Marcy Kaptur

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the second half of the Wall Street bailout is being jammed at this House today--again, with a cursory review by the committees that should be meeting their constitutional responsibilities. I have a simple question: Why would any Member trust the very same group who engineered the first bill to do it to America again? That first bill has not worked. It has made the foreclosure crisis worse, which is at the heart of what is wrong with this economy. Yet Wall Street was handsomely showered with taxpayer billions, and they then thumbed their noses at Main Streets across this country. I wouldn't expect anything from Treasury in the way of sensitivity to regular folks. Its job is to sell U.S. debt on Wall Street and to collect taxes. They're not designed to do real estate lending or housing workouts or real estate accounting. That's the job of the FDIC, of the SEC and of HUD. They should be in the lead in the mortgage workout process. And frankly, we ought to quadruple the number of financial crimes analysts at the FBI. I repeat: Why would Congress allow itself to be hoodwinked not once but twice into making the same big mistake? I urge my colleagues to vote no on the second Wall Street bailout bill. Instead let's do what works for the American people by solving the home foreclosure crisis first.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I am glad I was here on the floor to respond to the prior Member who felt compelled to say that he thought the Wall Street bailout was working. I would like to know what evidence he has to prove that, since we have no forensic accounting of what the Wall Street banks that got all this money did with the money. Maybe he has some special access inside these institutions and can provide it to the Record, because I will tell you what happened yesterday. I went before our Rules Committee and I proposed a very simple amendment. My amendment was that before we give one more dime of the people's money, we require the Treasury to do a forensic accounting of every bit of money that was sent up there to Wall Street. And I was denied my amendment. There is no Member of this Congress that can say with accuracy, including the gentleman who just spoke, that he knows where the money is, because, you know what? They haven't told us. All you know is what you have read in the newspapers, and how can we extend more money from the American people when we don't even know what happened to the money that went out the door? So you can say whatever you want and create a fiction, but the fact is that foreclosures are going up across this country. That bill that was passed last year was supposed to help people hang onto their homes. In Ohio, foreclosures have gotten worse every month. What I am telling people right now is, stay in your homes. If the American people, anybody out there is being foreclosed, don't leave, because I will tell you what. If you had a smart lawyer like those banks up there on Wall Street can get, they would take you into court and they couldn't find the mortgage. They couldn't find the mortgage. So why should any American citizen be kicked out of their homes in this cold weather? In Ohio it is going to be 10 or 20 below zero. Don't leave your home. Because you know what? When those companies say they have your mortgage, unless you have a lawyer that can put his or her finger on that mortgage, you don't have that mortgage, and you are going to find they can't find the paper up there on Wall Street. So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don't you leave. In Ohio and Michigan and Indiana and Illinois and all these other places our people are being treated like chattel, and this Congress is stymied. We have the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and our committees are muzzled. Power is given to one chairman or one person. We are all equal here. We have a right to be heard. The concerns of our constituents have a right to be registered in the committees of this House, not choked down as what is happening here today. It is just a tragedy. And if we don't fix the economic cure, it is going to get worse, and the cure is to go after the home foreclosure crisis. Who does that? Treasury? No. That is absolutely the wrong place. We need the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Securities and Exchange Commission empowered to do the real estate workouts on books across this country. Those are the normal institutions that are used. And then you have got HUD there now with FHA that can take these mortgages once they are refinanced. But that is not what is happening across our country. There is no help for the homeowner. That whole section they talked about today, Help for Homeowners over at HUD, nobody has even benefited. We said last year they wouldn't, and that is exactly what has happened. So I say to the American people, stay in your homes. You have earned them. And don't you get out until you get a really good lawyer who can find your mortgage up there on Wall Street. Because, you know what? They won't be able to find it, and therefore they can't prove you should be evicted.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me and rise in reluctant opposition to the rule and in strong opposition to the bill. Now, let us get this straight: Hank Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs boss, now Secretary of Treasury, wants $350 billion more to burn after the first $350 billion of our taxpayers' money was already wasted on the Wall Street bailout. Congress is being asked to do this a few days before a new President takes office. Hmmm, the timing of that even is suspicious just on the face of it. Why not wait until the new President takes office so he can really fix this right by using the FDIC and the SEC, as their past practices well demonstrate? Why give all this power to Treasury? This would make sense to any reasoning person, unless of course you're one of the bankster beneficiaries who have been planning this heist for a long time. It's almost a perfect crime, too; complicated enough on the surface to intimidate the public and many in Congress by using fear of the future to mask what is being perpetrated. The architects of this financial crime aim to cement the deal now--a perfect time--when the country is distracted, the Congress hoodwinked with no real oversight, at a moment of transition between two Presidents. The banksters aim to secure their last overdose from the U.S. Treasury with little oversight. The question is, will Congress be hoodwinked again, losing all reason? We can't even account for what was done with the first $350 billion, so now we're supposed to double that and give more? What we do know is that the home foreclosure crisis wasn't helped by the first Wall Street bailout. Home foreclosures are escalating, getting worse. Why trust Treasury again? Meanwhile, Wall Street mega-banks have cleaned up as Main Streets across our country have lost 10 percent of their homes to foreclosure. The first TARP was adopted without hearings, real debate or amendments, without proper justification, safeguards or oversight. And then the Secretary of Treasury didn't do anything to help the housing crisis, instead using the money for banks to buy other banks through capital infusions, which should have been done by the FDIC anyway. Now it appears that Congress is gearing up to give the Secretary another $350 billion to spend on--well, it's not exactly clear on what. The legislation states that $40 to $100 billion is intended for some kind of foreclosure relief without specifying how it is to be accomplished. Is a $60 billion swing between these numbers the best we can do in estimating the cost of the program? That's more than we spend on several agencies of our government combined. What is the remaining $250 billion to $310 billion to be used for? Who decides? Just Treasury again? Is this lunacy or collusion? If we are going to continue putting capital into financial institutions, shouldn't we at least order the SEC to stop destroying capital through outdated real estate accounting? Shouldn't we allow the President a bit of time to see if the Fed's very aggressive monetary policy activities, coupled with enormous deficit spending we've already done, are having any effect? Why this rush? It's overtime for justice to reign down. It's time for this Congress to assume its constitutional responsibilities and not cede our power to the executive branch. May truth and justice will out. This bill won't get either. I thank the gentleman very much for yielding.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to warn America that here we go again. Wall Street, the Bush administration, the chief executor of Goldman Sachs Hank Paulson, who in his spare time sells U.S. debt to China and Saudi Arabia as our Treasury Secretary, are asking to get their hands on the second half of the $700 billion bank bailout. Last fall the administration and Wall Street's chief cheerleader Treasury Secretary Paulson scared Congress into adopting the first round of Wall Street bailout money. They called it the TARP. Some people would call it the ``TRAP.'' That was adopted without hearings, without debate or amendments, and without proper justification, safeguards, or oversight. Fortunately, the Secretary of Treasury abandoned the intended purchase of troubled assets and has used the money instead to purchase capital in banks; so banks are buying banks now. But that funding should have gone to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to purchase the capital rather than Treasury. He didn't use the money to do anything about the central part of the problem: mortgage workouts, the foreclosure crisis. So why do we now have a proposal here to give the Secretary of Treasury another $350 billion to spend on only God knows what? The bill says that $40 to $100 billion, and that's a $60 billion spread, my friends, is intended for some kind of foreclosure relief but doesn't specify how it's to be accomplished. Congress's job is to specify. Is a $60 billion swing between those two numbers the best we can do in estimating the cost of this program? What is the remaining $250 billion to $310 billion to be used for? Who decides? Just Treasury? If we are going to continue putting capital into financial institutions, shouldn't we at least order the Securities and Exchange Commission to stop destroying capital through market value accounting? What an opportunity for the special interests on Wall Street to take control when no one here seems to be in control, 6 days before our new President is sworn in. Today, trying to correct the huge inadequacies of this bill, I went to the Rules Committee to prevent more damage and outright financial crimes associated with this, and I asked for two amendments, and both were denied. The first amendment would have suspended any more money being expended from the first $350 billion, if there's any left, and would stop the next $350 billion until the Congressional Oversight Panel established in the original law has forensically accounted for each dollar of the original $350 billion. Why not examine the effects of the first $350 billion on the economy? Why not assess the effect of what the Federal Reserve policies in lowering their interest rates has been on our economy? That amendment, to follow the money, was denied. Now, here you have an agency that's selling trillions of dollars of our debt, and they're not telling Congress what they have done with $350 billion? The other amendment that I offered would have increased oversight and strengthened the role of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation overseeing TARP funds. It would have provided for oversight by the FDIC directly into the boardrooms of the banks that are getting our taxpayer money. Don't we have a right to know what they're doing with it? The FDIC is the right agency to oversee that. So the Rules Committee denied me. I wasn't expecting they would approve it because this seems like a greased deal to me, but it shouldn't be a greased deal for the American people. Before we send another $350 billion out of the door, there ought to be some accountability here. The legislation that will be before us provides no plan to stop foreclosures, which is the root of the problem. In fact, there is nothing in there about renegotiation or holding the banks and the servicers accountable. The bill continues to do more of the same, which simply has not been working, but it gives all this power to Treasury, this secretive agency that isn't sharing anything. The legislation does not help homeowners to defend themselves against criminal acts of massive fraud being perpetrated against them by Wall Street banksters in processing foreclosures. The legislation continues to shift both the risk and the cost of the program off corporations and their boards of directors and their executives who perpetrated this scheme on the taxpayers. And the legislation does not address the root of the problem: foreclosures themselves. So it will be just as ineffective on Main Street as the first round of TARP in addressing the core problems. Truly TARP is a trap. Mr. Speaker, I would like to place in the Record additional comments about the impact, sadly, of the original bailout bill on my district and end with saying the intent of TARP was to stabilize our financial system, which means our housing industry. It's not happening, and we shouldn't give them more money. recommendations This bill is not correcting the root of the problem and will not achieve the goal of preventing foreclosures and keeping people in their homes. There are many effective foreclosure prevention strategies being deployed by attorneys and advocates and we need to translate these into systemic solutions. This Congress must embark upon a full investigation of how the ``Shadow Banking Sector'' created by the Wall Street Investment Banks post-repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (Gramm-Leach-Bliley) constructed a private money-creation system that in 10 short years equals or exceeds the assets of all regulated banks nationwide. In short, there are solutions. We need a consumer-centric model. What we have now is so creditor-centric it will eventually lead to a complete collapse because consumers/taxpayers cannot handle the burden.