers, businesses and federal budget, the status quo has proven itself unsustainable, fiscally irresponsible and morally unacceptable. The time has come for this historical change. I stand in support of its promise to the American people.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, unemployment and foreclosures are on the rise. In my hometown of Toledo, Ohio, unemployment is officially at 11.1 percent, but that is just those who are looking for jobs. The real number is much higher as so many people have dropped out or are working part time and they really want full-time jobs. Many, many more people are discouraged and are no longer trying to find jobs. Kids are moving in with their parents. These are people, many of whom are losing their homes. The housing crisis continues. Before the financial crisis unfolded, our housing crisis was unfolding. In fact, it triggered the financial crisis. Congress acted, passing the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 at the end of July last year. I didn't vote for it because I knew it would not work. And you know what, it hasn't worked. The HOPE for Homeowners program has failed so miserably that HUD had to change the program, and Congress since has had to pass fixes to try to get more participation into it. It hasn't worked. As of mid-July this year, the program that the Congressional Budget Office estimated would help up to 400,000 people rework their mortgages has closed 50. Fifty mortgages. That's five-zero, from a program that was supposed to help 400,000 people. Fifty homeowners have been helped? The administration announced the Making Homes Affordable Program in February, released rules and regulations in March, and they told us that the program would help 3 million to 4 million homeowners. As of September 30, Treasury reported that 758,000 modification offers, listen to the words, my friends, had been extended with 487,000 trial modifications begun. Hmm. I will be interested to hear when the first modification moved from a trial to a real modification that actually kept somebody, a real person or family, in their homes. There is no peace for the family while they are in this trial period. They still have to have a backup plan in case something falls through. They are still stressed beyond what you and I can imagine. The servicers get to sit back and wait, keep making their money. Either way, they make plenty, either from the homeowner or from the government. They have got it at both ends. This program probably won't even help a handful of homeowners. So we have just 487,000 homeowners with these trial modifications out of the millions of people who are losing their homes. Now that's not 4 million people, like the program said it would take care of. And again, it is just trial modifications. Trial, not real. They get 3 months to show they can handle the modification payments. What happens if they lose their job? If they have already lost their job, unemployment income does not count as income for modification. Can you believe that? We can still tax it, but it does not count to banksters and servicers when they are looking to rack up fees, kick people out, sell the homes for a fraction of what they are worth and maybe pull a profit; and if not, they move that property and destroy the stability of the family that once resided in the home. I still hear that servicers and banks are hard to work with on modifications. Boy, is that an understatement. I heard that the Making Homes Affordable Program isn't working. Well, it isn't. The solutions are not working because the system does not work. The housing crisis will continue as long as the job situation is so poor. It takes employment to make house payments. It takes workouts to keep people in their homes, even with lease-to-own programs over a 40-year mortgage. That is why I am joining my colleague, Bobby Rush, in forming the Jobs Now Caucus. Please join us in taking a stand for putting our communities, our families, our Nation back to work and keeping them in their homes. This new caucus will advocate for policy initiatives that stimulate and maintain a strong economy that is based on sustainable development that will lead to one common goal across the political spectrum: Creating jobs again in America. The American people want to work. Employment brings stability, and the ability to stay in your home or buy a home and build your community makes this Nation truly strong. Please join Congressman Bobby Rush, myself, and Congresswoman Candice Miller in our bipartisan Jobs Now Caucus.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. In Iraq, after thousands upon thousands of lost lives and hundreds of thousands of disabling injuries, after a trillion dollars of U.S. treasure added to our Nation's debt, after an incalculable amount of U.S. prestige being lost, one aspect about Iraq remains defining: It's all about oil and the spoils of oil across that region. Exxon, the largest U.S. oil company, with profits totaling $40.6 billion in 2008--a record--just got its first contract inside Iraq. Foreign oil companies like Exxon were thrown out of that country four decades ago when Saddam Hussein nationalized Iraq's oil fields. Michael Klare, in his prescient book about resource wars, ``Blood and Oil,'' connects the dots. What a shame our world is so primitive, people brutally fight over diminishing resources as global energy extraction giants advantage themselves, far from home, in the wake of our soldiers, tapping largesse these oil giants covet. Iraq ranks fourth in global oil reserves behind Saudi Arabia, Canada, and Iran. Iraq's central government is now picking winners in the great oil prize bonanza--the ``Iraqi Oil Contracting Rush of 2009.'' Oil has dominated Iraq's economy for generations. Oil has traditionally provided more than 90 percent of that country's exchange earnings, and that is likely to be the case for a few decades to come until it's all sucked dry. According to the Washington Post, the oil ministry is expected to hold a new bidding round in December for undeveloped fields. Those are also for service agreements. Oil giants hope the deals could one day lead to production-sharing deals, long a goal of energy firms that have been shut out of the Middle East for years. The oil giants, Exxon-Mobil and Royal Dutch/Shell, signed a $50 billion deal with Iraq to extract oil from the Western Qurna oil field, one of Iraq's largest oil fields located north of Rumaila field, west of Basra in southern Iraq. Western Qurna is believed to hold 11 to 15 billion barrels of recoverable reserve. This prize of a deal gives Exxon-Mobil, Shell and their partners $1.90 per barrel above the current production rate of 2.5 million barrels per day, and they hope to increase production to 7 million per day over the next 6 years, meaning a windfall of $3.1 billion per year. Are the lives of our soldiers worth it? The giant Exxon Mobil/Shell consortium beat out the other oil giant consortiums, led by Russia's LUKOIL, France's Total and a consortium led by China's CNPC. Dictators have come and gone, foreign armies have come and gone, some still remain. One thing remains constant about Iraq. Oil is still the big prize. That is why American and European oil company giants going all the way back to the Ottoman Empire have coveted control of their crude. Cynics would even say they have been willing to go to war over it. As we observe the continuing rush to the oil fields by a world that must transition to a greener and sustainable energy future, one must ask the tough question, Are the lives of our noble military going to be expended--for how long?--far away from home to access a resource that is diminishing globally while America's Treasury is emptied, supporting wars in foreign places to tap a resource that, by 2050, will be gone, never to return again. Civilized people should demand more than fighting resource wars of the past for an oil giant's prizes, for limited remaining time on this planet. It's time to think hard about where we have extended our most precious assets and to say, It's time to come home.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentleman. With respect for all of my colleagues, I rise in support of the Stupak amendment, which maintains existing Federal law, the Hyde amendment, on the compelling issue of abortion. For 34 years, citizens of conscience have weighed in on this important moral and legal issue. Let me repeat: This amendment reaffirms longstanding, existing law and nothing more. It represents the broad consensus of the American people after 34 years of consideration on this issue. This is what it says: ``No Federal funds 'authorized under this act may be used to pay for any abortion or cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion,' except in the cases of the life of the mother, rape or incest.'' The amendment does no more, no less. It is similar to language that applies in Federal law on Medicaid, Medicare, Veterans Affairs, the CHIP program, and the Federal Health Employees Program, which is a model for how this language should be applied. It has been tried, tested and proven. The inclusion of this amendment clarifies the bill's language on the potential fungibility of premium dollars. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment and the bill.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. speaker the Affordable Health Care for America Act will strengthen America and offer greater security to our workers, families, seniors and businesses. It will enhance our nation's health care system, placing American healthcare consumers where they belong: at the heart of it. H.R. 3962 will improve quality, choice and competition, while cutting down fraud, waste and abuse, and lowering costs over the long term. It will strengthen Medicare, eliminate the Part D ``donut hole,'' improve access for lower income citizens so that Medicare is affordable for ALL seniors, and create new consumer protections for Medicare Advantage Plans. Discrimination for pre- existing conditions, dropped coverage, and yearly or lifetime caps will no longer be tolerated. Co-pays and other cost-sharing for preventative services will be eliminated and annual caps on what an individual or a family pays out-of-pocket will be established. Since 1987, the cost of the average family health insurance policy has risen from 7 percent of median family income to 17 percent. Family premiums are projected to increase an average of $1,800 each year and in 2007, 60 percent of bankruptcies were reported to be related to medical costs. With this bill, no American family will go bankrupt because they get sick. Sixty percent of our nation's entire uninsured population are small business owners and their employees and families. This equals at least 28 to million uninsured Americans. Small business premiums have risen 129 percent since 2000. In 2008, 38 percent of small companies offered health coverage, compared with 41 percent in 2007 and 61 percent in 1993. For too long, the health of our nation has dwindled while the pockets of the insurance giants have thickened. Our seniors have compromised prescription drugs for necessary groceries, while the pharmaceutical industry has made record profits. Hard working families have watched their savings plummet and their homes foreclosed after unexpected illnesses. Woman 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. Under the House Plan, the Ninth Congressional District of Ohio will benefit immensely and in very specific ways: 386,000 residents in the region I represent will see improved employer-based coverage. 