Carolyn Maloney

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. Congressman Paulsen----

Mrs. MALONEY. I would like to inquire from Congressman Paulsen if he is aware of how many mortgages are underwater in his home State, the great State of Minnesota. I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. States across the country have this challenge. As I said, almost 11 million mortgages are underwater, or 22 percent of all outstanding mortgages. By passing this bill, we are saying that we have no solutions for these homeowners. It is not good for the homeowner, not good for the economy, and certainly not good for our country. President Obama has issued a statement that he will oppose the termination of this program and indicated that he will veto it when it gets to his desk. But I urge my colleagues to join me in vetoing this rule and vetoing the underlying bill in order to help our economy and to help homeowners stay in their homes.

Mrs. MALONEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and in support of the FHA refinancing bill that is one of four bills that will be on the floor coming out of the Financial Services Committee on which I serve that is terminating programs that will literally help people stay in their homes and help in the economic recovery. My Republican colleagues are proposing to terminate these programs, but they are not putting forward any alternative to help these people stay in their homes. There are nearly 11 million homes that are underwater now, meaning that the value of the home is less than the loan the homeowner has taken out to pay for it. Seven million homes have been foreclosed on so far, and another 3 million are expected to be foreclosed on through 2012. This vote will be on continuing the refinancing of FHA loans that will keep people in these homes, keep these homes filled so that they're not eyesores or pulling down the economy in certain areas. Last week, Citibank, Wells and GMAC voluntarily came forward and said they intend to participate in this program. It's a voluntary program. These are three of the largest mortgage companies in the country, and their participation will certainly broaden the reach to help more people. The program allows borrowers to write down at least 10 percent to reduce the debt burden. Then standard FHA loan terms will apply. As with all FHA-insured loans, the property must be the homeowner's primary residence, and the borrower must meet the FHA's full documentation. And they must be current on their mortgage. With declining home values, borrowers are caught in mortgages that they can no longer afford because their rates have reset or because their interest-only payments have not allowed them to grow any equity in their homes. They are making their payments--but barely. This is an important program.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, today, along with Representatives Baldwin, Hirono, Moore, and Stark, I am reintroducing comprehensive legislation to both prevent new obstetric fistulas and treat existing ones. The ``Fistula Prevention, Treatment, Hope and Dignity Restoration Act'' will bring new hope and opportunities to finally end this preventable condition. On the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, this is a fitting bill that will help millions of women achieve their maximum potential. Pregnancy shouldn't leave a woman with a disability and ostracized from her community. Congress should ensure investments for the more than two million women worldwide that have obstetric fistula and we do what we can to prevent new cases. Fistula results from prolonged labor without medical attention due to the pressure created internally from obstructed delivery, which kills tissue where a hole between the woman's vagina and rectum develops, leaving her without control of her bladder and/or bowels for the rest of her life if she goes untreated. It often results in the death of the infant. Many women with obstetric fistula are abandoned by their husbands and families because they are considered ``unclean'' due to leaking excrement. Left without support, the women are forced to beg or turn to sex work to survive. Fistula was once common throughout the world, but over the last century has been eradicated in Europe and North America through medical care. For example, New York's hospital for fistula patients, now the site of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, closed in 1895 due to diminishing cases. But still in 2011, from Bangladesh to Botswana, women continue to face these challenging deliveries and the complications associated with them, including obstetric fistulas. Fortunately, multilateral organizations such as UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, and its partners in the Campaign to End Fistula, as well as bilateral organizations such as USAID are working with partners on a global campaign to prevent and treat fistula with the goal of making the condition as rare in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia as it is in the United States. Being able to repair a fistula is life changing--and it will have a direct impact on a woman and her family if she is able to stay in her community, rather than to be shunned. At this point, the global community can do just that for about $300 for each repair. This bill authorizes the President to provide assistance to prevent and treat fistula. This legislation allows for a comprehensive, three pronged approach of prevention, treatment and reintegration which includes: increasing access to prenatal care, emergency obstetric care, postnatal care, and voluntary family planning; building local capacity and improving national health systems; addressing underlying social and economic inequities such as reducing the incidence of child marriage and increasing access to formal and informal education; and supporting reintegration and training programs to help women who have undergone treatment return to full and productive lives. These essential investments create a multiplier effect of benefits in the lives of women and their communities. The legislation also supports coordination among the community working to prevent and treat obstetric fistula through the International Obstetric Fistula Working Group. Support for monitoring, evaluation, and research to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of such programs throughout their planning and implementation phases will ensure the most efficient and effective use of U.S. foreign assistance dollars. I urge my colleagues to support this important, meaningful legislation.