Mary Landrieu

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I am proud to honor a group of 92 World War II veterans from the Acadiana region of Louisiana who are traveling to Washington, DC, this weekend to visit the various memorials and monuments that recognize the sacrifices of our nation's invaluable service members. Louisiana HonorAir, a group based in Lafayette, LA, is sponsoring this Saturday's trip to the Nation's Capital. The organization is honoring each surviving World War II Louisiana veteran by giving them an opportunity to see the memorials dedicated to their service. On this trip, the veterans will visit the World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and Iwo Jima memorials. They will also travel to Arlington National Cemetery to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknowns. This is the sixth flight Louisiana HonorAir has made to Washington, DC, and there will be three additional flights this spring. World War II was one of America's greatest triumphs, but was also a deadly conflict. More than 60 million people worldwide were killed, including 40 million civilians, and more than 400,000 American servicemembers were slain during the long war. The ultimate victory over enemies in the Pacific and in Europe is a testament to the valor of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. The years 1941 to 45 also witnessed an unprecedented mobilization of domestic industry, which supplied our military on two distant fronts. In Louisiana, there remain today more than 40,000 living WWII veterans, and each one has a heroic tale of achieving the noble victory of freedom over tyranny. Veterans in this HonorAir group began their service in 1940 before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and served as late as 1950 in the European and Pacific theaters as well as stateside. They served in various branches of the military--25 members in the Army, 24 in the Army Air Corps, 37 in the Navy, three in the Navy Air Corps, one in the Navy Reserve, two in the Marines, and one in the Merchant Marines. Several served during World War II and the Korean War, and one of our veterans spent 30 years in active service in the Army, serving through the Vietnam war. One of our heroes served as a Control Tower Operator with the 104th AACS Squadron. Another was aboard the USS Proteus, alongside the USS Missouri, during the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945. And yet another hero went on 35 bombing missions over Europe between 1942 and 1945. Some participated in the Battle of the Bulge and the D-Day Invasion of France at Utah Beach. Many fought in the South Pacific. Some served in the China-Burma-India Theater, and others in Africa. Also traveling to Washington on Saturday's trip is an active member of the service. Army MAJ Robert Gutierrez of Lafayette finished a tour of duty in Iraq in February. I ask the Senate to recognize him for his commitment to our country. I also ask the Senate to join me in honoring these 89 men and three women, all Louisiana heroes, that we welcome to Washington this weekend and Louisiana HonorAir for making these trips a reality.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I rise to speak about an amendment I have offered with Senator Wicker from Mississippi. Our amendment is pending. It is germane. We hope to have a vote sometime soon on this amendment, if we can move past this present standstill. I want to just put up some numbers to try to explain our situation in Louisiana. I have used this chart before. This chart is the underlying reason for the bill that we are on because these are the top 10 districts in the country, according to the official data, where these foreclosures are taking place. As you can see, there are about 40,000 distressed properties in and around Detroit; about 10,000 in Stockton, CA; 30,000 in Las Vegas; about 51,000 in San Bernardino, CA; about 23,000 in Sacramento; about 27,000 around the Cleveland area--and it goes on. These are the top 10. Now, this data is readily available. I am sorry I do not have more than just the top 10. But I used this chart to make my point about our situation still in Louisiana and on the gulf coast. You can see, the percentage of households in Detroit is about 5 percent; the same with Stockton, CA, and Las Vegas is 4 percent. That is a real crisis in those areas. It seems like a small percentage, but if you are in a neighborhood where there is a concentration of these kinds of homes, the problem is--and what we are trying to solve, those of us who are supporting this bill; and I am supporting this bill--to try to provide some additional community development block grant funding because not only are we trying to perhaps come up with State- based local solutions that might help these particular families, but the real tragedy, in my mind, is those families around these homes who did absolutely nothing wrong. They took out a 30-year mortgage. They have paid their mortgage every month. They did not enter into any flimflam kind of agreement. But the problem is, as homes collapse around them and become vacant and are foreclosed on, these homeowners who did nothing wrong, who have most of their net worth tied up in the value of their home, are seeing, through no fault of their