167,000 households would be eligible for credits to help pay for coverage. 38,000 uninsured citizens just in our region would be eligible for insurance under a reformed system. 14,500 small businesses will be allowed to obtain affordable health care coverage and 12,400 among them will receive tax credits to help reduce the costs of health insurance. 102,000 beneficiaries will benefit from an improved Medicare program. 7,600 seniors will benefit from closing the prescription drug donut hole, starting with $500 of cost forgiveness is 2010. 1,700 families will be protected from bankruptcy due to unaffordable health care costs. $120 million in savings will be seen by hospitals and health care providers as a result of reductions in uncompensated care. The uninsured will receive immediate relieve through a temporary insurance program. Individuals receiving COBRA will be allowed to keep their coverage until a more customer friendly, one-stop marketplace for health insurance, known as the Exchange, is created. The Exchange will offer affordability credits and tax credits for individuals and businesses that need them. Health plans will be required to allow young people until their 27th birthday to remain on their parents' health insurance policy. Moreover, insurance companies will be subject to public review and disclosure of insurance excessive rate increases. Much needed investments will be made right away in training programs designed to increase the number of primary care doctors, nurses, and public health professionals. Not-for-Profit purchasing collaboratives, such as the FrontPath Health Coalition from Northwest Ohio, will be strengthened to achieve careful plan management and cost-savings, and encouraged as a central provision of Title I. Community Health Centers will see an increase in funding to allow for a doubling of patients over the next 5 years. A $10 billion fund will be created to finance a temporary reinsurance program to help offset the costs of expensive health claims for employers that provide health benefits for retirees age 55-64. The well being of individuals and our nation will benefit from these reforms. From an economic standpoint, healthcare costs have stifled the vitality of American businesses and their ability to compete in the global marketplace. The 129 percent increase since 2000 in small business premiums alone have smothered their potential and destroyed their ability to cover employees, resulting in an astounding 60 percent of our nation's entire uninsured population. Affordable health insurance reform is necessary 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 and our seniors and others that everything they have worked for will not be taken away if they get sick. As someone who grew up in a small business family, I watched our father forced to sell our small family grocery when he became ill. He needed health insurance for our family and took a job at a local auto assembly plant to obtain it for his wife and children. I promised myself when I was elected to Congress that passing legislation to cover small business would be one of my top priorities. Finally, it has become possible to vote on a bill that will do this for millions of our fellow citizens. With the mounting economic strain on American families and the rising costs of health insurance to workers, businesses and federal budget, the status quo has proven itself unsustainable, fiscally irresponsible and morally unacceptable. The time has come for this historical change. I stand in support of its promise to the American people.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 2996, the Interior Appropriations bill. This legislation provides critical support for redevelopment of the Great Lakes and includes $475 million to jumpstart restoration activities in our freshwater rich region. For the past decade, our region has been carefully assembling a comprehensive restoration strategy, and for the first time, this bill begins to fund that restoration. With 84 percent of our Nation's fresh water, over 40 million people living on the Great Lakes and over 20 percent of the world's freshwater, America must implement a restoration strategy that empowers the basin to use this freshwater resource to promote sustainable growth. As we are constantly reminded, freshwater is becoming a scarce resource. This has been a watershed year for the Great Lakes. With the inclusion of this language in the budget resolution and now the full fledged commitment of the Appropriations Committee and Congress, America takes a significant step to restore the landscape on which over 40 million Americans rely. In addition to this historic commitment for the Great Lakes, this bill provides nearly $3.6 billion for sorely needed drinking water and wastewater investments, and significant increases for the National Park Service. This legislation supports activities by the Forest Service to more effectively deal with invasive species that have destroyed the tree cover by bugs such as the Emerald Ash Borer which have killed as many as 40 million trees in the Midwest. Our region alone will lose 10 percent of its tree cover as a result of a bug that came into our country from imported material. Let me congratulate the chair of the full committee, the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Obey and the chair of this subcommittee, Mr. Dicks, the gentleman from Washington who have done yeomen's work in shepherding through this legislation which protects the environment and allows Great Lakes shipping to continue. U.S.-flag Great Lakes fleet already burns cleaner fuel than that used by many of the world's ocean going vessels. The useful lives of the 13 U.S.-Flag steamships to 2020, will be extended when the .5 percent sulfur standard is implemented worldwide. Ships burn less fuel and produce fewer emissions than trains and trucks. It would take 1.1 million trucks or 290,000 railcars to replace their carrying capacity. We all win when we keep these cargos on vessels working the Great Lakes. Let me thank all the conferees for their hard work.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, Fortune magazine reported on October 20, 2009, a title story, ``Big Banks, Take Your Money and Run.'' The New York Times today reported, ``As Wall Street has returned to business as usual, industry power has become even more concentrated among relatively few firms.'' A handful of mammoth banks has brought our Nation, our credit system and our economy to its knees. Some call them ``too big to fail.'' One must ask: Why should a few big players have so much power that they can force taxpayer bailouts for themselves, can shut off credit and can hold the reins of our economy in their hands? A handful of firms are gobbling up our money and are killing off smaller banking institutions. Congress and this administration are just letting them do it. My friends, such concentration of financial power is dangerous to our country. A few Wall Street firms are on the fast track to controlling all banking in this country. Rather than address this by breaking up these banks, some in Washington say they just want to regulate them better. If you believe that, you haven't paid any attention over this last year. The biggest banks are getting bigger. In fact, a year ago, the biggest ones controlled 30 percent of the deposits in the country, according to Fortune magazine. Now they're up to 37 percent, and they're growing even faster. Here are their names: Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and PNC. PNC practically has price control power over western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio right now. These firms have already shown us that regulations mean nothing to them. They invent loopholes before Washington has even thought of them. Why wouldn't they again? Not all of their activities were by the book either. Fraud is rampant. Yet we cannot even get a grip on fraud because there are not enough FBI agents to look into mortgage, corporate and securities fraud. We need 1,000 FBI agents, not a few hundred, to untangle what has really been going on. Americans have a right to be angry about being cheated out of their money, their homes and their jobs; but how long will Congress and the administration tiptoe around the power grab? Wall Street goes right on, seizing all they can get their hands on, and they are holding onto the money so tightly they're not lending it. They're buying up one another and the smaller banks, rewarding themselves quite handsomely. There is a clear solution: Break them up. It's overdue. The Governor of the Bank of England says to break them up. Why not? Why are we protecting Wall Street's bad boys? Another terrible precedent: rewarding more hazard rather than preventing it. We've been there before, and look where it got us now. This brings to mind Charles Dickens' 19th-century English masterpiece, ``A Tale of Two Cities,'' except this is the United States, and it is the 21st century, and it is a tale not of two cities but of two countries. There is one country where the giant banks are making so much money that they are setting aside enough to pay each worker in their investment banking division a bonus of $353,834. That country is Wall Street. The other country, where I come from--Toledo, Ohio and places like it--is where the median household annual income is not even one- tenth of what they get as bonuses. Our median income is $35,216. That's not even one-tenth as much as JPMorgan Chase is setting aside just for bonuses for its investment banking employees. In one country, banks make themselves too big to fail. They privatize their profits and they socialize the losses. In the other country, which I represent, families, which are too small to matter, lose their jobs to globalization and their homes to foreclosure. In the other country, where I live, the unemployment rate exceeds 13 percent. Housing values have fallen more than 10 percent in a single year, and foreclosures are up 94 percent. The mortgage workouts Congress promised with all of those bills that were rushed through here are just an illusion. They're not happening. There is something really wrong with this picture. There is something really wrong with our economy. Even one of the Wall Street analysts picked up on it. He was quoted by the AP as saying, ``Wall Street is picking up quite smartly while Main Street continues to suffer.'' Do you mean someone up there has finally noticed? Madam Speaker, there is a solution here: Break them up. It's long overdue. [From the New York Times, Oct. 26, 2009] Trying To Rein In ``Too Big To Fail'' Institutions (By Stephen LaBaton) Washington.