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, today, I am pleased to introduce the Access to Books for Children Act. This bill would amend the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 to provide a $5 voucher to mothers for the purchase of educational books for infants and children participating in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, WIC. As a lifelong advocate for reading and early education, I am introducing this bill to help provide nourishment for both the body and the mind to children who need it most. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommend daily reading to a child beginning when the child is 6 months old. The Access to Books for Children Act will make it easier for children in the WIC program to develop literacy skills by placing books in the hands of children who may not otherwise have their own books in the home. Children who are exposed to books and reading before they start school are much more likely to graduate from high school than those who are not. I urge you to support this bill to invest in early education by instilling the love of reading in all children during the formative years that matter the most.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express concern about the treatment of Baha'is in Iran. Recent reports suggest that the seven Baha'i leaders convicted last August have been transferred to more dangerous areas of the prison in which they are being held. Additionally, a series of arrests of Baha'i adherents began in Isfahan on February 13th. The fate of those individuals is currently unknown, but these arrests suggest that the Iranian government is continuing its persecution of members of the Baha'i faith. Freedom of religion is a basic human right. The United States has always been committed to defending religious freedom around the globe. The world must be vocal in its condemnation of the mistreatment of the Baha'i people at the hands of a brutal government. I urge the Iranian government to release all those whom it has imprisoned solely because of their religious beliefs, and to treat all of its religious minorities with tolerance.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to Ruth Gruber, an extraordinary woman whose life's work has made her an icon and a role model. Over the course of her long and active life, she has been a ground-breaking journalist and photographer, a brilliant scholar, an exceptional writer and a compassionate government official. Most of all, she is a humanitarian whose leadership and intellect helped save thousands of lives. Ms. Gruber received the American Spirit Award from The Common Good (TCG) on February 3, 2011. In addition, TCG will be screening Ahead of Time, a 2009 documentary about Ms. Gruber's life. Under the leadership of the dynamic Patricia Duff, TCG is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that strives to inspire broad participation in our democracy through the free exchange of ideas and civil dialogue. Born in Brooklyn in 1911, Ruth Gruber studied at the University of Cologne in Germany where, at the age of twenty, she received her Ph.D. Her dissertation on Virginia Woolf made her the youngest Ph.D. in the world, earning her international headlines and a movie star's welcome when she returned to the United States. Ms. Gruber returned to the United States where she became a journalist. In 1935, she won a fellowship to write a study of women under fascism, communism, and democracy. The first journalist to enter the Soviet Arctic, she published her experiences in the book, I Went to the Soviet Arctic. In 1941, after reading her book, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes sent Ms. Gruber as his field representative to make a social and economic study of Alaska. Her reports were forwarded to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and played a major role in shaping American policies in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, which were then on the frontlines of World War II. Among other things, her reports documented the strong work ethic of African-American soldiers. When Ms. Gruber returned to Washington, Ickes appointed her his special assistant, a position she held for five years. When President Roosevelt decided to accept a thousand European immigrants in the midst of World War II and the Holocaust, Secretary Harold Ickes asked her to escort the refugees to the United States. Largely but not entirely Jewish, the 984 refugees who were chosen to make the journey came from all over Europe. The refugees were permitted into the country with the idea that they would return home following the war's end. Following their arrival in New York harbor on August 3, 1944, they were kept segregated on an old army base in Oswego, New York. Ms. Gruber served as their liaison with the outside world. When the end of the war came, Ms. Gruber lobbied the President and Congress, with the help of Catholic, Jewish and Protestant clergy and other advocates, and convinced them to allow the refugees to stay in America. Following the war, Ms. Gruber became a foreign correspondent for the Herald Tribune. In 1947, the New York Post asked her to cover the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine, which was formed to consider what to do with the Jewish Holocaust survivors who could not return home. She traveled to the displaced persons camps, covered the Nuremberg trials, and met with Zionist leaders in the Middle East. In 1947, while covering the Middle East for the Herald Tribune, she