Maxine Waters

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. We have not seen the final version of the bill, but today, in a discussion, one of the things that did interest me that I'm looking forward to seeing is that we are strengthening the oversight on the GSEs with OFHEO, the regulatory agency that has now been designed just to take care of these government enterprises. But also what has been represented to us is that the investors will not be able to make any money off of this bailout; that GSEs, as you know, get input, they get money from investors and they go out to the market to get money. And so if we are going to allow them to go to the discount wonder at the Fed and to be invested in by Treasury Department, that we will be number one in line for the repayment. And the CEOs cannot get the big salaries that they have gotten in the past, that there will be a limit to what they will be able to do. And so I'm looking to see the language in the bill that's going to make sure that we're first in line to get paid back, that the investors don't get paid dividends off of our money that we're putting in there, and that the CEOs and the top management of the GSEs don't get the fancy bonuses and the high salaries that they've been getting.

Ms. WATERS. Thank you. [From the Wall Street Journal, Jan. 23, 2008] Wallets Open Up on Wall Street (By Brody Mullins) Despite Wall Street's recent woes, people who work in the financial industry continue to dig deep for political donations to Republican and Democratic candidates for president. Employees of Wall Street firms are the single largest source of campaign cash, accounting for a total of $50.4 million in financial contributions to the candidates so far this election cycle. That is more than any other industry sector, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of campaign-finance data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. As candidates load up for advertising blitzes before ``Super Tuesday'' primaries on Feb. 5, candidates from both parties are again coming to New York seeking campaign donations. Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican, had a fund-raiser at the St. Regis Hotel last night that was hosted by Merrill Lynch & Co. Chief Executive John Thain, private- equity giant Henry Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chairman John Whitehead. Mr. McCain recently spent $1 million on advertising ahead of the Florida primary next Tuesday. Voters in more than 20 states, including California and New York, go to the polls Feb. 5. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton heads to her home state tomorrow for two fund-raisers. The Clinton campaign hopes to raise $15 million through these and other means to fund her campaign through Feb. 5. Contributions from Wall Street have favored Republicans, who have collected 54% of donations from financial companies. Wall Street is the No. 1 source of donations to every major presidential candidate in both parties, except former North Carolina Democratic Sen. John Edwards, who is favored by the legal industry, according to the data. Lawyers and lobbyists are the second-largest source of contributions to the candidates, with $34.8 million in donations. Together, the finance and legal industries are responsible for nearly a quarter of the $354 million donated to the presidential candidates as of Sept. 30. The next round of campaign-finance information, covering the three-month period ending Dec. 31, will be released at the end of the month. Employees of financial firms, lawyers and lobbyists make up 46% of all large donations--contributions of $200 or more--to the presidential candidates. Each of the other industry sectors is responsible for just a fraction of the donations to the candidates. According to the data, people who work in Hollywood, communications or electronics rank a distant third with $13.3 million in donations to the candidates. Other top sources of donations were employees of the health-care industry with $9.5 million, construction with $6.1 million and energy with $3.1 million. People who work in the defense industry gave $502,000, according to the data. Not surprisingly, the two candidates from New York are winning the race for donations on Wall Street. Mrs. Clinton and former New York City Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani lead with $12.3 million and $10.6 million, respectively, in campaign donations from employees of Wall Street firms. Employees of Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Morgan Stanley rank as the top individual sources of donations to the presidential candidates, according to the data. Goldman employees were the largest contributor to Mr. Obama, the second-largest giver to Mrs. Clinton and the fifth-largest to Mr. Edwards. Goldman employees donated $369,000 to Mr. Obama and $350,000 to Mrs. Clinton. Other top Wall Street givers to Mr. Obama include employees of Lehman Brothers ($229,000), J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. ($217,000) and Citigroup Inc. ($181,000). The top seven companies that have produced the most money for Mr. Giuliani are all financial firms, including Ernst & Young LLP, hedge fund Elliott Management and Credit Suisse Group. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney also has fared well on Wall Street. A founder of Bain Capital, Mr. Romney has scored with employees of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. Employees of his former company have donated $112,000 to his campaign, according to the data. Unlike Wall Street, lawyers heavily favor Democrats with their political donations. Lawyers have donated $9.6 million to Mrs. Clinton, $8.2 million to Mr. Edwards and $7.9 million to Mr. Obama. Mr. Giuliani, a former prosecutor and partner with Bracewell & Giuliani LLP, raised $3.2 million from others in his profession. That was more than any other Republican but less than half as much as the leading Democratic candidates. Pennsylvania-based law firm Blank Rome LLP was the top source of donations to Mr. McCain, who collected $141,000 from employees of the firm. Mr. McCain fared well with employees of Greenberg Traurig LLP, a Miami firm that ranks as his third-largest contributor. As the chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain took the lead in investigating convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was a lobbyist with Greenberg Traurig. Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton led all others with donations from lobbyists. Mrs. Clinton collected $568,000 from lobbyists, while Mr. McCain has $340,000.

