David Scott

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 391) to authorize the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to continue to insure, and to enter into commitments to insure, home equity conversion mortgages under section 255 of the National Housing Act.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may need. First of all, H.R. 391 is a bill sponsored by my good friend and colleague from Utah (Mr. Matheson). H.R. 391 would prevent any shutdown of the Federal Housing Administration, FHA, reverse mortgage program. This program is also known as the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program, or the HECM program. As we are all aware, the Federal Government is currently operating with temporary funding authority that expires on February 15, 2007. The FHA can insure no more than 275,000 FHA reverse mortgages cumulatively nationwide under this authority. A reverse mortgage is a unique loan that enables senior homeowners to remain in their homes and remain financially independent by converting part of their home equity into income without having to sell their home, give up title, or take on a new monthly mortgage payment. Reverse mortgage is an apt name because the payment stream is reversed. Instead of making monthly payments to the lender, as with a regular mortgage, the lender makes payments to the homeowner. Payments to the borrower come in the form of a lump sum, monthly payments, a line of credit, or a combination thereof. Thus, the funds can be adapted to the financial needs of the senior taking out that particular loan. Mr. Matheson's bill is necessary because surging FHA reverse mortgage loan volume could result in this current national volume cap of FHA reverse mortgage loans being reached before February 15. The FHA HECM program is the oldest and most popular reverse mortgage product, accounting for 90 percent of the total market. It has been available since 1989 to homeowners aged 62 or older. HECM loans are insured by the Federal Government through the Federal Housing Administration at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD. The HECM program was created to serve our seniors who are cash poor but equity rich. The majority of loan recipients are elderly widows. The funds from a reverse mortgage can be used for anything: daily living expenses; home repairs or modifications; health care expenses, including prescription drugs or in-home care; existing debts; and other needs. This is extraordinarily important and timely legislation for our seniors. The HUD HECM program has proven to be a growing success, serving its mission, while actually making money for the Federal Government. Its rapid pace of growth created a near crisis in 2005 when the number of FHA reverse mortgage loans began to near a statutory volume cap on the number of reverse mortgages that FHA could insure, leaving the program on the edge of suspension. However, emergency appropriations legislation for fiscal year 2005 raised the volume cap from 150,000 to 250,000. Last fall, in the face of a similar concern, the limit was increased a little further to 275,000. However, current projections show a very real risk that the cap will be met before February 15. In 2006, the House passed a bill that included a provision eliminating the FHA reverse mortgage volume cap, but unfortunately, the Senate did not act on this bill. As a result, in the short term, the statutory cap needs to be kept above the actual number of loans, or HUD will be required under law to suspend the program. That is why we need this very important piece of legislation passed. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I have no further speakers at this time. Let me just say in concluding, this is vitally important, this is vitally important to all Americans, but it most certainly is extraordinarily important to our seniors, and especially those that are widowed, so that we can lift this cap to save this program. It is a very, very important program. Again, I commend Mrs. Biggert and all of those on the House Financial Services, and Mr. Matheson for the brilliant leadership he has provided us with, and the fact that we all stand ready to assist Mr. Matheson when he brings the other bill back so that we can permanently solve this problem. General Leave

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 188) to provide a new effective date for the applicability of certain provisions of law to Public Law 105-331.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Madam 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. SCOTT of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I urge today that the House pass H.R. 188, which was introduced by the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey, Representative Pallone. This bill has the simple purpose of addressing a glitch in the distribution of surcharges on the sale of commemorative coins that honor America's great inventor, Thomas Edison. In 1988, legislation authorizing the production of the coin was enacted and the U.S. Mint minted and issued the coin in 2004. But as a result of some unclear language in the documents provided both the Mint and to recipient organizations, it was unclear that the matching funds required by law in the order for recipient organizations to receive the coin's proceeds must be raised entirely from private sources and that no other government funds could be used for this purpose. This bill extends for a period of 6 months the amount of time in which the recipients of surcharges on the sales of the Thomas Edison commemorative coin are allowed to raise matching funds. While the House passed the bill to remedy this problem by voice vote under suspension of rules last November, the Senate failed to act on this in a timely manner, so I would urge the House to consider the bill and immediately adopt the underlying text. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), someone who is truly a leader in this Congress and the sponsor of this bill.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Madam Speaker, it is now my pleasure to yield 1 minute to one of our distinguished newer Members from New Jersey (Mr. Sires).

