Mel Watt

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Madam Speaker, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Madam Speaker, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. WATT. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Financial Services be discharged from further consideration of the bill (H.R. 6162) to provide research and development authority for alternative coinage materials to the Secretary of the Treasury, increase congressional oversight over coin production, and ensure the continuity of certain numismatic items, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 6162 and H.R. 6166.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for the time and for his leadership in this tremendous effort. I would like to spend some time just challenging a notion that is out there that this whole meltdown was unforeseeable by anybody, that nobody could have foreseen it, and dispel that notion by understanding that on March 16, 2004, the first anti-predatory lending bill was introduced in this House of Representatives by Brad Miller of North Carolina and myself. We saw forthcoming the possibility of this substantial meltdown, because we knew that predatory loans were out there being made to people who could not afford to pay them back. Again, on March 9, 2005, in the 109th Congress we reintroduced the bill, the anti-predatory lending bill. On October 22, 2007, we reintroduced the anti-predatory lending bill in the 110th Congress. Finally, finally, in this term of Congress, on March 26, 2009, we reintroduced it for a fourth time, and finally it is incorporated into this legislation. Now, why is that important? It for the first time puts around loans some prudential rules that say you ought to exercise some common sense when you make a loan to somebody. Don't do a loan to people without proper documentation of their income. Don't give them a teaser rate for six months and then escalate it by two or three percentage points and increase their fees and their payments exponentially so that they can't pay it back. Don't give them yield spread premiums that reward the people who get people into the worst kind of loans, rather than giving them the best loans available. Don't charge a prepayment penalty for allowing somebody to get out of a higher interest rate into a lower interest rate. Make sure that when you refinance, somebody gets some net tangible benefit out of the refinance, other than the person that is making the loan. Don't allow people to steer to the highest interest rate and worst possible predatory loan when there are other loans available. Don't fail to give the proper disclosures about what is going on. And don't prevent the State Attorneys General from enforcing their own State laws, when we don't even have a Federal law on the books.

Mr. WATT. All of that is in this bill. If we had had this kind of legislation in effect when we first started introducing it back in 2004, we could have avoided this. Don't let anybody say that this was an unforeseeable chain of events that led to this meltdown. We need to correct it and make sure that going forward those kind of predatory practices never, never, never, never occur again in our country.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Madam Speaker, I am honored to welcome Reverend Dr. Roderick D. Lewis, Sr., as the guest chaplain for the United States House of Representatives for today. Since July of 2001, Reverend Dr. Lewis has served as pastor of Parkwood Institutional CME Church which is located in my congressional district in Charlotte, North Carolina. Reverend Dr. Lewis is a native of Columbia, South Carolina. He received his bachelor of social work from Livingstone College, also in my congressional district, his master of divinity from Howard University's School of Divinity, and his doctor of ministry from Hood Theological Seminary. He is an active member of the community and has served as a clinical social worker with the W.G. Hefner VA Medical Center in Salisbury, North Carolina, which is also in my congressional district, and with the South Carolina Department of Mental Health. On behalf of my constituents in the 12th Congressional District and my colleagues here in the House, I thank Reverend Dr. Lewis for his service to his community and for his prayer today.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the 32 millions Americans who will get insurance under this bill. Announcement By the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Madam Speaker, on February 1, 1960 four freshman students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Ezell Blair (Jibreel Khazan), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil and David Richmond, sat down and requested service at the F.W. Woolworth's segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. In the following days more students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Bennett College for Women, Woman's College of the University of North Carolina (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro) and Dudley High School would join the sit-in. The nonviolent action of these students sparked a nationwide sit-in movement. I ask my colleagues in the House to join me today in commemorating and celebrating these acts of heroism and the opening of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum on February 1, 2010. The Museum is located at the site of the February 1, 1960 sit-in and will be a lasting memorial to these historic acts. The courage of the students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Bennett College for Women, Woman's College of the University of North Carolina (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro) and Dudley High School serves to remind us of the important role that young people played, and continue to play, in the civil rights struggle and in the fight for equality and justice for all people. The International Civil Rights Center and Museum will be a monument to the sacrifices of freedom-loving people who came together to work for the promise of this nation. Madam Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro sit-in and to thank those who labored to keep America's dream of democracy alive and real. I also encourage all citizens to join me in supporting the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Madam Speaker, I would like to submit the following information on H.R. 4173: [From the Washington Post, Dec. 19, 2009] The House of Representative's Reform Package Hurts the Fed's Independence The House of Representatives has passed a comprehensive financial regulatory reform package. It creates a consumer protection agency for financial services and establishes a mechanism for resolving failed, systemically important institutions. Agree or disagree with the particulars, there is no disputing the bill's significance. Certainly President Obama has made reform one of his top priorities. The Senate, of course, has yet to weigh in, and it will probably be months before Mr. Obama has legislation on his desk. Yet if the House bill did come to him, he should veto it, for one reason: Whatever good it might do would be canceled out by the inclusion of Texas Republican Ron Paul's proposal to subject the Federal Reserve's monetary policymaking to regular audits by the Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress. Supporters suggest that the measure would merely provide ``transparency'' for a secretive, powerful institution. But for all its wide, bipartisan backing, this is anything but a prudent or centrist law. In fact, it is an attack--born of crisis and the attendant emotions--on the political independence the central bank must have to do its job. The case for political independence at the Fed is elementary. Elected officials, such as members of Congress, are inherently loath to tighten the supply of money available to their constituents, even when that might be necessary to fight inflation. U.S. experience, and that of countries around the world, confirms this, which is why Congress exempted the Fed's money-supply decisions from GAO scrutiny in a 1978 law. Mr. Paul's proposal would effectively repeal that. Investors already spend enough energy and money trying to figure out where interest rates are heading without this additional dose of permanent uncertainty. Trust in the Fed, and, by extension, the dollar, will evaporate if markets believe that the Fed is courting the approval of Congress's auditors. Mr. Paul doesn't care; he's an ``end the Fed'' man. In the past, other members of Congress have basically just humored him. It's a sign of the times--and not a good one--that they have been Fed-bashed into following him now. To be sure, the Fed may have been lax as a bank regulator. Monetary policy under former chairman Alan Greenspan was, in hindsight, too loose. Both failures contributed to the current crisis-- during which the Fed has ventured into new and unorthodox areas to stave off depression, thus unavoidably politicizing itself. Under Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, the central bank has corrected some regulatory errors. It is aware of the politicization risk posed by its current monetary policies and seemingly is eager to undo them as soon as it safely can. This week, the Fed announced that it will phase out special lending programs for money market mutual funds, short-term corporate lending and investment banks by Feb. 1. Mr. Paul's cure is worse than the Fed's ills, real or alleged. The central bank is already more transparent than the Fed-bashers let on: It produces an annual report; the chairman testifies before Congress; it releases, with some delay, the minutes of its policy meetings. We hope cooler heads prevail in the Senate, though a similar measure has 31 co-sponsors there. If not, Mr. Obama will have to get out his veto pen. In fact, it might save everyone a lot of trouble if he made that intention clear right away. View all comments that have been posted about the article.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. I rise to offer the amendment.

