Marcy Kaptur

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, America faces a vital decision to improve health care for all, both its quality and affordability. But follow the money. Ask yourself, Who's making the big bucks off the current arrangement? Aren't you tired of all those expensive medicine ads on TV? If you weren't sick before you watch them you're sick afterwards. Pharmaceutical companies are the third most profitable industry in our country. They don't even manufacture most of those medicines here anymore. They outsourced them long ago. And their CEOs grab millions of dollars a year in salaries and bonuses from our middle class that's struggling more each year just to pay for insurance. And the insurance companies? They're raking in your health insurance dollars too. They don't deliver an ounce of care, but they've become the ninth most profitable industry in our country. Go to any state capital. Who owns the highest buildings in those towns? Insurance companies. That says it all. America needs quality, affordable health care, not insurance and pharmaceutical kingdoms.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, our whole economy has been in trouble for a long time. We can no longer look at foreclosure rates but ignore our trade deficit, or discuss high gas prices without mentioning the billions spent on Wall Street and the growing U.S. debt that results from an economy not in charge of itself. Mr. Speaker, the health of our economy is not just one number, like Wall Street profits. It's not just our budget deficit. There are so many more aspects to our economy that weigh heavily on how prosperous America could be. Those aspects include having grown more dependent year after year on foreign products. This first chart shows since the 1970s how deeply into debt we have fallen in terms of more imports coming into our country than exports year after year for so much of what drives this economy. Three quarters of a trillion dollars more imports in here than our exports out. More foreign imports into the United States means less U.S. jobs. More of our exports out means more jobs here. Our trade deficit has been driven up to nearly 5 percent of what's called the gross domestic product--a shocking number by any measure--by this growing dependence on foreign goods starting with oil, which consumes over half of this deficit, and bad trade deals. In fact, when you look at this chart, it's hard to imagine that almost half a trillion dollars is related to imports of energy. With high gas prices and bad trade deals have come growing legions of the unemployed with climbing rates higher and higher. There's been a steady pattern of this deepening crisis over the last several years. In fact, it's interesting to look at this chart which shows the relationship between unemployment, rising oil prices, and unemployment. And going back to the 1970s, with the first embargo of oil from the Middle East, we saw a huge peak in price and then a huge peak in unemployment. And the same is true in every succeeding decade in the 1980s, in the 1990s, and certainly now. There has been a steady pattern of this deepening crisis over the last 20 years. In 1993, when NAFTA was rammed through this Congress, they said it would create jobs. It did just the reverse. There's been a huge net job loss for our country. In the late 1990s, when they passed PNTR for China, they said, Oh, that will create more jobs here. Well, no. It did exactly the reverse net; more jobs were outsourced. At home, in places like Toledo, Ohio, 15.6 percent of our people are officially unemployed as foreclosures continue, deep, huge payouts to Wall Street continue, and now 12 percent of our housing stock foreclosed. The gap between the super-super rich and the rest of us is getting wider all the time, and those numbers threaten the future of our Republic. At a recent job fair in Toledo, unemployed workers were able to post video resumes courtesy of local television stations. One man, a CVL licensed truck driver in his early sixties, said he was looking for anything, ``even something in fast food.'' We don't lack for a work ethic in our area, we lack for jobs. But with so many outsourced jobs, from televisions to clothing to automotive to call centers, for heaven's sake, American consumers are abdicating their buying power abroad and losing millions of jobs. Unemployment benefits are starting to run out. Food pantries are seeing record increases, and people are getting desperate. The wealth disparity grows larger every day. Don Monkerud wrote in the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, the 400 richest Americans, who now own more than the bottom 150 million Americans, increased their net worth by $700 billion during the 8 years of the Bush administration. I think one can ask, isn't that enough? Are they filled up yet? In 2005, the top 1 percent claimed a quarter of our national income and the top 10 percent of earners in this country took fully half of the entire national income. It's even worse now. The super rich taking the largest share of our national income since--are you ready for this?--since 1928, the year before the Great Depression started, the wealth gap. And yet we're listening to the super-super rich whining because they want them to help pay for a health care system that will help make our Nation competitive in the global marketplace so we can help recapture some of the lost jobs. We can't fix our country by simply fixing things on Wall Street for those who are super rich or pandering to the complaints of the richest of the rich or the Wall Street bankers that have outsourced so many of our jobs. That's how we got here in the first place. We need to fix this country by reducing our trade deficit, cutting our dependence on foreign oil, helping hardworking Americans who are doing their best to make ends meet and who want to work and putting our accounts back in order. Listen to the over 250 million Americans, not just the top few, who are asking us to make America, all of us, rich again as a result of our hard work. It's time. Our people have earned it.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow, hundreds and hundreds of Americans will gather in Massena, New York, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation, the fourth seacoast of our country, stretching all the way from Duluth, Minnesota, all the way out to the Atlantic Ocean, and for communities such as Toledo and Port Clinton and Sandusky in my own congressional district, the Saint Lawrence Seaway waterborne corridor is our gateway to the Atlantic and the world beyond. The seaway is the linchpin in our efforts to create sophisticated, modern, multimodal distribution hubs that can skirt the congestion in coastal ports in our country. The seaway, our corridor that we share with the Canadians, is the vital link of commerce between our Nation's heartland and world markets. Therefore, investments in the seaway are not only investments in our economic future for the Great Lakes States but for the Nation. As the United States Congress considers clean energy legislation and a national power generation policy, it is important that that policy remediate a major national energy inequity that must be included in any reform bill. Power costs are just horrendous in the Great Lakes States, in fact, double and triple the rates of our western and southern brethren and southeastern brethren in our country. And when you think about those regions having had the luxury of Federal power support for nearly 75 years--and they have enjoyed those power supports--they were really a product of a Nation that believed in growing to the west and the south. And we made it happen. But our Great Lakes region, along with some northeastern States, are the only parts of our country without equal access to Federal benefit for electric power generation and transmission, thus denying competitive rates to our residential, commercial, and industrial consumers. The high costs of power just in my district here in northern Ohio--at 14 to 18 cents a kilowatt hour--is a serious factor contributing to job loss. In fact, the Midwest is put at a competitive disadvantage with the entire rest of the country, not because we have fewer resources or less skilled workers, but because Federal subsidies encourage development in western and southern areas, but not in ours. The House version of the energy bill includes a provision members of the Great Lakes States worked very hard to incorporate. It begins the process of leveling the energy playing field for these Great Lakes States and creating the startup of Federal energy parity. The Great Lakes region is home to 116 million people that account for well over a third of our Nation's gross domestic product, and we've long endured these serious competitive disadvantages because of the absence of Federal power parity. This provision aims to level the playing field with all other regions of the country--the South, the West, the Southeast, the Tennessee Valley Authority--that have benefited for over 75 years from Federal power assistance to develop their economies. These regions borrow at very favorable Federal funds rates and also receive significant energy infrastructure investments annually, with the Western Power Authority alone receiving over $228 million just in the last year. In the recovery bill passed earlier this year, there was an additional $6.5 billion just for Bonneville Power Authority and the Western Area Power Authority, along with $10 million for added infrastructure and administration. For infrastructure, for renewable power generation, really, these Federal supports provide a huge strategic advantage. The language we're offering would propose a similar $3.5 billion borrowing authority to create jobs through the development of clean energy platforms, and if we don't do this in our region, those green energy jobs are going to flow to the other parts of the country. This provision would allow a Federal instrumentality such as the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation to undertake these green energy development activities across Great Lakes communities. And as the energy bill moves to the Senate, Members of this body must continue to demand equal treatment from the Federal Government for all regions of our Nation. Our region's track record is commendable. It speaks for itself. We're among the three top solar centers in the hemisphere. We have massive biofuels industries, the first solar plant at a U.S. National Guard base, establishment of clean energy incubators at many of our advanced universities, and an expanding roster of startup green companies that are pursuing exciting opportunities in solar, wind, and other green power sectors. The Great Lakes deserve to be a part of the solution to clean energy in our country, but in order to do this, we need to have that Federal energy power parity with the other regions of the country that have now developed as a result of what the Midwest and Northeast did for them over three-quarters of a century ago. A true revolution in green energy can only be ushered in in a balanced way when the Great Lakes have the same instrumentalities that ushered in generations of western and southern growth.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, the first goal of our banking system, as opposed to a securities system, should be to create a safe and sound credit system, one that promotes responsible savings and lending practices. In this system, the availability of credit is crucial, and that's what's missing today across our country. Earlier today, Vice President Joe Biden held a town hall meeting in the Toledo, Ohio, area. He heard from Governor Ted Strickland and others that one of the biggest economic challenges facing Ohio remains an inability of businesses to obtain the credit they need. The reason is because our banking system suffered a heart attack last year and still hasn't fully recovered. Safe and sound credit and prudent financial behavior by individuals and institutions should be our Nation's financial system's primary purpose. The administration's priorities tell me it plans a much larger role for higher-risk securities in whatever system they are envisioning, which to me threatens more higher-risk behavior. Banks traditionally have served as intermediaries between people who have money, depositors, and those who need money, borrowers. The banks' value-added was their ability to loan money sensibly within parameters of $10 of loans with every dollar on deposit and thus sensibly and responsibly managing their deposits and collecting on the loans that they were to oversee. Wall Street's high-risk securitization destroyed that system. The banks didn't much care about making sensible loans as long as they could sell them off somewhere. The regulators were not on top of this because the loans were off the banks' books. So why would the regulators care? These loans were now somebody else's problem, not theirs. Where has the epidemic of securitization taken us? Well, if you look at the government-backed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae secondary markets, they became the larger purchaser of securitized mortgages. In case you forgot, its we, the taxpayers, who own both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But these securitized mortgage bodies bought too many bad loans, which contributed to those institutions' downfall. Who is profiting from this? Because, yes, there are certain organizations that are profiting royally from the downfall of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. It is not our constituents, it's not our Treasury, which collects our tax dollars. There are four entities at least that are profiting, and I would like to target on one tonight, BlackRock. That's a company that isn't a bank. And why on that one in particular? Because its current CEO Lawrence Fink coincidentally, some might say, sold Freddie Mac its first $1 billion in collateralized mortgage obligations. Euromoney.com states, ``Larry Fink is one of the pioneers of the mortgage-backed securities market. As a trader at [then] First Boston a quarter of a century ago, he pitched the first collateralized mortgage obligation that Freddie Mac ever did.'' So Larry Fink had a hand in making financial instruments that have brought Freddie Mac and our financial system to its knees, yet the company he leads now profits from his mistake. Now BlackRock just won a big contract with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to manage the toxic assets of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in their collateralized mortgage obligations. It's a mess that he help to create, but now we have hired the same man to clean it up? One question I have to ask is how can we be sure he isn't self-dealing or covering up what he did in the