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. If the gentleman will yield for a moment, I would like to respond to your point, because we owe it to those generations. That is one of the reasons why I spoke out and set the stage for my remarks, to go back to the beginning of this country, when the foundation of this country was laid out. That is what has made us great. We honor our debts. That is what Hamilton and that is what Jefferson and that is what Madison were all about. You talk about your parents and your grandparents. What would they say? What would my grandparents say? They would say, by George, we love this country. This is our country. We are hoping and we are praying that the Congress will stand and get it right. As I looked at the polls in Georgia, we had a rainy day in the election down in Georgia, but when I looked over the precincts, I could see that it wasn't 25 or 30 percent turnout, in that rain there was 50 and 60 and 70 percent turnout. The people in this country love this country, and they know that we need a new direction, and the first order of this new direction is to get our finances in order. Your parents brought you up, my parents brought me up saying watch your money, son. Work hard. Save it. Invest it. Make sure you honor your debt. That is what they would want us to do.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Thank you very much, Mr. Ross. It is indeed a pleasure to be here with everyone, as I said earlier. I think in conclusion tonight it is very important that we let the American people know that we very soberly understand this charge that has been handed to us as Democrats to lead in this Congress, and we also understand why and we handle that responsibility with great care. One of the things that it is important for us to point out, when they ask what can we do and what is expected of us, is to stand up for the American people finally at last and lift up our way of life. We have two duties to do under the Constitution as Members of Congress and they are expecting us to use these tools and do them well, and these tools are, one, oversight. Through our ability to oversee this government we can make these changes happen. The other is appropriations, to handle their money as good stewards. These are the things that we are committed to do, and this is how we will get to the new direction that the American people expect us to get to.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Thank you very much, Mr. Ross, for yielding. And to my fellow colleagues, it is such a pleasure to join you once again. When we were here last, we were in the minority, and we said some things. We said what we wanted to do. We said some of the first things we would do when we got here, and one of those was to address this serious problem of financial and fiscal responsibility. I had some time to reflect on our history, and as we looked at the very first move that we made when we came back last week, one of our first measures was to establish pay-as-you-go, PAYGO. It is very interesting that this is not a new phenomenon. Not only did we have it in store when we had the Clinton administration and prior to that, but from the very foundation of our country, it was Thomas Jefferson. First, Thomas Jefferson was so against government debt and its inherent dangers that, back in 1789, in a letter that he wrote to James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, Framers of our Constitution, in that letter, Thomas Jefferson wondered in the letter as he wrote to Madison and Hamilton, he wondered this, whether, quote, ``one generation of men has a right to bind another.'' And he came to his answer with an exclamation point in the letter: ``No.'' He said that ``the Earth belongs in usufruct to the living.'' Jefferson concluded in this letter with these words. He said no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence. In other words, financial responsibility. Fiscal responsibility was at the cornerstone of this great Republic, of this great Nation, the cornerstone of a lasting and free Nation. One generation of consumers borrowing and spending then hands that bill to the next generation, that get the benefits of spending the money in the present while passing on the debt to future generations, that is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind. And each generation as we move through our history paid down its debt before it moved on, oftentimes marked by war. In 1812, the debt was paid down. The Civil War, borrowed money, the debt was paid down. And into World War I and World War II when the debt really amassed up to $62 billion, and yet over time and those generations those debts were paid down. All of the way up through the Cold War, even into the Reagan years, and up to Clinton, up to the year 2001. But then after 2001 when this Republican administration took hold, in the 5 years that ensued, this President and the preceding Congress, controlled by Republicans, borrowed more money from foreign governments and foreign nations than the entire preceding 218 years of this country. From 1789, the year Thomas Jefferson wrote these words to caution us and set the pattern to pay as we go, here we are now with that big situation hanging over us of the borrowing from our debt. And I mention that because we are now faced with that situation where we are borrowing this money, over $1.5 trillion over the last 5 years, from countries in the most unstable regions of the world: $310 billion from Communist China; nearly $700 billion from Japan; and nearly $300 billion from the unstable OPEC countries in the Middle East which we are dealing with now. This is the background which we are having to deal with today.