own, their property values plummeting. Now, if you are a young person, and you are a homeowner in this situation, you might have time to ride it out. But if you are a senior getting ready to retire, or if you are getting ready, in middle age, to send your two children to college and were hoping to refinance your home to do that and had planned for 20 years--this was your plan to send your kids to college. You did not get to go to college, but you have saved and scrimped and worked hard, and you were going to refinance your house to send your children to college. Guess what. Your kids do not go to college because your neighbor took out a subprime loan, and it is causing your property value to plummet. Now, I know the President does not understand why community development block grant moneys are important. He does not understand a lot of things. But some of us do understand why we need to help people in these neighborhoods. So I am just explaining that while the numbers are very high, and these percentages are startling, I want to show you what our numbers look like in Louisiana because if these look bad, ours are terrible. It is not because we had foreclosure problems. It is not because we have subprime--in fact, our State does not really have the same problem that California and Nevada are facing. But we had our own sets of catastrophes, and that, of course, was in the storms of a few years ago, Katrina and Rita, that hit the gulf coast--both just historic in their devastation. We are still having a housing crisis throughout the gulf coast, really from Alabama to the southern part of Texas, as people struggle with the impact of those storms. In New Orleans and Saint Bernard and in the southeastern portion of Louisiana, our situation was even further complicated when the Federal levees that should have held did not. They failed, and people who had never had an inch of water in their home had 14 feet and lost everything they had worked for their entire lives. So in St. Bernard Parish we see not 5 percent, not 4 percent but 54 percent of the homes are empty or devastated. In Cameron, LA, not 4 percent or 5 percent but 46 percent of the homes; in Plaquemines Parish, 44 percent; in Orleans Parish, 78,000, almost 80,000, out of only 122,000. That is an extremely high percentage almost 42 percent of households that are still damaged or destroyed. Now, what has been done to help these homeowners? Some have been able to collect their insurance, but very few people have collected all of what they thought they were due. Some have collected a modest grant we gave from this Congress of an average of $60,000. Some have received-- that is about the average for homeowners. But I would contend that a $60,000 to $75,000 to $85,000 grant and some insurance proceeds they were able to receive does not, by any means, get these homeowners back to where they need to be. So we have tried to pass additional legislation that might help and have been unable to move anything substantial through the Housing Committee. However, we now see an opportunity on this floor on a housing bill that is attempting to reach communities that are in distress--ours is in distress for a different reason, not, as I said, because of failure to pay or because of delinquency or foreclosure. We see an opportunity, by making a very modest change in the underlying bill, to help these homeowners. This would make it clear, with the amendment I offer with Senator Wicker--our amendment would simply say that in the community development block grant portion of this bill, that it be allowed to be used not just for homes that were foreclosed but for homes that were conveyed to local land banks. To deal with this situation, we have created in Louisiana--or are in the process of actually creating--parishwide authorities that are done at the local level; they are called land banks. They have other names for them, such as redevelopment authorities. They exist throughout the country. It is not anything new. But we are finding we may need to be supporting these kinds of land banks as properties are conveyed back to the Government--not in every case, but some people are making choices. They don't want to rebuild in that place; they would rather take their grant money and build somewhere else. That piece of property is then conveyed back to our State land bank, and our land bank is trying to move these properties back to local parish-based land banks so these neighborhoods can be redeveloped with some sort of rhyme and reason to them; so it is not hit or miss but that there is some sort of local planning. We are being required to build better and stronger and smarter. We are trying to actually live up to that challenge by being smart about the way we redevelop. I see the ranking member of the committee on the floor, the Senator from Alabama, who is familiar, of course, with some of the devastation that occurred because some of it, unfortunately, happened in Mobile-- not to the extent it happened in the southern part of Mississippi and Louisiana. But what I am saying to the Senator from Alabama is that with one modest change that actually is germane, according to the Chair, and does not cost anything, we would simply allow our portion of whatever comes to Louisiana and Mississippi--not