last quarter century? Some might say that relationship is a bit incestuous. The administration's financial regulatory reform proposal includes some consideration for dealing with too-big-to-fail institutions but, rather than create an architecture that keeps risk in hand, what they are doing is they are allowing institutions like BlackRock to become too big to fail. In fact, BlackRock's assets are now larger with the purchase of Barclays than the entire Federal Reserve system itself. So BlackRock, although not a bank, is getting too big to fail, perhaps? Is BlackRock favoritism an example of how we should be rebuilding our financial system? Paul Krugman thinks not. He states, ``In short, Mr. Obama has a clear vision of what went wrong, but aside from regulating shadow banking, no small thing, to be sure, his plan basically punts on the question of how to keep it from happening all over again, pushing the hard decisions off to future regulators.'' Now is not the time to punt. It's the time for reform. The time the has been not as ripe since Roosevelt. We really need a President who will lead and a Congress as well, not following the guidance of Wall Street, but going back to prudent lending and recreating a safe and sound banking system across this country. [From the New York Times, June 19, 2009] Out of the Shadows (By Paul Krugman) Would the Obama administration's plan for financial reform do what has to be done? Yes and no. Yes, the plan would plug some big holes in regulation. But as described, it wouldn't end the skewed incentives that made the current crisis inevitable. Let's start with the good news. Our current system of financial regulation dates back to a time when everything that functioned as a bank looked like a bank. As long as you regulated big marble buildings with rows of tellers, you pretty much had things nailed down. But today you don't have to look like a bank to be a bank. As Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, put it in a widely cited speech last summer, banking is anything that involves financing ``long-term risky and relatively illiquid assets'' with ``very short-term liabilities.'' Cases in point: Bear Stearns and Lehman, both of which financed large investments in risky securities primarily with short-term borrowing. And as Mr. Geithner pointed out, by 2007 more than half of America's banking, in this sense, was being handled by a ``parallel financial system''--others call it ``shadow banking''--of largely unregulated institutions. These non- bank banks, he ruefully noted, were ``vulnerable to a classic type of run, but without the protections such as deposit insurance that the banking system has in place to reduce such risks.'' When Lehman fell, we learned just how vulnerable shadow banking was: a global run on the system brought the world economy to its knees. One thing financial reform must do, then, is bring non-bank banking out of the shadows. The Obama plan does this by giving the Federal Reserve the power to regulate any large financial institution it deems ``systemically important''--that is, able to create havoc if it fails--whether or not that institution is a traditional bank. Such institutions would be required to hold relatively large amounts of capital to cover possible losses, relatively large amounts of cash to cover possible demands from creditors, and so on. And the government would have the authority to seize such institutions if they appear insolvent--the kind of power that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation already has with regard to traditional banks, but that has been lacking with regard to institutions like Lehman or A.I.G. Good stuff. But what about the broader problem of financial excess? President Obama's speech outlining the financial plan described the underlying problem very well. Wall Street developed a ``culture of irresponsibility,'' the president said. Lenders didn't hold on to their loans, but instead sold them off to be repackaged into securities, which in turn were sold to investors who didn't understand what they were buying. ``Meanwhile,'' he said, ``executive compensation-- unmoored from long-term performance or even reality--rewarded recklessness rather than responsibility.'' Unfortunately, the plan as released doesn't live up to the diagnosis. True, the proposed new Consumer Financial Protection Agency would help control abusive lending. And the proposal that lenders be required to hold on to 5 percent of their loans, rather than selling everything off to be repackaged, would provide some incentive to lend responsibly. But 5 percent isn't enough to deter much risky lending, given the huge rewards to financial executives who book short-term profits. So what should be done about those rewards? Tellingly, the administration's executive summary of its proposals highlights ``compensation practices'' as a key cause of the crisis, but then fails to say anything about addressing those practices. The long-form version says more, but what it says--``Federal regulators should issue standards and guidelines to better align executive compensation practices of financial firms with long-term shareholder value''--is a description of what should happen, rather than a plan to make it happen. Furthermore, the plan says very little of substance about reforming the rating agencies, whose willingness to give a seal of approval to dubious securities played an important role in creating the mess we're in. In short, Mr. Obama has a clear vision of what went wrong, but aside from regulating shadow banking--no small thing, to be sure--his plan basically punts on the question of how to keep it from happening all over again, pushing the hard decisions off to future regulators. I'm aware of the political realities: getting financial reform through Congress won't be easy. And even as it stands the Obama plan would be a lot better than nothing. But to live up to its own analysis, the Obama administration needs to come down harder on the rating agencies and, even more important, get much more specific about reforming the way bankers are paid.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, last Sunday, Treasury Secretary Geithner and the President's economic adviser, Larry Summers, both Wall Street men, wrote an editorial laying out their case for financial regulatory reform, or at least that is what they called it. It fell far short of the mark. They stated the basis of their proposal is the theory ``the financial system failed to perform its function as a reducer and redistributor of risk.'' Let me repeat that. Their fundamental principle is ``the financial system failed to perform its function as a reducer and redistributor of risk.'' They then advised the President to use that idea as the basis of what he proposes. I beg to disagree. The purpose our financial system should be to assure sound credit. A financial system should be structured to promote responsible lending and responsible savings practices. We have seen the result of a financial system that lost its way and traveled down the road of high risk-taking with other people's money, a system with no boundaries, no accountability and inherently unstable. Securitization and risk were at the heart of that failed system. Have we learned nothing? Securitization may spread out risk, but it does not spread out damage when it fails. We see that clearly enough today. Who on Wall Street who led the charge on high risk-taking is suffering today? They are getting bonuses. I cannot say that for those Americans who are losing their jobs, their homes and their businesses. Enshrining securitization and risk at the heart of their proposal is absolutely the wrong end of the road to be starting at. Securitization has nothing to do with sound credit. Securitization removes the connection between the lender and the borrower. It does nothing to assure sound credit, nor encourage savings and prudent lending. The lender sells the loan, and they are done. What does the lender care if the profit has been made? They don't. We don't need more securitization, more credit default swaps, more derivatives and more obligations that are hedged so many times that no one can even find them. The financial regulatory reforms the administration released this week do not restore prudent financial behavior. That is what is necessary to lead us out of this economic darkness. America needs a credit system that is safe and sound, not risky and not overleveraged. Yesterday in The New York Times, and I will place this article in the Record, Joe Nocera said that if President Obama wants to create regulatory reform that will last for decades, he needs to do what Roosevelt did. ``He is going to have to make some bankers,'' and I would add security dealers, ``mad.'' But why are Mr. Geithner and Mr. Summers protecting Wall Street? To date, the executive branch has been barking about the too-big-to-fail institutions. But the best they have done is nip at the edges of real reform and fixing what is wrong. Did AIG teach us nothing? An institution that is too big to fail is too big to exist. Wall Street's bailout taught banks exactly the wrong lesson. It taught them, be reckless. The U.S. Government will make sure you do not take a hit. Just keep your campaign contributions rolling our way. Take a look at derivatives in their proposal. Why only regulate normal boring derivatives when the derivatives that got us here are the exotic ones that are being protected from regulation? Do we need yet another credit default swap debacle to teach us that every derivative needs to be regulated in a transparent way and over the counter? Didn't the President campaign on transparency? Isn't the best disinfectant sunshine? Let the sun shine too on the Federal Reserve. Do you know that the Federal Reserve is responsible for regulating mortgage lending? But did the Federal Reserve act when the FBI warned in 2004 that the subprime mortgage fraud could become an epidemic? No. So if the FBI warned an epidemic was ahead on something that the Federal Reserve regulated and the Federal Reserve failed to act, what makes us think that they can actually regulate anything, and why should we give them more power, which the administration proposal does? Many more questions need to be asked about financial regulatory reform. We should not rubber-stamp the administration's first idea. Our people want a sound credit system. We should ask for no less. The first goal of our banking system, as opposed to a securities system, should be to create a safe and sound credit system, one that promotes responsible savings and lending practices. Prudent financial behavior by individuals and institutions should be its primary purpose. The administration's priorities tell me they plan a much larger role for higher-risk securities in whatever system they are envisioning, which to me threatens higher-risk behavior. Banks traditionally have served as intermediaries between people who have money--depositors--and those who need money--borrowers. The banks' value-added was their ability to loan money sensibly and manage and collect the loans. Securitization broke down that system. The banks didn't much care about making sensible loans as long as they could sell them. The regulators didn't stay on top of it because they foolishly thought the banks had gotten the loans off their balance sheets and the chickens would not come home to roost. [From The Washington Post, June 15, 2009] A New Financial Foundation (By Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers) Over the past two years, we have faced the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression. The financial system failed to perform its function as a reducer and distributor of risk. Instead, it magnified risks, precipitating an economic contraction that has hurt families and businesses around the world. We have taken extraordinary measures to help put America on a path to recovery. But it is not enough to simply repair the damage. The economic pain felt by ordinary Americans is a daily reminder that, even as we labor toward recovery, we must begin today to build the foundation for a stronger and safer system. This current financial crisis had many causes. It had its roots in the global imbalance in saving and consumption, in the widespread use of poorly understood financial instruments, in shortsightedness and excessive leverage at financial institutions. But it was also the product of basic failures in financial supervision and regulation. Our framework for financial regulation is riddled with gaps, weaknesses and jurisdictional overlaps, and suffers from an outdated conception of financial risk. In recent years, the pace of innovation in the financial sector has outstripped the pace of regulatory modernization, leaving entire markets and market participants largely unregulated. That is why, this week--at the president's direction, and after months of consultation with Congress, regulators, business and consumer groups, academics and experts--the administration will put forward a plan to modernize financial regulation and supervision. The goal is to create a more stable regulatory regime that is flexible and effective; that is able to secure the benefits of financial innovation while guarding the system against its own excess. In developing its proposals, the administration has focused on five key problems in our existing regulatory regime-- problems that, we believe, played a direct role in producing or magnifying the current crisis. First, existing regulation focuses on the safety and soundness of individual institutions but not the stability of the system as a whole. As a result, institutions were not required to maintain sufficient capital or liquidity to keep them safe in times of system-wide stress. In a world in which the troubles of a few large firms can put the entire system at risk, that approach is insufficient. The administration's proposal will address that problem by raising capital and liquidity requirements for all institutions, with more stringent requirements for the largest and most interconnected firms. In addition, all large, interconnected firms whose failure could threaten the stability of the system will be subject to consolidated supervision by the Federal Reserve, and we will establish a council of regulators with broader coordinating responsibility across the financial system. Second, the structure of the financial system has shifted, with dramatic growth in financial activity outside the traditional banking system, such as in the market for asset- backed securities. In theory, securitization should serve to reduce credit risk by spreading it more widely. But by breaking the direct link between borrowers and lenders, securitization led to an erosion of lending standards, resulting in a market failure that fed the housing boom and deepened the housing bust. The