--Congress and the Obama administration are about to take up one of the most fundamental issues stemming from the near collapse of the financial system last year--how to deal with institutions that are so big that the government has no choice but to rescue them when they get in trouble. A senior administration official said on Sunday that after extensive consultations with Treasury Department officials, Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, would introduce legislation as early as this week. The measure would make it easier for the government to seize control of troubled financial institutions, throw out management, wipe out the shareholders and change the terms of existing loans held by the institution. The official said the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, was planning to endorse the changes in testimony before the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday. The White House plan as outlined so far would already make it much more costly to be a large financial company whose failure would put the financial system and the economy at risk. It would force such institutions to hold more money in reserve and make it harder for them to borrow too heavily against their assets. Setting up the equivalent of living wills for corporations, that plan would require that they come up with their own procedure to be disentangled in the event of a crisis, a plan that administration officials say ought to be made public in advance. ``These changes will impose market discipline on the largest and most interconnected companies,'' said Michael S. Barr, assistant Treasury secretary for financial institutions. One of the biggest changes the plan would make, he said, is that instead of being controlled by creditors, the process is controlled by the government. Some regulators and economists in recent weeks have suggested that the administration's plan does not go far enough. They say that the government should consider breaking up the biggest banks and investment firms long before they fail, or at least impose strict limits on their trading activities--steps that the administration continues to reject. Mr. Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, said his committee would now take up more aggressive legislation on the topic, even as lawmakers and regulators continue working on other problems highlighted by the financial crisis, including overseeing executive pay, protecting consumers and regulating the trading of derivatives. Illustrative of the mood of fear and anger over the huge taxpayer bailouts was Mr. Frank's recent observation that critics of the administration's health care proposal had misdirected their concerns Congress would not be adopting death panels for infirm people but for troubled companies. The administration and its Congressional allies are trying, in essence, to graft the process used to resolve the troubles of smaller commercial banks onto both large banking conglomerates and nonbanking financial institutions whose troubles could threaten to undermine the markets. That resolution process gives the government far more sweeping authority over the institution and imposes major burdens on lenders to the companies that they would not ordinarily face when companies go into bankruptcy instead of facing a takeover by the government. Deep-seated voter anger over the bailouts of companies like the American International Group, Citigroup and Bank of America has fed the fears of lawmakers that any other changes in the regulatory system must include the imposition of more onerous conditions on those financial institutions whose troubles could pose problems for the markets. Some economists believe the mammoth size of some institutions is a threat to the financial system at large. Because these companies know the government could not allow them to fail, the argument goes, they are more inclined to take big risks. Also, under the current regulatory structure, the government has limited power to step in quickly to resolve problems at nonbank financial institutions that operate like the failed investment banks Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, and like the giant insurer A.I.G. As Wall Street has returned to business as usual, industry power has become even more concentrated among relatively few firms, thus intensifying the debate over how to minimize the risks to the system. Some experts, including Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, and Paul A. Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, have proposed drastic steps to force the nation's largest financial institutions to shed their riskier affiliates. In a speech last week, Mr. King said policy makers should consider breaking up the largest banks and, in effect, restore the Depression-era barriers between investment and commercial banks. ``There are those who claim that such proposals are impractical. It is hard to see why,'' Mr. King said. ``What does seem impractical, however, are the current arrangements. Anyone who proposed giving government guarantees to retail depositors and other creditors, and then suggested that such funding could be used to finance highly risky and speculative activities, would be thought rather unworldly. But that is where we now are.'' The prevailing view in Washington, however, is more restrained. Daniel K. Tarullo, an appointee of President Obama's, last week dismissed the idea of breaking up big banks as ``more a provocative idea than a proposal.'' At a meeting Friday at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said in response to a question by a former Bank of England deputy governor that he would prefer ``a more subtle approach without losing the economic benefit of multifunction, international firms.'' Republican and Democratic lawmakers generally agree that the ``too big to fail'' policy of taxpayer bailouts for the giants of finance needs to be curtailed. But the fine print-- how to reduce the policy and moral hazards it has encouraged--has provoked fears on Wall Street. Even before Mr. Frank unveils his latest proposals, industry executives and lawyers say its approach could make it unnecessarily more expensive for them to do business during less turbulent times. ``Of course you want to set up a system where an institution dreads the day it happens because management gets whacked, shareholders get whacked and the board gets whacked,'' said Edward L. Yingling, president of the American Bankers Association. ``But you don't want to create a system that raises great uncertainty and changes what institutions, risk management executives and lawyers are used to.'' T. Timothy Ryan, the president of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, said the market crisis exposed that ``there was a failure in the statutory framework for the resolution of large, interconnected firms and everyone knows that.'' But he added that many institutions on Wall Street were concerned that the administration's plan would remove many of the bankruptcy protections given to lenders of large institutions.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, this week, The New York Times reported that Credit Suisse, the largest Swiss bank, stated how it will overhaul compensation for its banking executives. The changes go into effect in January and include their compensation for 2009 and 2010. Importantly, Credit Suisse ties compensation and bonuses to the firm's future performance and return on equity. In other words, if your decisions yield solid performance, you will be rewarded on that, not on arbitrary bonuses taken just because you can. I'd like to commend Credit Suisse's experience to other big banks in our country. We should follow suit in an even more rigorous reimposition of discipline. By contrast, in a speech on September 9, 2009, Goldman Sachs' Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein put forth some principles on compensation. We asked when Goldman Sachs was going to implement those changes; we haven't heard back. But Credit Suisse already did it; they did it in line with the principles established by the G-20 in Pittsburgh earlier this year. In their press release, Credit Suisse reaffirms the bank's commitment to fair, balanced, performance-oriented compensation policies that align long-term employee and shareholder interests. So, once again, Wall Street could have led the charge and embraced, for the sake of our Nation, reforms of employee compensation which rewarded short-term gains and encouraged excessive risk-taking as well as increased moral hazard. Instead, Wall Street stood up only for themselves again, first, last, and always. They simply have too much power. Moreover, Credit Suisse's approach claws back bonuses if the banks perform poorly. Why should America accept that if a bank performs poorly, that bonuses should be paid out when our taxpayers' money is propping them up and at risk? In particular, if the government saved your bank and therefore your pay despite your poor performance, why should you get a huge bonus? It makes no sense. Congress and the administration, by allowing huge bonuses in the wake of huge bailouts, have ceded our people's power to Wall Street. These individuals are making three, four, five, six--10 times as much as the President of the United States. Today, Obama pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg--who was not vetted by the Senate through normal procedures--is supposed to address this situation for our country. Feinberg is expected to cut the average pay only of the top earners at the seven bailed out firms, AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup, General Motors, Chrysler, GMAC, and Chrysler Financial. Remember, the American taxpayer saved them all--for example, they saved Citibank from its downfall. So their jobs were saved, their companies were saved by us, yet they get bonuses? Some say we would be a lot worse off if this lopsided approach had not been imposed, but far too many Americans find it hard to imagine that as they have lost their jobs, their homes, their access to credit, their sense of hope, and their self-respect. Meanwhile, they see Wall Street titans enriching themselves even more and the biggest banks getting even bigger. That's what is happening across our country. Wall Street should have been leaders for our republic, helping the Americans whose money saved them, but their culture of ordinary greed continues to stampede forward. They simply don't care about the rest of us. The distance between those elites and our people are growing, and with each step the have-nots suffer more and pay for those that have far too much. Amidst the compensation fiasco is the core problem: These megabanks are too unaccountable and too big--some call them ``too big to fail.'' As many have said, those institutions too big to fail are actually too big to exist. It's time to break up the biggest banks, sell off their healthy parts, and never let another bank or financial institution become too big to fail. Wall Street comeuppance is long overdue. Main Street USA is paying close attention to your shenanigans. We don't intend to take the spotlight off until justice prevails and the stampeding bulls are put back in very tight cages. [From the New York Times, Oct. 21, 2009] Credit Suisse Overhauls Compensation (By Graham Bowley) As Wall Street looks forward to a new era of blowout bonuses, the unthinkable is happening, at least at Credit Suisse, the big Swiss bank. It said on Tuesday that it would radically change the way it paid its employees. In a break with longstanding industry practices, Credit Suisse intends to alter the mix of salaries and bonuses for its top employees, tie the bonuses to a specific financial measure and effectively claw back the payouts if the bank's fortunes dim. The move will not necessarily reduce compensation at Credit Suisse, which is moving aggressively to compete with American banks on Wall Street. But the shift nonetheless brings Credit Suisse in line with pay practices endorsed in September by the Group of 20 nations and puts the bank ahead of resurgent rivals like Goldman Sachs, some of which are contemplating similar changes but have yet to make their plans public. Goldman, for its part, announced new pay principles in May, which it says embrace best practices on compensation. A year after Washington rescued the financial industry, bonuses are once again front and center as some big banks roar back in profitability. Goldman, for instance, is on track to award bonuses that could rival the record payouts it made at the height of the boom. But the likelihood that Wall Street will enjoy big paydays as many ordinary Americans are struggling has angered some policy makers and created a public relations headache for banks. Many are struggling to defuse the resentment directed at the industry. The Credit Suisse plan will cover roughly 2,000 employees in the United States. Top executives will receive a greater portion of their total compensation in the form of their monthly cash salaries, while bonuses will be split evenly between cash and stock. The stock will vest over four years, and the cash portion will pay out in three. But both components will be adjusted based on the bank's performance over that period, with a particular emphasis on its return on equity, a closely watched financial measure. The performance of an executive's business will also be taken into account. By tying payouts to a specific measure like return on equity, Credit Suisse will essentially be able to take back bonuses in the event the bank's fortunes take a turn for the worse. Credit Suisse earlier introduced a bonus plan linked to some of the bank's troubled assets. Claw-back provisions are becoming increasingly common on postcrisis Wall Street. Critics say the industry's decades- old bonus culture, which focused on short-term profits, encouraged the excessive risk-taking that led to the crisis. Morgan Stanley introduced provisions for a portion of its employees' bonuses last year, and another Swiss banking giant, UBS, imposed similar rules on deferred pay. But Credit Suisse executives and compensation experts said the bank's plan was the most detailed and comprehensive yet to take back pay if senior executives--and the bank--failed to perform adequately. ``As far as we know, we are the first major bank to announce a compensation structure that is consistent with the best practices laid out at the recent G-20 summit,'' Brady W. Dougan, chief executive, said in a statement. The bank is also introducing a minimum share ownership requirement for members of management committees and the executive board to align the most senior executives' pay with shareholders' interests, although it did not specify the new thresholds. Lynn A. Stout, professor of securities law at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Credit Suisse's four-year stock deferral was at the outer limit of what many banks were considering. She said many other banks were thinking of changing compensation practices along similar lines to rein in practices that made multimillionaires out of many financial executives during the housing bubble. ``You get a sense that there is a cultural shift in boardrooms and a new awareness about looking to the longer term,'' she said. At a meeting of the G-20 last month, leaders agreed on recommendations to defer bonus payouts for several years and reduce the incentives for people to take short-term gambles, although they avoided any explicit call for a ceiling on remuneration. The return to big profits at some banks and big bonus payouts, even at firms that received billion-dollar federal bailouts, has raised questions about whether compensation should be even more tightly controlled. In the summer, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a financial industry trade group, put forward guidelines on best practices, which included tying bonuses more closely to long-term performance and a more independent role for bank compensation committees. The Federal Reserve is now preparing to release its own guidance on compensation for the more than 5,000 banks it regulates. It would cover staff at all levels within banks, not just at the most senior levels, and would apply to Goldman and Morgan Stanley, which became bank holding companies last year. In broad scope, the new rules being considered depart from the largely hands-off approach that dominated bank regulation in the United States for the last three decades. They give banks freedom in how they structure their compensation. The rules are intended to inhibit pay plans that encourage reckless behavior by rewarding only short-term gains. But they would not stop million-dollar pay packages or address issues of fairness. The stimulus bill that President Obama signed into law this year restricts companies that accept federal bailouts from paying bonuses that exceed one-third of an executive's total annual compensation. Now, Kenneth R. Feinberg, the administration's pay czar, is due to publish by Oct. 30 his finding on pay at the seven major banks that still have not returned large amounts of federal support. His report will include judgments on the 25 most heavily compensated executives at each of the banks--citing pay levels and composition of pay, and whether compensation is properly aligned with performance.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. These private sector researchers at the University of Toledo have continued investing in these designs and have birthed new solar companies that will be the Fortune 500 of the next generation. Companies like Xunlight, Innovative Greenfields, Solar Fields, Calyxo, Willard & Kelsey--these were born because of an innovative incubation strategy that helped our researchers make the leap from science to manufacturing. Mr. Chairman, the base bill and this amendment provide the direction to transform our solar industry and breathe life into our idle industrial economy to produce the advanced energy products of tomorrow and to restore America's energy independence. I again compliment the gentlelady from Arizona for her leadership, and I thank both Chairman Gordon and Ranking Member Hall so very much for their time today. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the amendment and the base bill. [From the Wall Street Journal, Dec. 18, 2007] Toledo Finds the Energy To Reinvent Itself (By Jim Carlton) Toledo, Ohio.--This city became famous in the last century for being one of North America's leading glass centers. The industry has been in decline since the 1980s, but Toledo hopes to be known for its glass again. This time, though, the glass is being coated with thin layers of chemicals to produce ecofriendly ``solar cells.'' Toledo is among several old-line industrial cities trying to reinvent themselves--sometimes based on their older industries--to cash in on the demand for alternative energy. In 2006, solar start-up United Solar Inc. said it would open thin-film factories in Auburn Hills and Greenville, two Michigan towns hit hard by the automotive decline. And last year, a wind-generation plant began construction on the grounds of a shuttered Bethlehem Steel plant in Lackawanna,