a dime more than what is already in the bill--to be used for land banks associated with the redevelopment of these kinds of properties. I am afraid, if we don't make this change, it might put Mississippi and Louisiana and, frankly, Alabama and parts of Texas in the position of not being able to use their community development block grants for the problem they have. So in this whole country, some States have problem A. In other States, we have problem B. I am trying to make sure our problem is met with this amendment. It is not adding anything; it is an allowable use of our community development block grant, and it will go a long way to help. Now, we estimate--I don't know if the Senator from Alabama has these numbers--that for our State, based on the formula that is in the bill, Louisiana may get somewhere between $90 million and $100 million, but we don't know until that formula is promulgated by the Secretary of HUD, but we estimate that based on the formulas in the bill. So we want to make sure the $90 million or $100 million can actually be used to help these homeowners because they are technically not in foreclosure. They are in various stages of legal status, but they are not necessarily in foreclosure. So that is the purpose of our community development block grant amendment. I would most certainly appreciate it if the leadership would take a look at it. Again, it is amendment No. 4447. It doesn't cost anything. It is scored at zero. I have a great partner in offering this amendment, the Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Wicker. So that is the community development block grant amendment. I wish to take a moment to also talk about the mortgage revenue bonds, which is part of the financing part of this bill. As my colleagues know, this bill is basically made up of two different sections. One is a housing section and then one is a tax section. In the tax section of this bill, one of the ways the Finance Committee wants to try to alleviate some of the problems around the country is to allow the issuance of some additional mortgage revenue bonds. We have done this for years and years and years. Before I was a Senator, I was the State treasurer. I used to issue these bonds in my State. They are a very good tool to promote home ownership, which we believe in at home in Louisiana, and I am sure everyone else does as well. It gives opportunities to build affordable, low-income housing where there is a real need throughout the country, particularly now in the gulf coast. One of the things I am very concerned about--I don't know if the Senator from Alabama or the Senator from Utah, who is on the floor, experienced this in their States, but we have a real shortage of affordable housing for seniors, as more people want to live independently, but they don't necessarily want to live in a 2,000- or 3,000-square-foot home by themselves. They would like to move somewhere closer to maybe where their family is, and they would like an affordable rental unit. Some people would like to buy a condo, but to people of a certain age bracket, a condo is not something they grew up with, so an affordable rental is a more comfortable situation for them. We can't find a lot of senior housing down in the gulf coast right now. Most everything we had was literally washed away or flooded or destroyed. So the great thing about this particular provision coming out of Finance is these revenue bonds could be used for this kind of building. Again, the other amendment I have, No. 4404, does not have a score. Actually, it has a minor score of $3 million. It is very minor compared to the other costs of this bill. It is de minimis, a $3 million cost. What it will do is it will allow us to be able to again use our bonding authority--not anything more, not anything additional, but to use our bonding authority to address the problem we have with these properties. I wish to show some pictures. This is a neighborhood--I am sorry I can't identify where this is, and it was some time ago. Most of this debris has been picked up throughout the gulf coast, but in many places, while the debris is gone, these structures remain as they are here: abandoned and destroyed until property owners figure out what they are going to do. Here is another picture we have used. I am not sure, again, where this is, but houses such as this are still throughout the gulf coast area; a lot of it has been cleaned up. Maybe this home has been gutted, but it is basically down to its 2 by 4s, and it is basically sitting there in neighborhood after neighborhood. This is actually a home in St. Bernard Parish in a community called Chalmette. I wish I had better pictures to show the blocks and blocks of devastation that still exist. When I say devastation--it is cleaned up, on many of the lots the grass is cut, but there are no homes there, there is no neighborhood there. The library is not yet back, the Post Office is not yet back, and people are still struggling to rebuild their neighborhoods. So I am imploring the leadership handling this bill to please take a look at amendment No. 4404. Please take a look at amendment No. 4447. The cost in one case is nothing. The cost in the other is a de minimis $3 million, but it will help tremendously to make this bill, we hope