administration's plan will impose robust reporting requirements on the issuers of asset-backed securities; reduce investors' and regulators' reliance on credit-rating agencies; and, perhaps most significant, require the originator, sponsor or broker of a securitization to retain a financial interest in its performance. The plan also calls for harmonizing the regulation of futures and securities, and for more robust safeguards of payment and settlement systems and strong oversight of ``over the counter'' derivatives. All derivatives contracts will be subject to regulation, all derivatives dealers subject to supervision, and regulators will be empowered to enforce rules against manipulation and abuse. Third, our current regulatory regime does not offer adequate protections to consumers and investors. Weak consumer protections against subprime mortgage lending bear significant responsibility for the financial crisis. The crisis, in turn, revealed the inadequacy of consumer protections across a wide range of financial products--from credit cards to annuities. Building on the recent measures taken to fight predatory lending and unfair practices in the credit card industry, the administration will offer a stronger framework for consumer and investor protection across the board. Fourth, the federal government does not have the tools it needs to contain and manage financial crises. Relying on the Federal Reserve's lending authority to avert the disorderly failure of nonbank financial firms, while essential in this crisis, is not an appropriate or effective solution in the long term. To address this problem, we will establish a resolution mechanism that allows for the orderly resolution of any financial holding company whose failure might threaten the stability of the financial system. This authority will be available only in extraordinary circumstances, but it will help ensure that the government is no longer forced to choose between bailouts and financial collapse. Fifth, and finally, we live in a globalized world, and the actions we take here at home--no matter how smart and sound-- will have little effect if we fail to raise international standards along with our own. We will lead the effort to improve regulation and supervision around the world. The discussion here presents only a brief preview of the administration's forthcoming proposals. Some people will say that this is not the time to debate the future of financial regulation, that this debate should wait until the crisis is fully behind us. Such critics misunderstand the nature of the challenges we face. Like all financial crises, the current crisis is a crisis of confidence and trust. Reassuring the American people that our financial system will be better controlled is critical to our economic recovery. By restoring the public's trust in our financial system, the administration's reforms will allow the financial system to play its most important function: transforming the earnings and savings of workers into the loans that help families buy homes and cars, help parents send kids to college, and help entrepreneurs build their businesses. Now is the time to act.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your leadership on this issue and for your leadership on our full committee. I look forward to working with you to bolster the FBI's critical investigative capabilities and deliver justice to the American people through prosecution of those who have perpetrated systemic financial fraud and control fraud, which have brought our Republic to this dangerous juncture.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, thank you for discussing with me a matter of great importance to the citizens of the United States. At the heart of our financial crisis is the housing crisis and at the heart of the housing crisis is mortgage fraud. The FBI redeployed financial special agents in the last decade and have yet to allow the White Collar Crime Division to replace those agents even when it warned the public and the administration in 2004 of the potential for mortgage fraud to become an epidemic. The vast majority of mortgage fraud in fact goes unreported, and thus the depth of mortgage fraud is vastly underestimated. In the savings and loan investigations of the late eighties and early nineties, approximately 500 FBI agents worked on cases. In February 2009, however, Deputy Director of the FBI John Pistole testified before the Senate stating: ``However, today's financial crisis dwarfs the S&L crisis as financial institutions have reduced their assets by more than $1 trillion related to the current global financial crisis, compared to the estimated $160 million lost during the S&L crisis.'' According to the Department of Justice budget documents, there are currently 175 FBI agents working mortgage fraud and corporate mortgage fraud. That is laughable, given the vast amount of taxpayer dollars still at risk. We know that the FBI Mortgage Fraud Division needs to have an increase in special agents and an increase in the necessary support personnel such as forensic accountants. I look forward to working with the chairman as the bill moves forward to address this national need.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, since January, the American people have endured another loss of $1.33 trillion of their wealth, having already faced the worst drop in wealth since 1951 in the prior quarter. Yet despite being at the root of our economy's tailspin, Wall Street continues to issue huge bonuses. For example, Merrill Lynch has issued $4 billion in bonuses to the very bankers and financiers who created this mess that are now nested over at the Bank of America. This is yet another sign that America needs to rein in the false money wizards and reward those who create real wealth in our society, starting with hardworking Americans. So let me ask the question, when will Wall Street's profits translate into a better life for everyone else? With wealth declining and unemployment rising, America should not be hollowed out by Wall Street. Rather, Wall Street's business should translate into a better way of life for the American Republic. We have wandered far from that mark. Americans' Net Worth Shrinks $1.33 Trillion in 1Q (By Jeannine Aversa) Washington.--American households lost $1.33 trillion of their wealth in the first three months of the year as the recession took a bite out of stock portfolios and dragged down home prices. The Federal Reserve reported Thursday that household net worth fell to $50.38 trillion in the January-March quarter, the lowest level since the third quarter of 2004. The first-quarter figure marked a decline of 2.6 percent, or $1.33 trillion, from the final quarter of 2008. Net worth represents total assets such as homes and checking accounts, minus liabilities like mortgages and credit card debt. The damage to wealth in the first quarter came from the sinking stock market. The value of Americans' stock holdings dropped 5.8 percent from the final quarter of last year. The stock market began to rally from 12-year lows in early March after Citigroup Inc. reported it was profitable in the first two months of the year. Since peaking in October 2007, it had been the worst bear market since the aftermath of the crash of 1929. Another hit came from falling house prices. The value of household real-estate holdings fell 2.4 percent, according to the Fed report. Collectively, homeowners had only 41.4 percent equity in their homes in the first quarter. That was down from 42.9 percent in the fourth quarter and was the lowest on records dating to 1945. The Case-Shiller national home price index, a closely watched barometer, last month estimated that house prices dropped 7.5 percent during the first quarter. Prices have fallen 32.2 percent since peaking in the second quarter of 2006. The latest snapshot of Americans' balance sheets was contained in the Fed's quarterly report called the flow of funds. Despite the drop, the speed at which net worth shrunk slowed at the start of the year. During the recession's deepest point in the October-December period, Americans' net worth fell a record 8.6 percent, according to revised figures. That was the largest drop on records dating to 1951. With wealth declining and unemployment rising, there are questions about how consumers--the lifeblood of the economy-- will behave in the coming months. If they continue to spend, even at a subdued pace, the recession likely will end this year as predicted by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and other economists. However, if consumers hunker down and cut spending again, that could delay any recovery. In the final quarter of last year, Americans slashed spending at an annualized rate of 4.3 percent, the most in 28 years. Still, there was some encouraging news on consumer spending Thursday. Retail sales rose 0.5 percent in May, following two straight monthly declines, the Commerce Department reported. Meanwhile, the number of newly laid-off workers filing for unemployment benefits fell last week by 24,000 to 601,000, the lowest level since late January.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to remember L. William Seidman, known to many as Bill. Among his many life accomplishments, he served as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation through the recovery of the savings and loan industry following the massive scandals and excesses of the 1980s. He was a patriot, a wry intellect, and a very sharp financial system regulator. Sadly, America lost Bill in mid-May, but his legacies will remain with us for years to come. Beyond his financial expertise, he led the effort for the creation of a State college in his home State, in the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area known as Grand Valley State University. Education is a key indicator of individual success, and through the leadership of Bill Seidman, young and old alike can further their learning and obtain new skills to achieve their dreams. I can see why this achievement was said to have been one of Bill's proudest. I've had the great privilege in my life of working with Bill Seidman during my own career, and most recently I invited him here to Congress to meet Members to engage his experience, along with that of Bill Isaac, another former effective Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, on the current financial crisis and the paths these two experts could suggest to resolve it and accelerate its resolution. Of his major concerns, based on a life dedicated to finance and prudent banking system regulation and performance, Bill Seidman felt that the lack of regulation in the derivatives market, including credit default swaps, was a severe and continuing problem. He discussed how former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan opposed regulating these instruments because they were agreements between sophisticated parties and need not be regulated. Seidman strongly disagreed, stating that he felt that the credit default swaps market was a dishonest one. His words were prophetic. Seidman also felt that securitization lay at the heart of the housing crisis because of the way the practice is carried out. He said they take a bunch of mortgages, they bundle them up, and then they sell them off without any connection to the value of what they are selling. He said, ``If you can make money off garbage, go ahead and sell garbage, as long as you don't have to deal with it later.'' Both Bill Seidman and Bill Isaac really advised America that we needed to fix securitization, including making sure that bankers have real ``skin in the game,'' that is, hold on to some of the risk rather than passing it all forward. I couldn't agree more strongly. It's time for transformation in these instruments and in the overall financial system. Our Members were honored to be discussing such matters with Mr. Seidman, as he had served as financial adviser to four Presidents, served as Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation during a most difficult time as he helped steady our economic ship of State. And during his tenure, one of the Nation's largest banking scandals, the savings and loan crisis, unfolded, arising again out of a housing crisis. Under his watch, the FDIC, through the Resolution Trust Corporation, was created to take over the troubled thrifts and resolve them. Bill oversaw that as Chair of the FDIC and closed or reorganized 747 institutions during the banking excesses of the 1980s. Their assets totaled over $400 billion. The assets were seized and sold at bargain prices through the Resolution Trust Corporation, and the goal of getting the maximum for those toxic assets and reducing taxpayer exposure was primary. Still, that mess cost over $124 billion to the U.S. taxpayer. Stability was established at a great price, but after his tenure, rather than Congress tightening down on bad behavior and improving financial system regulation, it just opened the doors and rewarded bad behavior, and it carried us to our current sad state of affairs. America will miss Bill Seidman's wisdom, his insight, his experience. He continued his knowledge and advice right up until the day we lost him. May we remember Bill. We thank his family for his hard work and dedication to his callings and the lessons he learned and taught us. We need to reread his words and to act thoughtfully and swiftly to solve the current crisis facing our Nation. I know he would want that for sure. I extend the sympathies of this Congress and our hope for strength to his family in the coming days to endure his loss, to Bill's wife, his children, his grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. He truly was a great American. Our country was strengthened by his service and it is with a sad and grateful heart and mind that I yield back the balance of my time this evening.