learned of the British refusal to allow the Exodus, a former cruise ship crammed with 4,500 refugees, to land in Haifa. The British loaded the survivors onto several boats and sent them first to Marseilles and then to Germany. Ms. Gruber was permitted to travel with the refugees from Marseilles to Germany as the pool reporter. Her dispatches, later collected in the book, Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched a Nation, introduced the world to desperation and determination of the survivors. Her iconic photograph of refugees on board the ship under a flag bearing the British Union Jack overlaid with a Nazi swastika became Life Magazine's photo of the week and was reproduced around the world. Ms. Gruber continued to work as a foreign correspondent until 1966, and has continued to write books up to the present day. In 1985, Ms. Gruber witnessed another exodus--she traveled to isolated Jewish villages to aid in the rescue of the Ethiopian Jews. She chronicled her experiences in Rescue: The Exodus of the Ethiopian Jews. In 1998, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from her peers in the American Society of Journalists and Authors as ``a pioneering journalist and author whose books chronicle the most important events of the twentieth century.'' When asked the secret of her success, she said: ``Have dreams, have visions and let no obstacle stop you.'' Ms. Gruber was married twice, first to Philip H. Michaels and, after his death, to Henry Rosner. In 1952, at age forty-one, she gave birth to her first child, Celia; her son, David, was born in 1954. Mr. Speaker, I ask my distinguished colleagues to join me in recognizing the remarkable career and achievements of Ruth Gruber, an indefatigable journalist, activist and humanitarian.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. I thank the gentleman. I rise in tribute to Representative Steve Horn. He was a thoughtful, dedicated, honorable man who built his record on bipartisan cooperation and commitment to good government. He was a legislator's legislator. He was deeply committed to doing the right thing, writing the right bill, getting it passed. And he was also a very good friend of mine. He came with his wife and visited me in my home in New York. I went to visit him in his district, the district that he loved and was totally dedicated to. During his 10 years of service here in the House of Representatives we worked together on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He chaired the Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology for 6 years, and I was the ranking member with him. So not only was he dedicated to running government better, saving taxpayers money, but he also legislated and passed many important bills. He helped me pass a bill that I authored, the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, which we worked on together for roughly 7 years--it took us that long to pass it. A book has been written about that process and the bill, and what it has done to help in problem-solving now as we confront delicate issues going forward. The first hearing on the Debbie Smith bill, which has been called the most important anti-rape bill in the history of our country, was in his committee where Debbie Smith testified about her rape, the fact that no one was reacting to it. And this whole effort, including that hearing that he chaired, was made into a movie called ``A Life Interrupted'' and how DNA has been used to put rapists behind bars. He was a dedicated, wonderful person. He also chaired the Arts Caucus and worked hard for its funding. In a time when we talk about bipartisanship, Steve Horn was the real deal: a bipartisan problem-solver. He wanted to get the problems solved. He wanted to help this country, help his community. He was devoted to his wife and two children and grandchild. He was just a great guy.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Chair, this bipartisan amendment places a reasonable limit on the Government's ability to spy on American citizens using Patriot Act powers, by narrowly targeting the Patriot Act provision which allows the Government to seize library or bookstore records to determine what Americans are reading and thinking. Protection against this type of intrusion into our thoughts and minds is at the heart of our most fundamental freedoms and what it means to be an American. For these reasons, I vote in favor of the Nadler/ Conyers amendment.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Chair, this week, the House is debating a Continuing Resolution (H.R. 1) that includes the dangerous elimination of funding to a key organization, UNFPA, that provides life-saving services to women, children and families around the world in over 150 countries--more than any other organization in the world. The work UNFPA does recognizes that there is a direct connection between a woman's ability to plan her family, space her pregnancies, and give birth safely and her ability to get an education, work outside the home, support her family, and participate fully in her community. UNFPA knows that when we ignore the health of women, there is a measurable cost in terms of lost productivity, lost resources, and lost lives. The CR works against these efforts which is why I urge you to vote against it. Recent natural disasters remind us that the needs of women must not be forgotten in times of emergency. The devastating earthquake in Haiti did not stop the need for access to good maternal health care. Haiti already had the highest rate of maternal death in the Western Hemisphere before the earthquake, with the lifetime risk of dying in childbirth equaling 1 in 47. Since the earthquake, UNFPA has delivered reproductive health supplies, including clean delivery kits and other maternal and neonatal health care products. UNFPA helps to ensure women and their health care needs are not ignored in the wake of a disaster. But we can't wait until times of emergency to act. Each year more than 536,000 women die due to complications developed during pregnancy and childbirth, and another 10 million suffer debilitating illnesses and lifelong disabilities and UNFPA works to help prevent these deaths and complications. Every step of the way, UNFPA is working to help women, prevent death, and support healthy families. This bill will cut funding to the basic work UNFPA does as well as the work in does in times of emergency, including Haiti, the Southeast Asia tsunami in 2004, and Afghanistan in 2001, among other times. For this, and scores of other reasons, I encourage you to vote ``no'' on H.R. 1.