Mr. WATT. Madam Chair, I yield myself 3\1/2\ minutes. Madam Chair, let me say at the outset it is my intention at the end of a short discussion to ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment, but I thought it would be enlightening to colleagues and to whoever else might be listening at this time in the morning to talk about some of the practical problems that you have even when there's broad agreement on an issue. And I will describe the process. Both Mr. Campbell, who is a member of the committee, and I agree that automobile dealers ought to be exempt in their primary duties from the CFPA, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency supervision and what have you. There was broad bipartisan and philosophical agreement on that general proposition in the committee when Mr. Campbell offered his amendment, and there was broad agreement that there were some practical problems with the way the amendment was written; and the chairman delegated to me and to Mr. Campbell the responsibility to try to find the right language. We set about trying to do that, and we have been diligently trying to do that. Then the practical problems intervened. Other people get their fingers in the pot and suggest different issues that need to be resolved. Mr. Campbell and I, on a Friday night, with him in California and me in North Carolina on our cell phones, have a conversation, and we are right at the verge of reaching an agreement, we think, and we are quibbling about words. Then he gets called away to the USC football game the next day, and I get called away the following day to the Carolina Panthers football game. And then we are right up against the deadline. Then we find out that the chairman has offered a manager's amendment that deals with part of the problem, but not all of it. We both submitted amendments to the Rules Committee. Mr. Campbell withdraws his amendment, mine is still standing, and we are still talking about the amendment. And then the automobile dealers, because they don't like my amendment, decide that they need to lobby against it and make it sound as if I'm opposed to what I was in favor of all along. So we've been at this for a long time. And finally, yesterday, Mr. Campbell and I sat down and talked again and decided that we should not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. What we have in the bill with the manager's amendment substantially advances the process. We are not the end of the process anyway. The Senate is going to have to deal with this. And both of us are still intent on the philosophy that automobile dealers ought to be exempt from CFPA. We agree on that. And so here we are, and we thought it would be helpful to have this dialogue. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT. They lost, too.

Mr. WATT. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the Chair of the committee.

Mr. WATT. Madam Chair, I will just say in closing that one of the other wonderful things that has come out of this is that prior to this, Mr. Campbell and I had never really had an opportunity to roll up our sleeves and work on issues together. It has been a joy to work with him, and he has been very constructive. I want to just reserve myself enough time to ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment, but I don't want to do that before he has the last word.

