Brad Miller

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose this bill, but I do so with mixed feelings because I have been one of the critics of the HAMP program. The members of the majority have pointed out correctly that this program has been widely criticized for more than 2 years. It has been criticized by the congressional oversight panel, by the SIGTARP (Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program), by La Raza, by Elizabeth Warren, and, yes, by me. But I have not criticized it for the reasons that the gentleman from Alabama gave. If this bill is keeping a promise, it is not a promise made in open to the American people, it is keeping a promise made in secret to the banks, because the costs of this program are not going to come out of the pockets of the American people. This comes out of the TARP program. That legislation said that any money not recovered by 2013 has to be recovered from the financial industry, and whoever's present in 2013 has to propose to Congress exactly how it is we're going to get that money back. They can afford it. Thirty percent of all corporate profits are in the financial sector. They can more than afford it. The gentleman from Alabama frequently says that he hates visiting debt on his grandchildren, and I believe him when he says it, but I have good news for him. Unless his grandchildren take a job on Wall Street in the next 2 years, they are not going to have to pay this debt. This debt, if Congress does keep its promise to the American people, will not come from the American people. It will come from Wall Street. It will come from the people who created the mess that we are now trying to clean up. But I have criticized this program because it is not as effective as it should be. It has gone on for 2 years. It is not what we need. The problem, however, has not been what government has made banks do. This program has been run by the banks. It has not been run by the government. It has been run by the banks. Every horror story about a homeowner's being abused is being abused by a bank, the bank handling the mortgage, not by the Department of the Treasury, not by the Federal Government. So, of course, when they come to see a Republican Member of Congress, the Republican Member of Congress says, ``Oh, isn't it terrible what the Federal Government made that poor bank do to you.'' No, the Federal Government didn't make the banks do that. My criticism of this program and my criticism of the Obama administration in how they have run this program is not that they've made banks do what they've done, but they have let banks do what they've done. This program can work if there are some tough rules that are really enforced, tough on the banks. The gentleman from Massachusetts mentioned earlier the bankruptcy proposal 3 years ago. I introduced that bill. I have been trying to put rules, requirements, on the banks that they let people out, that they try to begin to let people out in a very orderly, logical, fair way, through judges, through a judicial process, to begin to get control of the collapse of the housing market. Something has got to happen to stop the continuing fall of housing values. Something has got to happen to end the cycle of foreclosures and diminished home values and more foreclosures. Republicans have offered nothing to do that. We know something can work. We know that we can design a program that will work, because it has been done before. In the New Deal, one of the most successful programs in the New Deal was the Home Owners' Loan Corporation which bought mortgages, modified them, worked with homeowners, tailored the mortgages to something the homeowner could buy for those homeowners who really could afford a house, the house that they were in but not the mortgage that they had, and most historians say that program saved the housing market in the Great Depression and saved the middle class. We have got to make something work. There are rules on the horizon. There is now a pending settlement negotiation for the violations of law by the banks in how they've managed mortgages. It is with States attorneys general and it is with the Federal regulatory agencies. Some on the Republican side have publicly pressured the Federal agencies to lay off the banks. I really cannot tell much difference between what they are doing in the pressure they are putting on banks and the regulatory agents in an enforcement matter and what happened a generation ago with the Keating Five. But they're doing it. They're saying, ``Lay off our buddies the banks. Don't come down too hard on them.'' But there is a real possibility the result of that settlement will be some tough rules, and there is now rule-making authority. There is now a cop on the block. The CFPB has the authority to develop rules for banks in how they manage mortgages. But something has to work. This has not been working. It can be fixed. It has to be fixed. Something has to work.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Chair, I seek to offer the amendment as the designee of Mr. Inslee of Washington.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, first I want to assure the gentleman from Texas that if he's worried about the debt burden that children being born today face, with respect to this program, unless one of those children takes a job on Wall Street within the next two years, like the talking baby in the ETrade ads, they really are not going to have to pay for this program. This program is going to come from the financial sector. That was a promise made in the TARP legislation; and unless they plan to break that promise, and I'm beginning to get the feeling that they are, this is not going to be a cost borne by innocent taxpayers, but by the industry that created the mess. Now, many people have criticized the TARP program, including me. The Congressional Oversight Panel has; the Special Investigator, Inspector General for the TARP program; yes, a lot of people have criticized the program. Unlike Republicans, a lot of us have been trying to figure out a way to make it work. I have