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, wake up, America. Get your telephone calls going to Congress. Set up your robodials in gear. Wall Street's banksters are coming back to mama. Here they come again, and shame on us if we let them do it to us again. America, pay attention. Batten down the hatches. Let your Member of Congress know the banksters are coming back to mama. We are about to be taken for a ride by the banksters again. These banksters bank on us making the taxpayers pay again. Don't let them do it. Why? Because what they are doing is trampling our democracy. We are getting set to have another piece of legislation crammed through the Congress regarding the bailout. They call it TARP, the Troubled Assets Relief Program. It's the old bank bailout bill from last year. Despite the fact that due deliberation is required of us as Members of Congress through regular order of this House, and, frankly, our Constitution, this new cram down comes with a twist. Instead of not holding any hearings on the reform of the TARP, like happened last time, and only letting us see the bill 18 hours before $700 billion of the taxpayers' money was to be put on the table, one hearing is being held, exactly one, tomorrow, and it happens to be being held at the same time that amendments to that bill are supposed to be filed upstairs in the Rules Committee. So Members who spent over 20 years on that committee are unable to take what they hear at the hearing, and the information learned, to make recommendations for amendments to the Rules Committee. Any Member who might not be on the committee, and who wants to go to the hearing and listen, and then maybe propose amendments, well, you can't do that because it's being held at the same time. The committee will be holding the hearing here in the Capitol where most Americans can no longer afford to travel. They are not bothering to go out to the country, to the communities that have been so badly devastated by the rising foreclosure crisis, that the TARP, the bank bailout bill is not solving. No, the public won't be included, and the subpoena power of the committee will not be used. So here we go, the banksters are back. They want another $350 billion of our taxpayers' money, and the deliberations inside this Chamber are throttled. Isn't that sad, particularly given what happened to the first 350 billion. Once again, we are being pushed and told we have to hurry this up. We are going to have a new President. So we are told to hurry up and be hasty and not be thoughtful, because, of course, something might happen. But you know what? It's already happening. What we are doing isn't working. But we are going to have to be voting this week on a big unthinkable wad of our taxpayers' money, $350 billion more. And if we learned anything from the release of the first half of the TARP funds, it's that hurried legislative action brings undesired and sloppy results. Back in the fall we were told we didn't have the time to be deliberative, that if we didn't pass it, the economy was going to continue a downward spiral, that the economy would crash, and we would be to blame. Well, some Members voted for it, and it passed, and guess what happened? What they said wouldn't. Never mind that Secretary Paulson's management of the economy and the bailout still has resulted in 1.2 million jobs lost in November and December. Believe me, people in my State know what those numbers really mean. One in 10 homeowners are in arrears or in foreclosure, imagine that, 10 percent of the people who own homes in this country. And $4 trillion of wealth has been lost by our families. The American people were played, and $350 billion later Secretary Paulson has given us no progress for the American people. We are in a deeper economic hole than when we began. TARP isn't working. It hasn't stemmed the foreclosure crisis, which is at the heart of what is wrong with our economy. It didn't help unfreeze credit inside our financial system. The auto industry didn't go into a nose-dive because people didn't want to buy cars. They couldn't get the loans from the banks to buy the cars because the housing foreclosure crisis froze up the credit system. Instead, TARP has brought the auto industry and hundreds of thousands of businesses across our country to their knees. A staggering 693,000 jobs were lost across this country in the last month, three-quarters of a million, following 533,000 jobs the month before, half a million more. There are now nearly four job seekers for every one job opening. And, again, one in ten homeowners nationwide are now in arrears or facing foreclosure. My advice to people in that position: Don't leave your property. You claim your own property, because chances are if you had a good lawyer and they went to court on your behalf, they couldn't find who really holds your mortgage. If they go to the Truth in Lending laws, you might be surprised. The law might be on your side. Don't leave your property. So what have the banks done with all this money? Shouldn't we know that before we vote to give them more? I ask every Member of Congress, shouldn't we know where the money went and what they did with it? Have they reworked mortgages and started lending again? No. No, they have not. Instead, they have had a party buying one another up. The big banks, particularly the Wall Street banks, they are getting bigger. Community banks are under stress. Many State-Headquartered banks are being bought by the bigger banks. PNC, already one of the Nation's largest banks, bought National City Bank in Ohio. They are throwing 4,000 people out of work in Cleveland, Ohio. But PNC became, hold on to your seats now, the fifth largest bank in the United States from the infusion of TARP funds it received. The fifth largest bank in our country, and their corporate expansion bought and paid for by you, our taxpayers. Now, look at who else is getting bigger. Last night, CBS news reported on CBS.com that Bank of America received $15 billion, and then they bought Merrill Lynch, that had gotten $10 billion even as it was put up for sale. Total that up. That is $25 billion. Now Morgan Stanley, the recipient of $10 billion, is buying China Trust Bank. Another half dozen banks, including M&T, Capital One Bank, US Bancorp, Hampton Roads Bankshares and PNC, got bailout money, and then they bought up other banks. They just keep getting bigger. And what is interesting about that, under the law, when they buy another bank, they can probably book losses on their 2008 tax returns. It is very interesting how the financial system works on behalf of the big, and yet for those losing their homes, they have almost no one to represent them. They are having a royal time with our money, the banksters up there on Wall Street. Money Morning reports the 116 banks that are receiving billions in taxpayer-provided bailout money this year actually paid out $1.6 billion in compensation to their executives, plus benefits, even though the results at some of these institutions were so poor that they would soon have to turn to Washington for government-engineered rescues. The $1.6 billion in compensation and benefits to the banksters was paid out to nearly 600 executives at the 116 banks that have so far accepted Federal money to bolster their financial situation. The Associated Press concluded after a review of U.S. security filings that in addition to salary, the compensation included bonuses paid in both cash and stock. The benefits reaped by top executives included the use of company jets for personal purposes, personal chauffeurs, home security services, country club memberships and professional wealth management services, the news service said. Now, let's give them credit. These banksters know how to walk our money around. They even know how to create money when there isn't any there. They create fancy names; derivatives, credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. But those instruments are not worth anything, because the underlying assets cannot pay back the money if someone tries to collect it. That is usually called fraud or money laundering. But could it be a cruel twist of fate that the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Paulson, former chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, oddly took care of Goldman, his firm, first during all of this, making it a bank holding company, so it could get its nose under the tent cover--I mean qualify for Federal insurance, like the well-run banks do, which had paid into the insurance system. He did that for his own institution, but then he shed crocodile tears and he pushed Lehman Brothers overboard with no mercy. I would really like to know the full truth behind that story. But then Mr. Paulson, by coincidence surely, picked his top money man at Goldman Sachs and moved him too, lock stock and barrel, into the U.S. Treasury to hand out our cash. Now, this surely must have been done accidentally. How can you have two men from the same Wall Street firm delegated all this power? Oh, you might have heard his name. It is Mr. Kashkari. Yes, Neel Kashkari. He came from Goldman. It must surely be another coincidence that Goldman was also Wall Street's largest contributor to Federal campaigns last year. Check it out yourself at opensecrets.org. That is a Web site, opensecrets.org. In fact, Wall Street overall became the largest donor to Federal elections. And they are not showing any signs of slowing down. According to the Wall Street Journal, 90 percent of donations received so far for the Inaugural Committee have been raised by well-heeled fund-raisers, including Wall Street executives whose companies have received billions of dollars in Federal bailout money. Well, think about that one. Of the 207 fund-raisers that have collected $24.8 million of the $27.3 million in contributions through Thursday for the coming inauguration, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan campaign finance group Public Citizen, Wall Street employees as a group have been the biggest single source of these donations. Much of their donations, in fact $5.7 million total, has been channeled through financial services executives who each have bundled together donations worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Goldman Sachs has provided $175,000 in donations primarily through the bundling efforts of Jennifer Scully, who has raised over $100,000; Bruce Heyman who raised $50,000, including $10,000 of his own money; and another gentleman, David Heller, who donated another $25,000. Think about what is going on here. But, you know, a lot of people say they don't influence peddle. Banksters don't influence peddle. They just want good government. Sure they do. Of course, all this is accidental. Nobody planned it this way. Just like Bernie Madoff. Oh, he didn't plan anything either. Some might believe what these banksters do in their private affairs has absolutely no relationship to what happens here in Washington, and if you believe that, you were born yesterday. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. There are problems with the bill drafted to address the administration's mishandling of the bailout. This is the bill that is going to come before us, we think, H.R. 384, the TARP Reform Accountability Act of 2009. TARP doesn't need reforming. We need to kill it. We need to put the attention at the Federal Deposition Insurance Corporation and the Securities and Exchange Commission in order to resolve the interbank lending problem and the foreclosure credit crisis. We don't need to give this job to the Treasury. The wrong agency has the lead. Let's look at title II, called ``foreclosure relief.'' Number one, the legislation provides no new plan to stop foreclosures. That is what it was passed to do in the first place. This bill doesn't have it either. It continues to do more of the same, which simply hasn't worked. Servicers are not motivated through this bill to modify loans, because they are making money hand-over-fist servicing defaulted loans, foreclosing on loans and profiting from real estate that they have come to own. And they are awaiting booking huge tax losses on their 2008 income tax filings. The Tax Code favors them, not us, not the people who sent me here. This legislation that is proposed does not help homeowners defend themselves against criminal acts of fraud being perpetrated against them in processing foreclosures. A majority of the loans originated between 2000 and 2008 have legal defenses against foreclosures, but because the scheme has drained consumers of financial resources and because there are so few consumer law attorneys who know how to raise these defenses in a court of law, consumers have no access to their rights, for example, under the Truth in Lending Act. The legislation continues to shift both the risk and the cost of the program off corporations who perpetrated the scheme and on to homeowners, our American taxpayers. The legislation does not address the root of the problem and it will be just as ineffective as the first round of TARP funding in addressing the core problem, the home foreclosure crisis. The current loan modification restrictions are unsustainable and they will redefault. Let's go to title V, and I can't go through every title tonight, called Hope For Homeowners Program Improvements. Hope for Homeowners consist of industry players who created the mortgage mess to begin with. They are milking the system and not providing any relief to homeowners now. New nonprofit companies and loan modification companies are cropping up all over, and most of these have been established by the very mortgage brokers who defrauded consumers and sold them into subprime slavery. They should not now be rewarded with a new business opportunity to revictimize the victims. So let's look at some recommendations that make sense. The bill that will be sent to us will not correct the root of the problem and it will not achieve the goal of preventing foreclosures and keeping people in their homes. There are many effective foreclosure prevention strategies being deployed by attorneys and advocates, and we need to translate these into systemic solutions. We need to investigate, and it is a sham that this Congress is not doing appropriate oversight; how the shadow banking sector created by the Wall Street investment banks after the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which was called Gramm-Leach-Bliley, constructed a private money creation system that in a short 10 years equals or exceeds the assets of all regulated banks nationwide. In short there are solutions. We need a consumer-centric model. What we have now is a creditor-centric model. It will eventually lead to a complete collapse, because consumers and taxpayers cannot handle this burden. Let's go back to Ohio and take the case of National City, which has been an institution headquartered in Ohio, in Cleveland, since 1845. Now, Treasury's money, the taxpayers' money, our money, went to another out-of-state bank, PNC, of Pittsburgh, whose vice president, Mr. Demchuk, invented the derivative instrument. They came to Ohio, PNC, and they bought National City Bank, putting all the National City Bank employees on notice with pink slips, 4,000 of them, that they would be out of work on the tape. PNC became bigger. So what Mr. Kashkari did was take our money and give it to PNC, that hasn't worked out any of its mortgage loans. They, then, came to Ohio and bought out National City Bank. So PNC got bigger, our banking system gets more concentrated, and PNC became more powerful. Some say they actually have price control power now over all of Western Pennsylvania. So, PNC got $7.5 billion from us. Cleveland and Ohio lose a Fortune 500 company. They lose 4,000 National City Bank workers, and in Ohio, foreclosures are raging. And Ohio, it gets nothing. We get nothing. We need $20 billion just to fix what's wrong in Ohio. But all we get is more foreclosures. Now, take another institution. In 2008, Citigroup, one of the main culprits that caused the financial meltdown, was bestowed $25 billion. They got more than PNC. They got it from us, the taxpayer. And then they just kept foreclosing. In my district alone, another 235 families just were told, you're out of your house. Last November I found an advertisement in my local paper that said there was going to be an auction in my home community, and I was surprised. I didn't know the company coming in. It was called Hudson and Marshall of Dallas, Texas. So I went to the auction. And guess what? Citigroup was one of the banks selling the properties through Hudson Marshall. I attended. And I watched homes in my community sold for as little as $7,900, a price so low that we could have put the original owners back in those homes. Not only was Citigroup auctioning homes that night, but so were lots of other bailout recipients. Those are the banks that got the money from Treasury through us. Here they are: Wells Fargo, US Bank, Deutsche Bank, ABN/Amro, Chase Home Finance, Fifth Third Bank, Standard Federal, and LaSalle. They all got the money, and then they turned their backs on the very people that they were meant to help. That's what the people who passed the bailout bill last year said, that we would help those being foreclosed. But that hasn't happened. It is clear that the recipients of the Treasury money are unwilling to craft real workouts. And so what happens in our region is people just keep getting kicked out of their homes. Wall Street hired the auction company from Dallas, Texas. They didn't even hire an Ohio auctioneer. They came to our region. They sold all those properties for very little money. And they're going to get big, huge tax losses written off their IRS filings for the tax year of 2008. But where are our families who lost their homes? Out on the street. Our people lost their homes and they lost their way of life. I would like to invite Mr. Kashkari and Secretary Paulson and all the PNC executives to come to Ohio. I want you to live in one of the neighborhoods that your actions have affected. We're going to give you a little heater, a Bunsen burner heater overnight so you don't get too cold in those houses. And we'd like you to experience the results of what you are doing to the American people. You're holed up here in Washington with lots of security. We need to get people back on Main Street. That's where we represent. Last year 4,100 homes, just in my home county, were foreclosed. And in the last 2\1/2\ years, 10 percent of the properties in my home community foreclosed. 10 percent of the entire housing stock. And as foreclosure rates continue to rise in places like Ohio, it's pretty obvious that's what's happening here in Washington isn't connecting to Main Street. Why don't people here see that? Why are people afraid to look at the details of what's being proposed to us and say, no, no, to the banksters? Sadly, Hudson and Marshall, the auction house that Wall Street hired to sell all those homes in my community, they're coming to your town too. This month alone they're slated to be in several cities, in Michigan, Arizona, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey. Think about this. Think how much money they are making. And they're going to auction at least 1,455 properties. They've now sold over 70,000 homes just in the last few years, and they are expecting, just this one company, to sell another, to auction another 30,000 properties in 2009. Mr. Paulson and Mr. Kashkari, your program isn't working. What is happening is an outrage to the American people, and they are being asked to pay for this. There shouldn't be any more TARP bills clearing this Congress. Full hearings must be held in the communities being affected, not some little hearing up here in one room in the Capitol on one afternoon or in a couple of hours. We need to use our power to get to the truth and represent the voters that sent us here. Equity is bleeding profusely from our communities, and the sheer volume of the properties sold at auction is disturbing. Financial institutions which have been capitalized through the TARP program have failed to do mortgage workouts. FDIC and SEC are the institutions to take care of this mess, and they must be required to do mortgage workouts, rather than foreclosing on homes and participating in these auctions. Hudson and Marshall stated in a press release today that they have made over $1.2 billion recently doing auctions. $1.2 billion. These are dollars that could have been turned to do mortgage workouts at the local level and put people back in their homes. The intent of the TARP was to help stabilize our financial system, which includes, in large measure, our housing industry. Yet, what are the financial institutions doing? Enriching themselves, merging, creating mega-giant institutions and foreclosing on families, rather than working to stabilize families and neighborhoods across this country. A stable home permits people to focus on obtaining and maintaining employment, purchasing food and contributing to society in positive ways, rather than relying on Social Services funded by State and Federal dollars. We see communities falling apart. Community members and local banks are effectively locked out of the opportunity to reinvest in themselves because monies from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which we were told would get to the communities so they could buy these homes, guess what? They're not there. They weren't there in October. They weren't there in November, they weren't there in December. They're not there in January. Now we're told maybe they'll be there by March. Nobody seems to know. So all of these programs that were supposed to work to help the American people who are paying the bill aren't working. No second round of bailout money, under TARP, should emerge from this Congress unless real hearings are held under all the committees of jurisdiction, unless the subpoena powers of this Congress are used, and that the victims of this crisis can have their voices heard in the deliberative process, not just here in Washington but where they live, where we live, in the real America. The committees should treat the American people with respect, and they should travel to the communities most impacted. Why should we trust the banksters, those Wall Street banks that are going to be up here again this week, as we watch families in our regions pushed over the edge every day of every month, as the year proceeds? Mr. Speaker, this is probably the worst financial crime I've ever seen committed against the American people. And yet, Congress seems almost somnambulant. It seems to be walking around in a daze, the institution largely shut down, all of this happening before the new President even assumes office. Think about the politics of the timing of this. I think the new President should suspend foreclosures. He should make a statement on that, and he should ask that this action be suspended. What's going to happen in 7 days that hasn't happened already? And then assume office and appoint people at the FDIC and SEC who will use the normal means to resolve real estate problems across the banking system of this country. To give $350 billion more, 1/3 of a trillion dollars, to the banksters who have led America to this precipice, is absolutely backwards. I ask my colleagues, wake up. I ask the American people, get your calls coming in. Let's let the new President and the new Congress use the full powers they have been given to address this deeply, deeply rooted economic crisis. Until we fix the housing crisis, and we get those real estate loans worked out on the books of institutions locally, and we stand up to Wall Street, we are not going to fix this problem, and the American people are going to continue to bleed, and that is morally wrong. That is simply morally wrong. I agree with the new President-elect who said he believes in a moratorium on foreclosures. That ought to happen until he puts people in place who can remedy this problem without $350 billion more dollars walking out the door before he even assumes office. As a former community organizer, he must know the pain that exists across this country. And just because Wall Street has more money and a lot of political power doesn't mean that it's right. We, as a Congress, must do what's right for the American people. We must say ``no'' to the second $350 billion, and we must represent the people who depend on us to do what's right for them and right for the country.