Neighborhood Stabilization Act of 2008

Floor Speech

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I thank my good friend from West Virginia for her leadership on this and for cogently bringing the debate forward and stating why this is the wrong bill at the wrong time.

I am pleased to hear from my friend, though, from Minnesota who said that this was going to save America money. If we keep saving money at this rate, our deficit ought to disappear in short order, $15 billion chunks going out the door. I'm not sure how that math adds up, but I'm certain that it works somewhere.

I want to commend my friend from Illinois for raising the point, as I know that the chairwoman acknowledged, and that is that there was no bidding process. There is really no accountability in this bill. Yes, there are plans that have to be proposed and submitted, but there's no oversight, there is no oversight of this money. Fifteen billion dollars could go to anybody, truly, who was a friend or a crony of any official in a State or a city. And we're going to trust the cities, as the chairman said, it was important that we trusted the cities. And I believe primarily that that is important that we do trust cities. If we trusted cities so much, though, then why would we not adopt an amendment that I proposed in committee that said that we ought to let the city do with the property what they deemed appropriate? But we haven't done that. We said oh, no, even if this facility, this housing facility is public housing and is absolutely dilapidated, you couldn't demolish it. Oh, no, we wouldn't want that to happen. We wouldn't want the city to make a decision that they could do something better with that property. In fact, this bill precludes that opportunity.

I heard the chairwoman say that she wouldn't want to add an amendment that would provide for that accountability or that oversight because it might bog down getting the money to the cities. Well, Madam Chairman, I'll tell you what will bog down getting money to the cities, if people were really sincerely interested in that, and that's a veto. And this bill will be vetoed by the President of the United States for appropriate reasons because it is irresponsible and it is not appropriate to spend the kind of money that we're talking about without any oversight and without any accountability. Remember, $15 billion.

I am constantly surprised, truly, by my friends on the other side of the aisle who don't seem to remember where this money comes from. Where does this money come from? It comes from hardworking Americans. And I would suggest, Madam Chairman, as my friend from Texas said, that hardworking Americans have a significant challenge right now in some aspects of their life, trying to make certain that they can afford the increase in gas prices under this majority, for the increasing prices for commodities under this majority. And so it would be appropriate that we remember that, and that we allow more Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money.

Now what is the solution? Well, I would suggest, Madam Chairman, that a couple of programs that are in place right now and are working diligently to make certain that people can stay in their homes, FHA Secure is a program that is administered by the Federal Housing Authority that provides greater flexibility for refinancing homes for hundreds of thousands of Americans. The Hope Now Alliance was a program that was put into place, a private sector cooperative effort that actually makes it so that struggling homeowners can get the kind of counseling and guidance to assist them to refinance their mortgages. More than 1.4 million Americans, Madam Chairman, have been shown the opportunity to be able to stay in their home.

These are positive and productive programs that make it so that individuals can stay in their home. They aren't a bailout that is being proposed by the other side. They aren't taking $15 billion of hard-earned taxpayer money and saying, ``It's okay. We'll cover it. Don't worry about that. The American people's pocketbook is absolutely endless.''

This is a bad bill, wrong bill, wrong time. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

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