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Chair, I rise in strong support of the Lowey amendment which restores lifesaving medical services to millions of young and low-income women and men who receive their basic health care through the 4,400 clinics nationwide receiving Title X funds. Let's be very clear about what services Title X family planning programs do and do not provide. First off and very importantly, federal law prohibits any Title X money from being used for abortion care. Plain and simple. Instead, these monies go toward breast and cervical cancer screenings, hypertension and blood pressure measurement, prenatal, post-partum and well-baby care, birth control and abstinence education. The statistics speak for themselves: contraceptive services at Title X centers annually prevent 973,000 unintended pregnancies, which would result in 433,000 unplanned births, 406,000 abortions, and 134,000 miscarriages. Slashing this funding actually has the opposite effect of the so-called ``pro-life'' majority. Not only would the number of abortions rise by 40% if these funds are cut, defunding Title X jeopardizes the millions of women and their babies who benefit from these clinics. Given the objective benefits of this program which include annual savings of $3.4 billion, it is unclear how the anti-choice, Republican majority concludes that attacking and eliminating women's basic health care will improve our economy, erase our deficit, or create one single job. Once again, the message this majority is sending to women across this country is clear: They do not trust you to make your own decisions about your own body and will cut or eliminate programs that help you do so.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. Madam Chair, I inadvertently voted against Amendment No. 524 which would protect our libraries and booksellers from Patriot Act searches and seizures. I change my vote to a ``yea,'' as I did in 2005 when I voted in favor of this very amendment. Amendment No. 466 Offered by Mr. Poe of Texas

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Mrs. MALONEY. I rise in strong support of accountability and oversight, and I rise in strong support of the Frank amendment, which would help give tools to the SEC so that they could better enforce the laws of this country. Madam Chair, our Republican colleagues have proposed that the SEC's budget should be cut back to roughly 2008 levels; but I can hardly imagine that anyone in this body on either side of the aisle is pleased at the level of oversight that was performed by the SEC in 2008, the year the economy cratered under the Bush administration. According to the SEC Inspector General, the Republican proposal would force the agency to let go 600 staff right when we need more activity by the SEC in oversight. Just as our colleagues across the aisle are calling for more accountability, they would cripple one of the key agencies that holds people in a key sector accountable. The SEC's budget for all of 2010 is equal to just a small fraction of the bonus pool for just one major investment bank or hedge fund in the financial sector that they are charged with overseeing. It is a small fraction of what they are charged to oversee. The total loss of household wealth as a result of this Great Recession has been estimated at approximately $14 trillion. It was a financial disaster that did not have to happen. A lack of adequate oversight and regulation were major contributing factors. We heard that from the Angelides committee report yesterday. So the Republicans' new proposal to cut the badly needed oversight of our financial system brings to mind one of the oldest sayings in our country: ``They are being penny wise--and pound foolish.'' The majority party is basically resisting any increase in the funding for the cops, the major cops on the financial beat. They apparently can look back on the carnage of the past years, look at the way the middle class has been brutalized, look at how people have had their dreams stolen in this recession, look at how their hopes were crushed, and declare that the status quo is ``just fine, thank you.'' We're not even going to fund it at the status quo at the time that we had the great debacle and crash of our financial system. They want to de-fund it even more. I really do not agree. I feel strongly about it. This is a huge mistake. They would deny the needed relatively modest funding that is required to begin supervising over-the-counter derivatives trading. Let's take a look at some of the numbers. The over-the-counter derivatives market is valued at about $600 trillion. In 2010, the GDP of the entire world was just over $74 trillion. The infamous ``flash crash'' on May 6 temporarily wiped out of our economy $1 trillion. In 2010, the budget for the entire CFTC was just $169 million. So the number of new staffers that the SEC is saying it would like to hire will understand this new type of trading--the algorithmic trading, the kind of high-frequency trading that tends to dominate today's marketplace. It is trying to hire five new oversight professionals; but the number of such specialists the opposing party seems willing to fund is absolutely zero so that there will be no one looking over this new type of trading. Zero is the level of effort that the Republicans seem willing to make to see to it that we don't suffer through another great recession and to make sure that a Bernie Madoff doesn't happen again. This is not the way to proceed. We should fund the SEC appropriately so that it can oversee the new Dodd-Frank bill, which requires many new studies and new rules, and so that it can give this country the protection it needs from risky trading. How can we know that the capital markets and the leverage rules that we are putting in place are enforced? We can't do that unless the SEC is properly funded. This is an important amendment. I think it is one of the most important before this Congress. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support the Frank amendment so that we can oversee the financial markets, so that we can make sure that the rules are enforced, and so that we can make sure that the American investor, the American public, is protected. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. MALONEY. Madam Chairman, I, too, rise in support of the Holt amendment and will place in the Record an eight-page document from the Americans for Financial Reform. This has eight pages of State, local, and city organizations in support of an independent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I must say that the Republicans are chipping away at the independence of this very important bureau. We put it in the Fed to have financial independence for regulation. They're putting it back under the appropriations system and cutting it dramatically. Dodd-Frank did a lot of good things, and one of them was to try to level the playing field for the consumer with the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. For far too long in our financial system and its products, any concerns about consumer protection came in a distant second, a third, or not at all. Now, any American who opens a checking or savings account, anyone who takes out a student loan or a mortgage, anyone who opens a credit card or takes out a payday loan will have a Federal agency on their side to protect them. For the first time, consumer protection authority will be housed in one place, and the Democrats funded it. The Republicans are taking away that funding and that independence. This is a critically important amendment for the financial independence, security, and well-being of the consumer in our country and for the financial system. We are suffering through the Great Recession because there was no oversight. The Democrats have put in oversight, accountability. And the Republicans lose the vote on the floor, we pass it, but they're trying to win by cutting away the funding so they can't function, so they can't do their job, taking away their independence. It is outrageous. It is wrong. It is an insult to the American people. And my friends on both sides of the aisle should join Congressman Holt in support of his important amendment. It is important to the financial independence and security of the American public, and I urge everyone to support it. House GOP Targets Consumer Protection Bureau With CR (By Tim Fernholz) When Democrats in Congress crafted last year's Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul, they went out of their way to protect the fledgling Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from the financial sector and Republicans who opposed it. They did so by crafting a dedicated funding stream from the Federal Reserve to protect the agency's independence from the whims of appropriators--or so they thought. A provision in the continuing resolution being debated on the House floor this week would limit the CFPB's funding, which could be as much as $700 million a year, to only $80 million for the rest of this fiscal year. ``They found a way around it,'' said Financial Services Committee ranking member Barney Frank, D-Mass., the law's namesake who managed its progress in the House. The measure created several regulatory agencies and strengthened existing ones while proposing restrictions on bank borrowing and pernicious business practices. House Republicans had promised to use the appropriations process to limit funding for the agencies implementing the new law, which they believe imposes burdensome costs on consumers and the private sector while failing to prevent future crises. The CR includes no money for the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to implement key provisions in the law; similar restrictions are already in the bill being debated on the floor. With the bulk of the funding for the CFPB under the Fed's discretion--the agency can request a further $200 million from Congress if the director so chooses--Democrats thought the CFPB would be safe from the whims of appropriators, but language in the CR would amend the Dodd-Frank law itself. ``We don't normally tinker around with the Federal Reserve; however, the Dodd-Frank bill did, and it opened the door,'' a GOP aide said. Frank doesn't disagree: ``In fairness to [Republicans], the Fed didn't independently decide to fund the CFPB; we told them to.'' Frank was skeptical about the provision's chances in the Senate or in negotiations with the White House, which has made the agency a priority, but worried that the issue might get lost in the complex funding battle. ``I don't think the tea party's victory was a mandate for the re-deregulation of the American financial system,'' Frank said, arguing that voters are behind restrictions on the financial sector. ``On all those issues, as they become public, we win.'' Among the amendments that have been proposed to the CR, one would eliminate the salary of the CFPB's interim head, Elizabeth Warren, and another would defund the agency entirely. Warren pushed back at the agency's critics in a speech on Tuesday. ``Politicizing the funding of bank supervision would be a dangerous precedent, and it would deprive the CFPB of the predictable funding it will need to examine large and powerful banks consistently and to provide a level playing field with their nonbank competitors,'' she said, pointing out that IndyMac, a bank that failed during the 2008 crisis, cost the government nearly 20 times the maximum yearly funding of the CFPB.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. I move to strike the last word.