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, today I wish to comment on the bloodbath occurring in the Gaza. No human being can watch this carnage and not be reminded of the festering hatred that grows with each successive unleashing of violence in Israel, the Gaza, in the Palestinian territories that sadly rescars that tragic region. In voting for the resolution today, I want to be clear I did not do so because I believe more war or violence is the solution to stability. In fact, more war will breed more retribution, as history surely demonstrates. I voted for the resolution because its preamble clearly states our goal is supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The proportionality of Israel's response to Hamas' incessant terrorist rocket launches is lamentable. Over 750 Palestinians have now died, one-third of them women and children; there have been four Israeli soldiers killed; and in the last 7 years three Israeli casualties from the rocket launches from the Gaza into Israel. Immediately, there is a lack of adequate humanitarian relief from the world community, and for the victims, that is appalling. Two wrongs do not make a right. My view is, the current administration has left Israel more vulnerable and less stable as hatreds grow toward it regionally. Our Nation's reputation, too, has been badly damaged globally. I would like to enter into the Record today an editorial written by President Jimmy Carter called ``The Unnecessary War,'' the only President in the last 3 decades to achieve real, lasting peace in the Middle East. There is a road forward. His life is proof the future of that region can be better than the past as development replaces war as the common denominator. But that will take courage. It will take perseverance. It will take more than congressional resolutions. It is why our hopes ride high at this moment with the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama. [From the Washington Post, Jan. 8, 2009] An Unnecessary War (By Jimmy Carter) I know from personal involvement that the devastating invasion of Gaza by Israel could easily have been avoided. After visiting Sderot last April and seeing the serious psychological damage caused by the rockets that had fallen in that area, my wife, Rosalynn, and I declared their launching from Gaza to be inexcusable and an act of terrorism. Although casualties were rare (three deaths in seven years), the town was traumatized by the unpredictable explosions. About 3,000 residents had moved to other communities, and the streets, playgrounds and shopping centers were almost empty. Mayor Eli Moyal assembled a group of citizens in his office to meet us and complained that the government of Israel was not stopping the rockets, either through diplomacy or military action. Knowing that we would soon be seeing Hamas leaders from Gaza and also in Damascus, we promised to assess prospects for a cease-fire. From Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who was negotiating between the Israelis and Hamas, we learned that there was a fundamental difference between the two sides. Hamas wanted a comprehensive cease-fire in both the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israelis refused to discuss anything other than Gaza. We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved, as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food had found that acute malnutrition in Gaza was on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian families eating only one meal a day. Palestinian leaders from Gaza were noncommittal on all issues, claiming that rockets were the only way to respond to their imprisonment and to dramatize their humanitarian plight. The top Hamas leaders in Damascus, however, agreed to consider a cease-fire in Gaza only, provided Israel would not attack Gaza and would permit normal humanitarian supplies to be delivered to Palestinian citizens. After extended discussions with those from Gaza, these Hamas leaders also agreed to accept any peace agreement that might be negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who also heads the PLO, provided it was approved by a majority vote of Palestinians in a referendum or by an elected unity government. Since we were only observers, and not negotiators, we relayed this information to the Egyptians, and they pursued the cease-fire proposal. After about a month, the Egyptians and Hamas informed us that all military action by both sides and all rocket firing would stop on June 19, for a period of six months, and that humanitarian supplies would be restored to the normal level that had existed before Israel's withdrawal in 2005 (about 700 trucks daily). We were unable to confirm this in Jerusalem because of Israel's unwillingness to admit to any negotiations with Hamas, but rocket firing was soon stopped and there was an increase in supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel. Yet the increase was to an average of about 20 percent of normal levels. And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza. On another visit to Syria in mid-December, I made an effort for the impending six-month deadline to be extended. It was clear that the preeminent issue was opening the crossings into Gaza. Representatives from the Carter Center visited Jerusalem, met with Israeli officials and asked if this was possible in exchange for a cessation of rocket fire. The Israeli government informally proposed that 15 percent of normal supplies might be possible if Hamas first stopped all rocket fire for 48 hours. This was unacceptable to Hamas, and hostilities erupted. After 12 days of ``combat,'' the Israeli Defense Forces reported that more than 1,000 targets were shelled or bombed. During that time, Israel rejected international efforts to obtain a cease-fire, with full support from Washington. Seventeen mosques, the American International School, many private homes and much of the basic infrastructure of the small but heavily populated area have been destroyed. This includes the systems that provide water, electricity and sanitation. Heavy civilian casualties are being reported by courageous medical volunteers from many nations, as the fortunate ones operate on the wounded by light from diesel- powered generators. The hope is that when further hostilities are no longer productive, Israel, Hamas and the United States will accept another cease-fire, at which time the rockets will again stop and an adequate level of humanitarian supplies will be permitted to the surviving Palestinians, with the publicized agreement monitored by the international community. The next possible step: a permanent and comprehensive peace.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, in 2008, Wall Street's biggest banks got Congress to hand over to them $700 billion of your taxpayer money. Now they want more. Yesterday, Neel Kashkari, the Interim Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability, gave a speech at the Brookings Institution. He gave fancy sounding bureaucratic names to the $175 billion that he has already forked over. He called it Capital Purchase Program, Asset Grant Guarantee Program, Targeted Investment Program. Essentially he was talking about the $20 billion that went to Citigroup. He asked rhetorically, when will we see the new banks making loans? Well, that is part of his job, to get them to make the loans. But he said as long as confidence remains low, banks will remain cautious about extending credit. Oh, Mr. Kashkari, we know that well. The reason the auto industry is in trouble is because credit has dried up. Car loans can't be made. So let me get this straight: He wants more money, because he has only given $175 billion from the taxpayers' money out there in the country to the biggest banks that did the wrongdoing to begin with, and they are still reluctant to lend. Let me give Mr. Kashkari a dose of reality. Your program isn't working, and it is not working for Main Streets across this country. PNC Bank of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of the Nation's largest banks, now the fifth largest bank, has received $7.5 billion from Mr. Kashkari. And instead of providing additional lending capacity and loan workouts for those mortgages to help resolve the problem, PNC took the money. And you know what they did? They came across the border to Ohio and they bought National City Bank in Cleveland. I see my dear colleague from the city of Cleveland, Congressman Kucinich here this evening. He understands this well. National City has been a headquartered institution in Ohio, headquartered in Cleveland since 1845. Now, Treasury's money, the taxpayers' money, went to PNC and they came to Ohio and bought National City Bank, putting all those people out of work. And PNC became bigger. So what Mr. Kashkari did was take our money and give it to PNC, that hasn't worked down any of those loans, but they came to Ohio and bought out National City Bank. So PNC gets bigger, our banking system gets more concentrated, and PNC becomes more powerful. Some say they actually have price control power on the western side of Pennsylvania. So, PNC gets $7.5 billion. Cleveland and Ohio lose a Fortune 500 company, and Ohio, where foreclosures are raging, gets nothing. We get nothing. We just get more foreclosures. In 2008, Citigroup, one of the main culprits that caused the financial meltdown, was given $25 billion. They got more than PNC. They got it from us, the taxpayer, and then they have foreclosed, just in my district, on another 235 families in Lucas County, Ohio. Last November I found an advertisement in my local paper that said there was going to be an auction in my home county. I was surprised. I didn't know the company coming in, called Hudson and Marshall of Dallas, Texas. So I went. Guess what? Citigroup was one of the banks selling properties. I attended and watched homes in my community sold for as little as $7,900, a price so low that the original owners could have gone back into those homes. Not only was Citigroup auctioning homes that night, but so were TARP money recipients; those are the banks that got the money through the Treasury from us, Wells Fargo, US Bank, Deutsche Bank, ABN/Amro, Chase Home Finance, Fifth Third Bank, Standard Federal and LaSalle. They all got money. It is clear that some of the recipients of the Treasury money are unwilling to craft real workouts. And so what happened in our region was people got kicked out of their homes. Wall Street hired the auction company from Dallas, Texas. They came to our region, they sold all those properties for very little money, and they're going to get big, huge tax losses written off on their IRS filings for the tax year of 2008. But where are our families? Out on the street. Our people lost their homes. I would like to invite Mr. Kashkari, Secretary Paulson and all the PNC executives to come to Ohio, and I want them to live in the neighborhoods that their actions have affected. We'll give them a little heater, Bunsen heater overnight so they don't get too cold in the houses; and we'd like them to experience the results of what they have done to the American people. Last year, 4,100 homes in my region were foreclosed upon. In the last 2\1/2\ years, 10 percent of the properties in my home community have been foreclosed. 