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, first let me thank the distinguished gentlewoman from Arizona, Congresswoman Giffords, for her leadership in developing this legislation, and the Democratic and Republican leadership of the Science and Technology Committee, Chairman Bart Gordon of Tennessee and Ranking Member Mr. Ralph Hall of Texas. Truly, for my region, which is one of the three leading solar centers in the hemisphere, Toledo, Ohio, and an area enduring great economic transition, solar energy is so much a part of our future. My amendment is very straightforward. It directs the committee charged with outlining the needs of the solar industry to consider the outcomes for domestic solar manufacturing and commercialization in the United States. The amendment also asks the committee to consider the policies of other Federal agencies for encouraging solar commercialization. We know that while the United States has long been the leader in research and development of solar technologies--and let me hold one of them up, one of the newest solar inventions from my region which is actually going to be on all our roofs someday. It doesn't have glass in it, but it's seven layers, and it is part of the future of solar building technologies in this country. Our children and grandchildren will come to know it very well. We have had a lot of creative geniuses out there developing solar patents and new technologies, but our country seems to have lost the lead in solar deployment and manufacturing. With dramatic advances in Germany, Spain, and China, our country needs a unified strategy for developing a competitive domestic solar industry. For the last 100 years, our community, which has been known as the glass center of the world, has been devoting our best minds to the exploration of traditional energy resources. We are now converting and building on what we've known in the past to something new and innovative. Regressive research and development practices and our reliance as a country on foreign oil helped precipitate our economic decline and strategic vulnerability. I have always believed that our dependence on imported petroleum is America's chief strategic vulnerability. In fact, in 2006 alone, $270 billion, or one-third of the total $836 billion U.S. trade deficit, resulted from imported petroleum. That's right, one-third of our trade imbalance is the result of imported oil and our oil addiction. The economic, political and environmental future of our country lies in our ability to transition our economy from traditional energy sources and to ensure we produce and manufacture the clean power sources here at home. That, coupled with conservation and our building technologies, can make tremendous strides. Between 1943 and 1999, the nuclear industry of our country received over $145 billion in Federal subsidies. But the solar industry, by contrast, which is our future, only got about $4.4 billion for solar energy development; that's less than 3 percent of what was received by the nuclear industry. If we are going to invest the billions needed in solar, and which we have no choice but doing, there needs to be a road map that guides our policies and promotes not just research and development, but leads to the creation of a domestic industry without outsourcing. We should be exporting, not outsourcing. We must ensure that Federal policy takes these technologies from the drawing board to the manufacturing line as we've done in so many other industries; otherwise, we will find that offshoring will occur as it has in other industries and that global trade practices will allow foreign imported solar production here, and our domestic manufacturers will not be able to keep pace. As my colleagues join me on the floor and wonder why an amendment like this is necessary, let me provide you with an example from my hometown of Toledo; and as I mentioned, it is now one of the leading three solar centers in the hemisphere. Toledo, Ohio is a city in transition. Throughout the 20th century we were known as the glass capital of the world. With the world's glass giants--Libby-Owens-Ford, Owens-Illinois, Owens-Corning and Libby--all headquartered in our district, the city provided reliable transportation, cheap natural gas, and silicate and limestone building materials. As the glass industry advanced, the titans of glass spun off glass technologies into some of the early solar technologies that local talent created. In fact, the hottest stock on Wall Street in the last couple of years has been First Solar that is headquartered in our district. It was spun off from research at our University of Toledo hand in hand with our glass industry leaders. Leaders coming from the glass and automotive industry in our region, such as Dr. Harold McMaster and Norman Nitschke, who were the founders of First Solar, and other entrepreneurs--Norm Johnson, Xunming Deng and his wife, Liwein Xu, Al Campaan--all of these wonderful Americans are helping to build our future in places like Toledo.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer an amendment as designated amendment No. 5 in House Resolution 846.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, just this morning to a roomful of Members of Congress, Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner said, and I quote, ``Our economy is doing better.'' Boy, is he out of touch. Let him come to Ohio. Let him see where our people are living and what we are enduring. Like many communities across our country, our region has been devastated by the irresponsibility of the big banks where he came from. We have local banking institutions that were prudent in their lending and had strict underwriting. They belong to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and they have for many decades. They adhere to real rules and regulation, and they have regulators in their banks frequently, and they don't look for special privileges or taxpayer bailouts. Overall, these community banks did not contribute to the downfall of our economy, and they were not propped up by the Federal Government. Why is this important? Because locally owned and operated banks and credit unions create real economic opportunity in their communities across this country. They invest local capital. They fund local, small and medium-size businesses, and they are accountable to their customers. They know them by name. Right now, in most economically depressed communities, because of what happened on Wall Street and the megabanks, credit is shut down. It's hard for our small businesses to keep their doors open. They don't want money from TARP and the Federal Government like the Wall Street banks. They just want to return to business as it used to be, prudent, responsible, innovative, creating local capital in the marketplace. But in America, there is no business as usual right now. On Monday, I met with many of these local bankers and credit unions, and what I heard makes me sad and makes me angry, and it makes me troubled for the future of our Nation. One banker told how he worked his way up in one of the big banks and then saw how capital moved away from our community to where that bank was headquartered. He didn't want to leave our community, so he went to work for a local bank, where he has now become the head of that bank. What's on the horizon for that institution? The FDIC fees that have to be paid by these local banks that didn't do anything wrong are going up astronomically, from maybe $37,000 or $40,000 a year to over $450,000 a year, because of what the big banks did, not because of what they did. Why should our local banks be made to pay the price of the excess of Wall Street? Credit unions, they told us one that had a $20,000 fee in their share insurance fund. They are going up to over $240,000 this year. That could shut down credit unions across this country. Why? Because the ``too big to fail'' banks are dipping into the coffers. What's happening at the local level is that as these higher fees have to be paid, those local institutions can't make loans. I will tell you what's going on: A further concentration of our banking system in the hands of too few. Five banks in our country now have 37 percent of the deposits in our Nation. What does that say to you? When will the price of credit be controlled by the very few? In fact, it is right now. Smaller banks are drying up. The FDIC has had to resolve dozens and dozens of them, and more are on the chopping block. Nearly 100 banks have been resolved this year alone, and the FDIC fund has taken a serious hit. It is going to take a bigger hit. Now they are going to the healthy banks to try to pay for the ones that didn't do it right in the first place. So, who should step in? Where's Congress? What are we doing? We are diddling at the edges rather than dealing with the reality of what's happening in communities across this country. You know what? It's time to break up these big financial institutions. We ought to take them into receivership like other Presidents have done in prior years in prior decades. We ought to resolve the loans on their books, and we ought to incentivize the part of our economy and those banks and credit unions that didn't do anything wrong. That isn't happening. ``Too big to fail'' has to leave our financial vocabulary. It's time to return to Banking 101. Wall Street was rewarded for bad behavior, and they have been rewarded for the last 15 years. They will do it again, and they are being rewarded again. So what do you think they are going to do again? No more rewards. Madam Speaker, the culture of greed and excess has to go if America is to survive this terrible meltdown. The big banks should be taken into receivership, their books resolved, and their burden taken off the rest of us, our financial system and the good actors in it, our taxpayers, so our economy can grow again. Nothing else should be acceptable to the President, the Congress and this country. It's long overdue to stop the billion-dollar bonuses and restore finance as usual in our country.