Mr. WATT. Madam Chair, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. I thank the gentleman for yielding time. Madam Speaker, obviously, I am a very strong supporter of this legislation, and I was here on into the evening last night to express my support for it; but there is one aspect of it that I want to point out that I have some discomfort with and which I would like to speak about. There is really nothing we can do about it, and it is not going to cause me to vote against the bill, but I think we need to continue to work on it. The Financial Services' version of the bill requires swap dealers and major participants to execute their standardized swaps on exchanges, or swap execution platforms. These provisions, we thought, were very important to the bill. The reason for that is, 15 years ago, the only way to search for a swap transaction was to use the telephone. It was time-consuming, expensive, and a company was never sure that it had found the best deal. Today, new electronic technology creates pre-trade price transparency. The House Financial Services' version required the use of that platform for transparency purposes so that companies could get the best price in an open transparent market and so that regulators could have a high-resolution view of risk as they moved through the system. It was our intent that the regulators would require these new technologies to be used for price discovery so that impartial, instantaneous information was available to all participants at the same time. So we kind of lost the totality of that in merging the Financial Services' version of the bill and the Agriculture Committee's version of the bill. I just want to rise to put it back on the radar screen as something that we need to continue to try to resolve. When you have got a $600 trillion over-the-counter derivatives business, there needs to be absolute transparency as there is in the stock market. That is the only way you can bring this out of the shadows and onto a transparent platform. So I hope we will be able to continue to work with it. The chairman of Financial Services has been excellent on this issue. I hope we will continue, as the House and the Senate move these bills, to figure out a way to make sure that we have the maximum amount of transparency as we did in the Financial Services' version of the bill. I thank the gentleman for yielding me time to raise this issue.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. It is an inconvenient fact that the Constitution reserves certain rights to the States and allows the Federal Government to have certain rights. And it sometimes gets inconvenient for those people who profess to believe in States' rights that we have to accommodate them. One of the most difficult parts of making the appropriate accommodation has been finding the right preemption of State law standards to put into this bill. I am deeply indebted to all of the members of the committee, particularly Ms. Bean, who has been very active on this issue. We worked out 10 different things on Federal preemption, some reserved to the States, some reserved to the Federal Government. And as I said at the very outset of the discussions about this, we knew we would find the right place to be on preemption if the consumer groups were unhappy and if the industry was unhappy. And we have succeeded in making both of them unhappy. And they are equally unhappy, so I think we have found the right balance on preemption. That is about all I can say because I don't have time to go through the 10 things that we were able to agree on. Nobody is jumping up and down and threatening to shoot any of us, but I can tell you that everybody is kind of equally unhappy. I appreciate the chairman giving me the opportunity to explain that. And I am sure nobody understands it, but that's okay.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Madam Chair, I have endured the entire debate this evening, which is now approaching 3 hours, and I've been absolutely fascinated by it. Before I came to the body, I practiced law for 22 years. I've now been in this body 17 years. When I was practicing law, quite often, I had cases in which the facts and the law were on my side, and I would go to court, and I would argue the facts and the law and deal with what was before us. Sometimes I would have some cases where neither the facts nor the law were on my side. And I would show up in court, and I would argue everything other than what the case was about. Now, that's what my friends on the opposite side of the aisle have been doing tonight, because neither the facts nor the law is on their side this time. So we've heard about health care. I've been making notes. I was here the whole time. We've heard about socialism. We've heard about supply and demand. We've heard about energy and electricity rates. We've heard that the government intervention caused the economic meltdown, that the Fed ratcheted up the panic and that other government agencies contributed to the panic, and that's how we got into this economic mess. We've heard almost every speaker talk about the size of the bill. We've heard something about cockroaches. I have no idea what that has to do with this bill. We've heard a lot about czars. We've heard about the 2003 and 2007 Fannie and Freddie purchase of subprime loans, and made it sound like somehow that was our fault rather than your President who was out there pushing home ownership when we were trying to get him to push to provide decent housing for people. We've heard about credit czars, and we've had our colleagues just pull figures out of the sky. I have no idea where they came from. This bill is going to increase interest rates by a point and a half. I don't know how anybody would ever be able to know that. It's going to decrease jobs by 5 percent. I don't know where that figure came from. It's going to break up Dell. My goodness. I didn't know Dell was a financial entity at all. It's in the computer business, it's not in the financial services business. And we've heard our friends say that they don't want taxpayer bailouts, but they also don't want us to set up a fund that's paid for by the industry to take care of the dissolution of these failing companies. So what's the solution here? I don't know what their solution is, to be honest with you. The truth of the matter is the private market failed, and we had an economic meltdown. And I think we need some reasonable regulation, which is what this bill does. We need somebody who is going to show up at work every single morning saying, my primary obligation is to at least think about what is in the interests of consumers. And that's what the consumer financial protection agency's charge and responsibility will be. And that is what this bill does. We need to do something about all these predatory loans that were made that are now being foreclosed and have gotten us into the financial mess that we are in, and that's what this bill does. We need to make the derivatives market more transparent and put them on a platform so that the whole world can see what's going on back there in the derivative room, and that's what this bill does. Now, what do you all want to talk about? You can talk about health care or energy or electricity or cockroaches or whatever you want to talk about. We want to fix this economic system in our financial services industry. That's what this bill does. It is long, it is complex, it is a complex undertaking. Our Chair has done it admirably; he has led this. What is your proposal? That we just do nothing and let the market take care of itself? That is not an option, my friend. That is not an option, my friends. That time has passed for a while. Announcement by the Acting Chair