10 percent of the housing stock. And as foreclosure rates continue to rise in places like Ohio, it's pretty obvious that's what's happening here in Washington isn't connecting to Main Street. Sadly, Hudson and Marshall, the auction house that Wall Street hired to sell all those homes in my community, are coming to your town too. This month alone they are slated to be in several cities in Michigan, Arizona, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Jersey, and they're going to auction another 1,455 properties. They've now sold over 70,000 homes in the last few years, and expect another 30,000 in the year 2009. Mr. Kashkari, your program isn't working. Madam Speaker, I would like to place the additional remarks that I have in the Record. What is happening is an outrage to the American people, and they're being asked to pay for it. There shouldn't be any more TARP bills clearing this Congress until hearings are held in the communities that have been affected. We need to use our power in order to go out to the voters that sent us here. Equity is bleeding profusely from our communities. The sheer volume of the properties sold at auction is disturbing. Financial institutions which have been capitalized through the TARP Program have failed to do mortgage workouts--FDIC and SEC should do their jobs, and they are not--and must be required to do mortgage workouts, rather than foreclosing on homes and participating in auctions. Hudson & Marshall stated in a press release that they have made $1.2 billion doing auctions. The intent of the TARP was to help stabilize our financial system, which includes in large measure our housing industry. Yet, we financial institutions enriching themselves, merging, and yet foreclosing on families rather than working to stabilize families in their homes. A stable home permits people to focus on obtaining and maintaining employment, purchasing food, and contributing to society in positive ways rather than relying on social services funded by State and Federal dollars. Furthermore, we see communities falling apart. Community members and local banks are effectively locked out of the opportunity to reinvest in themselves because monies from the Department of Housing and Urban Development which would allow community banks and members to purchase foreclosed homes have not yet arrived. No second round of TARP money should emerge from this Congress unless regular hearings are held and the victims of this crisis can have their voices heard in the deliberative process. The Committees should travel to the communities most affected. Why should we trust Wall Street Banks again as more families teeter on the edge.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Absentee ownership. What is happening in my community is horrendous, and yet I see these Wall Street banks get more money. Wells Fargo--I will say their names. Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, U.S. Bank, these are the ones that are causing huge problems in my region. And when they get acquisition of the property, they don't manage it because they don't care about our community. We are a dot on the map for them. You know what? I was sitting here, I was thinking, what is going on here? I figured out, you know what they are going to do? They are going to take the loss on those properties, their original worth, and then the $4,500 they got, they are going to take the loss and book it on their tax returns for 2008 and make a huge windfall in the Tax Code, which isn't fair to the American people, because the American people are footing the bill here. So we have a lot of work that we have to do to heal this system and to heal this market. The one gentleman was talking about, you know, when the government takes over it's socialism. I don't know exactly what to call it when the Treasury Department really has rescued all these banks. The fascist system used to do that. They are combines, they are industrial combines, and their banking combines were one and the same with the government. But it's an ``ism'' of some kind. I thank very much the gentleman. We share the same deep concern.

Ms. KAPTUR. I want to thank the gentleman for yielding. Last year back in the Congress when it really mattered, when that proposal came down like a fast ball down the center aisle here from the administration and wanted the American people to put forward nearly $1 trillion and normal hearings were not held. The membership, I don't think, was respected at that time. Thank goodness, it's a new Congress, and we have now seen that the Treasury Department, under Mr. Paulson's leadership, was more than happy to take over $250 billion of the American people's money and to distribute it to their favored friends. We don't even know who all those friends are. We read press reports. There has been no proper oversight, and we don't know who the recipients have been. I can tell you, and I was identifying so much with the gentleman from Texas, because in my region of northern Ohio the foreclosures are increasing, unabated, the pace of increase. And just last December we had another 300, right before Christmas, 300 more families dislodged from their homes. This month, we had the same. I went over to the Treasury. Right before Christmas, when Congress left, I came back with a big scroll. I took over to the Treasury 4,100 addresses in Lucas County, Toledo, Ohio, of every citizen that had lost their home in my district in 2008. The Secretary wasn't there to see me. So we went out in the back and we unrolled the scroll, which went all the way down the stairs on the south side of the Treasury building. And we took some photos, and we put them up on our Web site. We pleaded with the people from Treasury to please work with us, not to make it a bad holiday for the people in our region, not to make it a bad new year, to find a way to gather the agencies. One of the assistants to the Secretary gathered us, and we asked for a televideo conference with people back home. We did that over at the Library of Congress, where Treasury officials, FDIC, SEC, HUD, Federal Reserve--and we had the people back home, realtors, the county commissioners, the auditors. We had all of the interest groups back home in this conversation--and it was great to have a conversation on how can we stop the hemorrhage in the mortgage markets? It didn't happen. Christmas came, Hanukkah came, more hundreds of people got dislodged from their homes, and the system just didn't work. Unfortunately, the administration said to us, well we really need a housing czar. I said, we said we don't need a housing czar. We need for the agencies to use their regulatory power to get the market to work. Let the market heal itself. You are not using these powers to let the market heal itself. As a result, my region has had auctioneers come in. One company from Texas actually came in. I read about it in the newspaper, and I went to the auction of homes that were auctioned off for $4,500. For that amount of money, we could have put the original owner back in. But the HUD money hadn't come. The HUD money wasn't there so the city couldn't bid on its own properties. Outside investors, one outside investor bought 137 properties. These properties are not maintained. What happens is people break in them and they steal the copper wiring and the chandeliers, and they become gutted units. This is what is happening.

Ms. KAPTUR. Will the gentleman yield?

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, today I am here to express my support of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. I would like to commend and indeed applaud my colleagues Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and Chairman George Miller of the Education and Labor Committee for their tireless efforts in support of fair treatment in the workplace. Jobs are on everyone's mind, and I rise in support today of H.R. 11, not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because, for me, it is personal. When our beloved mother, Anastasia, began work back in the middle of the last century as a counter waitress at a place called Liberty Lunch on Broadway in Toledo, Ohio, she did not even earn the minimum wage. And I will tell you what; she deserved it. That wage was only made possible by the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938. But even when that act passed, her vile boss would then cash her check and deduct the increase from her and pocket the money for himself. Sadly, stories of pay discrimination and inequity still reside across our country. The Lilly Ledbetter bill is named after Lilly Ledbetter, who worked for almost 20 years at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company plant in Gadsden, Alabama. After finding out that she was the lowest paid supervisor at the plant where she worked, despite the fact that she had more experience than her male counterparts, Lilly sued Goodyear for unlawfully discriminating against her based on gender. A jury found in her favor, but, of course, Goodyear, which has deep pockets and in fact is a defense contractor of our country, went to court. In fact, they had the money to go all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court ruled in favor not of Lilly, but of Goodyear. The Court cited the reason being that the time limit for her claim had passed as the initial discrimination happened nearly 20 years earlier. However, Lilly Ledbetter filed her charge as soon as she learned of the pay discrimination. It was not her fault that it took almost 20 years to learn of her situation. The United States Supreme Court's decision changes the law, limiting any action to 180 days after the first incident of discriminatory activity. In such cases as Lilly Ledbetter's, it took nearly 20 years to have the discrimination come to light. This decision limits the ability of any employee to challenge discriminatory pay. H.R. 11 will restore the law and justice by clarifying that each paycheck resulting from a discriminatory pay decision would constitute a new violation of the employment nondiscrimination law and reset the 180-day clock. Employees do not go around asking each other how much money they earn on each paycheck. In fact, many employers even explicitly prohibit such conversations. It is not like working for Congress, where our pay is public record. In addition, who would want to go around when they are at a new job and ask new coworkers their income and level of work experience as well as other data to evaluate if one's own pay is fair, knowing you have 180 days from your first paycheck to file with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission? Who would want to start a job like that? Most new employees are more focused on doing their job and working hard and performing well so that he or she can keep their new position and continue to earn paychecks. In today's climate, an income is more critical than worrying about pay discrimination, but that too should not allow this practice to continue. We cannot allow employers to hide behind a mere 180 days and potentially successfully carry out pay discrimination day after day. Madam Speaker, that is why I'm an original cosponsor of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. It's in memory of our own mother. This bill is not only about pay discrimination on the basis of gender, but also race, religion, national origin, disability or age. This bill is about doing the right thing to protect the hardworking people of this Nation. I urge my colleagues to support this important bill as we begin the 111th Congress, and I want to thank Lilly Ledbetter for her life and for the life of working-class women and men across this country. Madam Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity today to support the Lilly Ledbetter Act of 2009, H.R. 11.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at 9 a.m. tomorrow.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Speaker be authorized to entertain motions to suspend the rules relating to House Resolution 34 on the legislative day of Friday, January 9, 2009.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, the wonderful opportunity of a new Congress is that it is not bound by the mistakes of the past. As foreclosure rates rise in Ohio and across our Nation, it's pretty obvious that the Federal responses are not working on Main Street, whether it's the $700 billion Wall Street bailout or the $300 billion FHA loan workout program. Citigroup, for example, was one of the big culprits that caused the financial meltdown; yet, they got paid $25 billion from the public Treasury. But Ohio, where foreclosures are raging, got nothing. Instead, out-of-State megabanks are buying up Ohio banks, while more Ohio homeowners get booted out of their homes. Last year, in my home County of Lucas, another 4,100 homes were foreclosed. That's a minimum of 10,000, 10,000 more people who were not helped by Treasury's failed TARP program. Ohio's families alone need $20 billion to stop the real estate hemorrhage which is less than what Citibank received, and would go to real people, not ersatz and paper trades on Wall Street. In Toledo, Ohio, you can now buy a home for $4,500, but last fall, rather than local homeowners being refinanced in this Wall Street bailout bill, one California investor figured it out. He bought 137 foreclosed properties in Toledo at auction, an auction sponsored by the very Wall Street banks that caused the trouble in the first place. Houses are being auctioned at prices so low we could have put the original occupants back in. Even cities would be able to bid on these homes on behalf of their local homeowners, their property owners, but they've not yet received any funds from the $4 billion neighborhood stabilization program that we were told was supposed to keep local neighborhoods whole. But the Wall Street banks are cleaning up. They get the bailout money. They don't have to manage those properties. They auction them to outsiders and then they're just waiting for their taxes to be filed for 2008 at the IRS to get all those losses booked and get more back from the people of the United States. Something is very wrong and uncoordinated with the manner in which the Federal Government is allowing equity to be bled from local homeowners and from our communities at large and awarded to Wall Street whole. Wall Street banks that hold or sell mortgages on these foreclosed properties are not managing their property holdings. These holdings are then frequently stripped of copper, electrical wiring and other materials, further devaluing adjacent properties and decimating entire neighborhoods. The $300 billion FHA program designed to help modify troubled mortgage loans is as ineffective as the Wall Street bailout. The program has received fewer than 200 applications nationwide since taking effect October 1 and not a single loan has been modified. A bank's receipt of TARP funds should be conditioned on them lending money and engaging in mortgage workouts to ensure the program at least starts to work somewhat. Many banks and servicers are still reluctant to structure manageable workouts with their customers. Among them are JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Wilshire, who have received $65 billion among them in Treasury funds. What's fair about that? May the 111th Congress pass more than just hollow legislation. Let's pass a measure worthy of the oath we took yesterday to protect our Republic from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Jesse James robbed banks because he said that's where the money is. Well, Wall Street just robbed the biggest bank of them all, the public Treasury. It's time for Congress to blink and do what's right in the 111th Congress of the United States.