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, it is important that we remind people that not only are we talking about the billions of dollars that we just articulated we are borrowing from these foreign governments, more than we borrowed over the last 218 years, but the interest, the money that these folks are making off of us now constitutes the fastest growing part of our budget. We are spending more just paying for the money on the interest that is being charged than we are spending on education, the environment, and veterans at a time when our veterans are making such fantastic contributions and at a time when there needs to be a greater emphasis placed on those who have been on the battlefield and are coming home, and we are spending more on the interest there. Let me just finalize this for a moment, and I just want to mention because we are here and we talked about what we wanted to do. Pay-as- you-go was one of the deals we made. We passed earlier today the 9/11 Commission recommendations. We have worked on so many other things, but I do want to just mention the earmark reform legislation that we passed, and just to share with the American people what we have already passed in our earmark reform. It will require committees to disclose the sponsors of any earmarks included in appropriations authorizing measures such as the highway bill and the tax or trade legislation that benefits 10 or fewer. We will have new rules that will prohibit trading earmarks for votes and require Members to disclose their earmark request and certify that they and their spouses have no personal financial interest in the requests. These provisions comprehensively require committees of jurisdiction and conference committees to publish lists of the earmarks, limit tax benefits, and limit tariff benefits, along with their sponsors contained in the reported bills and the managers' amendments and conference reports brought to the House floor for consideration. A Member may make a point of order against consideration of any rule that waives this requirement. The rule defines an earmark as any Member-requested project that is targeted to a specific place and falls outside of a formally driven competitive process. Transparency, clearness: this is what the American people want. And I am proud to see us in our first week of action be able to pass these important measures that bring about good strong stewardship of the taxpayer money.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. You are absolutely right, and it is so important I think as we talk this afternoon that the American people are well aware that they are in good shape with Democrats in control of the Congress. Let me go on from the minimum wage. I mean, that is important. We are going to get that done and we are going to do it in a bipartisan way. We will reach out to the Republicans. We will work with Republicans. That is another thing that the American people want to see us do. I can't tell you the number of times on the campaign trail that people will come up to me and say, Congressman Scott, for goodness sake, can you all stop the bickering? Can you just get along? To paraphrase our friend in California, can we just get along? And we are going to do that. So we find common ground on the minimum wage and quickly pass that. Then we can find common ground, and let me just say something about the minimum wage as we go forward so people will know. We are talking about pay-as-you-go; we are talking about keeping financial and fiscal responsibility in and making sure we are accountable. This minimum wage is totally absorbed by the private sector, by the employment sector. We are simply making the adjustment to give a due raise to go in line with inflation and the other needs to bring the minimum wage up to the standard that we have.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. And I will tell you why I am so pleased with our leadership and Leader Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, and all of our great leaders. They have said that before this Congress gets another raise in pay, we will raise the minimum wage for the American people. That is leadership that the American people can be proud of. As we move from the minimum wage, another area that we are going to work on very quickly: we know the high cost of education, we know what it costs for a young person to go to college. We have found a way in which we can get common ground. The Democrats will lead the way in cutting in half the interests that students will have to pay on their student loans. That is the kind of tax cut for middle-class America that is needed. It impacts everybody to have that. And we pay for it as we go. We can afford that, because that money that is saved is stimulated and goes right back into the economy. When you are able to get money back to the consumers and to the American people, they are able to use that money in every area; but it is recycled, it continues to go back into the economy to help the greater productivity of this country.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, it is very important that we put this in context because as we move forward with pay as you go, we at the same time must respond to the needs of the American people. But we are doing so in a very fiscally responsible way. Check the minimum wage, no Federal expenditure. It will be absorbed by the private sector, and indeed stimulating that private sector to produce more. The movement to bring down prescription drugs by having the Secretary of Health and Human Services be able to negotiate using the bulk number of 55 million recipients of Medicare to be able to bring down the cost that accrues to us. And just now with the release of the Iraq Study Group report, and Mr. Israel and I share as cochairs of our Democratic group, as cochairs on national security, that we have been examining these issues. He is absolutely right. We must take better care of our military. The American people are expecting our expenditures to go there. And one of the great, I think, recommendations of this study group that is headed by Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Baker that was just presented to the President yesterday