Mr. WATT. The gentleman is yielding to me for the purpose of responding to that?

Mr. WATT. I haven't referred to any study because I haven't said that it wasn't going to cost jobs or increase or decrease jobs.

Mr. WATT. I just wanted to inquire of the chairman whether he saw anything in the bill about cockroaches.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Madam Speaker, today I rise to recognize to honor the outstanding achievements of Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. Twenty-five years ago, Reverend Jackson took an historic step when he ran for President of the United States, becoming only the second African-American to run for that office. He received over eighteen percent of the total Democratic primary vote and won five primaries and caucuses. The numbers, while impressive, don't begin to convey the broad impact of his candidacy. Reverend Jackson motivated millions of new voters to register to vote and become engaged in the electoral process. His example of hope and achievement reaffirmed the self-worth of an entire generation of young African-American men and women. His candidacy was not a compromised, watered-down one. It demanded publicly that the national political agenda include the issues affecting a ``Rainbow Coalition'' of individuals, including African-Americans, Hispanics, Arab-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, gays, lesbians, farmers, the poor and the working class, and it started a whole new public dialogue. Reverend Jackson challenged us to think bigger and inspired many others to pursue careers in public service. He paved the way for many of us in this body to run for political office and laid the foundation for the candidacy, nomination and election of President Barack Obama, our most recent historic candidacy and election. Rev. Jackson's place in American history was legend long before his presidential candidacy--through his activism at North Carolina A & T University and leadership of civil rights demonstrations in Greensboro, North Carolina, his work with Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the S.C.L.C. and the formation of Operation PUSH and the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. But his presidential run twenty-five years ago solidified his place in history and continues to be an inspiration for all Americans today. Rev. Jackson, thank you for all that you have done.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Madam Speaker, on December 27, 1892 the first college football game between two historically black institutions of higher education was played in Salisbury, North Carolina. On October 3, 2009 the Livingstone College and Johnson C. Smith University football teams will extend this 117-year rivalry in the 2009 Commemorative Classic Football Game. I rise to recognize and pay tribute to Livingstone College and Johnson C. Smith University as they prepare to participate in this historic game which is being held in my Congressional District. Collegiate sports provide a backdrop for a multitude of life's lessons and a crucible in which many of society's leaders are shaped. To quote former Livingstone College president S.E. Duncan, ``The claim that football engenders school spirit has seldom been challenged. For the stimulation of academic improvement, for its impact on the citizenship of our students and the outcomes of physical fitness, football comes increasingly to the attention for consideration . . . May we remember those who learned how to win and lose.'' I wish continued success to Livingstone College and Johnson C. Smith University, and best of success in this yeaar's game to Dr. Jimmy Jenkins, President of Livingstone College, and to Dr. Ronald Carter, President of Johnson C. Smith University. I am honored and privileged to represent these institutions and their outstanding scholars-athletes in Congress.

Mr. WATT

Mr. WATT. Mr. Speaker, on December 27, 1892, the first college football game between two historically black institutions of higher education was played in Salisbury, North Carolina. On October 3, 2009, The Livingstone College and Johnson C. Smith University football teams will extend this 117-year rivalry in the 2009 Commemorative Classic football game. I rise to recognize and pay tribute to Livingstone College and Johnson C. Smith University as they prepare to participate in this historic game, which is being played in my congressional district. Collegiate sports provide a backdrop for a multitude of life's lessons and a crucible in which many of society's leaders are shaped. To quote Livingstone College President S.E. Duncan: The claim that football engenders school spirit has seldom been challenged. For the stimulation of academic improvement, its impact on citizenship and the outcome of our students on physical fitness, football comes increasingly to their attention for consideration. I wish continued success to Livingstone College and Johnson C. Smith University and wish both of them success in this year's game.