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, it's a particular joy this evening to have Congressman Nick Lampson in the Chair as Speaker Pro Tem and thank him for his remarkable and exemplary service to the people of the United States. Tonight, I would like to address the subject of the fact that a majority of House Members today voted for a bridge loan, a very tightly structured bridge loan, to throw a lifeline to American workers, American communities, American manufacturing, to save American jobs, in fact, one of every 10 jobs in our country. They're jobs not just in the so-called automotive assembly plants, but twice as many jobs in the automotive parts plants, the steel industry, the plastic industry, the semi-conductor industry, even the textile industry. Nearly half of that production is used in automotive products. It is simply staggering the way in which this integrated set of production occurs in our country. What was passed was a bridge loan to the auto industry, and I underline the word ``loan.'' It has to be paid back. It has to be paid back in 7 years, and it has to be paid back with interest, 5 percent interest over the first 5 years, and 9 percent interest over the last 2 years. It requires restructuring by March 31, severe restructuring in order to place the United States in a competitive position again in our country and globally. It requires enormous sacrifice. Now, what's interesting to me is the amount of the total loan was $15 billion; yet Wall Street received $700 billion plus, $750 billion, in that bill that passed here. There were no such requirements. There's no mandatory payback. There are no sacrifices that are as significant as they're being asked of this manufacturing industry, and the manufacturing of automobiles is a really tangible, goods producing industry. It creates real value. It creates wealth because you sell something. Wall Street's bailout is basically accounting and paper trades. They don't really produce anything. And one of the points I want to make tonight is that in order to lead America forward out of this deep, deepening recession in which we find ourselves, we have to manufacture our way out. We have to grow our way out of it, and we are not in recession because of the automotive industry. In fact, the reverse is true. The auto industry is the victim of the credit crunch caused by the mortgage foreclosure crisis. The bailout of Wall Street, the improper bill that was passed here, is making the situation worse, and it's affecting industries like the automotive industry. I visited the U.S. Treasury Department today as well to share a list of foreclosures just in my home county of Lucas County in Toledo, Ohio. That is 4,100 homes since the beginning of this year. Before the end of January of next, an additional 600 families will lose their homes just in that county because the TARP program, the Wall Street bailout program, is not working at the local level. The list is so long I could roll it through the Chamber and out that door, and there would still be more paper left, and that's with four columns. In fact, it could probably be rolled over to the Senate for the size that it is. Now, why is the Treasury program not working? The first reason it's not working is Treasury's not a housing agency. Its experience is not in resolving mortgage workouts. More paper shuffling isn't going to solve the problem. What's happening over at Treasury is they're buying banks. They are concentrating the banking system of this country rather than doing mortgage workouts, and they're concentrating them up on Wall Street, and the big banks like PNC, which has just bought National City Bank in the State of Ohio, National City shouldn't have been purchased. A workout should have been done in Ohio for the loans that gravitated to Ohio and may have been troubled. Seventy-five percent of the loans were working before the Treasury Department took over. The problem is that the Treasury Department is like a truck with several wheels, and they're all going in a different direction. There's not coordination. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation should be involved to do the mortgage workouts on the books of local banks. That's really not happening for most of the loans at risk. The Securities and Exchange Commission should be taking a look at their accounting standards and marking them to true value. You know, in order to fix the automotive industry, you've got to fix the mortgage industry, and the Wall Street bailout isn't working. Mr. Speaker, Godspeed to you in your future years.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Iwan Shuljak of Cleveland, Ohio who passed away October 6, 2008. This record stands as first published in the Ukrainian Weekly, November 2, 2008, written by Andrew Fedynsky. In addition to this beautiful narrative of the life of Iwan Shuljak, I fondly remember his warm smile and welcoming heart. He will be missed by his family, friends and the entire Ukrainian-American community. May his generous and loving spirit be comfortable at its final resting place. ``This is a fairytale, only the story is true. And because it's true, it ends with death, but it's a fairytale and therefore has a happy ending. It's about an elderly man who devoted his life to Ukrainian Culture and how the global village cared for him. I first met Iwan Schuljak in the early 1960s at the Plast Scouting Home in Cleveland where he was the live-in caretaker. Twenty-five years later, he was still there when I returned to Cleveland to become director of the Ukrainian Museum-Archives (UMA), which had purchased the building from Plast. In 1987 the UMA was adrift. Having been in the Tremont neighborhood for a century, the Ukrainian community left for the suburbs after highway construction demolished half the houses and nearby factories were closing. UMA leaders had either passed away or retired. And so, a staggering collection of memorabilia, documents, books and artifacts was sitting neglected in an aging wooden building in a neighborhood where the major industry had become arson and insurance fraud. Mr. Schuljak lived in a spare room on the second floor. Invariably, he sat on the porch reading or prowled the streets of Tremont to let people know the UMA was viable and someone was caring for it. In the winter he shoveled the snow; in the summer, he mowed the grass; throughout the year, he cleaned and was there to welcome the occasional visitor. I was 39 years old and ready for a change after nearly a decade on Capitol Hill. My father had been UMA director and I felt an obligation to help preserve his legacy. And so, with old friends like Ihor Kowalysko and new ones like Vlodko Storozynsky, we started working on the collection and raising the profile of the institution. At the age of 76, Mr. Schuljak welcomed the changes and made appropriate accommodations. He announced that he was now restricting his garlic to weekends only and told me that I was to avoid it altogether. People were noticing, he said, and we had to present a certain image. Before long, the world around us changed dramatically: communism collapsed and Tremont began gentrifying. The arsonists went to jail, and urban pioneers were restoring historic buildings, opening art galleries, coffee shops and restaurants. Developers built townhouses and condominiums. And the UMA was part of all that, with young volunteers and board members. Throughout, Mr. Schuljak was a mainstay: not only a caretaker, but also an advisor, a confidant and a beloved figure in the neighborhood. He had a thousand stories: you know the guy at the Friendly Bar with no fingers on his left hand? Back in the 1930s, the NKVD demanded he turn his gold over to the state. He didn't have any, he said, so they chopped off a finger and kept on until they were finally persuaded he was telling the truth . . . The macabre punch line: the joke was on them! He had the gold all along, and it's still there, buried in the ground. The guy hated the Communists so much he wouldn't give them the satisfaction. Well, Mr. Schuljak, the son of farmers, hated them too. When communism came and with it collectivization and famine, he became a ``class enemy.'' Arrested and brutally interrogated, he carried scars the rest of his life where a Chekist cracked his skull with a revolver, depriving him of hearing in his right ear. Once the Terror subsided, Mr. Schuljak was released to work on the railroad. When the Nazis invaded in 1941, he, along with 2 million other Ukrainians, was forced to work in the German economy. His blue and white OST patch identifying him as a slave is now part of the UMA collection. When the war ended, Mr. Schuljak wisely decided to immigrate to America. There, he maintained contact with his family, exchanging letters and phone calls, sending them money. As he reached his mid-80s, Mr. Schuljak was slowing down and the village in Cleveland began to pay attention to his plight. Daria Sopka, who worked at the UMA, signed him up for the Cuyahoga County Passport Program for the elderly. Lida, a young immigrant from Lviv, assisted Mr. Schuljak with everyday needs, shopping, etc. At MetroHealth, nurses, doctors and Ukrainian interpreters knew him by name. Then in January 2007, he slipped and broke his leg. The leg healed, but at 95, he could no longer live unassisted and Myron Pakush--also with the UMA--arranged for him to be admitted to Avon Oaks, a nursing home owned and operated by the Reidys, Ukrainian Americans from Lorain County. Not having heard from him for some time, Mr. Schuljak's family became concerned and called. When they learned what had happened, they immediately offered to take care of him in Ukraine. Well, Avon Oaks is a gracious and caring community and he had regular visitors, especially Father John Nakonachny from St. Vladimir's Cathedral, but it was still a nursing home and Mr. Schuljak was ecstatic at the prospect of ``going home.'' But there was a problem: he had never become an American citizen and since Ukraine did not exist when he was born, he wasn't a citizen of that country either. So he couldn't get a passport. I explained the situation to Ukraine's ambassador to the U.S., Dr. Oleh Shamshur, who directed his consular office to help. To establish that Mr. Schuljak had been born in what is today Ukraine, his relatives retrieved his birth certificate from 1911. He also needed an updated ``green card.'' Alerted to the urgency of his case, the Department of Homeland Security turned things around in less than a week. Ukraine's honorary consul for Ohio, Andrew Futey, and Roman Andarak at the Embassy in D.C. did the rest and earlier this year, Mr. Schuljak became a Ukrainian citizen. In June, accompanied by Ihor Mychkovsky, he arrived in Kyiv to meet his relatives. His life had come full circle. Because he was nobody's responsibility, Mr. Schuljak became everyone's. People all over helped out, making amends, in a way, for how brutally he'd been treated in the first half of his life and repaying him in part for his dedication and selflessness. He died on October 6, and is buried within walking distance of where he was born.''