Ms. WATERS. You're certainly welcome, and I thank you for taking this time out this evening, Congresswoman Kaptur, to talk about what is happening in this country with this foreclosure mess that we're in, this sub prime meltdown that we are experiencing. I really came to the floor to commend you and congratulate you for all of the time that you have put in on this issue unraveling some of the history of what has taken place with the banking community with what is going on in our economy today and trying to identify how we got into this situation and what we could do to get out of it. Many of our Members--two are distressed about what is happening in their districts and in their communities, but they don't know nearly the information that you have discovered about this entire unfortunate situation that we are in. Let me just say that I did come to Ohio at your invitation and your delegation's invitation, and I know that you were the leader in helping to pull that delegation together and getting me there to talk about what is going on in Ohio. I was joined, and we were joined, by several members of the Ohio Congressional Delegation each trying to bring attention to the foreclosure devastation that's spread across that State. Again, you have been a persistent voice in our Democratic Caucus for taking bold action on the foreclosure crisis, generally. Let me mention that Representative Tubbs Jones, Representative Kucinich, who was here on the floor, Representative Sutton, Representative Wilson was in attendance, and I think we all learned an awful lot that day. We had great witnesses who came and talked about what is going on in the State, and we discovered since 2005, Cuyahoga County has had the highest number of foreclosures in the State, with Montgomery, Summit, Lucas, and Preble counties rounding out the top five. The 10 largest counties in Ohio accounted for 64 percent of the foreclosure filings in Ohio last year. And according to data from the Mortgage Banking Association, in the fourth quarter of 2007, 7.67 percent of Ohio home loans were past due with 2.01 percent 90 days or more overdue. And during the same period last year, 7.25 percent of Ohio loans were past due with 1.74 percent 90 or more days overdue. Because of the challenges it has faced economically over the past few years with the loss of manufacturing jobs and population from certain parts of the State, Ohio was truly the ``canary in the coal mine'' of the foreclosure crisis--vulnerable to sub prime lending and its aftereffects much earlier than the rest of the Nation. And the foreclosures have taken a toll on Ohio's neighborhoods and communities. Data that was provided by HUD showed that there is a direct correlation between the number of high-risk loans in a neighborhood and increase in the neighborhood's vacancy rates. Cleveland has been especially hit hard. There are an estimated 10,000 vacant homes in the City of Cleveland. On one of Cleveland streets, 37 out of 123 homes are in the same stage of the foreclosure process, so they are in some stage of the foreclosure process. The testimony we heard in Ohio only made me more certain in my belief that State, cities, and counties need help from the Federal Government to deal with the problems caused by abandoning foreclosed properties. And I could go on and on and on, but I was extremely moved; and on my way out there were some people there from east Cleveland who said that 40 percent of all of the homes in east Cleveland were in foreclosure. And then I heard the story of Campbell where people owned their homes free and clear. They were not expensive homes, but they had been handed down. They were in the family. They were paid for, $40,000 homes, and the guys came in there, the best suede-shoed boys I call them, and increased the appraisals on those homes, ran those appraisals up to $150,000 or more and lent money. And people found themselves in a situation where they couldn't pay it back. People who thought, well, I could refinance this house, I can put on another room, I can put on a new roof. I can do these things. And they were told, ``Just sign on the dotted line. Don't worry about it. We can get you into this refinance. Even if it resets, we can take care of that.'' But Marcy Kaptur, let me just say, people all over America are wondering what happened. Families have lost their homes, communities are being devastated, cities are using their precious general fund money and CDBG money trying to maintain these boarded-up and foreclosed properties. They have problems with the vacant properties being occupied sometimes by the homeless or gang members in some communities. They have the thieves that are going in stripping out the copper. Weeds are growing up. There are dogs on the property, and so the neighborhoods are being driven down by the foreclosed properties, and the people who remain in the neighborhoods, who keep their properties up, are losing value, and that value is fast being lost on homes. And people are finding that their mortgages that they are paying far outweigh the real cost of that home now that the values have been driven down. And so here we are in the Congress of the United States; what do we do? As you know, a number of ideas have come to the surface. Barney Frank, who is the Chair of the Financial Services Committee, came up with another comprehensive bill, and in that bill they worked out an arrangement where the lenders, the bankers, would write down the property to 85 percent of value. We've been working for months to strengthen the FHA, who found itself toothless when all these banks came into our cities with these fancy products that they had. They had what we call exotic products, the products with the teaser loan that says you need nothing or a little bit down, sign on the dotted line, 6 months from now, a year from now, it will reset, but don't worry, we'll refinance it. And people only find that they cannot refinance it and they're losing the homes. And so we were supposed to come up with these bills and legislation to deal with it, and we find that the Senate side worked on this for quite some time. They agreed on some things. One of the things they agreed on was that they would indeed work with the lenders to write down the properties and have them refinanced by FHA which would now be strengthened, and this would keep people in their homes. We don't know how all of that is going to work. We do know that if people get refinancing and they're able to stay in their homes, we hope that they're able to keep up on those payments because, if they don't, that debt will fall back on to the American taxpayer. And unless the FHA by way of its collection of certain kinds of rates are able to offset that, then that's another burden that we're going to have to be faced with. But it is a way by which we can begin to look at how we can perhaps give some help to the homeowner. You know, I had a piece of legislation that was quite controversial because there was some people who did want to bail out the big boys, but they did not want to do anything for the little people and for the cities that are suffering. And my bill, as you know, is designed so that we have money that would go straight into those cities, working with nonprofits and others to grab those properties, rehabilitate those properties, put them back on the market for low- and moderate-income people to be able to afford. Well, it got stuck for a while. I had $15 billion for the cities and the counties in that bill. It was scored at half that amount because 7.5 of that $15 billion was going to be in loans and 7.5 was going to be in grants.