Mrs. MALONEY. I rise in strong opposition to the Pence amendment, which will eliminate all funding for the many services provided by Planned Parenthood. That's the amendment that is before us, not the other items that other people are talking about. This amendment is not merely anti-choice. It is also anti-health, anti-woman, and anti-poor, and is a thinly veiled attack on birth control. This amendment will not do anything to grow our economy or create any new jobs to help us out of this great recession. It will only turn this Nation backwards. Planned Parenthood is the Nation's largest provider of family planning services; and for roughly 60 percent of their patients, they serve as the primary care physicians, as 90 percent of the health care they provide every day is primary and preventive. This is not about abortion. The Hyde amendment is alive and well, and it prevents and restricts any use of Federal funds for abortion. This is about primary and preventive health care. This anti-woman amendment will restrict millions of women from access to family planning, HIV testing and counseling, and breast and cervical cancer screening, leaving them with nowhere else to turn. The other side's vision of smaller government would expand the government's power over women's choices. It is wrong, it is shortsighted, and it is unjust. Instead of getting between a woman and her doctor, instead of allowing women to have control over their own health care, instead of forcing personal beliefs on half the population, let's turn to the business of creating jobs and economic opportunity and away from the business of ruling other people's lives. I urge a ``no'' vote on the Pence amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Mrs. MALONEY. I rise in opposition to this amendment and want to state that the arts not only contribute to education and enlightenment, they're important job creators. The NEA contributes to the development and economic growth of communities nationwide, and each year, the arts industry generates $166 billion in economic activity and provides 5.7 million full-time jobs. In my district alone, nearly 120,000 people are employed in the museum, theater, art galleries, and other arts organizations that I'm proud to represent. So this is not the moment for trying to score political points in the name of fiscal responsibility, and we should not be proposing deep cuts that will take effect right away and destroy jobs in the arts and other places at the very time we're trying like mad to create them. This CR threatens our recovery just as the economy is bouncing back from the worst recession in decades, and it proves that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are tone deaf to the American people's number one priority, which is jobs. Earlier this week, President Obama laid out a budget that makes tough choices, a thoughtful budget that includes a 5-year freeze on non- defense discretionary spending and reduces the deficit by $1.1 trillion. It does all of this while making important investments in education, infrastructure, jobs, and our Nation's competitiveness, investments that will prepare us to compete now and in the future. As the President said at his press conference on Tuesday, when it comes to this budget, we need to use a scalpel, not a machete. The Republicans, by contrast, are making deep, painful, and seemingly arbitrary cuts, cuts that would result in more than 200,000 children being dropped from Head Start. Thousands of teachers would lose their jobs and be forced to leave the classroom. Some $2.5 billion in NIH cuts would jeopardize critical cancer and other disease research, and 1,300 fewer cops would be on the beat as a result of eliminating the COPS hiring program, which we restored in a vote on this floor earlier tonight, thankfully. There will be 2,400 fewer firefighters through the elimination of SAFER grants, which again we fought to restore. Science and energy research, to help drive our clean energy economy, would be reduced, and the horrible list goes on and on, including this cut that is before us right now. Let's be clear: Cutting education, the arts, letting our infrastructure deteriorate further, and failing to harness the power of innovation is a recipe for declining competitiveness in an increasingly competitive global economy. It's imperative that we must invest in the future, invest in creating jobs, and this grant to the National Endowment for the Arts is an important investment that will pay dividends years down the road. I strongly support the program, and I'm opposed to the gentleman's proposal to cut it. Sure--it's harder to be strategic--but it's required. It's required that we recognize some investments make sense and some don't. We need to do more of what's working and eliminate what's not. The reality is that we have to keep growing the economy to bring down the deficit. And we have to bring down our long-term deficits to sustain that growth. But indiscriminate steep cuts--like the ones now being advocated by the Republicans--will jeopardize our recovery and make deficit reduction that much more difficult to achieve. This CR is bad for the recovery, bad for jobs and will hamper efforts to get out our long-term deficit under control.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of Women's History Month to introduce the Susan Brownell Anthony Birthday Act. This bill will designate the third Monday in February as the day to celebrate the legacy of Susan Brownell Anthony, a pioneer of the women's rights movement, and its leader for more than 50 years. Born on February 15, 1820, Susan Brownell Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1851 and attended her first women's rights convention in Syracuse in 1852. At that convention she was inspired to join the fight for women's suffrage, asserting that this was `the right women needed above every other.' The first proposal for women's suffrage was presented to Congress in 1868, and the first formal women's suffrage amendment to the Constitution of the United States was introduced in January 1878. For 35 years after that first proposal was made, Susan Brownell Anthony appeared before every Congress to ask for passage of a suffrage amendment, demonstrating her unwavering dedication to the cause. Her last public words before her death on March 13, 1906 were `Failure is impossible.' Between 1917 and 1919, over a thousand women held a vigil outside the White House, asking, `How long must women wait for liberty?' Unfortunately, Susan Brownell Anthony did not live to see her dream of women's suffrage become a reality, but her heroic efforts were not in vain. The