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentleman, and know that Congresswoman Fudge will be a valued member of our delegation. We have our work cut out for us. We welcome you. Madam Speaker, we yield back our remaining time.

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker and Members of the House, obviously this is a great moment of joy for our country and for our delegation. Congresswoman Marcia Fudge will become an outstanding Member of this House. She is an attorney, a businesswoman, and a mayor--indeed, the first female mayor, and first African American mayor of Warrensville, Ohio--since the year 2000. That alone constitutes major accomplishments. She has her law degree from Cleveland State University, and she will become the ninth female Member ever elected to this Chamber from the great State of Ohio, and only the second African American woman ever to be elected from our State. As Mayor of Warrensville, Ohio, she has been heavily involved in economic development. In fact, she said, ``I believe people started to feel really good about where they lived because of the results of our economic development efforts, and I think when people feel good about where they live, that pride transitions into so many positive things.'' Congresswoman Fudge formerly served our beloved colleague Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones as her Chief of Staff during her early years. She also worked early in her career on Carl Stokes' Cleveland bid for mayor, as a teenager, heading up Young Folks for Stokes. She has been a law clerk; a tax attorney; county prosecutor's office attorney; held Cuyahoga County Budget, Tax, and Finance positions; and she is Immediate Past President of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, serving from 1996 to 2000. We know what a powerhouse that is. She's also a board member of the famous Cleveland Public Library and, perhaps most important of all, she's a member of the Baptist Glenville Church of God. We know she's come this far by faith. We welcome her here today and join her among our Buckeye ranks. I would be pleased to yield to the fine dean of our delegation from the Republican side of the aisle, Congressman Ralph Regula, who we will say goodbye to as a Member this year, but not as a former Member, and we expect to see him and his beautiful wife, Mary, very often.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentlewoman from Ohio, the Honorable Marcia Fudge, be permitted to take the oath of office today. Her certificate of election has not arrived, but there is no contest and no question has been raised with regard to her election.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the chairman of the subcommittee for yielding to me, and I want to thank him for being a true leader for those who are unemployed across our country, so many of them in the State of Ohio. I know how hard Congressman Jim McDermott has worked on this legislation. And I have to say I come to the microphone with a heavy heart, because I obviously did not support the $870 billion for Wall Street, and now we come with $6 billion, 6 precious billion dollars that these people earned and sent into the tax coffers of this country. And we are going to give it back to them as a gift? I am getting tired as a Democrat of picking up the wreckage across America. When is my party really going to stand up to Wall Street and the outsourcing of jobs? This isn't good enough. This isn't good enough for the people who have sent us here. They have earned it. Those people at Treasury didn't earn it. Wall Street didn't earn it. They squandered our money. So today, because of Congressman McDermott's leadership, at least we have a lifeline to the people who are paying the tax dollars. They are going to be rerouted to Wall Street and then they are going to send half of it abroad. I rise in support of this legislation because it is the least we should do, but it isn't the most we should be doing.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, Mr. Chairman, and dear colleagues, do you feel like a herd of bulls and bears are rushing at you? They are. The question is will you stand up to them? This approach, their approach, will not work. It won't solve the credit crunch nor the mortgage foreclosure challenge. Wall Street speculators, now the major donors in Federal campaigns, have used their considerable influence inside the halls of government, especially at the U.S. Treasury, to open up the piggy bank. Meanwhile, taxpayers across Main Street, who will pay the bill, will find it has no effect on bettering their lives as unemployment increases, foreclosures increase, and the squeeze on the middle class increases. The Treasury plan throws an ungodly amount at Wall Street. Yet all of our Congressional committees but for one were relieved of their duties as regular order was dispensed with for a very hasty action. We should do what we did back in the '70s, '80s and '90s and use the powers of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Securities and Exchange Commission to address the credit crunch without costing the taxpayers a penny. This bill is just an end run around the American people 3 weeks before an election while this Congress is skittish and as Wall Street's investment houses conduct their biggest heist of the century from the U.S. Treasury and our U.S. taxpayers. Pray for our Republic. She is being placed in uncaring and very greedy hands. Vote ``no'' to get a real deal, not a fast deal. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding me 1 minute in this very important debate.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the Chair of the Rules Committee for granting me the minute. My colleagues, a vote to reject this bill is not a vote to do nothing. I will vote ``no'' on the rule and on the bill because I want to vote to do something that really works. My ``no'' vote will be a call to not reward speculators, but first to bring in the regulators to do their job. We should be using the regulatory powers of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the accounting powers of the Security and Exchange Commission to unseize credit lines to our banks. That is at the heart of the problem that we are facing. Let's do that first. I would urge the leadership of this House to put a sense of Congress resolution attached to this agreement that does exactly that. Let us do that first. Let's wait a week. Let's see what happens. Let's see if those actions defuse the tension in the credit markets. We must craft an alternative that will also provide help to our home owners facing foreclosure now. How can we reward Wall Street, who made bad decisions, but yet allow millions of our people to be thrown out of their homes by the first of the year? Let's work on a bill that doesn't reward bad behavior but corrects the real problems inside this marketplace. Let's unleash the power of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Securities and Exchange Commission to use their authorities to unseize credit flows and mark mortgages to the true economic value of the assets. This will not cost the taxpayers a cent. It will restore rigor to the markets and use the market, as was done in the 1970's and 1980's successfully, to resolve troubled banks suffering under the weight of real estate foreclosures.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank the gentleman, the chairman of a subcommittee on International Relations, who has just dedicated himself, his great intelligence and great fervor, to helping to explain to the American people and our colleagues what is really at stake, and to try to move this institution, the House of Representatives, the closest body left at the Federal level to the American people, to move us to the right decision tomorrow. Tonight, so many of us, we are praying for our American republic, and we ask the American people to pray with us and to pray for this House, and to pray without fear. Franklin Roosevelt said, ``All we have to fear is fear itself.'' We need to make wise decisions; not decisions made in haste or in panic. If we vote ``no'' tomorrow, that is not a vote for no action. A ``no'' vote tomorrow will signal we want a better answer, and we will work here until we get it. The other night the Senate voted to pass their version of a bill, and the stock market went down. Explain that to me. They passed the bill. It goes down. I don't think there is any relationship between day-to-day trades, what is happening in the markets and what is happening here. We know that there is a serious issue in our financial system because credit markets are seized up. As others have said, what we can do there is to ask the FDIC to employ its emergency powers, which are already law, and agree to cover all creditors, bondholders and depositors in those institutions and that that will take the fear out of that system because they're scared, too, because they don't know, if they borrow from bank X in another city, whether that bank will be around the next day. Those banks are liquid. In other words, they have money to lend, but they're afraid, too. So we've got to get the fear out of the system. Let us pray to not have fear. If we pass the bill the administration has sent us, one of the things that's going to happen, plus what they did over in the Senate, is that we're going to add 870 more billion dollars to our debt. We can't afford to do that right now. That is a very bad decision because we are in debt. We will be over $12 trillion in debt. The value of our dollar is already going down. This will push it down more, and our deficit is going up, which is not such a good position to be in. So we need a solution that doesn't raise our deficit by any more. By declaring that emergency at the FDIC, it gives the FDIC and its bank examiners enormous powers to go around and to try to make the loans that are necessary, to work out real estate loans where those need to be worked out. They can even get into executive compensation, and they can look for fraudulent accounting throughout the country. That's what bank examiners do, and they're really good at it. Ask any banker. We need to enliven that system and make it function. Then we need to ask the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has moved along this week and has been doing better than it has in the past, to help these banks within their accounting systems give a true value to the real estate assets on their books and not to some artificial index that bears no relation to reality, to what has happened in Cleveland or in Toledo or anywhere else, and to use the private sector as we did back in the 1980s--to heal the system and to use its power and to do it with discipline and rigor, not to take $870 billion and reward those who have had very bad behavior on Wall Street. I'm sure my dear colleague from California and Congressman Kucinich from Ohio, who has been