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the announcement today that JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in our country, turned a $3.6 billion profit in the most recent quarter brings to mind Charles Dickens' 19th-century English masterpiece, ``A Tale of Two Cities,'' except this is the United States, and it's the 21st century, and it's a tale not of two cities but of two countries. There is one country where giant banks are making so much money that they are setting aside enough to pay each worker in their investment banking divisions $353,834. That country is Wall Street. The other country is where I come from--Toledo, Ohio--and places like it across the Nation where the majority of the American people live. Toledo, Ohio, where the median household annual income is not even one-tenth of that amount--it's $35,216. It's not even one-tenth as much as JPMorgan Chase is setting aside for bonuses for its investment banking employees. In one country, banks that are too big to fail privatize their profits. They're taking more, but they socialize their losses, putting their trillion-dollar mistakes on the backs of the American taxpayers. In the other country, which I represent, families that are too small to matter lose their jobs to globalization, and they lose their homes to foreclosure. These same banks finance the outsourcing of their jobs, and they restrict credit to Main Street businesses across our country. In one country, financial commentators cheer as the Dow Jones Industrial Average goes over 10,000. In the other country, where I live, the unemployment rate is rising, exceeding 13 percent. While housing values fall more than 10 percent in a single year and foreclosures are going up 94 percent, JPMorgan Chase is the top forecloser in the Ninth Congressional District of Ohio, and they don't even show up for meetings with the people being affected. There is something wrong with this picture. There is something really wrong with our country, and there is something really wrong with our economy. Even one of the Wall Street analysts picked it up today in his comments to the Associated Press, saying, ``Wall Street is picking up quite smartly, while Main Street continues to suffer.'' How can that be? How can the stock market be so oblivious to the pain that American families are feeling? Granted, a rising stock market might help 401(k)s and pension plans and individual portfolios, but not everybody is celebrating. In fact, the majority isn't. Furthermore, how can this stock market rally last when national unemployment is close to 10 percent and, in some regions, far above that? How can the bullish sentiment override the reality in the other America where unemployment and foreclosures have turned the American dream into a nightmare for so many people--for so many millions and millions and millions of our fellow citizens? Perhaps congratulations are in order to JPMorgan on its quarterly report. I would only ask Chase and the other banks to remember who came to their rescue, because the people who bailed them out, the people in the other America--beyond Wall Street, those people--are still really hurting. The communities that they live in are really hurting. Our food banks are up 53 percent in requests, and donations are down 13 percent. This economic depression is widening across this country, but there are some folks in that other country who don't seem to care at all.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank Chairwoman DeLauro for her excellent work on this bill and the open and bipartisan process that yielded it, and the ranking member, Mr. Kingston of Georgia, for his great work always. I rise in support of this measure because it truly undergirds the four pillars of U.S. agriculture: food, forestry, fiber, and, the most recent, fuel to help America become energy independent. The American people know that in the area of nutrition truly the funding in this bill, especially for those who are out of work and their families, is extraordinarily important. The Commodity Supplemental Food Program will be expanded to seven States, and we really have no choice in this and the other programs in the bill to try to help the American people weather this really terrible economy. The Special Nutritional Assistance Program and the Women, Infants and Children food program are essentials. They're not frills. They're not unnecessary. I am particularly pleased that through the Department of Agriculture, and through this measure and the leadership of the chairwoman, that community gardening and hunger-free communities are highlighted so that people become involved in the production of their own food to try to alleviate some of the growing want across the country. These are really very important and they really work. In the area of rural development, we know that energy independence has to be our future, and agriculture has a rare opportunity to become a part of the green revolution. Really this initiative started with Congress. It really didn't start with USDA. Some of the folks over there have seen the light, and we know that the farmers of our country have to help our Nation transition in this new millennium to an energy- independent future. In terms of sustainable agriculture, I again want to compliment the chairwoman for the growing efforts in the Urban and Sustainable Agriculture arena to help a whole new generation of American farmers reinvent American agriculture. If you look at our imports, they've increased from $43 billion in food in 1997 to over $85 billion today. They've doubled. In our Nation we can produce our own food. What are we doing? The Agricultural Research Service has ways and means to help us invest and invent new growing platforms in this country to recapture these markets 12 months out of the year. So sustainable farming is given a real boost in this bill. And I want to praise Chairwoman DeLauro again for her steadfast leadership on this and so many other areas, including food safety, to produce a fair and honest bill that maintains a leadership role for American agriculture and protects the health and safety of our citizens while investing in very important conservation and development tools for rural America and for a sustainable ecosystem. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise in support of this excellent resolution. Since its founding, the people of Poland have been great allies to the United States in our own struggle for freedom, and of course then our working with them in their struggle for freedom. One of the first and finest Americans who was a great friend to our country was Brigadier General Casimir Pulaski. I want to commend Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio for helping to make history correct today by granting honorary citizenship to this great Pole, whose life stood for freedom. He was born on March 6, 1745, in Warsaw, Poland, and at the age of 15 he joined his father and other members of the Polish nobility in opposing the Russian and Prussian interference in Polish affairs. He moved to Paris where he befriended Benjamin Franklin and was fascinated by the idea of the American colonies and the new Nation it wished to become. He volunteered his services to fight for our nascent freedom. Benjamin Franklin wrote to George Washington describing the young Pole as ``an officer renowned throughout Europe for the courage and bravery he displayed in defense of his country's freedom.'' Pulaski fought on the side of America against the British in the Revolutionary War and became known as the father of the American Cavalry. The brilliant history of the Polish Cavalry is now being restored at a location called Grudziadz, Poland, and Casimir Pulaski, with this honorary citizenship today, should become a part of those growing collections; and with passage of this bill today, we should seek, as a Congress, additional ways for us to link the history of our cavalry and the Polish cavalry in the world's struggle for freedom. These are works not yet fully represented and remain largely unwritten. After fighting bravely for our country, General Pulaski was mortally wounded at the Battle of Savannah in Georgia, and died there on October 11, 1779. Casimir Pulaski is a hero in his native country of Poland. He is also a hero in our country, one for which he fought so valiantly to create. This is why his being granted honorary citizenship in our country is so important and why he should be recognized permanently by the Nation that he helped to create and to defend in a singularly noble undertaking. I urge my colleagues to support honorary citizenship for General Casimir Pulaski.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I rise to recognize the 125th birthday celebration of Maumee Valley Country Day School in Toledo, Ohio. As noted in the school's history, ``While the world has changed dramatically since the founding of our School in 1884, essential characteristics of our school have remained constant.'' Since it's founding in 1884, Maumee Valley has seen itself as ``a warm, family-centered, comfortable environment that encourages passion and creativity in our exceptional student body.'' The school is built on the foundation of a visionary board, supportive parents, and the dedication and commitment of our talented faculty and staff, and has never lost focus on its core purpose, to provide the best educational opportunities for its students. Maumee Valley Country Day School's original school was on North Summit Street in downtown Toledo and known as the Smead School for Girls. The school soon moved to the Judge John Fitch Homestead in Toledo's Old West End. The current school's Smead building was completed in 1934. Beginning in the 1950s, the school saw increasing construction and expansion to its present day. Now in the 21st Century, Maumee Valley embarks on new transformations to further develop education in the new century. Maumee Valley Country Day School's mission is ``to enable students to become enlightened, compassionate and contributing citizens of our global community, while preparing graduates for their best opportunities in higher education.'' Over three centuries, the school and its leadership, parents and students, have carried forth this mission. As they pause to mark this milestone 125th year celebration, I join the school families past and present in looking toward a bright future.