Randy Neugebauer

Mr. NEUGEBAUER

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Madam Speaker, at this time, I would like to recognize one of my distinguished constituents, SPC Russell W. Byers, who has recently been honored with the Army Commendation Medal from the Department of the Army. SPC Russell W. Byers is attached to the Headquarters Battery, 1st Battalion of the 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment. He was awarded this citation by the Secretary of the Army for ``Meritorious service during combat operations in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.'' The award further commends Specialist Byers, stating ``Your Tactical and technical proficiency, hard work and mission dedication have greatly contributed to the overall mission success of the task force. Your actions reflect great credit upon you, Task Force Panther and the United States Army.'' This is Specialist Byers' first commendation, and was presented to him after a one year tour in Iraq. Duties he performed to receive this high honor include being an expert on the Command Post of the Future (CPOF) computer system, where he gathered, analyzed and developed vital intelligence for the Task Force. In addition, he gathered intelligence from HUMINT, prepared summarized reports and organized data, maintaining a complex database that captured all the significant enemy activity within the Task Force's combat zone. In the recommendation letter for this medal, Specialist Byers' superior officer wrote, ``SPC Byers' ability to multi-task and present information in a clear and consistent manner is of the highest military standards. He is extremely diligent and competent in accomplishing all assigned tasks with little or no supervision, while producing dynamic results. SPC Byers leads the way with a `can do' attitude and an outstanding drive to go the distance, even when it requires him to go above and beyond his assigned scope of duties and responsibilities. He is well ahead of his peers in military bearing and fortitude.'' I am well aware that there are thousands upon thousands of soldiers, airmen, Marines and sailors that earn prestigious citations such as this, but I am excited that a proud son from West Texas is among them. Congratulations SPC Russell W. Byers; you have served your country with distinction. I would like to express my gratitude on behalf of a grateful Nation, and especially your neighbors in the 19th Congressional District. We all sleep well every night, knowing dedicated people like you are defending all we hold dear.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Madam Speaker, I proudly congratulate St. Anthony's School on the occasion of its 90th anniversary. The school's 90th anniversary was celebrated along with Catholic Schools Week from January 27-February 2, 2008. St. Anthony's began providing Catholic education in 1914 with the purpose of supplying children with knowledge of the Catholic faith, as well as a strong foundation for future learning. In 1917-1918, continuous classes were introduced. St. Anthony's moved to its current location in 1955 where 14 classrooms, a library, a meeting room, a cafeteria and a gym now make up the school. Throughout its history, several orders of religious nuns have staffed the school. Presently, the Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculate make up the faculty. They have taught and maintained St. Anthony's since the 1987-1988 school year. St. Anthony's provides classes from pre-school through sixth grade. The school remains focused on teaching the Catholic faith while also providing the opportunity for students to acquire the skills needed to achieve high honors upon entering the Hereford Independent School District upper grades. Students participate in acts of service, the Accelerated Reading Program and after-school activities such as sports or choir. The six-member board of education along with Principal Ann Lueb and Rev. John Valdez govern the school and determine policies. During the 90th anniversary celebration, Dolores Loerwald Brorman was presented with the 2008 National Catholic Education Association Distinguished Graduate Award. The award recognizes individuals who have made a significant contribution to American society and the Catholic Church and has been presented to a deserving graduate of St. Anthony's School every year since 1993. I applaud St. Anthony's school for providing quality education and developing knowledgeable and honorable students for 90 years. Also, I congratulate Dolores Loerwald Brorman on receiving the 2008 Distinguished Graduate Award and making such a mark in her community.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Madam Speaker, I rise to congratulate Mrs. Annette Sykora of Slaton, Texas, on becoming chairwoman of the National Automobile Dealers Association. Annette comes from a family of auto dealers and is the dealer principal of Smith South Plains Ford/Mercury in Slaton, Texas, and South Plains Ford/Lincoln Mercury/Dodge/Jeep/ Chrysler in Levelland, Texas. From an early age, Annette knew her heart was in the automobile business. At age 19, she told her father of her dream that one day she would run his dealership. By age 26, she was general manager, and by 29 she had a controlling share of the store. In addition to running a successful business, Annette is also an active leader in her community. She is the chair of the finance committee of the First United Methodist Church of Slaton and serves as board member of the Slaton Chamber of Commerce. As chairwoman of the NADA, Annette wants to strive to help connect domestic dealerships with valuable resources that are available through the NADA. Car dealerships in Texas alone bring in $55 billion of revenue and employ more than 85,000 people. She also brings years of hard work and experience, as well as a message of hope for the future of domestic dealerships in America. I, along with all the citizens of Slaton, am proud to celebrate Annette Sykora as the first woman to become chair of the NADA. I wish her continued success.