Ms. WATERS. Well, you're absolutely correct, and certainly, we had our supporters. But I want to thank the Ohio delegation for weighing in on this bill and giving support to it. We had all of our community groups and organizations all over the country working hard, making calls, talking to Senators, talking to Members, putting stuff in the newspapers about this bill because they see this bill, too, as hope for the neighborhoods and the communities. And it would stop the cities from having to spend their precious general fund moneys and CDBG moneys to try and maintain and keep up of these properties for God knows how long. And so you are right. This will bring some measure of help, and we've got to keep working at this to find out how we can do more. One of the things that we know, the regulators dropped the ball. The regulators should have seen these exotic products. They should have known about these ARMs. They should have known about these no- documentation loans. They should have known about these loans resetting with margins of 2 to 3 and 4 percent above the interest rate once the reset takes place. Someone gets into a loan for 5, 6 percent, when it resets now they're 10, 11 percent, and people who are paying mortgages of $950, maybe even $1,000 a month, now they're told their mortgage is $3,000, $3,500. It is unconscionable. And I see you have a picture up there of some of the giants of the banking industry. You know, Countrywide is a real poster child for what went wrong in this mortgage market. Mr. Mozilo really does have to take credit for having done extraordinary business with these mortgages. Mr. Mozilo is one of those bankers and one of those companies where he got the license as the broker, and then he hired people who didn't have a license, who didn't have any training, and put them out on the street, and they were all over the place. Everywhere you look, every town hall you go into, where people are coming, begging us for help, and we ask them about where they got their loans, invariably Countrywide is going to show up all over this country. And so, you know, we have criticized him, and we have said how is it Mr. Mozilo can create this kind of devastation, walk away with millions of dollars that he's taken out of this company, and how is it that Bank of America could end up buying this company for pennies on the dollar and not be afraid that with somehow all of this portfolio of bad debt that they are going to make it? Well, I think that they know more than we know. I think that they know more than we know, and we've got to get smarter. We've got to have regulators who are prepared to do the job that they are supposed to do in protecting the American consumer from these rip-off artists and from these people who would steal their futures and steal the futures of their children with these rip-off products and the way that they design for everybody to make money along the way and leave that American homeowner not only holding the bag but with nothing at the end of this terrible situation. So I want to thank you. We've got to put a lot of time in on this. We're going to get some legislation out. Of course, we're going to get some legislation, and as you know, with the GSEs now in trouble, Fannie and Freddie, and the move to help them and to bail them out, to keep the whole economy from crashing on us, you better believe that we get a chance to get our little $4 billion in because it was put in on the Senate side. But that's a drop in the bucket from what we're asking for and for what we need, but we must take this as a time when we never allow the American economy to be placed at risk because of a sub-prime crisis in the way that we are witnessing it now because we're going to be smarter. We're going to not only know what our regulators are supposed to be doing, we're going to provide the oversight for those regulators. We're going to unveil not only the schemes and the fancy products, but we want to know more about servicers, who they are and what they do. Did you know that we have these banks with loss mitigation departments? Supposedly, if you're in trouble, you can call the bank and say I can't make my mortgage payment, I had a terrible illness and I had to pay out too much health money, and they're supposed to do kind of a workout with you to make sure they keep you in that home. Did you know that the people that they're talking to are offshore in India, in other countries, who are supposed to be responsible for loss mitigation activities for the banks? They have exported the loss mitigation departments offshore to foreigners who are talking to Americans about whether or not they can find a way for them to stay in their home.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Clerk be authorized to make technical corrections in the engrossment of H.R. 1286, including corrections in spelling, punctuation, section and title numbering, cross-referencing, conforming amendments to the table of contents and short titles, and the insertion of appropriate headings.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that Members may have 5 days to revise and extend their remarks on the motion to instruct on H.R. 3121.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 6312, The Credit Union, Bank, and Thrift Regulatory Relief Act of 2008. I am particularly pleased to speak in favor of this legislation because I have always been a strong supporter of credit unions. These institutions have been effective in pursuit of their mission to serve people of modest means and underserved communities, both of which characterize much of my district. Regulatory improvement in this industry is long overdue and I want to thank Mr. Kanjorski and Mr. Moore for their work on this bill. Credit union regulatory relief is especially urgent in light of the nation's current financial crisis. We are either at the brink of a recession--or already in one--largely because of the crisis in the subprime mortgage market that has led to a wave of foreclosures unlike any since the Great Depression. In significant part, this crisis resulted from certain financial institutions, many of them largely unregulated, peddling dangerous mortgage loan products to borrowers who did not fully understand the risk they were taking on. Meanwhile, the lenders themselves whisked their own risk to the four corners of the earth via securitization and the secondary market. Much of the Financial Services Committee's work in the past year has involved working to enact legislation that prevents this from ever happening again. Notably, credit unions did not help to create this mess. Indeed, analysis of 2006 home mortgage disclosure data reveals that credit unions were far less likely than other lenders to make subprime loans to low and moderate income households, especially minorities. So credit unions were not part of the problem. But they can and must be part of the solution. If there is any lesson to be learned from this crisis, it is that low or moderate income households and residents of underserved communities don't just need access to any credit, but rather access to sound and appropriate financial products. Credit unions stand ready to provide such products to more people and more communities, but need Congressional action to do so. Specifically, H.R. 6312 would allow credit unions to extend their services to areas with high unemployment rates and below median incomes that are generally underserved by other depository institutions. Critically, it would also allow some people who don't belong to a local credit union nonetheless to go to that credit union for short term loans, as an alternative to the exorbitant rates charged by payday lenders. This is progress in achieving the outcome policymakers must pursue in the financial services sector, namely, connecting households of modest means with the soundest financial products and institutions available to them. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, Members, I would like to commend all of our authors and co-authors on this legislation. We learned a lot because of Hurricane Katrina. We learned that FEMA and HUD are confused. They don't work together. As a matter of fact, they work against each other. And the most vulnerable of those who were victimized by Hurricane Katrina, the public housing residents, were so negatively impacted by all of this. We found that when there was a subcommittee hearing that we held, this joint hearing with Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emergency, Communications, Preparedness, and Response, we talked about the roles of HUD and FEMA in responding to affordable housing needs following natural disasters and emergencies. At that hearing, we learned that HUD Section 9 program, the public housing reconstruction, has never been funded because of language in appropriations acts that has barred the program from receiving any appropriations. Although HUD has been providing a limited amount of funds from its already underfunded capital fund this year, the department proposes not to provide any emergency capital funds. In addition, because section 9(k) is authorized, FEMA has refused to allow PHAs to access funds under its section 406 reconstruction program. This is in spite of the fact that there is no statutory or other prohibition on PHAs using these funds. FEMA is simply refusing to grant PHAs access to section 406 funding because it says that PHAs have another source for this purpose, section 9(k), which has never been funded. You've heard a lot from Members here today about this, and I'm going to yield back my time so that the gentleman can do a close appropriate to this legislation that he so courageously authored. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Childers).