is the realization, number one, we have to make some changes in this Iraqi situation because of the terrible drain that it is doing to our military. If we don't correct that, surely the security of our country goes down. The other area that we talked about with regard to fiscal responsibility is the matter of halving the interest rate that our students pay on their student loans. That is money that goes back into the economy and a savings to our middle-class families. Now the other area that we are going to move on in our first 100 hours is to begin to deal forthrightly with our problem of energy, our problem of energy dependence on the Middle East, that most volatile region. We are making great strides. One of our first efforts is to increase the incentives to go into renewable energy. I just came back with a group of other Congressmen who are members of the Agriculture Committee. We went to Brazil. The reason we went to Brazil and South America, is because we realize here in this country we don't have all of the answers. But I will tell you one thing, they are doing something very special down in South America. We need to hurry up and do it here. For example, in Brazil, 85 percent of their new automobiles that they are putting out in the market this year are flex fuels so that they will be able to use ethanol as well as regular gasoline. I asked the Minister of Industry in Argentina and Brazil this one question about their trade relations with the Middle Eastern countries and what percentage of their energy they were getting from abroad: Argentina and Brazil, absolutely none. They are almost at the point of being energy independent because they had the foresight to move on this area. I am so pleased with our leadership on the Democratic side to say among our first efforts will be to increase at a rapid rate our preparedness, our infrastructure, so that we can develop ethanol in this country from the primary two sources that we have, granular corn and soybeans, as well as cellulosic.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Absolutely. Again, energy and becoming independent is a reachable goal. It is a doable goal, and we can reach that conclusion within a matter of a few years with the kind of leadership we are putting forward. I am proud to say we will be putting research grants into that to spur our country to move very rapidly and develop that infrastructure.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, thank you very much. It is always a pleasure to join you as we talk about the important issue of getting our fiscal house in order. Coming out of this recent election, the American people spoke and they spoke boldly, and the one thing they said was they want a new direction. A part of that new direction is to be fiscally responsible and to make sure we are spending the taxpayers' money wisely. I want to talk about several aspects of this today, one of which I want to start off by talking about the aspect of our foreign borrowing. That is one of the most dangerous areas in which we are moving. As you well know, we now are borrowing more money from foreign governments and foreign banks, foreign financial institutions. In the last 5 years, we borrowed more money from foreign interests than we borrowed in the whole history of this country up to 2001. I want to make that clear because I know the American people are sitting there and saying, is he saying what I think he is saying, that since 1789, at the birth of this country, through all the way up to 2001, we have borrowed less money from foreign governments than we have borrowed in the past 5 years? That is a dangerous situation for us to be in. It is dangerous to the future of our country, and we must move to correct that. When we look at Japan, we are borrowing nearly $700 billion from Japan. We are borrowing $368 billion from China, and we are borrowing $117 billion from Taiwan. We are borrowing over $200 billion from the OPEC nations. When you look at the Asian Basin and you look at the Middle East, you also find another occurrence that is troubling, and it presents some of the most unstable regimes and countries in our world today. It is a terrible situation for us to be in. At home, we must act more responsibly by making sure that we are spending our money and putting our priorities where they count the most. The American people are looking for help in terms of getting more of this money into their pockets, being able to help them with critical issues of education. So, for a little bit today, I want to talk about what we are doing as Democrats, and I thank God because this is the first time that I am standing and you are standing in this floor on the House of Representatives with this debate when we can say to the American people as Democrats, thank you, thank you for giving Democrats an opportunity to lead this Congress. We are grateful and we are humbled because we understand the levity and the seriousness of this responsibility that the American people have given us to lead. Nowhere is that more crucial than in taking care of their money and taking care of our fiscal responsibility and being responsible for it. So I think it is very important that as we talk this afternoon about this responsibility to let the American people know where we are going to work quickly to make sure we are paying attention to their needs, and one of the first places that we are going to start is to raise the minimum wage. Why is that important, people say, the minimum wage? It is more than just a symbolic gesture. It is a timely gesture. We have had the minimum wage since 1938. There has never been as long a period where we have not adjusted the minimum wage as in the period since the last raising of the minimum wage. So it is important for us to show the American people, at least they will see, they are paying attention to us. Yes, we will pay attention to the world; yes, we are very much concerned about what is happening in the world; but we must immediately send a message to the American people that we care about you. We care about America first. That is why the importance of raising this minimum wage is so important. It sends that message. The American people say, oh, okay, I think they get it.