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, September 1, 2009, and September 17, 2009, mark the 70th anniversary of Poland's invasion on the west by Nazi Germany and on the east 3 weeks later by the Soviet Red Army. It triggered the start of World War II. World War II began with the invasion of Poland. Poland suffered the loss of more citizens, percentage-wise, during that war--over 20 percent of its people--under domination by the Nazis and Communists than any other nation. You would think that to mark these historically important and solemn occasions on this 70th anniversary our Congress and our President would have passed a commemoration supporting Poland's struggle for liberty and its recent democratic advances. You would think that our Nation, a nation that owes so much to Poland for inspiring our own struggle for freedom at our Nation's founding, and to its great generals, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, chief engineer of our Continental Army, and Casimir Pulaski, who saved the life of General George Washington, that we would have risen to praise the 10th anniversary of Poland's succession to NATO and its support of our current military engagements in the war on terror. This year Poland will mark one decade as a signatory of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an intrinsic part of the United States' strategic foreign policy. September 17 should have been a reverent commemoration of an extraordinary effort that cost so many lives but seeded and bequeathed a powerful sense of freedom and democracy inside the Nation of Poland that ultimately yielded solidarity and strikes that began in 1956 until the final solidarity victory in 1989 and the collapse of the Berlin Wall. September 17 should be a day that commends the valiant people of Poland for their historic struggle against fascism and communism and commemorates the sacrifices made by the Polish people, including those who have since become American citizens. On that day, our President should have called for strength and partnership in the NATO organization, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, European Union alliances, and continued friendship with our Polish allies in the furtherance of freedom's cause. We should have honored the historic ties that our two great nations have fashioned over two centuries. Instead, on September 17, on the very anniversary date of the heinous Communist invasion of Poland, our government and the Obama administration chose to withdraw support of the proposed antiballistic missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Whatever one's views of the merits or demerits of that defensive system, the choice of that date to announce this historic withdrawal is truly an insult to the Nation of Poland and to the people of Poland. Our Nation not only owes Poland an apology, we owe her affirmative support. The United States has had diplomatic relations with this region since they were first established in April 1919--after having been wiped off the maps of Europe for over a century--with the then-newly formed Polish Republic, while the two nations have enjoyed consistently warm bilateral relations since 1989. The Polish Government has been a strong supporter of continued American military and economic presence in Europe. We have a shared love of freedom and democracy. They have supported our global war on terror, Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, and our coalition efforts in Iraq. Why did the administration do this? Poland cooperates closely with American diplomacy on such issues as democratization, nuclear proliferation, human rights, regional cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe, and U.N. reform. Now is definitely the moment for this Congress and the administration to restore a level of credible relationship with Poland in order to continue an abiding friendship that should not be smeared by this really tactless decision to announce this consequential defense decision on September 17, a date which hearkens back to some of the worst memories that Poland has as part of her history. I besiege this Congress and the administration to correct a great mistake.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, today marks the 1-year anniversary of the fall of Lehman Brothers. Just prior to that, former Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs executive Hank Paulson; Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke; and then-President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, bailed out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and orchestrated the first of multiple tranches of taxpayer money to AIG. Some mark the fall of Lehman as the start of our financial crisis, but it started long before. It started on Wall Street, the very place that President Obama gave his financial regulatory reform speech today. The President stated, Restoring a willingness to take responsibility-- even when it is hard--is at the heart of what we must do. Very carefully worded, Mr. President. But what real reform will assure it? Willing to take responsibility. Mr. President, Wall Street has responsibility for the greed they bred, for ripping off American taxpayers and taking exorbitant profits, destroying anything and anyone in its path, and then taking more bonuses and continuing to live their high life. Wall Street will never willingly and openly accept its responsibility for their role in our financial system's downfall. It's our responsibility to hold them accountable. It is too late to ask Wall Street to play nice and make reforms. They had their chance, and they blew it. You can be sure they are going to pay millions to lobbyists and PACs to protect their bonuses, loopholes, their safety nets, and the current structure of banking in this country. It's time to face down Wall Street and stand up for Main Street. The time spent waiting for Wall Street's willingness to change is over. The results of the taxpayer bailout are clear: More profits for Wall Street, plus massive bonuses, while foreclosures skyrocket across this country. Wall Street had its chance to open credit lines to business, as well as to direct funds they got from the taxpayers to help millions of families facing foreclosure work out those loans, but instead they took the money for themselves and racked up huge profits in the last quarter. Wall Street had its chance to be responsible as stewards of the tax dollars they got. They failed. They didn't even try. Wall Street banks cannot even tell us where the TARP dollars, that is, the taxpayer dollars, went. The arms of their businesses which service loans are moving at a snail's pace to help people find ways to work out their mortgages. Why? Because they can make more money when loans are delinquent. The pace of loaning to businesses and people is almost stuck. What are fast and furious are the payouts of bonuses and profits. Wall Street executives like Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs are waltzing around the changes they should make around compensation and bonuses, but talk is cheap because it costs them nothing. It's a good press release. Name me one Wall Street money-center bank that has restructured its compensation structures. Wall Street is fighting to have custom credit default swaps and other derivative instruments remain unregulated in the coming reforms. This moment in history marks the time for each Member of Congress and public servants at the FDIC, the SEC, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and associated regulators to act and create the kind of reform that creates a credit system which stands strong for generations and contains moral hazard. Will America allow itself once again to be bought out by Wall Street? Or will we stand together thoughtfully, deliberately to empower regulators and to reform this system with a new banking system that respects communities, encourages savings, assures sound credit? Will we break up the megabank trusts or continue to allow the concentration of financial power in the few greedy hands that are holding it today? Will we move forward with a stronger, more creative, more prudent, more sound community-oriented financial system again? It's time to work on a bipartisan basis to do this. We can't race. We have to debate real financial reform here, not cosmetic bills that are brought up on this floor. We must share the rationale behind reform and make it real. And we must shift the balance of credit power from Wall Street back to Main Street and the American people. The challenge is crystal clear. The question is: Do we have the will to do it here--to create a financial regulatory system again for the betterment of all people in our Nation, to strengthen community lending and sound and prudent credit practices at the local level and, in turn, the world's financial system? The jury is out.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, our economy is the issue. Today, the World Economic Forum released its annual Global Competitiveness Report. Switzerland has now replaced the United States as the most competitive economy in the world. The United States fell out of first place due to its weakened financial markets and macroeconomic instability. This, Madam Speaker, is another wake-up call for our country, if anyone is listening. Due to the global economic crisis, precipitated by irresponsible U.S. financial institutions, nations throughout the world continue to struggle managing their financial futures. Let's take note of an important fact: Switzerland maintains a positive trade balance, not a trade deficit. In 2008, Switzerland enjoyed a $17 billion trade surplus, a third straight record year. And yet the nation is also now ranked as the most competitive in the world. We have almost a trillion-dollar trade deficit. Now, think about this: Free trade fundamentalists here in the United States would say that it is not possible, that you can't be competitive while running an enormous trade surplus. Some of them even try to tell us that trade deficits are good. Well, here in the United States, the free trade fundamentalists would have us believe we have to roll over for the Chinese or anyone else who wants to dominate our domestic market in order to be competitive. But facts are facts. Switzerland is both the world's most economically competitive nation, according to the World Economic Forum, while enjoying an enormous trade surplus. Madam Speaker, we have a lot of work to do here in our country and in this Congress to help our Nation regain its world-leading position in the competitiveness ranking. We now rank, shockingly, 108th in the world in the soundness of our banks. Switzerland fell in that category too, down to 44th, but not as far as the United States. In regulation of securities exchanges, the United States ranked a dismal 47th in the world, compared to Switzerland's third-place ranking. In property rights, Switzerland was first, and the United States 30th. In infrastructure, that is, roads, bridges and so forth, Switzerland was first. The United States, 14th. In math and science education, Switzerland was fifth and the United States 48th. In infant mortality, the United States ranked 36th. Doesn't that speak to a decent health insurance program in this country? In life expectancy, we were 30th. In the quality of primary education, 30th. Madam Speaker, we have a lot of work to do. Our Nation is losing ground internationally. Second place overall isn't bad, but we have to make the necessary investments in our physical and social infrastructure or we will fall even further. One the authors of the World Economic Report, Dr. Sala-i-Martin, a professor of economics at Columbia, put it this way: ``Amid the present crisis, it is critical that policymakers not lose sight of long-term competitiveness fundamentals amid short-term urgencies. Competitive economies are those that have in place the factors driving productivity enhancements on which their present and future prosperity is built. A competitiveness-supporting economic environment can help national economies to weather business cycle downturns and ensure that the mechanisms enabling solid economic performance going into the future are in place.'' We have a lot of work to do as a Congress. We need strong reform of the financial sector to restore strength to our banks, not cosmetic changes; we need investments in infrastructure and education; and we need health insurance reform. Our economic competitiveness as a nation and our ability to create jobs hang in the balance. Madam Speaker, it is time for Congress to take the reins and stop this stampede of greed, to provide leadership that will help our Nation and help our people through these tough times. We want the United States to be a world leader again in job creation, innovation and economic competitiveness. We can do it, but not unless the financial industry is a part of the team, pulling in the same direction, making our country stronger, not putting us further at risk, and not taking huge bonuses while 15 million Americans remain unemployed. Madam Speaker, the economy is the issue. The American people know that. The President and Congress have our work cut out for us.