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. I would first like to thank our chairman, Barney Frank, for the leadership that he has provided on dealing with a serious problem in America. I would like to thank the Members once more for the support that they gave me on the Neighborhood Stabilization Act that we passed today. That, coupled with what is being done now, will go a long way to providing real assistance to our cities, to our counties, to our States and to our citizens. I know that it has been said over and over again today that people are suffering, that there are people who got into these loans that did not understand what a no-doc loan, a no interest rate loan was, an ARM that was going to reset within 6 months, 1 year or 2 years, and that the mortgage would double, triple or quadruple. They are innocent, hardworking Americans out there every day who simply want to live the American Dream. Many of them were steered into these loans because there was this big, big housing bubble. We had these local initiators of loans through our banks and our mortgage brokers who discovered that they could package them, they could securitize them, they would be invested in Wall Street, and the Wall Street people invested mightily in them, and now the services have them all. The only thing that the services can do is foreclose on these properties. Well, we can do something about it. I don't know why we have to argue and fight about whether or not we can help the American people. They sent us here to look after their best interests. I don't understand why anybody can call this a bailout when, in fact, nobody has said anything about the bailout of the almost $30 billion for Bear Stearns. If we can help Wall Street, we certainly can help the people who vote for us every day and who sent us here. We help people all over this Nation in different ways. Some people are confronted with a hurricane, or a flood or an earthquake. American citizens expect us to be there for the citizens when we are needed in different ways. This is a different way. I ask everyone to support the bill.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Madam Chairwoman, I have an amendment at the desk that has been made in order under the rule.