nineteenth amendment, also called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, was ratified on August 26, 1920 giving the right to vote to American women. The text of the 19th amendment states that ``The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.'' The United States has previously recognized Susan Brownell Anthony's tremendous contributions to our Nation. To commemorate her legacy, a marble statue of her and her women's rights colleagues, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was dedicated in the United States Capitol in 1921. Susan Brownell Anthony's picture appeared on postage stamps in 1936 and 1955. Her home in Rochester, New York, has been a National Historic Landmark since 1966, and in 1979, her image was placed on a dollar coin. I am proud that the work of Susan Brownell Anthony and her fellow suffragists has been acknowledged and honored in these ways. However, as the founder and leader of the women's movement in the United States, Susan Brownell Anthony deserves a permanent place in our history. The journey to equality is long and difficult, but it well worth the fight. Passage of the Susan Brownell Anthony Birthday Act would make February 21st the first Federal holiday that celebrates the birthday of a woman, and would allow all women and men in the United States to celebrate and honor the legacy of a true American heroine.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. Madam Speaker, the new Republican proposal to eliminate all funding for the many services provided by organizations such as Planned Parenthood are not merely anti-choice, they are also anti- health, anti-woman, and anti-poor. The Republican proposal would eliminate the title X family planning which gives millions of American women access to primary and preventive health care. These budget cuts would deny crucial health services and cancer screening just to women. Their proposal would set up insurmountable cost barriers to family planning, just for the poor. Their vision of smaller government would expand the government's power over a women's choices. It is wrong, it is shortsighted, and it is unjust. Let's turn to the business of creating jobs and economic opportunity and away from the business of ruling other people's lives.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, when the national economy suffers, families face significant financial challenges and pressures--making measures that protect their health and prevent unnecessary job loss more important than ever. Helping families stay afloat in these economic times is critical--even for families of federal employees. That is why I am introducing the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act, which would provide 4 weeks of paid parental leave to federal workers following the birth, adoption, or fostering of a child. Paid leave ensures that a new child does not further destabilize families who are struggling to make ends meet. The federal government should be a leader in family-friendly workplace policy. As the nation's largest employer, with over 1.8 million employees across the nation--including 85% of those outside the Washington, DC area--the federal government can serve as a role model for other employers. Nearly ten percent of the workforce is unemployed, and many more are underemployed. Millions of families that once relied on two incomes are forced to survive on one--or none at all. A sharp rise in male unemployment has increased the number of families entirely dependent on a woman's earnings. Without paid leave, the birth or placement of a child means that many working families are left with no income at all coupled with rising expenses associated with a new child. This bill is a straightforward, cost-effective way to help families while rebuilding a strong national economy. As of January 2011, the United States is the only industrialized nation with no paid parental leave. We are in the company of Lesotho, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea by not offering paid parental leave. In the 111th and 110th Congresses, this bill passed the House with bipartisan support. I hope that my colleagues in the 112th will support this measure. In a tough economy, parents should not have to choose between a paycheck and caring for a new child.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. I thank the gentlelady for yielding and for her leadership, and I join her and my other colleagues in speaking out in strong protest to the projected cuts that they are pushing through the Securities Exchange Commission, the watchdog agency that is looking to find corruption, abuse and to protect the investors and to protect our financial community. Our Republican colleagues have proposed that the SEC's budget should be cut back to 2008 levels. But I can hardly imagine that they can be pleased at the level of oversight that was performed by the SEC in 2008, the year the economy cratered, the year that massive abuses such as the Madoff scandal came to light, and other abuses. We should not be scaling back the staff and oversight capability of the SEC. We should be adding to it so that they can do a better job in protecting investors and the American taxpayer. According to the SEC inspector general, the Republican proposal would force the agency to cut over 600 staff members--over 600. Now, we know that the SEC has 60 studies that they have to come out with, hundreds of rules, and they are clamoring for more staff to meet the mandates of this Congress and of the regulatory reform bill that has been written to save taxpayers from having to bail out too big to fail and excesses and mismanagement in the financial industry. Just as our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are calling for more accountability, they would cripple one of the key agencies that holds people in a key sector accountable. The SEC's budget for all of 2010 is equal to just a small fraction of the bonus pool for just one major firm in the financial sector. So let's look at the facts here. The total loss of household wealth as a result of the Great Recession has been estimated to be approximately $14 trillion. $14 trillion. It was a financial disaster that did not have to happen. There was a movement on the Republican aisle to roll back regulation. There was a lack of adequate oversight, and the lack of oversight and regulation were major contributing factors to this financial disaster. So the Republicans' new proposal to cut the badly needed oversight of our financial system brings to mind the old American saying, ``They are being penny wise and pound foolish'' with the economy of our great country.