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Speaker, I have some reservations about the effectiveness of this economic stimulus package and its impact on our Federal deficit; however, I am going to support it. One of the reasons I am going to support this package is it takes an important step toward providing more options for homeowners and homebuyers in America. By temporarily increasing the size of mortgages for our GSEs and FHAs, they will be able to purchase mortgages in high-cost areas across the country where some of those people have been locked out of those particular markets. By bringing additional buyers into this marketplace and rather than leaving them on the sidelines, we are going to help reduce housing inventories that, as you know, have been increasing all across the country. Increasing these conforming loan limits for these particular entities adds additional liquidity to a marketplace that is in dire need of additional liquidity and will help provide additional mortgages around the country. However, their taking this action is not nearly enough. Congress has completed important legislation that reforms FHA, and we must complete this legislation. We have passed legislation that brings reform to our GSEs. It's time for Congress to sign that legislation as well. We need to do this without siphoning important resources from these entities at a time where we are going to be relying on them to help provide additional mortgages and liquidity in the marketplace. In order to increase the loan limits to have its full desired effects, we need to also make sure that we increase the portfolio caps of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Congresswoman Bean and I have introduced legislation to increase these caps, and I urge the administration and Congress to act on these immediately. This marketplace is in need of liquidity, and by raising the loan portfolio limits and the caps, it will allow Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and FHA to come into the market and help bring back additional robustness in those markets. In hindsight, we see that borrowers, lenders and investors made poor decisions. In Congress' attempt to help stabilize this downturn we must avoid more poor decisions. Congress must ensure that we cause no further harm as we facilitate bringing more liquidity to the marketplace.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. If the gentleman would yield, I would appreciate working with the gentleman on that particular provision of making sure that those units that are not habitable now would not be counted.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I believe there is a concept that I strongly support, and one that I think a lot of Members of this body support, that when government is too prescriptive, then good ideas and innovation get suppressed. This is the reason I brought forward this amendment, because in H.R. 3524, it requires that all housing units demolished under the HOPE VI grant program be replaced on a one-for-one basis. What we know is that this is a new provision in the HOPE VI program. One of the things that concerns me most about this is in many cases it is not necessarily feasible for us to go back on a one-for-one basis, nor may it be a need in that particular community. Chairman Waters and I had a chance to travel down to New Orleans and see some of the activities going on down there, and what we saw is some units that were brought back on a one-for-one basis that were vacant, were unoccupied, which indicated there may be some resistance to coming back to that particular neighborhood. What we also know with the HOPE VI program is that this program was designed to replace some very terrible housing conditions, an old, failed system of putting all of these low-income systems in a very concentrated area, and we found out very quickly that that was not a successful program. So now with this particular legislation we are going to go back and say we didn't learn our lesson the first time; we are going to go back with these kinds of concentrations in these neighborhoods, which have already shown to fail. The other thing that I think needs to be brought out is in some cases there may be land constraints that make this not feasible to go back for one-for-one. The second piece of it is that housing and demographics have changed since a lot of these units have been built. What we are learning now is that we can do these mixed-use projects where we bring moderate and low-income families together and not putting all of these low-income families in one place. We have also learned a lot about the density, the environment, where we have open spaces for children to play, and we are not forcing them to play in the streets. So there's a lot of things that we do better now, but we are trying to limit using some of those new techniques and new innovations in housing by going back to the old model. One of the things that I think has been brought out in this debate is that this is not a debate about whether HOPE VI is a good program or not. I want to be clear about that, that when I stand before this body today and say we shouldn't be too prescriptive, I am not talking about not funding this HOPE VI program or reauthorizing it. I think we did some things that actually did make this better, but being too prescriptive begins to deny the ability of communities to sit down and decide what is the best footprint to provide good quality housing for our low-income residents, and they deserve that. For us to stand up and say this body of 435 here and 100 on the other side, that we know more about what the housing needs are in these communities around America, I think is a little ludicrous. We need to empower the local governments and the housing authorities to be able to sit down and say, look, we have got these old and dilapidated units, people don't want to live in them, some are vacant, some are occupied, and some of them probably shouldn't be occupied, but for the United States Congress to say we know more about your housing needs in your community, I think is poor policy. That is the reason I am going to be encouraging my colleagues today to vote for the Neugebauer amendment that takes out the provision of being too prescriptive, allowing American cities and communities and housing authorities to make the right decisions for our low-income folks. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. I thank the gentleman. I do understand that there could be a small minority of housing authorities trying to accomplish some purpose by keeping those units vacant, but I would say we are being probably more prescriptive for the ones that are vacant.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Madam Speaker, due to official business in my district, I missed rollcall votes 1145 through 1155 on Wednesday, December 12, 2007. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall vote 1145. On rollcall vote 1146, I would have voted ``nay.'' On rollcall vote 1147, I would have voted ``nay.'' On rollcall vote 1148, I would have voted ``nay.'' On rollcall vote 1149, I would have voted ``aye.'' On rollcall vote 1150, I would have voted ``nay.'' On rollcall vote 1151, I would have voted ``aye.'' On rollcall vote 1152, I would have voted ``nay.'' On rollcall vote 1153, I would have voted ``nay.'' On rollcall vote 1154, I would have voted ``nay.'' On rollcall vote 1155, 1 would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. NEUGEBAUER

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, I do rise in opposition to this legislation, not because of the spirit of compromise and bipartisanship that was used to come to this conclusion, but because of a philosophical difference. I believe that when markets have their ups and downs that it is better for the Federal Government not to try to intervene in those market cycles, so I think it is better to have better information than to have regulation when it comes to the issue of subprime mortgages. I have a little bit of experience in the mortgage business in that I was a mortgage originator. I was a homebuilder. I have sold and bought loans in the secondary market and I have owned a home and borrowed money on many mortgages. What I know is the system has worked, and we have record homeownership here in America today because we have had one of the most efficient mortgage markets in the world. But what I do know is an important part of that transaction is that everybody in the transaction understands what the nature of the transaction is. That is the reason I worked in a bipartisan way with the chairman and ranking member, along with my colleagues Mr. Green and Mr. McHenry, to make sure that we had a better disclosure piece of information for borrowers to look at, a universal box, if you would, that would allow borrowers to understand all of the terms and conditions of this mortgage and to be able to compare that out in the marketplace. Because what we do know is there is a lot of opportunities for people to get mortgages in this country today, or have been up to this point. What we want to make sure, Mr. Chairman, is in the future that they have that. But when they do take out that mortgage, they have the ability to look at the loan terms, the prepayment penalty, does this loan rate vary, and, if it does, what are the implications to that borrower. Because I believe, as one of my colleagues said earlier, the American people have the ability to make good choices when they are given good information. So, I am pleased that in this particular piece of legislation there is a disclosure box that will help our consumers do a better job of making that decision in the future. What I am disappointed in, Mr. Chairman, is the fact that we are going to, I think, put some very restrictive regulation on a market that may limit the ability for people to actually use that disclosure information in the future.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, I do not oppose this amendment. I think some of us had a concern early on that converting any of these monies to operating monies was a precedent we didn't want to move down. I think the purpose of the bill is to build housing. Although I believe this does help some of our very low income families, we would hope that they would not have to use any of that allocation for that. But this amendment does give them the flexibility to do that, and so we will support this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, I just want to close by saying that 50 States, 585 local communities, are already using the HOME program as a model for building and developing low-income housing in their communities. It just makes sense that we take an existing program, make the revisions that have really made, there are some good ideas that have come through this legislation, let's incorporate those ideas into the HOME program. Let's take an existing vehicle. Let's ask the United States Congress to prioritize where they think that we are getting the most bang for our bucks as we deliver low-income housing programs for the American people and for the people that need them so badly. Let's do it right. The right way to do it is to take this existing program and fold into it many of the good ideas that have come from that. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I was really tempted here to let the chairman be my designee on this, with the hopes that I would have the same success on my amendment as he had on those that he was acting as designee on, but since I'm here, I'll act in my own behalf. Mr. Chairman, one of the things we've heard a lot today about is that there is a need for making sure that we are taking care of our most neediest Americans when it comes to their housing needs. What we've also learned, though, is that there are a lot of programs out there, 70 something housing programs, 30 some odd that may be addressed as some form of housing for our low-income citizens. One of the things that I think the American people are kind of concerned about is they keep hearing that government solution to all of the problems. If we're not doing a good job with the programs we have, let's add another program, and I think they're getting kind of tired of that. So one of the things that my amendment does is it makes an existing program, it incorporates many of the good ideas, and may I say, Mr. Chairman, there are some good ideas that have come in this particular piece of legislation, updating it. And what I'm talking about is the HOME program. The HOME program