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the financial crisis has resulted in the largest transfer of wealth in U.S. history, from Main Street citizens to Wall Street titans, and Wall Street insiders made huge profits off the Ponzi scheme they set up that led to the real estate bust and to our economic demise. As the rest of America tries to dig itself out from the rubble left in their wake, The New York Times reports today that the nine biggest banks paid $32 billion in bonuses to their employees of the $165 billion they got from us, the taxpayers; 4,793 bankers and traders got a minimum of an additional $1 million each. The average dealer at Goldman Sachs will earn $750,000 extra. Meanwhile, Wall Street is dumping their bad loans on us, through the government, while dragging their feet on the mortgage workouts. Bear in mind, some people in this Congress and in the Obama administration decided to pay servicers to do mortgage workouts because they weren't doing them themselves. So, rather than holding them accountable and rather than this Congress' holding them accountable, the administration is paying them, and they're still not doing it. Look at the rogues gallery. Bank of America got $45 billion in TARP funds while pulling in $2.7 billion in profits last quarter. They're going to pay $3.3 billion in bonuses. Wells Fargo got $25 billion in TARP funds and turned a $2.6 billion profit, and they will pay $980 million in bonuses. J.P. Morgan is one of the worst. They got $25 billion in TARP funds, and wracked up $2.7 billion in profits last quarter, and they will pay $8.9 billion in bonuses. I am introducing legislation today to place a full excise tax on all of those Wall Street bonuses, to recoup the taxpayers' money and to direct it be used to do real mortgage workouts across this country on behalf of the American people to get our local real estate markets working again from coast to coast. You know, Wall Street gorges itself on profits while unemployment is rising across our country, while foreclosures are rising and while pink slips are rising. Look at JPMorgan. Within one week--and this happened in Ohio--on a Friday, they invited borrowers to attend a workshop for workouts. One little problem: Nobody from JPMorgan showed up until our office had to do their work and call their staff and get them there hours late. Only five of the original 20 borrowers who showed up to the meeting were left because they'd all taken off work, and they'd been able to get sick time to go to the meeting. Then we invited JPMorgan to a workout, and they said they'd send three staff. They didn't. The event went on with one staff member, and people left frustrated. This is what is going on across our country, so the Obama administration called the 25 servicers up to Washington this week, and tried to talk sweet talk to them. The New York Times said it right yesterday. Here is what they said: Why aren't these companies cooperating? We're enriching them, but beyond that, ``Even when borrowers stop paying, mortgage companies that service the loans collect fees out of the proceeds when homes are ultimately sold in foreclosure. So the longer borrowers remain delinquent, the greater the opportunities for these mortgage companies to extract revenue--fees for insurance, appraisals, title searches, and legal services.'' A Florida lawyer who defends homeowners against foreclosure, Margery Golant, says, ``It frustrates me when I see the government looking to the servicer for the solution, because it will never ever happen.'' The tax laws favor them. So, despite the Federal Government's chickenhearted efforts, the servicers will have none of it because they can make more money with all of these bonuses and in letting people lose their homes. Look in your neighborhood. How many more foreclosure signs do you see there? When America went to war in the early 20th century, each citizen sacrificed for the Nation. Now it's all about the big shots. It's all about their bonuses and their power. Has greed really become the top American value? Foreclosures are rising. Unemployment is rising. Ninety percent of the people in our country say the economy is not working for them, and Wall Street banks just can't seem to help themselves. They're squeezing more profits off of our people's misery. What is wrong with this Congress? What is wrong with the Obama administration? What was wrong with the Bush administration that preceded it? Somebody had better stand up for the interests of the Republic.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, from biblical times, each of us can recall images of strong women carrying heavy water jars--bringing the precious, essential liquid of life to family, to friends, to community. Water takes a special place in the Catholic Mass, recalling the holiest moments of Christian celebration. Jesus blessed the water and then blessed the people with that water. The women who carried water would gather at the well. Others would be drawn to conversation with them, and from their gatherings, community came to be built, gently and progressively, conversation, one by one. Ancient history rarely recorded women's words. We know now, it should have. We know their faithfulness at the well sustaining those they loved. All life needs water. Manette in so many ways was a Biblical woman, in our time. She was faithful, a Christian of the Catholic variety, strong, vital, wise and--as we all know now, courageous--carrying her water jar with sparkling eyes, a broad smile, humor and generosity. She gave you an extra portion. Her wisdom, born of faith, hard work and ethnic and gender sensitivity was an endless fountain for those who could appreciate it. She ministered to all who crossed her path. And importantly, she plowed her own path to seek those who others might not know. She did so unselfishly, with a rare spirit of self-giving. She worked hard, at every worthy task she undertook. She was a laboring woman who labored with love. As a child at her father and mother's side, she would rise at 4 am to accompany her dad as he opened the family restaurant called Najaim's and then Manette's. She hated that early rise but she learned to fill water glasses of countless people of all ages and stations. No one was a stranger at the Seady fountain. She learned about community at a young age. She was comfortable with people, most especially from Delta. She never wanted to leave them. She reminisced last week about the beauty of Delbert Dunbar's gardens, the Democratic women's club, St. Casper's and Father Ed. When I asked her, ``Manette, what especially did you want me to share with those who will gather to celebrate your life?'' She replied: ``Tell them how we worked to help the seniors.'' The idea for creating for our country The Senior Farmer's Market coupons was formed here, where it now serves 23,000 seniors in northwest Ohio, well as millions across our nation. She delivered communion to shut-ins, befriended individuals--Dorothy Biddle, Edwina Mattimore, Mary Turi, Nona Sue-Mack, Clarence Seifert--carrying her water jar. She influenced the younger generation, including members of our Congressional staff here today: Steve, Sue, Theresa and Karen among them. Theresa has written: It is just so hard to imagine life without our Manette . . . the Fulton County Fair (she loved the ribbon chips and getting tacos from J & A Taco Wagon from Defiance), having dinner at Byblo's and looking at Christmas lights (Manette asked Sue and me to be mystery judges for the Chamber's Christmas light contest) . . . none of that will be the same. She loved her community, her family, and had such a warm heart. Now, I have met thousands upon thousands of people in my own life. But there has been only one Manette, my sister-friend, The ``Blessed Woman of Delta with the Water Jar''. There is much I did not know about her family. I was reminded yesterday, her father ran for the Mayor of Delta, Of course, Manette ran for the Fulton County Recorder. Each took representative government a step forward. As a representative of our Congressional office in Fulton County, she stayed in touch with hundreds of people. She let us know what their concerns were. She took her duties very seriously. She practiced the route to events twice the day before. She planned every moment at every event. She left nothing to chance. She always worked hard, a laboring woman who provided her own sustenance, cared for her parents, working 28 years at Aunt Jane's Foods, and upon its closure, as an Administrative Assistant at the Fulton Mill Service. In her beautiful memory, Manette Ann Zogby Seady, we ordered a U.S. flag flown over the Capitol for a loving, generous, hardworking daughter, niece, cousin, godmother, beloved friend, devout woman of the church, and patriotic citizen for all time. She made her passage with grace and coverage. At twilight on the day of her passage, her cousin recalls she saw a rainbow through the trees, but there had been no rain. Truly, Manette was a ``Blessed Woman At the Well.''