Mrs. MALONEY

Mrs. MALONEY. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me and for leading on so many important issues for the safety of our country and world peace. I rise in strong opposition to this legislation which would, I believe, make New York City more vulnerable to terrorist attacks; and this includes people that I represent who are visiting or live around the U.N. compound. The bill would divert funds that the U.N. has that the State Department, United Nations, and the New York City Police Department have planned to use for much-needed security enhancements to the U.N. compound and surrounding perimeter in Manhattan. I just spoke earlier today with Police Commissioner Kelly, who says these funds are absolutely critical to maintain homeland security. Homeland security should be the number one priority for this country, and not having these funds would put at risk the lives of people who work there, people who visit, and people who live in the area. We know that threats of terrorist attacks are real. New York City has been attacked twice. And the police commissioner told me today that there have been 11 attempted attacks since 9/11, which they have stopped. So it is a real threat. And as a host country, we have a responsibility to protect the diplomats and those who work in and visit the United Nations. And we know that the U.N. is a terrorist attack target across the world, most notably in 2003 the attack in Iraq and in 2007 the attack in Algeria. So this is important. This vote, if you support the funding and the continued homeland security, will save lives. I would like to point out very importantly and place in the Record a statement from the nonpartisan CBO. They have said that this ``will not provide any savings to taxpayers.'' So if we are not providing savings to taxpayers, why are we not willing to speak out and vote for saving lives and security? I urge a strong ``no'' vote on this legislation. Congressional Budget Office, U.S. Congress, Washington, DC, February 9, 2011. Hon. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Madam Chairman: The Congressional Budget Office has prepared the enclosed cost estimate for H.R. 519, the United Nations Tax Equalization Refund Act of 2011. If you wish further details on this estimate, we will be pleased to provide them. The CBO staff contact is Sunita D'Monte, who can be reached at 226-2840. Sincerely, Douglas W. Elmendorf. Enclosure. H.R. 519--United Nations Tax Equalization Refund Act of 2011 CBO estimates that implementing H.R. 519 would have no effect on the federal budget. Enacting H.R. 519 would not affect direct spending or revenues; therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures do not apply. The bill would establish a new policy to direct the United Nations (U.N.) to return $179 million that the United States overpaid to the U.N. as well as any similar over-payments in future years. Under the bill, if the Secretary of State is unable to certify that the U.N. has returned $179 million, the State Department would be required to withhold the same amount from its assessed contributions to the U.N. Those contributions are funded through annual appropriations acts. Based on information from the Administration, CBO expects that the State Department would not seek the return of those funds and that the Secretary would thus be unable to make the necessary certification. CBO estimates that amounts appropriated in 2011 for assessed contributions to the U.N. will be obligated and expended before this bill would be enacted; therefore, there would be no funds available this year to withhold pursuant to the bill's requirement. Under current law, there are no appropriations authorized or provided for 2012 or future years for assessed contributions to the U.N.; therefore, CBO also would not attribute savings to H.R. 519 in future years. Thus, CBO estimates that implementing the bill would have no effect on the federal budget. If future appropriations are reduced by $179 million, CBO estimates that discretionary outlays would be reduced by a corresponding amount. H.R. 519 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act and would impose no costs on state, local, or tribal governments. The CBO staff contact for this estimate is Sunita D'Monte. The estimate was approved by Theresa Gullo, Deputy Assistant Director for Budget Analysis.