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, today the New York Times lead editorial ``Foreclosures: No End in Sight,'' states there will be no economic recovery until there is a halt in the relentless rise in foreclosures. Foreclosures threaten millions of families with financial ruin, and by driving prices down, they sap the wealth of all homeowners. They exacerbate bank losses putting pressure on the still-fragile financial system. Let's give Wall Street credit. They've accomplished the biggest transfer of wealth from the middle class to the super rich in U.S. history. And still, no one is holding them accountable. What a crying shame. Study this picture. Five Wall Street money center banks had subsidiaries involved in the subprime mortgage loan fraud which led to our economic meltdown--JPMorgan Chase, Citi-group, Bank of America, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo--yet we, the American taxpayers, continue to bail out their bad business practices. The Dow, in fact, removed Citigroup today from their listed companies. The very people who originated subprime loans, bundled them and passed them on are the very winners of taxpayer largesse with no strings attached. Those who come out on top are the same five, arrogant and recalcitrant. They don't even return phone calls from local Realtors trying desperately to resurrect their local housing stock. Nonresponse is but the tip of the iceberg. The banks' arrogance has led them to use their inordinate power to hold up our Republic. Elected officials tiptoe around them. Some even protect them. And any group with that much power needs to be reined in in a democratic republic. If you're too big to fail, you're too big to exist. But who will do it? Last year, Treasury Secretary Paulson struck fear in a skittish Congress a mere 6 weeks before elections--how convenient that timing was--to pass the $700 billion taxpayer bailout of Wall Street saying America was on the verge of an economic disaster. Congress stampeded to pass that bill, and the economy melted down anyway. Paulson held his conversations behind closed doors--no records-- banking on, both literally and figuratively, the honor of politicians to not repeat his exact words. But a few weeks after Paulson got his hands on the public spigot, he changed direction. Originally he said, We asked for $700 billion to purchase troubled assets and at the time we believed that would be the most effective means of getting credit flowing. But, in fact, after the bill was passed on October 3, in consultation with the Federal Reserve, he determined that the most timely, effective step to improve market conditions was to put the money into the banks themselves. So rather than holding banksters accountable in the courts and in the system, Washington has been systematically rewarding them. Since then, every clever bill Congress has cooked up to address the credit crisis engendered by the housing market meltdown has just picked at the edges. Look at your districts. Look at our country. The headlines and signing ceremonies look good. But there are over 5 million families' mortgages now under water, and it's rising. The economic fundamentals are out of whack. Legislation that looks good on the surface keeps being pushed forward, but in effect, the bills simply allow the government to become a bigger dumping ground for Wall Street's housing excess. Neither justice nor prudence are being brought to Wall Street. When Louis Brandeis wrote ``Other People's Money,'' his conscience moved a Nation to regulate banks that were plundering our republic during the Roosevelt years. This included Ferdinand Pecora, who directed Senate hearings over a period of 2 years, examining and illuminating Wall Street practices. And those exhaustive hearings turned Wall Street inside-out to public view. We should do no less. But who will be our Pecora? Where is this Congress? Where is our President? And what has happened to our democratic government? [From the New York Times, June 2, 2009] Foreclosures: No End in Sight A continuing steep drop in home prices combined with rising unemployment is powering a new wave of foreclosures. Unfortunately, there is little evidence, so far, that the Obama administration's anti-foreclosure plan will be able to stop it. The plan offers up to $75 billion in incentives to lenders to reduce loan payments for troubled borrowers. Since it went into effect in March, some 100,000 homeowners have been offered a modification, according to the Treasury Department, though a tally is not yet available on how many offers have been accepted. That's a slow start given the administration's goal of preventing up to four million foreclosures. It is even more worrisome when one considers the size of the problem and the speed at which it is spreading. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported last week that in the first three months of the year, about 5.4 million mortgages were delinquent or in some stage of foreclosure. Not all of those families will lose their homes. Some will find the money to catch up on their payments. Others will qualify for loan modifications that allow them to hang on. But as borrowers become more hard pressed, lenders--whose participation in the Obama plan is largely voluntary--may not be able or willing to keep up with the spiraling demand for relief. One of the biggest problems is that the plan focuses almost entirely on lowering monthly payments. But overly onerous payments are only part of the problem. For 15.4 million ``underwater'' borrowers--those who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth--a lack of home equity puts them at risk of default, even if their monthly payments have been reduced. They have no cushion to fall back on in the event of a setback, like job loss or illness. This page has long argued that a robust anti-foreclosure plan should directly address the plight of underwater homeowners by reducing the loans' principal balance. That would restore some equity to borrowers-- and give them a further incentive to hold on to their homes--in addition to lowering monthly payments. The mortgage industry has resisted this approach, and the Obama plan does not emphasize it. With joblessness rising, lower monthly payments could quickly become unaffordable for many Americans. In a recent report, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston argued that unemployment is driving foreclosures and to make a difference, anti-foreclosure policy should focus on helping unemployed homeowners. The report suggests a temporary program of loans or grants to help them pay their mortgages while they look for another job. The government will also have to make far more aggressive efforts to create jobs. The federal stimulus plan will preserve and generate a few million jobs, but that will barely make a dent--in the overall economic crisis or the foreclosure disaster. Since the recession began in December 2007, nearly six million jobs have been lost, and millions more are bound to go missing before this downturn is over. President Obama needs to put more effort and political capital into promoting the middle-class agenda that he outlined during the campaign, including a push for new jobs in new industries, expanded union membership and a fairer distribution of profits among shareholders, executives and employees. There will be no recovery until there is a halt in the relentless rise in foreclosures. Foreclosures threaten millions of families with financial ruin. By driving prices down, they sap the wealth of all homeowners. They exacerbate bank losses, putting pressure on the still fragile financial system. Lower monthly payments are a balm, but they are no substitute for home equity. And until more Americans can find a good job and a steady paycheck, the number of foreclosures will continue to rise.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, President Obama has stated that America can not, must not and will not let our auto industry simply vanish. The industry is like no other, he said--``an emblem of the American spirit, a once and future symbol of America's success.'' I could not agree more with the President. We must do what we need to do to save this vital industry in the face of the Wall Street meltdown and virulent and often unfair foreign competition. No major industrial power has ever survived without a strong automobile industry. First of all, auto production is essential for our domestic economic security. Automobiles built the middle class in America, and they made possible the greatest economic and continental expansion the world has ever seen. Secondly, auto production is essential for our national defense. When President Obama talks about the future symbol of America's success, he is talking about my district, including Toledo, as well as Sandusky and Lorain, but also Cleveland and Youngstown and, of course, Detroit. Why? Because we have been sowing the seeds for the rebirth of the American automobile industry in these communities and especially in my hometown of Toledo--that is, until Wall Street hit us with a blunt mallet. Mr. Speaker, Toledo is looking forward to a visit tomorrow by Dr. Ed Montgomery, the President's auto czar. He will visit Dayton as well as our hometown. In Toledo, we are going to tell him the story of automobiles and what they mean to America. We'll tell him how Toledo has been making cars for over 100 years, starting with an entrepreneur named John North Willys, who founded an auto company in Toledo that became Willys-Overland, later owned by Kaiser, then by Chrysler. Willys-Overland is a perfect example of the importance of automobiles in America. Willys was the second largest carmaker in America from 1912 to 1918--only Ford was larger--and then it took off when it won a spirited national competition, which we should repeat, to build the rough-and-ready vehicle that General George C. Marshall wanted for U.S. troops in the war. That vehicle was the Jeep. When President Obama talks about an emblem of the American spirit, he could have been talking about the Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio, because nowhere else did the American spirit manifest itself more magnificently. When World War II started, the United States was caught flatfooted. When Hitler invaded Poland, the United States had the 16th largest army in the world, just ahead of Bulgaria. If not for our domestic automobile platform, America could not have mobilized its industrial might to turn back Adolf Hitler and save the world. Toledo workers, my friends and family and, indeed, their parents answered our Nation's call and turned out hundreds of thousands of Jeeps during World War II. Men and women alike, they helped win the war, and they were proud of their contribution and deserved to be. The goodwill alone associated with the Jeep brand name is still magic today around the world. We'll tell Dr. Montgomery how the Toledo factory is today the most modern and efficient, indeed, the most innovative in the Chrysler family, how it's a model for flexible manufacturing production and labor management relations across this continent. We'll tell Dr. Montgomery that Toledo, Ohio, will be what President Obama calls ``the future system of America's success'' as the home, not only of Chrysler innovation and efficiency, but of General Motors' new green, six-speed transmission plant that won the Harbour & Associates' top ranking for productivity for 5 straight years and that it is poised to lead the way in America for the fuel-efficient and low-polluting vehicles of the future. We'll tell Dr. Montgomery how the University of Toledo, through its clean and alternative energy incubator, is leading the way in research and development and in the commercialization of green power, including for vehicles, and how the University of Toledo Transportation Center is focusing on economic development through transportation, research and education. Detroit will always be Motown and the Motor City, but the rebirth of the American automobile industry will happen in places like Toledo, where our legacy leads us to innovate, to create, to collaborate, and to meet the challenges of a new century and to build a new symbol of America's success. Frankly, it's time for a new national competition, for the rough-and-ready vehicles of the future. We know those will be built in Toledo, Ohio.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, who thrust Chrysler into bankruptcy? A few Wall Street investors who wanted more return on their investment as opposed to taking the government's deal. Who can't get loans to pay their employees or retool their businesses in this new economy? Heartland industrialists. Throughout our country, and especially in regions where manufacturing built the middle class, the credit crisis has subjugated production to Wall Street financiers. The warning signs were present when the Big Three automakers were changed from production companies to cash cows and transformed into financing companies back in the 1990s. In Toledo, Ohio, automobile production started 100 years ago when John North Willys bought the Pope Motor Company factory and started turning out automobiles in our region. When General George Marshall ordered production of a rough-and-ready vehicle for American troops to win World War II, Willys won the competition, and we made hundreds of thousands of Jeeps in Toledo, and we continue to do that today. Toledo workers make the best-known brand in the world. Control of Chrysler, however, went to Daimler, and then to an uncaring hedge fund known as Cerberus. Who is Cerberus? No one knows. Worse yet, Cerberus even has a seat on the trust created to handle the United Auto Workers' 55 percent investment in Chrysler. But the UAW doesn't even have a seat, and it's their money. Wall Street, again, will call the shots, not the people whose money they hold. By the late 1990s, the auto companies were profitable on paper, but only through their financing arms, because their Wall Street handlers had rigged the Tax Code, through this place, to benefit car leasing, fleet leasing, and financial activities. And you can trace the recent demise of GM and Chrysler, discounting the equally devastating trade and tax policies that bore down on them, to the year that they became financing companies, not production companies. Wall Street started to accumulate and milk the wealth of these firms. When GMAC became a mortgage lender and sucked into Wall Street's subprime lending in the late 1990s, then acquired by Cerberus, their fate was sealed. Chrysler Financing is now subsumed under Cerberus, too, as has been GMAC for quite a while. It is true that the public wanted more energy-efficient vehicles, and the Big Three failed to produce them. However, this goes back to management who were in cahoots with Wall Street and the role of Big Oil. You can look at all of the green patents that these firms filed, evidence of the industrial people, men and women inside these companies trying to beat back the Wall Street house. Why, in Europe, are the majority of cars diesel, but not here? Why, in Brazil, are flex-fuel vehicles made by GM the norm but not here? I will tell you why. Because lots of people made money off the ``gas hog'' cars of America. Global oil companies certainly did. And as oil companies merged and went global, many Arab sheiks got filthy rich by recirculating their petro dollars through, guess where, our own Wall Street houses. Their wealth grew so huge they constitute one-seventh of reinvested global capital that today props up our economy. This goes way back to the time of Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose secret U.S.-Saudi agreements were signed through the Treasury to denominate Middle East oil sales in dollars, thus assuring petro dollar reinvestment in this country's financial system and saddling the American people with gas hogs for years to come, because gas hogs meant more oil sales. The more oil sold, the more Wall Street got petro dollars to recirculate. Gradually, we became more and more embroiled in the Middle East, where our troops stand today, over 150,000 of them. And more energy- efficient cars would mean less deployment of U.S. troops to places they shouldn't be in the first place. But Wall Street doesn't like that game. They'd lose too much money and their greed would not be fed. Beyond diminishing our Nation's innovation, this dependence also wed our country to a diminishing resource found in these unstable, undemocratic nations. For too long, it is has compromised the integrity of the industrial might of regions like I represent in a critical sector of our economy, as well as our defense base. What great industrial Nation does not have a thriving automotive and vehicular sector? Wall Street continues to sell out our heartland. Let me repeat that. Wall Street continues to sell out our heartland, sell out our companies, sell out our workers. I hope the American people begin paying attention to whom really has the reins of power in this country, and it's time the American people reassumed that power to themselves.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the people of the United States are now in the car business. Our taxpayers own the majority share of Chrysler, and maybe General Motors before long. Why? Wall Street financial shenanigans and fraud left banks without credit to loan to dealers and to consumers who wanted to buy cars in this very credit-sensitive auto sector. The result? Car sales started plummeting last year, and this occurred despite the fact that the Big Three had reached an important plateau in the production of the cars of the future. In 2007 Ford won 102 quality awards, including AutoPacific's Best in Class for three models and Germany's largest auto magazine's Auto 1 of Europe Award for its S-MAX. In 2008, Forbes awarded the 2008 Chrysler 300 ``the highest-quality car in the near-luxury category'' over the Audi A4, BMW 3 Series, Lexus IS, and Mercedes-Benz C Class. Of the 15 global finalists for the 2008 Motor Trend Car of the Year Award, the Big Three manufactured nine, the Japanese only four, and the Europeans two. The 2008 winner was GM's Cadillac CTS, which Motor Trend described as ``proof that Detroit can still build a world-class car.'' America cannot afford to let the auto industry vanish any more than we can allow our national economy or defense to vanish. They are inextricably linked. America needs an auto industry that competes on a level playing field globally. And America needs Presidential advisors who tell the President the truth. And what is the truth? Truth 1: The U.S. auto industry was poised to rebuild market share with its new models until the Wall Street-manufactured financial crisis hit. In this situation, Wall Street is the perpetrator and our auto industry and our communities the victim. Truth 2: The global market in which our auto sector competes has been far from fair for a very long time. Closed markets and tax and trade policies have really crippled our industry. Truth 3: The unfair marketplace players include Japan, South Korea, and Communist China. Managed markets in Europe, as well, complicate the playing field. Japan has the third largest economy in the world, but its automobile market is essentially closed to American carmakers. Import penetration in Japan by all foreign firms is less than 3 percent, while Japanese companies just in this country now command more than half of our market share. Until recent cutbacks, one manufacturer, Chrysler Jeep turned out more vehicles at one factory, the Toledo North Assembly Plant, in a single month than the U.S. auto industry sold in Japan and Korea, combined, in an entire year. Superlative products made by U.S. workers in U.S. factories are still systematically barred entry into the closed markets of Asia: Japan, South Korea, and Communist China. Truth 4: China and Mexico, whose workers build vehicles the majority of their populations cannot afford to buy, while being paid subhuman wages, export cars anywhere in the world. We are told now China and Mexico are poised, through GM restructuring, to deliver more cars to our country. That's right. To get GM profitable as fast as possible, America must continue to shut plants down and unemploy our own workers? What kind of a solution is that? Millions of our own people are falling out of gainful employment, so we will use our tax dollars to deep-six U.S. workers while employing more Chinese and Mexican citizens? What sense does this make? Why would any first-world nation leave its auto sector in shambles? America's tax policy and our trade policy are seriously out of whack. Germany, through VAT, can export a vehicle here and get a 19 percent credit. Our vehicles there are saddled with a 19 percent tax. What's fair about managed markets all across the world that disadvantage autos from our Nation? While the former administration and Wall Street placed our auto industry on the operating table, President Obama had best ask his White House advisors from Wall Street for the truth. Why have the credit lines to the automotive sector been frozen for months, like a tourniquet, cutting off their blood supply? Why are Japan and South Korea's markets still closed to American vehicles? Why do nations like Germany employ a VAT tax to their advantage and our detriment? Let's get real before this White House's Wall Street advisors ask our Nation to take more Chinese and Mexican car imports while thousands upon thousands of Main Street Americans hit the unemployment lines. Here is the plain, unvarnished truth. The world might be flat in America because our markets are wide open, but tax-and-trade terrain is mountainous across the world for our country, surely in Asia and in Europe, in managed markets, and even on our own continent where tariff and nontariff barriers keep out our products. What sense does it make for our middle class to prop up companies hitting bottom from this financial crisis only to have more jobs outsourced, resulting in more unemployment here and more citizens expecting care from our government? It is time for this administration to employ section 201 trade relief in order to get our beleaguered industry back on its feet. And frankly, it is time for some truth.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, today we have a $96.7 billion bill that expands supplemental funds for more war in Iraq, ratchets up U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, and allocates a minimum of $400 million for nation building in Pakistan where corruption is the norm. We must ask how competent is our government to transform a world beyond our borders that speaks Arabic, Pashtun, and Farsi? Not even a handful of our military does. Those majorities practice religions largely foreign to us, and their governments, if you can call them that, are undemocratic, weak nation states with vast legions of poor people and corrupt governance. Pakistan alone has 163 million impoverished people, and Afghanistan's largest export is heroin. So we are going to inject ourselves into that situation even deeper, with almost no multinational support. What have we achieved politically in Iraq? Spending our Nation into endless debt, we have transformed a secular dictatorship into a divided Nation separating Sunni, Shia, and Kurd factions. A nation of 25 million has been upended, millions uprooted, and maybe 18 million shell-shocked people remain, while oil contracts have been divided up among multinationals. Not a pretty picture. And not a situation that will hold long term. So, now we're going to take on Afghanistan, a country that's not a nation, with over 400 tribes, where the Taliban is strengthened by the very sight of foreign troop presence. Madam Speaker, it is time for America to come to our senses. After $1 trillion, isn't it time to pay more attention to the fraying economy here in our homeland and the American people?

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, as we continue to celebrate Mother's Day and the women who have enriched our lives, I would like to recognize a group of women who may not receive cards or flowers this week, but who act as mothers to the world. Regardless of religious affiliation or conviction, Catholic sisters have not only nurtured countless hearts, minds, and souls throughout our nation's history, but they have played a vital role in shaping American life. The humble sacrifices, the heartfelt dedication and the tremendous contributions of these women are in earnest need of recognition. For this reason I have introduced a resolution today honoring the historical contributions of Catholic sisters in the United States. Since 1727, Catholic sisters have fearlessly and often sacrificially committed their personal lives to teaching, healing, and social action. Joined in unique forms of intentional communal life dedicated to prayer and service, these women have participated in the opening of the West, nursed soldiers during the Civil War, and cared for afflicted populations during the epidemics of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Catholic sisters established the nation's largest private school system and founded more than 110 U.S. colleges and universities, through which they have educated millions of young Americans. Moreover, managing organizations long before such positions were even open to women, the bold passion of Catholic sisters established hospitals, orphanages, and charitable institutions. They were among the first to stand with the underprivileged, to educate or to work among the poor and underserved, and to facilitate leadership through opportunity and example. Since 1980 alone, at least nine American sisters have been martyred. Maura Clark, MM, Ita Ford, MM and Dorothy Kazel, OSU were martyred in El Salvador in 1980. Joel Kolmer, ASC, Shirley Kolmer, ASC, Kathleen McGuire, ASC, Agnes Mueller, ASC and Barbara Ann Muttra, ASC were martyred in Liberia in 1992. And, Dorothy Stang, SNDdeN was martyred in Brazil in 2005. Despite such a horrifying reality, Catholic sisters remain dedicated and courageously spirited. Across the globe, Catholic sisters continue to provide shelter, food, and basic human needs to the economically or socially disadvantaged and advocate relentlessly for the fair and equal treatment of all persons. They work for the eradication of poverty and racism and for the promotion of nonviolence, equality and democracy both in principle and in action. The humanitarian work of Catholic sisters with communities in crisis and refuge throughout the world positions them as activists and diplomats of peace and justice for those most at risk populations. These women have offered so much to the world yet their stories have rarely been narrated or honored in our history. Though long overdue, the lives, works and legacies of Catholic sisters will finally be recounted. I am happy to announce that on May 16th, 2009, a traveling exhibit called ``Women & Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America'' will open in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sponsored by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in association with the Cincinnati Museum Center, it will tour multiple cities over the next few years. In continued celebration of the women who have shaped our lives and cultivated our potential, I stand to recognize the Catholic sisters not only for the personal impact they have had within our own lives, but for the extraordinary contributions they have made to the history of the United States.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, today the United States announced that America's trade deficit is back on the rise. The 2008 annual trade deficit topped $677 billion. That is three-quarters of $1 trillion, knocking several points off of economic growth in our country, and yet in response to today's announcement of the growing deficit, U.S. Trade Representative Kirk said we need to work more on new and pending free trade agreements. But trade agreements based on the NAFTA job outsourcing model are what helped get us into this mess of rising unemployment and heavy borrowing in the first place. Take Mexico, for example, which is the red on this chart. When NAFTA was signed back in 1993, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of $1.3 billion. But in 2008, our deficit with that country had surged to more than $367 billion. This year, in only 3 months, we have already seen a $9.7 billion deficit with Mexico. Indeed, in every single year of NAFTA since 1993, more imports have come in here from Mexico than our exports there. The biggest U.S. export to Mexico has actually been our jobs. Good jobs. In an article published in 1993 in Fortune Magazine, the self- proclaimed economic geniuses who urged NAFTA's passage, including Gary Hufbauer and economist Jeffrey Schott, said at that time that if that treaty passed, the United States would maintain, and I quote them, ``an annual current account surplus with Mexico of about $10 billion throughout the 1990s.'' Boy, were they wrong. Could they have been more wrong? Dead wrong. Consistently wrong. Since NAFTA was enacted, the United States has accumulated more than $1.2 trillion in trade deficits to both Mexico and Canada. The orange is the Canadian deficit. And this means lost jobs in our country and lost income to both Mexico and Canada. That $1.2 trillion of lost wealth in this country could pay for better health care. It could pay for better roads and bridges. It could pay for a better-protected soldier abroad and for police forces here at home. But instead, we shift these dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs across our borders every single year leaving our home communities devastated and costing our taxpayers ever more. People ask: Why is President Obama spending money to try to re-engage our economy? And the answer is: What other choice does he have? Doing nothing in an economy with double-digit unemployment numbers is absolutely cruel. At a time when our home districts are straining to make ends meet, millions of people are facing foreclosure and pink slips are coming day after day, why would we want to send more of our jobs and dollars abroad working on new, and I quote the trade ambassador, ``new and pending free trade agreements,'' as Ambassador Kirk suggests, instead of focusing our time and energy on remedying the broken banking and economic system of our country? We have to fix that. We have to fix the foreclosure crisis. And we have to create well- paying jobs right here in our own neighborhoods rather than weakening America further by shipping out more jobs and wealth abroad. Congress needs to stop making it easier for U.S. jobs to go to these far-flung, slave-wage havens, as in China, in Mexico, and in Panama. And by the way, countries like Panama are corporate tax havens as well. We need banking reform. We need help for homeowners. We need modern infrastructure, and we need lots more good jobs right here at home. Ambassador Kirk, won't you join us in the fight for America's economic prosperity? Why send more of our jobs away from our communities that need them most, particularly when you are staring in the face of reality, which is $1.3 trillion of trade deficit since NAFTA's inception, both with Mexico and with Canada, and not a single year in the black? Invest in the United States. We can leave Panama and Mexico to another day. It is time to reclaim our wealth and bring it back home where it belongs. I think the American people intuitively know something is really wrong, and they are trying to figure out why all this has happened. And I would say to some of the very institutions on Wall Street that have caused the deep harm to this economy, you are the very institutions that have helped to finance the outsourcing of these jobs.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the passing from this life of Alice T. Mosiniak, the founder of Toledo Seagate Food Bank, which over the years has helped countless people in need. Alice was Toledo office director in the 1970s of the National Association for Human Development, which trained senior citizens who were jobless and often alone. ``I took it for granted that everyone ate,'' Mrs. Mosiniak, who lived in South Toledo, told the Toledo Blade in 1993. She asked 50 seniors to bring a lunch to a meeting. ``Only two brought a lunch and one of those was a mashed potato sandwich, and the other person brought a bean sandwich. And that's how I found out they were all hungry.'' She scrounged and bought food for them. ``Her heart was compassion and caring for others,'' said her daughter, Deborah Vas, food bank executive director since 1998. ``She just truly believed and taught us you need to care about your neighbors'' The Toledo Seagate Food Bank began in 1980 after Alice saw what seniors ate--or didn't eat. Migrant farm workers in Lucas County were among the first fed, said Virginia Ortega, a member of the Ohio advisory committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. ``Her life enhanced the quality of life of many northwest Ohioans in ways many people I don't think even realize,'' she said. Mrs. Mosiniak enlisted local officials and business leaders in the project. ``She'd tell them exactly what she needed and wanted and say, `Either you're going to help or you're not.' And who's not going to help a neighbor or friend?'' Ms. Debbie Vas said. Added Harvey Savage, Jr.: ``When she set her mind on getting something, she was able to get it. We have people who are chronically underemployed, who are always going to need help.'' Mr. Savage is board president of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Kitchen for the Poor, founded by his father, the Rev. Harvey Savage. ``She saw it at a time when we were trying to sweep that under the rug.'' When I first encountered Alice more than 25 years ago, she was passionately piecing together the elements of what would become the Toledo Seagate Food Bank. Her enthusiasm and deep commitment to those who had fallen on hard times was unforgettable, and infectious. She was indefatigable. Enlisting the most unlikely coalition of supporters-- from pugnacious property owners to willing donors to amazed farmers to selfless volunteers and grassroots supporters, from all walks of life-- she built a vanguard institution from scratch, one that had never existed before. Year by year, its reputation earned respect and admiration across our region, Ohio, and the nation. Millions of meals, and other household necessities, have been made possible for three decades precisely because this incredible, inspired woman reached beyond herself to help others, at no cost to them. She sought no recognition. So let America acclaim her now and express its gratitude and acclaim for her noble efforts, truly a citizen of extraordinary proportion. She grew up at Detroit Avenue and Vance Street in Toledo. She attended Libbey High School, the former Harriet Whitney Vocational High School, and the former Mary Manse College. She and her husband, Alphonse ``Bill'' Mosiniak, formed a company that built houses in South Toledo and Perrysburg. They married May 25, 1945. He died July 8, 1966. Surviving are her daughters, Debbie Vas and Mindy Rapp; son, Douglas; brother, Richard Williams, and six grandchildren. It is with the deepest admiration that I pay tribute to the exemplary life of this pioneering woman. She dedicated her life in service to her family, friends, and the poor and hungry of our region. May her family be comforted by the loving memories they hold and may Alice Mosiniak be blessed with a loving peace.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, one can sure ask: Is it more than coincidence that the very Wall Street banksters who are holding up our Republic are also causing the economic meltdown affecting community after community and millions upon millions of our fellow citizens? Is it any coincidence that these banksters are also the ones who are still being rewarded day after day by their acolytes in Washington? In today's Huffington Post, filmmaker Michael Moore in a piece entitled ``Bernie Madoff, Scapegoat'' writes: ``Why did we allow those same banks to create the scam of a subprime mortgage? Instead of putting the people responsible in the cell block in Lower Manhattan, where Bernie now resides, why did we give them huge sums of our hard- earned tax dollars to bail them out of their self-inflicted troubles? Bernie Madoff is nothing more than a scab on the wound. He's also a continental distraction. Where's the photo on the list of the ex- chairman of AIG, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and the list goes on.'' Michael Moore is exactly right. Now the Center for Public Integrity reports the very list of the ``Who's Who'' of these exalted top bankster lenders responsible for the subprime loan fraud and our economic crisis. Let me place their names into the Record tonight, and what we know so far of the extent of their damage. These 25 lenders are responsible for almost $1 trillion of subprime loans, more than $7.2 million high- interest loans made just from 2005 to 2007. Together, these companies account for about 72 percent of the high- priced loans reported to the government at the peak of the subprime market. But their Ponzi scheme had been cleverly set in place during the 1990s. We need to follow their tracks back to the start of this trail of tears. Mr. Speaker, we need to go back to the roots of the subprime scam that, once established, just kept getting juiced more and more with each passing years. Securities created from these subprime loans have been blamed for the economic collapse from which the world's economies have yet to recover. My question is this: When will these Wall Street wrong-doers be brought to justice rather than rewarded? A couple of names on the list you'll probably recognize. Everyone has heard of Countrywide. Well, they floated about $97.2 billion of subprime loans. Chase Home Financial, JP Morgan Chase, they floated about $30 billion. Citi Financial, Citigroup, they floated $26.3 billion that we know of. American General Finance, AIG, at least $21.8 billion and counting. And Aegis Mortgage Corporation, they are number 25 on the list, at least $11.5 billion. Meanwhile, the special inspector general for oversight on the Wall Street bailouts being paid out by our Treasury through our taxpayers has now reported that the major institutions receiving tax dollars to cover their losses are none other than the very same group. I wish to place their names on the Record tonight as just one part of the Treasury's report.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, as unemployment in community after community rises to double digits, and foreclosures similarly rise, Wall Street is at it again, milking both ends of the foreclosure debacle. As many of the banks who volunteered to do foreclosure moratoriums, along with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, have ended those moratoriums, foreclosures are rising again and expected to continue to rise even with administration programs up and running. Between the first of this year and April 22, in my home county of Lucas, the major county I represent, 442 foreclosed properties have been sold. Now, would you think that's good? Who do you think is buying those homes? The very same institutions that made the liars' loans and subprime loans in the first place, Deutsche Bank, followed by Citigroup, by Wells Fargo, by U.S. Bank, Fifth Third and JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, you know the names, or their subsidiaries. So, they foreclose, they buy, then they sell, pulling profit each step of the way, while destroying neighborhood after neighborhood, community after community in their wake. When are we going to stop letting Wall Street make money coming and going while people lose their homes and our communities are destroyed? Now, who do they sell to? That's interesting. All to absentee investors who don't care or don't even know where we reside. Absentee investors across our country and, in many cases, across the world. Of the 442 properties sold--get ready for this--93 percent--93 percent--were sold to banks or to absentee investors. I don't call that community reinvestment. I call that community disemboweling, community disinvestment. These buyers have no connection to Ohio or our community. They have no tie to our people. They merely seek to make more profit off the anguish of places such as where we reside, through the foreclosure process, as unemployment skyrockets. Communities do not have the tools to defend themselves from this predatory pillage. Realtors from our district are telling us that the same banks purposely are slowing down short sales of properties, pushing off sellers, and leaving properties vacant. Why? To make more money again. Federal policy should support Main Street families regaining equity and hope. Wall Street is rigging every transaction to laden their pockets--at the expense of the very taxpayers that supported them when they were crashing, and continue to support them as they stabilize. Business as usual for Wall Street--never doing for others, but profiting at everyone else's expense. Foreclosures weaken communities. Absentee investors do the same. We see home prices fall, which leads to more foreclosures as communities weaken and mortgages go underwater. People in communities are drowning across this country. To jump in and save them will require creative, big picture-thinking that goes beyond the gains of these big banks or the silos of governmental programs and goes beyond the benefit of one institution over another. We must let the FDIC and SEC deal with troubled banks and their ledgers and our financial system as they are designed to operate. Any Federal agency that deals with housing and foreclosures and jobs must join forces in designing funding mechanisms to radically transform the most hard-hit communities across our country. I would start with those that are now at double-digit in unemployment and foreclosures. Saving them will save more than just those communities. It will begin to breathe life back into our Nation's economy. It's time Main Street was put ahead of Wall Street. And it's time that this Congress paid attention to what is happening coast-to-coast. I will place in the Record material from the New York Times of this week. [From the New York Times, May 4, 2009] As Foreclosures Surge . . . The Obama administration sat by last week as 12 Senate Democrats joined 39 Senate Republicans to block a vote on an amendment that would have allowed bankruptcy judges to modify troubled mortgages. Senator Obama campaigned on the provision. And President Obama made its passage part of his antiforeclosure plan. It would have been a very useful prod to get lenders to rework bad loans rather than leaving the modification to a judge. But when the time came to stand up to the banking lobbies and cajole yes votes from reluctant senators--the White House didn't. When the measure failed, there wasn't even a statement of regret. Mr. Obama's plan to keep struggling Americans in their homes now relies on lenders to voluntarily rework bad loans. The plan provides ample incentives, including payments to servicers who successfully modify loans and, in some cases, payments to mortgage investors who agree to modifications. Whether that will be enough remains to be seen. The administration estimates that its plan will prevent three million to four million foreclosures, but it will take several months before there is enough data to evaluate. In the past, however, voluntary modifications have failed to curb the rise in foreclosures. The number of foreclosure filings in March was very high, with estimates between 290,000 and 341,000. Even if lenders do agree to modify loans, many Americans will still be in trouble. That's because nearly 14 million homeowners are ``under water''--they owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. In a bankruptcy, such homeowners would likely have their loan principal reduced, lowering their payments and helping them to rebuild equity. In a typical voluntary loan modification, however, the monthly payment is reduced, but not the principal. That puts under-water borrowers at high risk of redefault, because there is no equity to fall back on if a financial setback leaves them unable to make mortgage payments. The negative feedback loop--foreclosures beget falling home prices, which beget foreclosures, further weakening the banks--is well under way. We hope the president's plan can break the loop, but without bankruptcy reform it is going to be a lot harder. In fact, last week we lost what one can say was a final hope for some Americans. With their mortgage completely underwater, credit card bills unpaid, home heating or cooling bills unpaid, healthcare bills unpaid and less food on the table . . . they turn to bankruptcy. This is the last chance and last hope for people who have tried everything else humanly possible to crawl out from under their debt. The decision is hard. Their hearts and souls demoralized, they turn to bankruptcy. Currently, bankruptcy does not include dealing with one's primary residence. The House passed bill H.R. 1106 included ``cramdown'' provisions. Not ideal. Not what anyone wants to do, but a tool to help some of the most desperate Americans settle debts and begin again. No such luck . . . the amendment in the Senate to achieve such a path was defeated. The New York Times editorial harkens this to a negative feedback loop. . . .

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the distinguished chairman for yielding. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the 2010 budget resolution conference report, and I commend the chairman for his diligent work, as well as the other conferees, to produce a budget to grow our economy and to restore discipline, finally, to America's accounts. The key to our Nation's future is a strong, robust economy, and this budget leads us in that direction. It also meets our commitments to our veterans by including a substantial increase from the 2009 veterans' services. I ask my colleagues to support this resolution. Again, I thank the very able Budget chairman, Congressman Spratt of South Carolina, for his incredible work. I rise today in support of the 2010 Budget Resolution Conference Report. I wish to applaud Chairmam Spratt and the other conferees for their diligent work on behalf of our nation. The key to our nation's future is a a strong, robust economy built on the foundation of resilient citizens working hard to produce goods and services. The Budget Resolution supports revitalization of our economy through investing in education and energy independence, both of which keep us competitive globally while protecting our national interests. In addition, this Budget Resolution aims to cut the deficit by nearly two-thirds while maintaining our commitment to our nation's veterans by including an 11.7 percent increase from 2009 for veteran's services. This is critical as we address our aging veterans and those who struggle with PTSD and other war-related injuries. I ask my colleagues to support this resolution.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, tonight as General Motors, Chrysler, and the United Auto Workers struggle with the imposed government deadlines that will determine their survival, I wish to share with you Harold Meyerson's article ``Break Up the Banks'' from The Washington Post last Friday. You see, what has been holding up the deal to save the American auto industry, save America's jobs, and breathe life into communities where wealth is actually created and not just traded away is something not much talked about, and that is the megabanks, centered, yes, on Wall Street, again. Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase that were huge Treasury bailout recipients, billions and billions and billions of dollars, who turned a profit this year, by the way, are the leading culprits for the rest of the banks in slowing down or impeding the Obama administration's efforts to restructure Chrysler. Currently, Chrysler's bonds found on the books of Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase are trading at 15 cents on the dollar. Despite increasingly better offers than that, Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase insist that they and their fellow banks are entitled to more, more of your money. More of our money. That is greed in its purest form. More, more, and more for them and their cronies, and less and less and less for everyone else. They have bilked America on the front end and then on the back end. First, the front end by restricting the availability of credit to consumers looking to purchase cars and car dealers looking to finance their showrooms. Just squeeze them down out of existence by shutting off their credit. And now at the back end by denying the restructuring of GM and Chrysler's debt. Yes, they keep America's cash but then deny us the ability to access it in the marketplace to buy cars and furnishing dealers' showroom floors. Very clever. It's a tourniquet at both ends. Wall Street's idea is to bleed Chrysler retirees, Fiat, and the American taxpayers dry. They care for their own interest at the expense of the national interest. The American automobile industry is just one victim of Wall Street's meltdown. The industry is the lifeblood of so many communities, and they were just on the cusp of a new green engine era, and they have been forced to their knees. Of course, the banksters bail out their friends, firms like AIG. Beyond mere life support, they were handed over $70 billion. That's putting all the auto bailout together and multiplying it times five. Not only does AIG have special access to policymakers and your tax dollars; they didn't have to take any haircuts. Compare that to what is being asked of autoworkers: first, give up your job, move out of your community, cut your wages and your health benefits too, and, oh, by the way, we want to go after your retirement benefits, even the widows and retirees out of those firms. Meanwhile, AIG pensioners, well, they're alive and well. Their health care benefits are not threatened. Their counterparties are kept whole. While hardworking blue collar America is squeezed dry, they're just as happy as clams. Right now it's Wall Street versus the American people. Surely those that work hard and make things with their hands and end up with all the injuries to prove it, with bodily wear and tear, don't they deserve some regard? Don't they have some rights for three decades in an auto plant? Well, Citigroup, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, HSBC, Wells Fargo, and the rest of the high fliers up there on Wall Street, they want to deny these folks the right to their hard-earned benefits and wages. American workers built and continue to build America, while Wall Street destroys not just capital; they destroy industries. They destroy communities. They destroy people's lives. Now, we can see who has that power. But that isn't what America was supposed to be all about. When you work hard and you build something real for the Nation's might, you expect a fair deal. And that was supposed to be the American Dream, for the many, not just the privileged few. Today a real industry, auto production, gets stomped on, chewed up, spit out because Wall Street robbed the kitty. They stole our hard-earned money and continue to beg, borrow, and steal from American citizens. Sales in business after business, including the auto industry, have gone down because the bailout recipients didn't make loans. Credit is frozen. People can't buy cars. The Big Three is suffering. So what does Wall Street do? It gets its friends, its shills, on the op-ed pages and other media to shift the blame. So who gets the blame for the strangled auto industry? Is it Detroit that's the problem? No, my friends. It's Wall Street that's the problem. And it's time that we put America back on its feet again. And as Mr. Meyerson suggests in his very last sentence, pass the anti-trust laws we need in order to scale down these banks and give America back to the American people. [From the Washington Post, Apr. 24, 2009] Break Up the Banks (By Harold Meyerson) This week in banking Our leading financial institutions announced that they had actually made a profit in the year's first quarter through the creative manipulation of rules and regulations, lobbied Congress to preserve their ability to raise credit card interest rates just for the heck of it and opposed the administration's plan for restructuring Chrysler, which would save some jobs and honor pension obligations, in the hope that they can redeem the company's bonds at a higher level than they're trading at just now. And, to round out the picture, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that lending at the 19 largest TARP recipients was 23 percent lower in February--by which time these banks had received hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds intended to enable them to lend more--than it had been in October, before the floodgates of tax dollars had been fully opened. This is what our major banks are up to at a time when it is our largess that is keeping them afloat. The week began with a burst of creative accounting. Citigroup, into which we've sunk more dough than any other company, with the possible exception of AIG, claimed a profit for the first quarter of this year because its bonded debt has lost value, which under the rules of accountancy enabled it to register a one-time gain equal to that lost value, because Citi could, in theory, buy back its own bonds for less. J.P. Morgan Chase, whose fire-sale purchase of Bear Stearns we taxpayers backed, declared a similar profit because of a similar decline in the value of its bonds. As events would have it, the very same Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase are the lead negotiators for the banks that are objecting to the Obama administration's efforts to restructure Chrysler. Chrysler's bonds, which these banks hold, are trading at 15 cents on the dollar, the amount the government offered to pay the banks in its initial proposal to restore the company to viability. Yesterday, the government upped that amount to 22 cents, plus a 5 percent equity share in the company. Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase, however, insist that they and their fellow banks are entitled to more, though that ``more'' could only come at the expense of Fiat (the auto company that is providing the new car lines and technology without which Chrysler will fold) or the company's retirees (to whose health-care fund Chrysler is legally obligated) who built the company, or the taxpayers who are keeping Chrysler alive. Instead of playing Scrooge (and a publicly subsidized Scrooge, at that), what the banks should do is lend Chrysler their accountants. Maybe they'd show that the company turned a profit last year. The banks' lobbyists, meanwhile, have been hard at work, too. Bills to limit credit card fees and penalties--my favorite fee is the one banks charge some customers for making (not missing, making) a payment--are moving through both houses of Congress, but the Senate version has yet to receive any support from Republicans. A bill that would enable bankruptcy judges to modify mortgage terms has also hit a wall in the Senate, with Republican leaders claiming the backing of all 41 of their members to filibuster the bill when it comes to the floor. President Obama told representatives of the major banks yesterday that he backs the limits on credit card charges. The question here is whether the administration and congressional Democrats will use this issue to go after the Republicans, whose decision to align themselves with the banks, particularly on the issue of credit card fees, is incomprehensibly dumb even by their standards. Socially liberal bankers may be a financial mainstay of the new-model Democratic Party, but if the Democratic Senate and House campaign committees don't run against the Republicans for backing the moral sewer and economic disaster that is our modern banking industry, they will be derelict in their political duties. And that should just be the beginning. The Democrat in the White House and the Democrats on the Hill are committed to legislation that regulates our dysfunctional wards in the banking industry, but regulations by themselves won't solve the problem of the banks being too big to fail--and so big that they dominate campaign finance and, with it, much of the business of lawmaking. We need to amend our antitrust laws so we can scale down banks to the point that they no longer imperil our economic and political systems. As things stand now, it's we who are serving their needs, not they who are serving ours. It's time to turn that around.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Chair, as a member of the Budget Committee, I rise in support of this pro-growth resolution. Finally, America is moving forward, and I want to thank our able chairman, John Spratt, for doing what the American people want us to do. They've told us they can't wait anymore. This budget resolution addresses the necessity for our Nation to reduce its crippling and dangerous dependence on foreign oil. We must produce our own energy and do so through sustainable, renewable sources, while creating jobs here in America. Our people cannot wait. We must re-imagine and re-tool America's energy economy. Alternative energy technologies provide one clear path to industrial growth and local employment. Our people cannot wait. This Congress started with the Obama Recovery Act which set our ship of State on a new path forward to spur development and production of new energy sources and technologies. Our people cannot wait. And this budget resolution includes a further commitment to renewable energy and energy efficiency. Especially through the deficit neutral energy fund, we will encourage and engage communities to emit fewer greenhouse gases and develop alternative energy technologies and production to create jobs in a new energy age. The resolution not only helps our Nation recover, it focuses on cutting the deficit in half by 2013 through all the efficiencies and establishes a balance between investing in key areas to grow our economy and saving in order to help put our Nation on a growth path forward. We are asking this of our citizens, are we not? And we should ask no less of our government. Our people cannot wait. I rise in strong support of the resolution, and I thank my colleague for yielding.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, these are daunting times for communities in the Great Lake States. Our region's communities have served as production platforms for our Nation for generations--for the generations when America built a solid middle class. Our region did not simply trade wealth, as do Wall Street and other mega-banking centers. We made it. Our Nation's economy and, frankly, our defense industrial base depend on production platforms such as the motor vehicle industry for jobs, for industrial might, and for real wealth creation for the Republic. One of every seven jobs in our country is tied to the motor vehicle industry. Over half of semiconductors are used in auto production, nearly half of the carpeting, as well as plastics, glass, metals, electric wiring, machine tools, and the list goes on. In my district and throughout the industrial Midwest, the Big Three and their suppliers still form the bedrock of our economy. And although elite opinion makers try to deny it, the reality remains that as the motor vehicle and auto industry go, so goes the economy of the United States. And that economy isn't looking too good these days. President Obama is correct in saying that we cannot and must not and will not let our auto industry vanish. Those of us in our Nation's heartland have always known that. America cannot lead the global economy unless it leads in the global auto and truck center. No modern industrial power has ever survived without a thriving domestic motor vehicle industry whose capabilities undergird its defense industrial base. Japan understands that. China understands that. India understands that. Germany understands that. Do we understand that? Now, we can take a look at the severe challenges facing this industry today. The most important reason that this industry is facing difficulties at the moment is because of the credit crunch and the inability of Wall Street to reach Main Street despite billions, hundreds of billions of dollars put into the TARP that isn't working. Any sales-dependent industry, like the automotive industry, must have credit lines open to the dealerships and to consumers who want to buy those cars. So that TARP bailout overrides everything else happening. We need to see it. Straightening out what is being done by the U.S. Treasury, aided and abetted by the somnambulant Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Securities Exchange Commission, is essential to righting our economic ship of state. And the failure of those agencies to monitor, let alone regulate, has created today's financial wreckage. Mark-to-market accounting is killing more value inside this economy than the bailout can possibly replace. And as Treasury and Wall Street still fiddle, Main Streets across this country implode, including those where the automotive sector is predominant. I am glad the President talked about the pain that is felt across our auto industry. Let me just say, look at the hands and the faces and the legs of autoworkers. They know their work is hard. The predicament we're in isn't their fault. It is a crisis of leadership, as the President has said, starting right here in this city. Thomas Friedman, a writer, is wrong. He says the world is flat. Well, it's not. It has mountains and has huge valleys, and our auto industry has had to compete on a very unlevel playing field. Take this fact: over half the vehicles sold in this country actually come from other places in the world. In Japan's market, the second largest market in the world, only 3 percent of their cars come from any place else in the world. Whose market is open? Whose market is closed? Mr. Speaker, tax policy operates against this industry, and if we look at the number of cars, including the new Buick LaCrosse that was rated No. 1 by J.D. Power, we have an industry ready to compete. Let's give it a chance. Mom, Apple Pie, and Hyundai? The auto industry has been a bulwark of the American middle class. If Wall Street warrants a bailout, why not Detroit? (By Pat Choate) In those happy days of the 1950s, my friends and I anxiously awaited the moment when the local auto dealers began displaying their new car models. My uncle was a Chrysler-Plymouth dealer, and we always began our tours there. Then we would go from one showroom to another, collecting the brochures, sitting behind the wheels of the new Corvettes, Chrysler 300s, Plymouth Sport Furies, and Thunderbirds, opening the hoods and admiring the powerful engines. Rare was the teenager of that era who did not know the specifications of virtually every model produced by General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. ``Car people'' such as Lee Iacocca, then at Ford, were in charge of America's Big Three automakers. They loved their cars as much as their customers did. The carmakers and their suppliers produced an ever changing set of engines, transmissions, accessories, and gadgets that made buying a car a family treat unlike any other. So many different types of hubcaps were produced that there were hubcap stores in all the major cities. In Texas, stealing them was a state pastime for teenaged boys. The differentiated line of cars produced by General Motors was also a measure of social and economic status. A Chevrolet was for those starting out. A Cadillac was for those who had arrived. Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, and Buicks were stop-offs for those on the way up or down. A jump from a Chevrolet to a Buick was an event noticed and commented upon by neighbors as a measure of success--or of someone acting above himself. In that postwar period, Americans were on the go, and though Charlie Wilson was ridiculed for commenting, ``What's good for General Motors is good for America,'' he was right. The Great Depression and World War II were memories, people had well-paying jobs, credit was easy, and a new car could be bought with a small downpayment. GM and the auto industry were a major part of the economy and an important contributor to that prosperity. The Big Three autos, coupled with the construction of the 42,500 mile Interstate Highway System and the establisment of a vast network of safe and inexpensive motels such as Holiday Inns, opened the continent for inexpensive family vacations. Dinah Shore's perky signature song captures the essence of America's love affair with its cars: ``See the USA in your Chevrolet. America is asking you to call. America is the greatest land of all.'' But success bred complacency and hubris in the industry. By the mid-1960s and early 1970s, management of the Big Three had shifted from the car people to ``numbers guys,'' who were more interested in squeezing every possible penny of profit from the vehicles. To avoid costly worker strikes, Big Three management made major concessions to labor on pensions, healthcare, and vacations, costs it then passed on to consumers. Meanwhile, quality slipped. Designs were unimaginative. Buyers would ask whether a car was produced on a Monday or Friday, fearing that either the workers were too exhausted and hungover after the weekends to do a good job or too anxious to leave on Friday to care. By the late 1960s, the Big Three had become an easy target for Japanese and European competitors. In 1980, Chrysler faced bankruptcy, and General Motors' management seriously considered exiting the auto business altogether. As part of that strategy, GM bought Hughes Electronics and Ross Perot's

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, today I wish to acknowledge and express deep gratitude to timeless leaders President Jimmy Carter, Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin for their historic, unprecedented and courageous journey toward peace in the Middle East three decades ago today. March 26 marks the anniversary of their signing of the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, momentous in that it was the first such treaty between an Arab nation and the nation of Israel. It followed the Camp David Accords which these leaders had signed the prior year. They signed it right here on the White House lawn. I can remember the day. History will record for all time that incredible step forward of lions and lambs lying down their arms and their fears. I can still recall the day of that signing. It was a sunny day, as the three leaders pledged their political and personal capital to that unprecedented feat. It was historic. It was bold. And it was costly. In 1981, an assassin in Cairo would take the life of President Anwar al-Sadat. In 1983, Menachem Begin resigned. President Jimmy Carter lost his re-election campaign. President Jimmy Carter and his gifted National Security adviser, Zbigniew Brezezinski, carry the collective living memory of that pristine moment of the Camp David Peace Accord and the Egyptian Israeli Peace Treaty. To date, only one other Arab nation has signed a peace accord with the nation of Israel, Jordan, in 1994, well over 10 years later, through the equally courageous vision of its timeless leader, King Hussein. Looking back, as today's upheaval across the Middle East reminds us of old fractures and unmet potential, we can ask, how did these men do it? How did they make history? The enmity between people and nations was no less. The prospects forward seemed very dim at that time. Yet, their inspired and dogged efforts did not take no for an answer. That peace agreement ended 30 years of war between Israel and Egypt. Now we have seen 30 years of peace between them. By anyone's measure, this remains the most important set of diplomatic achievements in the Middle East in modern history. We need to celebrate them. And as we honor the achievement of these leaders, and the nations to which they dedicated their lives, let us remember what they did. President Jimmy Carter stated, ``War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each others' children.'' Prime Minister Menachem Begin said, ``If through your efforts and sacrifice, you win liberty and with it the prospect of peace, then work for peace because there is no mission in life more sacred.'' And President Anwar al-Sadat said, ``Peace is much more precious than a piece of land.'' Could we only recapture that moment again. How much our world still owes these men for leading history forward, for showing us the way. They did not allow the status quo or entrenched rivalries and worn-out dreams to quash the prospect of peace. They gave their all to it. Today, we commemorate and we celebrate their greatness.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I join with the President in expressing hope that our economy will begin to recover soon. No one should underestimate the pain and worry that the American people are experiencing during this economic crisis. Every weekend when I am back in Ohio's Ninth Congressional District, I hear more worried stories from people about the trouble they are having making ends meet and planning for their futures with confidence. For the sake of our country, we simply have to get the economy right. Thus, I am troubled by several aspects of the most recent financial stability plan that Treasury Secretary Geithner unveiled this week. I am most concerned by the fact that the American taxpayers once again are shouldering far, far too much of the risk that was created by unscrupulous traders on Wall Street in the biggest mega banks and investment houses. And the plan does not place rigor and market discipline to correct what faces us. By committing taxpayer dollars to leveraging minimal private investment in the private banking system, a private system that is now substantially owned by the public, the Geithner plan once again places taxpayers on a very large hook. Why should we use taxpayer dollars to eliminate discipline and most risk for private investors to purchase the bad loans in order to clean up the banks' books? Taxpayers didn't create this problem. In this new deal, private investors may put up as little as 3 percent while government--which means our people--put up 97 percent of the rest as a loan, and a nonrecourse loan at that, which means if something goes sour, they pick it all up. And guess who gets the profits on the upside if there is any? That's not a good deal. This is what should be the focus of our concern. According to an Associated Press investigation reported recently, these bailed-out banks sought to hire 21,800 foreign workers in the past 6 years. Major U.S. banks sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers into our country for high-paying jobs even as the system was melting down last year. So, as Americans were getting laid off across our country, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications, these mega banks were hiring foreign workers. Dr. Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland, described the Geithner plan as ``structured to create more risk for the Federal Government.'' Why? Because ``it is going to be the fund manager who raised the private money and then borrowed with a government guarantee who is going to be paid on the number of loans he or she buys and he or she will have the temptation to bid whatever it takes. There is going to be real incentive here for people to overbid.'' Again, the proposal has no market discipline. Price setting will be taken out of the normal market process. That is never a good idea. ``As a result,'' says Dr. Morici, ``the Geithner plan creates the potential for another bubble. You have created the potential for a synthetic bubble inside the government,'' inside the public coffers, ``which could cost the government'' and, in turn, the American taxpayers, a whole lot more money down the road. Doctor Morici describes the plan as low risk and high reward for the private investor and high-risk and high- reward for everybody else, the taxpayer. I have said all along that the solution to this crisis lies in using the existing full authority of agencies such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Securities and Exchange Commission. I was outraged by the failure of the Bush administration to use these existing instruments of the Federal Government, and I am baffled by this administration's failure to do so as yet. I am concerned that the Geithner plan will actually place at risk the FDIC's insurance fund. Dr. William Black, a law professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, who was a key player in resolving the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s and 1990s has pointed to one explanation: The Bush administration, in its zealous pursuit of deregulation, ``gutted the FDIC and its sister agencies' staffs. The FDIC is trying to staff up, but it has put some absurd limits on hiring the best bank examiners. The FDIC shortages are critical in examination, not in the use of receivership.'' Mr. Black goes on to say: ``We didn't resolve the S&L crisis by appointing `political commisars' to govern failed S&Ls. We hired competent bankers with records of integrity to run the receiverships. The academic literature concludes that they did an excellent job. It is bizarre that (President) Obama and (Secretary) Geithner are channeling President Reagan and claiming the government can't do anything and the market is all knowing.'' We have learned that the market is not all knowing, especially when it is distorted by greed and avarice and government complicity. We have learned the hard way the costs of ``too big to fail.'' We have learned not to trust the right-wing ideologues who peddled a devil's brew of deregulated and free market fundamentalism. We have learned a hard lesson about free market fundamentalism. Just as we have learned a hard lesson about free trade fundamentalism. This snake oil was peddled by the big banks and the big corporations. You can see the effects by walking down the main street of almost any city or town in any state surely in the State of Ohio. We need to learn the lessons of history and apply them. We need to use the proper government instrumentalities. The proper use of the market to resolve this economic crisis. Otherwise we will make the same mistakes. And again the American people will again be left holding the bag of bad debts for generations to come, throttling economic growth and compromising our future. In the end, we must do what is right, not what might be politically expedient.