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Yes, I will.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I thank very much my colleague Mr. Lewis. This is indeed an extraordinary moment in the history of this country and history of American business. Let us see if we cannot set the stage properly so we understand exactly what is going on. As my colleague Mr. Lewis has stated and given history of Delta Airlines' brilliant and hard fought effort to come out of bankruptcy, this is a great American story. It is perhaps one of the greatest business recovery stories in American history. Delta Airlines was at the bottom, but that company came together. It made the sacrifices. Its pilots' union gave and gave. Its employees gave back raises. They combined their efforts. That company, under brilliant management and leadership, brought itself together. We owe it to Delta to have their bankruptcy plan now go into effect, and they have a plan to come out of bankruptcy, which they will have and they will come out of bankruptcy within the next 6 months. Do we not owe it to Delta to give them that opportunity to make it work? Meanwhile, lurching on the sidelines, almost like a vulture, is U.S. Airways. Let me take a moment to describe U.S. Airways at this point. Here is a company that is just coming out of bankruptcy itself, a company that has just gone through a merger, that is now problematic, a company that has a merger in which it is now dealing with two sets of pilots' unions, two sets of flight attendants' unions, two reservation systems and two scheduling systems. How in the world can we, in effect, for a creditor who has an indebtedness with Delta feel that that investment can best be met by investing in a company, an airline company that is beset with a ton of labor problems? I want to deal with the other issue. Not only is it bad for the creditors, it is bad in terms of our own antitrust practices. In a previous case in which there was a United Airlines merger, the Justice Department's antitrust division ruled that that could not merge, and they did not nearly have the overlapping that this does. So now we have a case here that with Delta in bankruptcy, even if this merger does proceed to a point, then it goes into bankruptcy, then the antitrust division of the Justice Department must rule. That is why it is important for us in Congress to make this bold statement and urge the Justice Department and urge that we have hearings and do everything we can to stop this merger from going through on the grounds that it is anti-competitiveness, it is anti- consumer and it is anti-American for this important reason. Another thing about U.S. Airways, they buy their airplanes from foreign governments, whereas Delta buys theirs from American governments.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. If the gentleman would yield for a moment, you hit on a very good point. But not only in Georgia is this significant, but this is a national issue. And we have our distinguished gentleman, Mr. Bishop from Utah, who will tell how this impacts the Nation as a whole.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I think it is very important for us to make sure that we sum up these major points that we have made here this evening, and that is this: one, this planned hostile takeover, which hopefully we will arrest and stop in the next few days, is anti-consumer, it is anti-competitive; it is not in the best interests of the American traveling public, it is not in the best interests of the creditors to Delta, and it certainly violates, as the gentleman from Utah so eloquently stated point by point, it clearly violates the antitrust statutes of the Justice Department of this country. So it is within the spirit of what is good and what is right about America, and let me say this to my colleagues and to you, Madam Speaker, that this country is grounded on justice. The American people are expecting justice. This is not just a case for Delta Airlines; it is not just a case for the airline industry. This is a case for the American people, and they are looking at this Congress to provide leadership, keep the feet to the fire, and make sure that this hostile takeover does not take place in the form of any kind of merger, and that Delta Airlines is allowed to stand alone and earn the right that they deserve to come back full flushed and be the outstanding airline that we know that they are.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize an important milestone in the life of my constituent Mrs. Maggie Katie Brown Kidd. On December 8, 2006, Mrs. Kidd will celebrate her 102nd birthday. Many family members and friends will recognize this momentous occasion with a party on November 24, 2006. Maggie Brown was the eleventh and youngest child born to William (Doc) and Lucy Brown. At an early age, Maggie learned the values of hard work and success as a laborer on her parents' farm, and continued in that tradition as an adult. She married Willie (Dock) Kidd, III on November 30, 1940, and raised two children, John and Rosalyn. Mrs. Brown is also a grandmother to four, and a great-grandmother to three children. Mrs. Kidd believes her faith in God has contributed to her good health and longevity. Her family describes her as a loving and selfless member of the community. When she had little to offer, Mrs. Kidd shared anyway. She is a principled and honorable woman, and I am proud to represent her in the 13th Congressional District of Georgia. In closing, Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing the life of Mrs. Maggie Katie Brown Kidd, by wishing her a very happy 102nd birthday.

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.