Mel Watt

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 347, a bill to award the Congressional Gold Medal collectively to the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, United States Army. The 100th Infantry Battalion fought valiantly in World War II in the Italian, French and German theaters. The 100th Infantry Battalion consisted of Americans of Japanese descent that bravely fought for their country at a time when all people of Japanese ancestry, whether they were citizens or noncitizens, were sent to interment camps. Members of the 100th Infantry Battalion were honored with six awards of the Distinguished Service Cross in the first 8 weeks of combat. And the battalion was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for its actions in battle on June 26 and 27, 1944. The United States remains forever indebted to the bravery, valor and patriotism of these men who fought fascism abroad and racism at home. They are true American heroes. And I am honored to support legislation awarding members of the 100th Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team the Congressional Gold Medal. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT. Madam Speaker, I yield as much time as he may consume to the lead sponsor of this bill, the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff).

Mr. WATT. Madam Speaker, I yield as much time as he may consume, up to the balance of our time, to the gentleman from American Samoa (Mr. Faleomavaega). (Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. WATT. Madam Speaker, once again, I have been privileged to be controlling the time and have the opportunity to listen to these wonderful stories that are both sad on the one hand because of the experiences that these brave people were experiencing at that time and exhilarating and deserve so much honor and respect on the other hand. So I want to again thank my good friend from California (Mr. Schiff) for bringing the bill forward and thank the gentleman from American Samoa for his touching personalization of the story so that we can all be more edified. With that, I urge my colleagues to support this important bill.

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

Mr. WATT. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time. I just want to take the opportunity to thank some people. This actually has been the most challenging piece of legislation I have been involved in since I have been in Congress because we have been walking a very delicate balance between the various considerations that we have heard on the floor, making sure that consumers, borrowers, are protected from terrible loans without, at the same time, on the other hand, drying up the availability of capital to fund loans. And it has been inordinately difficult. And a number of people have been working aggressively to try to find that appropriate balance. The Chair of the Financial Services Committee has been absolutely wonderful to work with. But there are players in all segments of this industry who recognize that change needs to be made so that we don't get back into the situation that we ended up in and we are in right now. They have been working constructively. I have heard some reference to the fact that there are a number of people who oppose this bill. I really haven't seen any letters that say, ``I oppose the bill,'' because we have been in constructive dialogue with all of the players involved in this process trying to find the right balance. There are some people who are saying, ``look, I have some concerns about this provision. I want to continue to work with you as this process moves forward.'' And this is not the end of the process. We have assured everybody that we will continue to work to find the right balance in this bill. This is not the end of the game. I just want to thank everybody.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I keep waiting on the gentleman to address his proposed amendment. I haven't heard anything about the proposed amendment, but I want to address the points that he addressed since he wants to have a general debate. First of all, he says he can't support this bill because we didn't deal with Fannie and Freddie. That is kind of like me saying I am not going to vote for the earned income tax credit because it doesn't deal with all of what caused poverty in America. You can't deal with every subject in every bill. We passed a bill that has dealt with Fannie and Freddie, and it has been over there in the Senate for a long time. And we are going to pass some other legislation to deal with Fannie and Freddie at some point, but it is not addressed in this bill, just like the whole totality of poverty is not addressed when we passed an earned income tax credit or when we passed health care. That is just a non sequitur, as far as I am concerned. He talks about, we didn't deal with disclosure so I'm not going to vote for the bill. Everybody in America that got a loan that is in foreclosure now, everybody who is in default now got full disclosures of what the terms of their loans were. And they were ineffective to prevent the kind of predatory lending and policies that this bill addresses. So I don't know what the gentleman is talking about when he says ``we didn't deal with disclosure.'' We intentionally didn't deal with disclosure because we acknowledge that disclosure and telling people that we are giving you a bad loan is not enough to protect them any more than disclosure that a doctor may not be the best doctor in America is going to stop people from going to the doctor. So now that I have dealt with those, maybe he will want to address the amendment itself. And I will reserve the balance of my time to address the amendment.

Mr. WATT. Would the Chair advise me how much time remains.

Mr. WATT. I will yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Miller).

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would now like to address the gentleman's amendment which he still never has addressed. I acknowledged from the very beginning that we walked a delicate balance between protecting consumers and protecting the availability of funds. But the balance that the gentleman would have us address says this, ``no assignee or securitizer of a residential mortgage loan shall be liable under this subsection.'' Let me tell you what that would lead to. I will close a loan one day, I will assign it to somebody the next day, and we will be right back where we are right now because nobody in the chain of custody of that loan, other than the original lender, will have any liability. That would be as irresponsible as not passing any bill or not doing anything, which is exactly what a number of my colleagues would like to have us do, but which is not an option in this posture at this moment. So I want my colleagues to be clear. This is a destructive amendment and should be opposed. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition, although I do not intend to oppose the amendment.

Mr. WATT. I want to just thank the gentlewoman for offering the amendment. We have been saying throughout this process that there are uncertainties and we need to know if we've made the balance the wrong way, and this study would help us determine that in a constructive way. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from California, chairwoman of the Housing Subcommittee of Financial Services, Ms. Waters.

Mr. WATT. We have a closing speaker. So if the gentleman is ready to close, he can go ahead, and we have one more speaker.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Chairman, today could easily be a day toward a celebration for myself, as an original cosponsor of this bill, and Mr. Miller of North Carolina, my colleague, who also is an original cosponsor of this bill, perhaps leading to a celebration of final passage. But I approach this day with two rather major concerns about celebrating. First of all, I approach it asking: What if 6 years ago we had passed the legislation that Mr. Miller and I proposed to the House of Representatives at that time? Isn't it likely that the major meltdown in our credit system would not have occurred, and there's the prospect that had that not occurred, the major economic crisis in which our country finds itself now, trying to dig our way out, may also have been avoided. So the decisions that we make have consequences. They have had consequences to our credit markets and they have consequences going forward, and have had consequences to our economy. So this is not a day for celebration. If we pass the bill and the Senate passes the bill and it gets signed into law, we will always wonder what if we had done this when we originally brought forward the bill and dealt with the issue when it should have been dealt with. Second, my observation is that this has been a very difficult and delicate bill to balance because we have tried to, on the one hand, not to dry up the credit--the money that is out there to be in the market for lenders to make loans to potential homeowners and to current homeowners to refinance while, at the same time, cutting back on the abuses that took place in the marketplace that led to the credit crisis and the economic meltdown that I just described. Balancing those two interests has been difficult and, unfortunately, those interests were balanced inappropriately in the past because credit obviously was made too readily available to too many people who could not afford to pay it back, who are now in foreclosure proceedings, now in bankruptcies, and we are seeing the negative consequences of an unrestrained market. So, obviously, the balance was not drawn appropriately in the past, and now we face the argument from a number of my colleagues that, ``Well, we can just leave this alone and let the market take care of itself and we shouldn't be doing anything.'' We're going to hear those arguments throughout today's general debate and, no doubt, on tomorrow when we start dealing with the amendment process. That's a laissez-faire attitude that I would remind my colleagues is the same laissez-faire attitude that we faced 6 years ago when we first introduced this bill which, I would suggest to you, if we had acted then, we wouldn't be here. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the lead sponsor of this bill, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Miller).

Mr. WATT. I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).

Mr. WATT. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time in an effort to equalize the time.

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the Chair of the Capital Markets Subcommittee of Financial Services, the subcommittee that has responsibility for making sure that there is money available, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kanjorski).

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Mr. WATT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois, a member of the committee, (Ms. Bean).