Ms. WATERS. Madam Chairman, I yield to the chairman of the Financial Services Committee 3 minutes.

Ms. WATERS. I yield an additional minute to the gentleman.

Ms. WATERS. I yield to myself 30 seconds. I'm glad the gentleman found the plan in the bill that I had advised him about because there is a plan, and perhaps it does not have 101 things that he would like, and I'm sure you could add a lot more to it, but there is a plan. And the situation that he just described could not happen. As a matter of fact, you have to pay back the money that you get through the loan. Madam Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) 2 minutes.

Ms. WATERS. Madam Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Ms. WATERS. Madam Chairman, I rise in strong support of Representative Kucinich's amendment. His subcommittee has done an enormous amount of valuable work examining this targeting issue, and I want to thank him for focusing attention on the issue of neighborhoods where there are large and growing concentrations of vacancies resulting from the foreclosure crisis. They're exactly the neighborhoods I mentioned in my opening statement, ones that face the prospect of reaching the tipping point of deterioration from which they may never recover. Stabilizing such neighborhoods is an especially daunting task for community leaders and organizations. So I think it is entirely appropriate, as this amendment does, to require States, counties and cities in their plans to prioritize these foreclosures and vacancy hotspots. Finally, I know that this is no academic exercise for Representative Kucinich in his role as subcommittee Chair. He's bringing hard experience to the table from the neighborhoods within his district in Cleveland. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. WATERS. Madam Chairman, I rise in support of Mr. Kucinich's amendment.

Ms. WATERS. Although I rise to claim time in opposition, I am not opposed to the amendment. I think the ranking member of the Housing and Community Opportunity Subcommittee has made a sound addition to the bill here. While, as I mentioned in my opening statement, we did not want HUD to get bogged down in processing 1,200 different plans from all the entitlement jurisdictions in the HOME and CDBG programs, there is no question that the expertise at HUD to administer this bill's loan and rent program lies in the Community Planning and Development division of the agency. So I urge my colleagues to support Mrs. Capito's amendment to ensure that we don't create an unnecessary new bureaucracy if H.R. 5818 is passed into law. I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. WATERS. Madam Chairman, I rise to claim time in opposition.