such a stalwart in fighting for the people of Cleveland and of our country, would agree that the bill they're sending over from the Senate has had no hearings in this House. When we sent our bill over there, it was about that thick. The bill that came back to us today is about that thick. It was so heavy I couldn't even carry it over here to the floor. We have had not hearing one on that bill here in this Chamber. We are not following regular order, and that is not in the interest of the American people. At a minimum, there ought to be regular order with the committees of jurisdiction. They've stuffed tax issues in that bill over on the Senate side. I understand there are Exxon Valdez provisions. There is even something for wooden arrows for children. There are trade provisions in there, and there is even Puerto Rican rum. How about that one? They've put the Alternative Minimum Tax in there, which sounds great except they didn't have any offsets, so it increases the deficit even more. We haven't had hearings, so we'll have to do a better job of due diligence here. Really, our leadership should allow us to do that. One day or two days or five days isn't going to make that much difference in what is happening in the markets. Let me give a point of view here as to one of the things that, I think, is happening in all of this. Why is the Treasury moving this in this way so fast now? I think it has to do with the fact that so much of our debt has been financed by foreigners and by foreign banks that the Treasury is a little bit worried about that as we begin a new fiscal year and that rather than presenting a balanced budget or a budget that moves us to a balance over the next few years that they're giving us more debt on top of old debt, which is a backwards way to help this economy. This past week, it was announced in Reuters news service that seven banks in China had lost over $700 million because of what happened at Lehman Brothers with its implosion and that the National Bank of China was paying attention to that and that the debt dealings that they were having with the United States, particularly at the beginning of the new fiscal year, which is October 1, had created a bit of tension in that system and that it is actually our deficit and our difficulty in financing that--because we have a President who conducted two wars without paying for them--that our credit situation is not as good as it should be. There are instruments, we've been told, such as credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations that have to be covered. Well, let's be honest with one another. If that's what we're going to be doing, then let's tell the American people, and let's get it done the right way. We understand, in this $870 billion that they want to take from the taxpayers, that over half of that money will go to foreign creditors. Doesn't this Congress and don't the American people have a right to know to whom and how much and what this all means and how we got into this situation? Because, if we really don't understand what we're getting into, we can't get out of it. If only a few people know-- and this is an inside trade, inside of Washington--and the American people don't understand it and we don't do this together as a people, then how are we really going to make it better unless we all walk together and get through this together? I have a great deal of confidence in our banking system, and I would encourage and would hope that Secretary Paulson and the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Chairman Bernanke, and the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Chairman Bair, and the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox, eat lunch tomorrow. I hope you figure out how to advise the President of the United States because I really do think those emergency powers at the FDIC would give great confidence to the system. When you do that, you will get an inflow of foreign funds into this country rather than the kind of policy you're following now, which is making those credit markets tighter and tighter and tighter in a banking system that is fundamentally sound and liquid. So pay attention to the booking of those assets through the Securities and Exchange Commission. Help our banks weather this period. Give them some confidence, and help us to heal this in the full sunlight, not in a quick vote that is rushed through here tomorrow. I want to thank my dear colleague from California, Brad Sherman, who has been a true, true leader in this effort to try to do this the right way, not the fast way. I thank the gentleman.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, for the second time in one week, this House is confronted with a momentous vote on the economic emergency facing our Nation, and it is imperative that we get it right. We must do the right thing. We must vote ``no'' on the Bush-Paulson bailout package. Three days have passed since we rejected that inadequate proposal, but one thing hasn't changed: This is still a bailout for Wall Street. One thing has changed: The cost has increased dramatically. Believe me, if you didn't like the first version of the Bush-Paulson bailout, you're going to hate this one because it's even worse, 22 percent worse. On Monday, the bailout bill would have cost the American taxpayer $700 billion. Three days later, the bill coming from the Senate is going to cost us $850 billion, driving up our deficit, driving up our borrowing. The Senate drove up the cost of the bailout by 22 percent by adding tax giveaways for special interest groups. America might be facing an economic emergency, but it's Christmas in October in the Senate here in Washington. The Bush-Paulson bailout bill is loaded up like a Christmas tree with ornaments known as tax giveaways for special interests. These ornaments will make a lot of people rich, but your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren will have to pay for them for years. When this body, having been rushed to judgment by the President and by our own leadership, rejected the plan on Monday, it was alleged that the House vote was responsible for the Dow Jones Industrial Average's falling by 700 points. So how do we explain the fact that the stock market fell almost 350 points today, the day after the Senate passed the Bush-Paulson bailout bill? What the stock market said today was heads you lose; tails you lose. America will still have a housing crisis even if the House puts the American taxpayer on the hook for another $870 billion for Wall Street. So don't believe people who tell you that the market is responding negatively to votes against the Bush-Paulson plan. The stock market is reacting negatively to the lack of leadership. The market knows that the Bush-Paulson plan is the wrong medicine. It knows the Bush-Paulson plan will not solve the problems in our economy. Madam Speaker, the American people have already spoken, and the financial markets are speaking, too. The Bush-Paulson plan, even this porked-up version, is not the solution of the economic emergency facing our country, and that is why the House should not rush to judgment. This House should stop and take a deep breath and make a commitment to stay in session until we enact comprehensive reform of the financial system and not take a quick vote on a stopgap plan that will cost the taxpayers $870 billion and counting. As I have said all along, we have to have reform first, not last after they take the money. I know there's a political sideshow underway, and I realize that certain Members face tough reelection battles and that they desperately want to wrap up business here so that they can go back home to campaign. To them, I would say, ``Trust your constituents. They will respect you for staying in Washington to address the economic emergency rather than your running home to shake hands and to kiss babies.'' Madam Speaker, the Senate's response to the House rejection of the Paulson plan was to add more spending. So we got tax breaks for rum. You've got it right. R-U-M. We got tax breaks for mine rescue teams, tax breaks for railroads, tax breaks for automobile race tracks, and tax breaks for wool research. I'm not making this up. They added tax breaks for movie and television productions, 6 pages of earmarks for Alaska for litigation in the Exxon Valdez disaster and, the coup de grace, tax breaks for wooden arrows designed for use by children. Now, our Nation is facing an economic emergency, and the Senate adds a tax break for wooden arrows designed for use by children. One would ask: Children's wooden arrows? Why not the bows, too? This is surreal. The American people deserve better. It appears that the Bush-Paulson team has failed to sell the country on the merits of a Wall Street bailout, and has decided to buy the package. We saw the same thing here in 1993 when the Clinton administration couldn't sell NAFTA on its merits and, instead, opened the Federal Treasury to buy the votes of enough Members to win passage. Let's get back to reality, but first of all, everybody needs to calm down. Don't give in to fear and don't give in to panic. We need regular order in this House. We need to be the deliberative body that our system of government envisions and demands. First of all, this downturn is not--I repeat ``not''--as serious as ever faced by our Nation. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the conditions were much worse: 3,000 banks failed. Interest rates shot up to 21 percent. Hundreds of agricultural banks failed. In using the powers of the FDIC and their emergency authorities, we worked it out without 1 cent being charged to the taxpayer. Madam Speaker, I want to thank you for giving me the time this evening. We face a real financial crisis, and we ought to stay here until we resolve it the right way, not the fast way.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, as the House approaches a vote on the Senate's Wall Street bailout bill, I urge caution to my colleagues. We need regular order, not panic. We want the right deal, not a fast deal. There is a better way to address the credit crunch facing our banks than taxpayers printing money for Wall Street's bad actions. We must use the FDIC as we did in the 1980s to resolve thousands of problem institutions. In those days, we had over $100 billion worth of resolutions that cost but $1.8 billion to the insurance fund, not the taxpayer. We need to have the Securities and Exchange Commission work with our banks on how they account for the real estate on their books not with arbitrary indexes and measures, but rather to true value. That would unlock billions of dollars, $500 billion in the system today, and would ease interbank lending. Let's use the right medicine, not a Band-aid through which a hemorrhage will soon break as our deficit explodes even more and the value of the dollar declines further. Let's have the wisdom and courage to do what's right.