offered several suggestions. I have criticized it continuously for 2 years and said what we should be doing instead, and on what we should be doing instead there has been a deafening silence from Republicans. We know we can do something. We know we have to do something. The foreclosures and the drop in home values are grinding down the middle class. The value they have in their home, the equity they have in their home is the bulk of their life savings. So when their home goes down in value, their life savings go away. We have got to get control of this. We know we can make something work because we have the tool. One of the most successful programs in the New Deal got control of the foreclosure crisis then, and the Federal Government made a profit from the program. And there is reason to think that there will be real rules, real enforceable rules soon. There are settlement talks pending on enforcement action by States Attorney Generals and by the Federal agencies for the violations of law by the biggest banks that handled most of these mortgages, which Republicans have opposed; and there are rules in the offing from the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which they have also proposed, something that really will make this work. Mr. Inslee's amendment is much the same. It requires a pullback, a hard look at the program and what will make it work, what are the guidelines that need to make it work, what are the standards that need to make it work, and requires that those suggested changes be implemented in the program. I urge adoption of the amendment.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I want to reassure Americans that it is not true that no problem ever gets fixed in Washington. Ten years ago, the debate here in Congress was what to do with the surplus. In fact, we paid off $400 billion of the debt; and Alan Greenspan, who was then the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, worried that we would pay off the national debt too quickly and it might be unsettling to the economy. Mr. Chairman, if there is one problem that got solved in the past decade, it is that problem: the problem of paying off the national debt too quickly. My party can claim none of the credit for that. It was a Republican President and a Republican Congress. I must admit that I don't like what they did to solve that problem of paying off the national debt too quickly. They gave tax cuts to America's top one-tenth of 1 percent, Americans making more than $2,340,000, and we saw just a couple of months ago that that was one thing that was absolutely nonnegotiable for them. They would give up everything before they would let those Americans have to pay any more in taxes. When there was a proposal to expand Medicare to take care of prescription drugs, something I supported generally, Republicans in Congress passed a bill that was not paid for, as other programs like that had been paid for, and was a giveaway to the insurance industry and to the prescription drug industry. So when they are giving tax cuts to the very, very richest Americans, the richest of the rich, when they are giving away taxpayer money to the insurance companies and to the prescription drug industry, the drug industry, they don't worry about deficits at all. It is only when Democrats take the Presidency, and particularly in the last 2 years when we have been dealing with the worst recession since the Great Depression and have been trying to pull the country out of a nosedive, that they have suddenly become worried about the deficits and criticized everything that we have done to try to save the country from the disaster that we inherited. It is only the programs that help working and middle class families that seem to give them a problem, like this one. Now, we have been on the case of subprime lending and its effects for a long time. I introduced legislation in 2004 to rein in subprime lending, not a bit of help from Republicans. Mr. Watt and I introduced that bill. It was Miller-Watt. Two years later, it became Miller-Watt-Frank. We have been on this case. The gentleman from Alabama said in committee the other day, Show me a way to deal with this problem that doesn't cost taxpayer money. I did that in 2007. I introduced a bill that bankruptcy lawyers and judges have said was one way to deal with the problem, let bankruptcy judges modify mortgages in bankruptcy the same way they modify all other kinds of secured debt; no support from Republicans at all, and the opposition Republicans killed that. I urged the Federal agencies that set rules for the banks to require they treat people better than they have been treating them when they manage their mortgages, no help from Republicans at all. Just yesterday, the Federal agencies in charge of the banks' conduct and the States' attorneys general have been pushing them, the banks, to impose fines for violating the law in how they handle foreclosures. Several Republicans sent a letter yesterday to the Secretary of the Treasury protesting that Federal agencies were being too mean to the banks. I thought most politicians learned during the Keating Five that your office does not give you the right to give your political buddies, your contributors, a get-out-of-jail-free card, but that appears to be what they're willing to do when it's the banking industry that is complaining about it. It is not true that this problem of foreclosures is just affecting a handful of Americans.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. We are in a cycle of foreclosures leading to the reduced value of homes, more Americans underwater, and when people are underwater, they've seen their life savings disappear. More Americans underwater, more foreclosures, and on and on. We have got to put a bottom on the housing market. We know this can work. This program is very similar to a program in the New Deal that did work, the Homeowners Loan Corporation. It turned a profit--a slight profit, but a profit--saved the middle class, and saved the housing industry. We need to do something. Republicans have offered nothing.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Thank you, and thank you for organizing this Special Order tonight to talk about an issue that we should not turn our attention from because we need to remember how we got here if we're going to figure out how to get out and how to make sure we don't get here again. This has been the worst economy since the Great Depression, and we need to make sure that the mistakes that got us here are mistakes we avoid in the future. Our colleagues across the aisle have said the great issue in American politics now is between those who want big government and those who want small government. The real issue is which side government is on; and for too long, government has not been on the side of working and middle class families who are trying to make an honest living, who are trying to support themselves, support their families, do the right thing, do something useful with their lives. Government has been on the side of people who were trying to make a killing by getting themselves into a position where they can take advantage of the economy, where they can extract money, they can loot the economy, is what economists called rent-seeking, doing nothing particularly useful, but just taking a piece of other people's productive work. There has been a lot of gloating in the last little bit about how successful the financial rescue has been, and by many measures it has been. The banks have not actually collapsed; the financial system didn't collapse. We did not have a Great Depression, as painful as this has been, but the financial collapse and the rescue profoundly offended Americans' sense of justice, and it offended my sense of justice. What led to the financial collapse was not some perfect storm of unforeseeable macroeconomic forces and this weird combination of events that no one could possibly have seen. It really was the result, as the FCIC report concluded, it was not just preventable; it was the result of blame-worthy conduct that we should never have allowed to happen. I first got involved in this issue, not knowing it would result eventually in a financial crisis, through working on the issue of mortgages, knowing that the mortgages were terrible for consumers, for homeowners. And the way that they had been portrayed, as a good-faith effort by the financial system to try to make home ownership available to people who could not otherwise afford it, was completely different from what was really going on with subprime mortgages. There was an explosive growth of subprime mortgages. They grew from 8 percent of all mortgages in 2003 to 28 percent in 2006. That is enormous growth in just 3 short years. And they certainly were not about helping people buy homes who otherwise could not have afforded home ownership. In fact, every study that has looked at it has concluded the great majority of people who got subprime loans qualified for prime loans. They got cheated. They got steered into loans that obviously were not in their interest. They weren't about helping people into home ownership. In fact, subprime was almost entirely a creature of refinances. Seventy percent, even during that 2003 to 2006 period, 70 percent were refinances. People already owned their homes, but they needed to borrow money. Some of them lived beyond their means, there is no doubt about it. Some of them were using the equity in their home as an ATM machine. But the fact is for the last generation the means of middle class families have not been enough. Americans, as the economy has grown, as the Nation has prospered, that prosperity has not been widely shared as it has been in the past. And so when Americans got into trouble, when they needed to borrow money from somewhere, when someone in the family got sick, when someone lost their job, when they went through a divorce, when they needed to borrow money, the only way they could borrow money was to borrow it against their home, to refinance their home. Seventy percent of subprime loans were refinances. And again, the great majority, The Wall Street Journal estimated 55 percent, most of the other estimates have been more than that, were people who qualified for prime mortgages. Ninety percent were not fixed rate, 30-year mortgages. They had a quick reset after just 2 or 3 years. So they were 2/28s or 3/27s. Most people who got those loans did not even know that. They did not know that the initial mortgage payment that they had to make, monthly payment, was going to be subject to a very quick increase. And the increase after just a couple of years was generally 30 to 50 percent a month. To get out of the mortgage, the great, great majority had to pay a prepayment penalty, usually like 3 percent of the outstanding balance of the mortgage. Now, those were not mortgages that were designed to help middle class families. Those were mortgages designed to take the equity in their home, to strip them of the equity of their home as house prices were going up. There was never any thought that they really would be able to pay off those mortgages over the course of 30 years and then invite their friends and family over to have a ceremony where they would burn their mortgages, as earlier generations of Americans had done. They were mortgages that had the effect of trapping people in debt and taking from them the equity in their home and making sure that that ended up in the pockets of the financial sector, not in the pockets of the middle class families. Other practices in that last decade that should never have happened, overdraft fees. Now, overdraft fees serve a useful purpose. In another generation, we used the criminal laws to prosecute people who wrote bad checks. There are a lot of perfectly honest folks who got themselves in just a little bit of trouble, or didn't balance their checkbooks, who ended up with prosecutions for writing bad checks. But overdraft fees became a source of profit for banks. A typical overdraft fee would be 40 bucks. The biggest banks actually developed what was called ``fee harvesting software.'' If you had an overdraft agreement, and you had one unless you specifically asked not to have one, and you went to an ATM machine and you asked for your balance, it wouldn't actually tell how much you had in your account. It would say ``funds available.'' That meant how much your balance was plus what they would allow in overdraft fees. And they would run the bills through in a way that would maximize your overdraft fees. So if you were like a lot of people and you got to the end of the month and there was more month than there was paycheck, and you went to the ATM, and you had a hundred bucks in your account, and you went to the ATM machine and you took out 20, and then you took out another 20, and then you made a $20 purchase, and then another $20 purchase with your debit card, and then maybe a $15 purchase, and then you wrote a $100 check or a $105 check, the banks would put the $105 check through first, putting you over your limit, charging you a $40 overdraft fee on that and the 20, the 20, the 20, the 20, and the 15. Now, that's just crooked. And that was legal. Ms. Speier, my colleague from California, has pointed out the lack of prosecutions. But perhaps the greatest scandal of this financial crisis is what was legal; not that illegality was blinked at, but what was legal in all of this. We have now passed legislation that should reform much of this, but we have to stick to it to make sure that those reforms are enforced, they are given meaning, and that the regulators do not fall into that tendency to be controlled by the people they are supposed to be looking after. They are supposed to be the cop on the block, and they have to exercise independent judgment on behalf of the American people. We need to make sure these reforms work because we cannot allow what happened in the last decade. It truly offended Americans' sense of justice, that the people who caused it have come out unscathed. Not only have they not been criminally prosecuted, but they are now back to making the same kind of bonuses they made before. And the people who have suffered, suffered the most, are the working and middle class families who got trapped in those mortgages, or who lost their jobs, or even people who had good mortgages have now seen the value of their homes collapse. And with the loss of the value of their home, one in four people with mortgages now are underwater, owe more on their home than their home is worth. With that, they have seen the loss of their life savings. That is the life savings for most middle class families, the equity in their home. So of course people have a knot in their stomach. They have a knot in their stomach about whether they're going to keep their jobs. They have a knot in their stomach over what they really own in the world when they have seen the value of their home collapse in the way that it has. So I thank the gentlelady from California for organizing this Special Order so that we can call attention again to the kind of misconduct, the kind of corrupt, rent-seeking looting of the economy that we have seen in the last decade that got us to where we are.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Will Rogers, who is responsible for many of my favorite quotes, that in the New Deal, even after the financial collapse, even after the stock market collapse and the revelation of all of the conduct that had led to that stock market collapse, the securities industry fought tooth and nail. Wall Street fought tooth and nail the regulation of the securities markets, the stock markets. Will Rogers said, ``The boys on Wall Street don't want a cop on their block.'' Well, they still don't. They still do not want someone standing between them and the kinds of profits that they made in the last decade.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Thank you very much. I think we all struggle with what phrase to use to describe the people that have been hurt by this. I think we use the words, the phrase working and middle class families, sometimes we say ordinary people. Sometimes we say regular people. But the phrase that keeps coming to me is people who are trying to make an honest living. And I think my model for that was my own parents. I am a child of the middle class. My father worked for the post office. He managed, at the end of his life, he worked for the post office almost all of his life, almost all of his working life. He died in 1965. At the end of his life, when I was 12, he was a manager of a neighborhood branch of the post office. After that I saw my mother support me on her own as a widow, when I was 12 forward. I remember my law school graduation, my mother trembling. I thought that she was overcome with pride since my generation was the first in our family to go to college. She later admitted to my sister that she had actually, after my father died, prayed that if her youngest, me, could just get through school, He could take her at any time. So she was expecting to be struck down at any moment and was trying to negotiate a new deal with God. I am deeply offended by the suggestion that my parents, both of whom were public employees, my father worked for the post office, my mother was a bookkeeper for the local school system, were not making a contribution to society, that they were taking, that they were takers and not givers. I saw how hard they worked to do right by me and to do right by the people who were paying their salaries. I am deeply offended by the arguments that public employees are people who are taking from our society and not giving back. The idea that they are takers, and the people who came up with this stuff, are the ones doing something useful to society, that they are the ones who are making a valuable contribution, offends me deeply.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. I yield back.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. I move to strike the last word.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Madam Chair, I want to congratulate the gentlelady from Missouri for an acrobatic defense of the continuing resolution's treatment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is not about whether government should be big or small. It's about which side government should be on. The CR, the continuing resolution, does not save a penny from the deficit because the money for the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, comes from a separate source of funding. This is really about hobbling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to keep it from getting up and running and doing its job. The CFPB is to put government on the side of Americans who are trying to make an honest living so they don't have to worry every time they sign a financial contract that they're going to get gouged, they're going to get cheated out of their income and their life savings by some trick or trap, some dishonest little clause hidden in the fine print of the legalese written by the banks' lawyers. The CFPB will set rules to make sure those contracts are honest, and it will enforce those rules. And it has not started yet, so it's a little early to criticize them for not getting the job done. The CR, by cutting funding by half, or a little more than half, is really about putting government or continuing to have government, as it has been for most of the last decade, on the side of the financial predators who are not trying to make an honest living but who are trying to make a killing and succeeding in making a killing by cheating ordinary Americans with the fine print. And they cheated them on mortgages, on credit cards, on overdraft fees, and on and on, and every American knows it because just about every American has experienced it. Now, in talking about the FCC earlier, Ms. Waters and Mr. Green both used the term ``cop on Wall Street.'' They didn't attribute that phrase, but it's from Will Rogers. Back in the Great Depression, even after we learned of all the corruption and the fraud that had led to the collapse, the stock market crash, when Congress was considering legislation, a bill, a law that would have set rules for Wall Street and given the Securities and Exchange Commission the power to enforce it, the securities industry fought it fiercely because, as Will Rogers said, the boys on Wall Street don't want a cop on their block. Of course they don't want a cop on their block. They will make less money. They don't want a cop on their block now either. They don't want a CFPB now either, because if their contracts have to be honest, they will make less money. Vote to put government on the side of the Americans trying to make an honest living. Vote to put a cop on the Wall Street block. Vote for this amendment.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. I yield to the gentlewoman from Missouri.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Madam Chairman, I have heard Mr. Price's arguments before. So I've talked to a lot of people about whether they really valued the freedom to be cheated on credit cards, to be cheated on mortgages, to be cheated on overdraft fees, and I found that that was not really a freedom that they valued; and, in fact, they didn't really believe that was the reason the financial industry was opposing consumer protection legislation. They thought that the reason the financial industry was opposing the legislation was so they could make more money and keep up by cheating people, which was not something they wanted any more than Americans a hundred years ago really valued the right to buy rancid beef, as the meatpackers argued a century ago. They were opposing pure food legislation so they could protect the right of people to buy rancid beef. Americans don't believe it. I asked the president of the American Bankers Association in committee if he could give me the names of some of the people who qualified for prime mortgages but got a subprime mortgage, or someone who really wanted to have a credit card contract that required them to continue to pay interest on a balance even after they had paid off the balance. He said that was a rhetorical question and he didn't have to answer it; it was just a rhetorical question. But I mean it. If somebody can tell me someone who qualified for a prime mortgage and instead asked for, wanted, chose a subprime mortgage, introduce them to me. If there's someone who actually wanted a credit card contract that required them to pay interest on the balance even after they paid off the balance, introduce them to me. I want to understand that consumer choice, because I have been assuming all along the reason they entered those contracts that were so hideous to them is they got cheated.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose this bill and the priorities and the values it represents. Republicans repeat like robots the same talking points we have heard again and again tonight, that to get our debt under control, middle class families are going to have to suck it up. We face tough choices, harsh choices; but really there is no choice. We are going to have to cut public education drastically, along with Head Start for the children who otherwise would start kindergarten too far behind to ever catch up; job training for workers who have lost their jobs; Pell Grants so middle class kids can afford a college education; research at the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy, and on and on. Mr. Chairman, we do have choices. We have this deficit because of choices we have made. Just a decade ago, the debate here was what to do with the surplus. Alan Greenspan, who was then the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, worried that it might unsettle the economy if we paid off the national debt too quickly. President Clinton urged that we use the surplus to shore up Social Security and Medicare so that my generation could live in dignity when we retire. A Republican President and a Republican Congress decided instead to cut taxes sharply for the richest of the rich. The deficit we face now is because of that choice, and we saw just 2 months ago that protecting those tax cuts for the richest of the rich, even Americans making more than $1 million a year, was their first priority. So despite all of the weeping and wailing, the gnashing of teeth, the rending of garments about the deficit now, just 2 months ago they said not a word about the deficit when they were voting to cut taxes, to explode the deficit by cutting taxes on the very richest Americans. So now Congress is voting to kick 200,000 kids out of Head Start so that Americans who worked and strived to be conceived to the right parents will pay little in inheritance taxes. Now Congress is voting to fire 17,000 teachers and special educators so Americans making more than $1 million a year will not have to pay the income taxes that they paid in the nineties, which was hardly a confiscatory rate. And much of the bill obviously has nothing to do with saving money or whether the government is too big or too small. It is about whose side the government is on. This bill cuts drastically the funding needed to protect middle class families from the gouging that has lurked in the legalese, the fine print of financial contracts, the tricks and the traps written by banks' lawyers. That cut has nothing to do with saving money. It is all about putting government on the side of financial predators, not on the side of hardworking honest Americans trying to make an honest living. We have seen clusters of rare cancers and birth defects that we know are the result of an environmental exposure to something, and this bill devastates environmental protection. Middle class children are facing life with lower IQs because of unchecked environmental exposure so polluters can have bigger profits and CEOs can reward themselves with bigger bonuses. Many of my colleagues have argued that this bill is penny wise and pound foolish, it is shortsighted and will hurt the economy. All of that is true. But I am most disturbed that this bill represents values that are incompatible with values that I learned at my mother's knee, the values of generations of Americans, the values of the faith traditions of most Americans, including me, the values that have been the glue that has held our country together in tough times. I will vote ``no.'' I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak against this bill. Even before the recession, my State of North Carolina was losing one wave of jobs after another in our traditional industries, and we have needed the energy and the job creation that comes from small business-- from people leaving jobs, whether they jump or are pushed, and starting their own businesses. Half the American economy, our gross domestic product, is generated by small business. Even more importantly, small businesses create 75 percent of new jobs. By providing access to State high-risk pools and an insurance market for individuals, the health care reform bill passed last year will make it possible for American workers to start their own businesses without worrying they are going to lose health care for themselves or for their families. I do know firsthand what it is like as a small business owner to buy health insurance for employees. It is one of the greatest frustrations--trying to find something affordable and trying to figure out what you really bought, and you're not going to know until one of your employees gets sick or gets hurt. This bill, the bill passed last year--this legislation--will make it affordable. It will provide tax credits of 35 percent for small businesses to provide health insurance, and that is going to go up to 50 percent. That will increase health care coverage by more than 12 percent amongst small business owners. Even more importantly, they're going to know what they've got. It is going to be insurance that really covers what it ought to cover. It is not going to be filled with small- print exceptions of one kind of care after another, one condition after another. Employees are going to get the care they need. Reform has freed people who want to start a business to do it without worrying about what kind of shape it's going to leave them in and their family members in. I urge my colleagues to vote against this bill, which will put those small businesses back into uncertain land.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6191) to amend the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 to include certain construction and land development loans in the definition of small business lending.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on this legislation and to insert extraneous material thereon.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this bill amends the Small Business Lending Fund legislation that the President signed just yesterday. The bill is identical to a House amendment that passed 418-3 but was left out of the other body's version of the legislation for reasons that surpass understanding. This bill, like the amendment, adds land acquisition and construction loans to the loans that qualify for the Small Business Lending Fund. The sad truth is that in many--really, most--parts of the country this bill will not have a lot of effect right away. Under the SBLF, community banks are on the hook if they make loans that don't get paid back, and they're going to steer clear of acquisition, development, and construction loans for home building until the demand for new housing improves. Around the country, there is an enormous inventory of existing homes, on or off the market. Because so much of the foolishness that led to the financial crisis was connected to housing, the housing sector of our economy remains very sick and won't get well right away. There are millions of foreclosed homes and homes destined for foreclosure. Mr. Speaker, I wish everyone in Washington felt the urgency that I feel about fixing that problem. But there are markets now that have a demand for new homes and home builders cannot get credit, ordinary loans, because of pressure from regulators on the smaller banks not to make real estate loans, not to make dirt loans. That indiscriminate refusal to lend for residential construction is killing jobs. We've lost 3 million jobs in the last 5 years in home construction