will pass, applicable to the situations in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, whose people are still struggling 2\1/2\ years after this devastation. Basically, that is the gist of my remarks. We have another amendment pending relative to the tax credit, but I will hold my remarks on that. But these two amendments we are hoping we can get included in any kind of modified package. Again, I have bipartisan support. It does not increase the cost of the bill, and it would go a great way to make sure this bill, if it does get passed--I know there is opposition in the House and I know the President is opposed to this bill, so this bill may never see the light of day. I am very clear about that. But if it does, at least let the people of Louisiana and Mississippi use the money that is being allocated to us anyway for the problem we have--not the problem everybody else has--because we simply have a different problem. I hope my colleagues would recognize our situation. I yield the floor.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, it looks as if we are getting to the end of this debate on housing, and it has been a good one. I come to the floor before we move to the final stages of this debate to thank my colleagues for their extraordinary help in putting into this bill, which is a major piece of legislation--attempting to help communities throughout the country deal with the added rate of foreclosures, the spiraling downward of so many neighborhoods due to a variety of different circumstances--and I think it is important that the Senate act today. I particularly thank the chairman of this committee, Senator Dodd, for his patience and his tenacity in getting us to this point and for putting in many good provisions into this bill that will be a help to homeowners, to communities, in some instances to lenders, who got themselves into difficulty because, again, our goal is to try to reinvigorate the housing markets, to stop the slide. Particularly, in the case of Louisiana, we still have a significant housing crisis that did not start with the foreclosure crisis but started when 250,000 homes were destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. This Congress has been generous at times in helping us to try to come up with ways to deal with this unprecedented situation. I am very grateful for the amendment that was adopted overwhelmingly last week by a vote of over 70 Members of this body to say that our Road Home grants, which is what they are called in Louisiana--they are called Homeowner Assistance Grants in Mississippi--but those grants that have been provided by this Congress to help people rebuild homes that were destroyed when insurance proceeds were either not available or not enough. This is from small towns such as Waveland, MS, to very large cities such as New Orleans, LA; places such as Lake Charles, LA, to small little communities such Creole, LA, on the southwest side. So it is affecting urban and rural places in my State. That amendment we adopted last week will be a significant help to homeowners trying to use those grants to get back into their homes. Until that amendment passed, this grant, if you will, was taxable. With the amendment we placed on the floor of the Senate, those grants will be treated as nontaxable, basically. I wish we could get this bill to the President's desk before April 15. We are going to move it off the floor today. It has, of course, to go to the House for negotiations and eventually get to the President. I am very hopeful this bill--generally in its current form, with, hopefully, some improvements, as it continues to move through the process--can get to the President's desk quickly because our people on the gulf coast--particularly in Louisiana, but on the gulf coast--who received help 2 years ago through community development block grants are feeling a real pinch right now because they are now paying $5,000, $10,000 or $20,000 in taxes on those grants at a time when they can least afford it. I cannot tell you how many people stop me when I go home and say: Senator, if you could do one thing for us, please tell them we cannot pay tax on these grants we have received--which have been minimal, helpful but minimal, in their efforts to rebuild hundreds of thousands of homes. Let me say for the record--and I am very proud of Habitat for Humanity. I am the cochair of the Habitat for Humanity caucus here. I have been on many builds throughout the country. Habitat for Humanity, which has not stopped working since the rain stopped--and I see the Senator from Connecticut on the Senate floor--and which has had thousands of volunteers every day coming to their sites in Louisiana, has only completed 162 houses--162 houses--and they are the largest homebuilder in New Orleans. We lost about 250,000 dwelling places throughout the state of Louisiana. So I am here in an uphill battle. I appreciate my colleagues bearing with this speech over and over again, but I can only say, if your cities or your communities were as devastated as the ones I am representing, you would be here, too, trying every way you could to bring every little bit of help and big help to them. So I am grateful that finally we got a housing bill to the floor after 2\1/2\ years. Finally, we got a very significant addition to some tax relief. I will say that in further reading of this bill, I am encouraged--the Senator from Connecticut is here--that the $140 million to $150 million in extra mortgage revenue bonds that will come to our State will be a help. I think in further reading of the bill, the underlying bill actually will work for us. So I am very pleased. I think we will continue to work on the $95 million to $100 million that will come to our State in the underlying bill to help land banks. We are establishing and have established NORA in New Orleans and other land banks, perhaps in St. Bernard, Cameron, Lake Charles, perhaps in Plaquemines, perhaps in St. Tammany and Jefferson Parishes, which are the hardest hit parishes. I think this bill allows for support of those land banks. So that is another $95 million to $100 million that may come for that purpose, and we have been looking for some help in that regard. So, overall, this bill will address many issues in Louisiana with the additional help we have received through these amendments. I am very pleased that we have made progress. Again, I wish to thank the Senator. He has been more than generous with his time. I know this has been difficult because there are 50 of us who are asking him for special help and attention. But he has been down to our State. I am hoping he will come back and walk through some of these neighborhoods. Finally, I will say that this is quite an interesting and wonderful-- if you can say that--experiment going on in the United States of America, because the question is, when a community of 60,000 people is wholly destroyed, which happened in St. Bernard Parish, the parish south of New Orleans, is it possible for the Government to rebuild it? If so, how and how quickly and how well? There are nonprofits and there are universities, from Harvard University to Stanford to LSU to some of the top social scientists in the country right there on the gulf coast, because in their minds, in this century, there has not been a devastation like this in modern times. So there are some interesting questions: How does a neighborhood come back? Do you build the churches first or the schools or the libraries? How important is water and electricity relative to the scheme of things in terms of rebuilding neighborhoods? How do you do it with community planning in a democracy where every neighbor's voice has to be treated the same? So these are some exciting times. We are just making the best of a very desperate situation and trying to do the best we can to rebuild our communities. I want to end with thanking all of the volunteers, all of the nonprofits, all of the businesses that have stepped up. I thank the Senate for acting on at least a very significant portion of this tax relief for homeowners who are still putting the pieces of their lives and their fortunes back together--regardless of how modest some of those fortunes may be--neighborhood to neighborhood. But people are really trying to put their homes and their lives back together. So I thank the Senator from Connecticut. I understand we are going to move now to the managers' package. Again, we have some significant portions taken care of in this bill. I am looking forward to being able to let the State know that another $140 million, $150 million worth of mortgage revenue bonds that I personally hope will go to affordable, low-income housing, workforce housing, and particularly for seniors who have been so devastated by the loss of their homes, and again, the support that may come out of this bill for our land banks as we think of new and innovative ways to get this property back on the private rolls, redeveloped in a way that creates excitement and vibrancy in neighborhoods from New Orleans East to Lakeview to the Lower Ninth Ward, all the way to lower Packwood Parish, which is about as far south as you can go in Louisiana. I thank the Senator from Connecticut, and I yield the floor.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Reserving the right to object, may I follow after that debate is completed?

Ms. LANDRIEU. So I will be in line to offer an amendment at 10:30 a.m.?

Ms. LANDRIEU. Be recognized for 10 minutes.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment No. 4389 be further modified, the text of which is at the desk.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, the junior Senator from Mississippi wishes to speak on our amendment.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, pursuant to section 204 of Senate Concurrent Resolution 21, I move to waive that section of the concurrent resolution for the purpose of the pending amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Reserving the right to object, could I be added after the Senator from Tennessee?

Ms. LANDRIEU. Reserving the right to object, may I inquire of whoever will be managing the next amendment how long they will go forward with the discussion on this amendment? I would like to be added to the list after it is all over for 5 minutes to present a wholly different amendment. It does not have anything to do with this issue.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I do have an amendment that I would like to offer on a completely different subject and sometime today.

Ms. LANDRIEU. To the housing bill.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Later on today.

Ms. LANDRIEU. I am trying to get a timeframe as to when I might be able to do that so I can plan my day.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I would like to add to the unanimous consent agreement: If I could let my colleague go before me and then I could speak whenever he is finished or at 11 o'clock.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be laid aside and call up amendment No. 4404.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I appreciate the support earlier today of an amendment that I, Senator Cochran, Senator Vitter, and Senator Wicker brought forward for the people of the gulf coast--thousands and thousands and thousands of homeowners, responsible homeowners, homeowners who did not exploit opportunities for fancy-dancy mortgages, homeowners who took just the regular standard mortgages, who had actually paid their mortgages off, and kept insurance their whole life. Then, in 2005, two storms hit the gulf coast and literally wiped out the net worth--literally, a great deal of the net worth--of hundreds of thousands of families on the gulf coast. The reason I continue to come to the Senate floor is because the Stafford Act, which would normally come, if you would, to the rescue of people in our country in this situation, is wholly inadequate for either the initial recovery or the long-term rebuilding. It is not just what Mary Landrieu says, the Senator from Louisiana. It is what Secretary Chertoff testified before our committee last week. I am going to submit his actual quote for the Record. It is what Chief Paulson of FEMA said yesterday, testifying before the committee. It is what the inspector general of the Homeland Security Department said yesterday testifying before our committee. So this is my dilemma as a Senator from a State that has had an unprecedented disaster. I would have been happy to receive the Stafford Act and just make it work for us. But since it is not working for us, I am kind of inventing things as we go along, trying to take appropriate and responsible advantage of other bills that come along that actually might be appropriate for our situation. I am trying not to ask for too much but only what we need. But since the structure we have is not applicable, I have no choice. So I have been waiting for a year and a half to get a housing bill on the Senate floor so we could make some of these changes. I appreciate my colleagues being understanding and supportive, and everybody has been just terrific. As I said earlier this week, we have had some terrible situations in Detroit, in California, in Las Vegas, in Sacramento, thousands and thousands in San Bernardino, CA. But as I said, some of these homeowners could have gotten themselves in trouble. They might have done things they should not have done. I do not know. Maybe some people were victims of fraud. That will be worked out, I hope, through some of the legislation we are passing. But the reason I pull this chart up is to say that even in the worst area in the country right now for foreclosures, which is Detroit, Dearborn, MI, with 42,000 homes--these are official numbers--only 4.9 percent of the houses in this whole area are basically in foreclosure or for which there is a threatening pending foreclosure. I bring this contrast to show you that down on the gulf coast, those numbers are dwarfed by what Katrina and Rita and the subsequent levee breaks did to our homeowners. In St. Bernard Parish, almost 55 percent--not 4 percent, not 10 percent, not 20 percent but 54 percent of the homes in St. Bernard Parish--had damage exceeding 30,000. Some of these homes were only worth $50,000. Some were worth $350,000. But they are basically completely damaged. In fact, the sheriff and the parish president told me that there were only five homes undamaged in the whole parish after Katrina and Rita-- after those waters went down--5 out of the 67,000 people who live in this parish. For Cameron Parish, almost 50 percent of their households have had completely devastating damage to their homes. So, if you can, picture a place that does not have just a spattering of houses and weeds and emptiness but places that have blocks and blocks and miles and miles of homes that are empty and gutted with the windows and doors open and the families gone. People are struggling to come back with a very inadequate Federal framework right now to help them. I know we have sent down a lot of community development block grant money. After a lot of contortions that everybody went through, we finally crafted a plan to give each of these homeowners, if they qualified--they had to prove they owned the land; they had to prove they paid taxes; they had to prove they were actually the right homeowner--we gave them a grant, no more than $150,000. The average is about $60,000 for Mississippi and Louisiana. Our plans are similar but not the same. But you can imagine the problem with a family who owned their house outright, they had no mortgage. It was worth $350,000 or $400,000 or $500,000, and the most grant they could possibly get is $150,000. So we are far away from trying to make