currently does a lot of the functions. In fact, when you look at the HOME program in this bill, many of those overlap. And yet we're now going to separate into two different funds an affordable housing fund and a HOME program. Instead of using the combined resources of those two programs to help further the housing situation, we're going to have two different. When we talk about the fact that we're already spending over $28 billion for affordable housing, low-income housing, and then we're going to take money out of one pocket and put it over to an area separate from that, quite honestly, Congress will not have the opportunity to really sit down and assess, hey, where are the American people, where are the people that are the recipients of low-income money, the people who are benefiting from this housing, where are we getting the best bang for our buck? But instead, we are separating those programs. I don't think that is good policy. The other issue here is that many communities, almost every State in the Union, and I think like 350 or 360, maybe it's a larger number, I don't have it in front of me, communities are already participating in the HOME program, they already have some familiarity with that program. And so now we're going to take the ramp-up time of having to learn a new program, to write the rules for it, to do all of the things that it takes to get a new program off the ground. We're going to have to form a new branch of government within the Department of Housing to be able to ramp up and have the employees that it needs to do this, another inefficiency of adding additional programs to something that maybe we're not satisfied with. And I would agree, there may be some things that need to happen in the HOME program that would make it more relevant today. But, quite honestly, adding a new program I don't think is in the best interest of the American people. It's not a good, wise use of their taxpayer dollars. And I believe we can create a more efficient delivery system using an existing program. What my amendment also does is says, look, GAO, go in and analyze what's going on, work with the various housing partnerships, let's determine some of the things that we need to do to the HOME program. Let's make those changes, and then let's make the HOME program a better program incorporating many of the good ideas, even that we've seen in some of the amendments here. Mr. Chairman, we had, I believe, seven amendments from the Democratic side, unfortunately, and I appreciate the Rules Committee making mine in order, but I think we had some other good ideas from some of my colleagues on my side of the aisle that we could have incorporated into this legislation. So that's the reason I'm down on the floor today offering this amendment. I'm encouraging my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, if you're really serious about two or three things, and let's talk about those things; one, are you interested in making sure that we have the most efficient delivery system to our low-income families to make sure that they have housing? If you're interested in that. Secondly, if you want to do that in a way that's a good steward of the American taxpayer's dollars, that's another reason to vote for this amendment. And thirdly, if you believe that we ought to be able to prioritize our spending and not separate into a different fund, separate and aside from what we're already doing for a lot of our low-income housing families, then the Neugebauer amendment is the amendment that you should vote on. It will actually move us more quickly in a direction of being able to implement a lot of the things that I think people on both sides of the aisle want to do, and that is, make sure that we get the money out to these families that need our assistance and help. And with that, Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. I would be glad to yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, I would just say, again, I think we want to make sure that any new housing that's done is energy efficient and also meets as many green criteria. One of the things I would encourage and would hope that the chairman would work with me in is in the final version of this bill I would hope that, once we conference that, the National Association of Home Builders has been involved in green building for a number of years and has set up a lot of information. So one of the things that you and I have talked about is we want to try to make this money go as far as we possibly can and avoid as much duplication as we can.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition, although I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, we have no objection to the manager's amendment to H.R. 2895, the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund Act of 2007. I yield back my time.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition, although I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining on both sides?

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, I think anytime that we can make sure that our people involved in housing, homeowners, renters, everybody, has the appropriate counseling is a good strategy, because in many cases what we find is people lose their assets or lose opportunities because they did not take advantage of some of the things that are available to them. So I thank the gentleman from Florida for introducing that amendment. We support his amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition, although I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, certainly I think that anytime we are going to be investing Federal dollars in any housing in the future, we need to make the sure the houses are as energy efficient as they possibly can be. And as I understand the gentleman's amendment, this would be about making sure, in consideration for granting funds for that, that the construction, the design, all of the phases of creating housing in this country would take into account the utility costs and, hopefully, the overall operating costs of those projects. So with that, we support the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition, although I am not opposed to the amendment.