and related industries. The jobs we've lost are jobs for the working man and woman: carpenters, plumbers, electricians, masons, painters, roofers, landscapers, and on and on. We've got to get as many of those working men and women back to work as soon as we can. And as the economy recovers, there will be an enormous pent-up demand for new housing. Catching up with that demand can be part of the virtuous cycle of recovery coming out of a recession as it has been in the past. Home construction now is probably about a third of the natural demand for new housing that's created by new household formation, replacement of obsolete housing, and second home purchases. As the economy recovers, young adults are going to move out of their parents' home or out of the apartment they're sharing with three or four roommates, and dilapidated housing will be torn down and replaced by new construction. We need to make sure that home builders can get credit to meet that pent-up demand and put more men and women back to work, and that's what this bill does. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I also rise to call attention to critical issues that Sudan now faces. More than 3 years ago, I was part of a congressional delegation to Sudan led by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who will speak shortly. Other members of that delegation are here to speak tonight as well. This past January marked the fifth anniversary of the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or the CPA, that ended more than 20 years of civil war between the north and the south of Sudan. That conflict was marked by northern aggression against the south. It resulted in the deaths of more than 2 million people, and more than 4 million people in Southern Sudan fled their homes, becoming ``internally displaced persons,'' or IDPs, in the jargon of relief efforts in conflicts around the world. The CPA committed the northern-dominated National Congress Party and the southern-dominated Sudan People's Liberation Movement to govern jointly for 6 years, followed by a referendum on self-determination for Southern Sudan and Abyei. That referendum must happen as scheduled in 4 months, and the referendum must be free, fair, credible, and a true reflection of the will of the people. If not, the CPA will mark only a 6-year pause in Sudan's civil war, not an end to the war. Secretary of State Clinton was right when she said a year ago that ``the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the north and south will be a flashpoint for renewed conflict if not fully implemented through five national elections, a referendum on self-determination for the south, resolution of the border disputes, and the willingness of the respective parties to live up to their agreements.'' Unfortunately, Sudan's elections in April 2010 certainly did not meet anyone's standards for a legitimate election. Those elections were marred by widespread violation of political rights, irregularities in voter registration, intimidation, and violence in some areas, and the continuing conflict in Darfur that suppressed voter participation. Predictably, the National Congress Party has consistently delayed and reneged on its CPA commitments. Madam Speaker, this is a critical moment for Sudan. The CPA-mandated referendum is just 4 months away. The CPA has not yet been fully implemented. Voter registration for the referendum has not yet taken place, and key procedures have not even been established. In addition, the violence in Darfur persists. The Bashir regime continues to restrict and disrupt United Nations peacekeeping, humanitarian operations, and human rights organizations in Darfur, leaving more than 2 million people still displaced and vulnerable. The Bashir regime must know that the whole world is watching. We cannot divert our attention from Sudan. We must remain committed and insist upon the full implementation of the CPA to ensure sustainable peace in Sudan.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, this bill is a huge step forward. Working and middle class families should not again have to worry that financial ruin lurks in the fine print of a contract that their bank's lawyer wrote. Families that qualify for prime mortgages that they can pay will not again get trapped instead in predatory subprime mortgages that they cannot pay. They can use a credit card without worrying about getting gouged. They can have overdraft protection that is the convenience that their banks say it is, that it should be, not a trap to run up indefensible fees. If this legislation is properly enforced, we can begin to believe again that our government is on the side of honest Americans trying to make an honest living. This bill is about our values. Our economy depends on our acting in our own self-interest and enjoying the rewards of our efforts, but every major religious faith forbids unrestrained greed. On the stone tablets that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai there is the commandment, ``Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbor's.'' And according to the First Book of Timothy, ``For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.'' When Franklin Roosevelt spoke in his first inaugural address about the practice of unscrupulous moneychangers in the temple, he spoke in language easily recognized by that generation. Roosevelt spoke of restoring ancient truths. ``The measure of the restoration,'' Roosevelt said, ``lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.'' The financial practices that this legislation seeks to reform have made a few Americans very rich, but by taking advantage of working and middle class families who needed to borrow money and honest investors who wanted to lend it, and by diverting too much of our economy from productive, honest work. We need to restore the faith from which we have erred. This bill is a start.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. I have an amendment at the desk made in order under the rule.

Mr. MILLER of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Baca).