people whole. Why should we try to make them whole? Again, it is nothing they did. They did not cause the hurricane. Some of them did not even live in floodplains. Some of the families did not have flood insurance because they were told by their mortgage holder and their bankers they did not need it. They were told by the Federal Government they did not need it. So my amendment is an attempt to help these homeowners by not adding a penny to the underlying bill, which is a wonderful thing--that we do not have to add any money to the underlying bill because I know we are trying to keep the cost of all this down. But all my amendment would do would be to allow there to be a third reason that bonds could be issued at the State level. In the underlying bill, the first reason, which is a good reason, is to allow first-time home buyers to buy some of the homes that have been foreclosed on that are sitting empty in neighborhoods. So what a good way to kind of get these homes back in circulation, to allow first-time home buyers with limited incomes--it is $65,000 in my State. I am not sure what it is in everybody else's State, but that would be a lot of families with teachers, firefighters, nurses, et cetera. They are not very wealthy but not poor middle-class families. These families could come in and buy some of these homes. That is a great idea. I used to be the State treasurer. I issued these bonds. It works. It is a happy thing when people can buy a home. The underlying bill also allows these bonds to be issued to build more multifamily dwellings. This is a desperate need in Louisiana because while we spend a lot of time talking about our homeowners who have lost homes, we had over 60 percent of the population in New Orleans, maybe between 50 and 60 percent who were not even homeowners. They were renters. Some of them were very wealthy renters. They chose to live in nice places, but a lot of the people in New Orleans--my hometown--were poor, and they could not afford a home, so they were renting. Their places have been destroyed, and we now have a growing homeless population of historic proportions. So the provision in the underlying bill that gives the opportunity to issue bonds to build multifamily dwellings is great. We can build for the elderly, who really need affordable housing in the country. I also believe the underlying provision allows for the building of places, rentals for the disabled, which is also a growing need. But what my amendment simply says is, there will be a third option for these bonds, and it will help to refinance homes that have been destroyed along the gulf coast in basically the storms of 2005. That is what the current amendment says. But let me say that I am very open to modify my amendment, if the leadership wants to do that, to allow the use of these bonds to go to basically any home that was destroyed by a disaster in the whole country. I think it would be a very good use of these bonds because, as I said, there is not a lot of help outside of just general insurance that helps people to rebuild. If people have insurance, fine; they can rebuild their home from insurance proceeds. But many people who had their houses destroyed by tornadoes or flash floods or hurricanes or earthquakes were not required to have insurance by the current law, and if they already paid off their mortgage, even if they were required to have insurance, they weren't required to after they paid off their mortgage; so a disaster hits and there is no way. This is not a grant. This is not a giveaway. It is an opportunity to provide mortgage lending for people who may want to buy some of these homes that have been destroyed. They are not foreclosed homes; they were destroyed and owned basically now by, in our case, Government entities that are trying to recirculate these properties back into the housing market. So that is basically what my amendment does. I hope we will have an opportunity, of course, as the day goes on, to maybe speak about it more or to have a vote on it next week, whenever the Senate decides to proceed. I thank the Senator from Connecticut. As I was saying before he came in, the amendment I am offering now adds no cost to the underlying bill. It takes the mortgage provision piece and makes it applicable for trying to help with homes that were destroyed in a disaster. Right now, we are trying to help with homes that were destroyed, if you will, by a foreclosure situation. We are also hoping to build multifamily housing, which is great. All we are asking for with this amendment is to basically add a third voluntary--not mandatory but voluntary on the part of the States if they want to include disaster, without adding any additional expense to the bill. So I thank the Senator from Connecticut. I hope we will take up this amendment whenever we can. I yield the floor.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Connecticut. I will follow his advice and keep the amendment tailored, and if he changes his mind, he can let us know. I appreciate his attention to this matter.

Ms. LANDRIEU

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 4389 for its immediate consideration.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.