Ms. WATERS. Madam Chairwoman, I was hopeful that the ranking member of the subcommittee would offer support for this amendment. I know that there are some differences that she has and others have on this bill. However, the attempts that we have made to make sure that it is a bill that can operate efficiently, such as identifying those 100 cities, those 100 counties and those 50 cities of a certain size would be the kind of amendment that the ranking member and others would understand makes this a better bill and would formulate ways by which it could efficiently and effectively get that money into the communities that are needed. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. WATERS. Madam Chairman, I yield myself as much time as I may consume. This manager's amendment is in the nature of a perfecting amendment that makes a few changes to the bill that I hope will be relatively uncontroversial. First, as this bill has moved through the process, we have moved from a program that allocated all of the funds to States to administer to one that, as I described in my opening statement, distributes funds to States, certain metropolitan cities and large urban counties. This amendment simply removes the State as the middle person in allocations to qualifying cities and counties which would instead receive direct allocations from HUD. This will expedite the distribution of funds which is critical in the context of economic stimulus. Second, the amendment brings a definition of operating costs of housing purchased under the program, which is an eligible use under the grant component in line with similar uses in other HUD programs such as the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. This just clarifies what is and is not an eligible expense when an entity is operating a purchase property as rental property or preparing it for resale. Finally, to further address the concerns that this bill somehow provides a bailout to lenders, the amendment caps the purchase price of foreclosed properties at the appraised price or 110 percent of the average local single family home price, whichever is less. This guards against property owners gaming the system to obtain inflated prices under the program. I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. WATERS. Madam Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Madam Chairman and Members, I would like to thank all of the Members who have come to the floor today in support of this legislation because they understand the devastation to neighborhoods all over this country. I have listened very carefully to the arguments from the opposite side of the aisle, and none of them rise to the merit of being able to oppose this bill because they're substantive arguments. First of all, I have heard Members on the opposite side of the aisle talk about taxes. They have talked about gasoline. They have talked about everything except what we are here to talk about: the fact that there has been a subprime meltdown in this country and many neighborhoods are devastated. We have homes that are being stripped of the copper. We have homes that have been boarded up with vandals inside those homes, oftentimes living inside those homes, with the weeds growing up in many of these properties, and the value of the homes in the neighborhood where people are attempting to maintain their homes is going down every day. We had one Member on the opposite side of the aisle talk about how flush these cities are with money. Evidently, he has not looked at what is going on in the cities and States. Many of them are in deficit situations. They're in deficit situations because we're in this recession, this nonperforming economy under the leadership of the President of the United States where the price of food has risen, gasoline prices are up, and the subprime mess is fueling the problems of our economy. And with all of this that has taken place under this President and this administration, you would think that the Members on the opposite side of the aisle would want to come to the aid of their constituents. We have talked about the $30 billion bailout under the Fed Chairman that was appointed by this President. And I am sure, since we did not get a call in the middle of the night to even discuss with us that the bailout was going to take place, I'm sure that the Fed Chairman called the President that appointed him. And I would give anything--I would place money on the line--to tell you that the President approved of that bailout. And so why not bail out the people who deserve to be helped? People, many of them who got into loans that were lured into these loans, lured into these mortgages by unscrupulous real estate brokers who told them to just sign on the dotted line, by unscrupulous folks representing some of the financial institutions who said get into this ARM and when it resets, I will be there to help you refinance it, and, of course, they're not there. These people, many of them have lost these homes through no fault of their own. But the neighborhoods are being devastated. We have information here that tells us how much crime will be fostered on the neighborhoods. As a matter of fact, what we have learned is that when there is one foreclosure, it leads to not only vandalism that affects the entire neighborhood, but it also increases the crime. This has all been documented. I would think that the representatives who have been sent here by the people who have voted for them would want to be able to go home and say to their constituents, I understand what's going on in the neighborhoods; to say to their mayors and to say to their Governors and to say to their county commissioners, ``We are here to help.'' Yes, we are spending a lot of money on other things. As a matter of fact, many of the Members on the opposite side of the aisle, in a matter of hours, are going to vote for over $107 billion in supplemental funding to continue the war in Iraq. Many of these Members have voted to give tax increases to the richest 1 percent in America. The least they could do is vote for the citizens and for their cities. I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. WATERS. Madam Chairman, I have no further requests for time, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. WATERS. Madam Chairman, I would like to yield to the gentlewoman from Cleveland, Ohio (Mrs. Jones) 1\1/2\ minutes and remind her that it was 2 years ago when I was in her city that she asked me to come to a town hall meeting where this issue was being discussed at that time and most of us really didn't understand the depth of it.

Ms. WATERS. Madam Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California, Ms. Barbara Lee.

Ms. WATERS. I yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds.