Preserving Access to Manufactured Housing Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, but more importantly, I thank him for his leadership, and I thank him for standing up for so many of the downtrodden, the low- and moderate-income Americans from sea to shining sea who want to realize some piece of the American Dream--they want to own a home.

Now, maybe it is not going to be quite as nice as a home that some Member of Congress might live in, you know, but it is going to be their home. In this case, it is going to be a manufactured home. I can say for many of the people who live, Mr. Speaker, in the Fifth District of Texas, if it weren't for manufactured housing, they wouldn't have a house.

As the gentleman from Tennessee so eloquently said as this legislation was being marked up in our committee, there are so many on the left and the far left who want to protect consumers right out of their homes. That is shameful, Mr. Speaker. It is absolutely shameful. They should have the same equal opportunity to own a home as any Member of this body, and yet my friends on the other side of the aisle would take it away from them. No, they have got a bumper sticker slogan here. You know, they

have got Dodd-Frank; we are going to aim at Wall Street. But when they aim at Wall Street, they are hitting Main Street. They are hitting Main Street, and low- and moderate-income Americans are suffering.

We have bank after bank after bank after credit union after credit union, we are talking community financial institutions who are saying, without the legislation of the gentleman from Tennessee, they have got to get out of the business. You know what that means, Mr. Speaker? It means people lose their opportunity to own that first home, which might just be a manufactured house.

First Arkansas Bank and Trust, we heard from them:

Our bank has a long history of helping consumers, especially those who, for some reason, cannot qualify for secondary market financing at the time. Due to the fact that this type of financing is now overly burdened by the qualified mortgage standards, we have ceased this type of financing.

I heard from the Central Maine Credit Union. And, by the way, we haven't mentioned Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. No, these are community financial institutions, Mr. Speaker.

I am sorry. This comes from Five County Credit Union:

Since October of 2010, Five County has no longer been offering mobile home loans to its members due to the Federal legislation.

First National Bank of Milaca. I hope I am pronouncing this right, but given that it isn't a money center bank on Wall Street, we are a little less familiar with its name. This is in Minnesota.

The high price mortgage rules have caused my bank to reduce the number of real estate mortgages we make on certain type houses, specifically mobile homes.

I could go on and on. I have got a stack of these, Mr. Speaker. That is why the gentleman from Tennessee, with his able leadership, has brought forth legislation--bipartisan legislation, I might add; bipartisan, almost half of the Democrats on our committee supported it.

The ranking member supported it before she was against it. I don't quite understand the change of mind. The need is still as great. People are still suffering. The low- and moderate-income Americans have been falling behind. Here is a chance to let them have an opportunity to get into a mobile home. But, no, no, no, no, no, we have got a Wall Street bumper sticker slogan here, and it doesn't matter who is going to get hurt.

Well, it does matter. It matters a lot, Mr. Speaker. We need to ensure that every American, regardless of their income, in a competitive, transparent, innovative capital market, that they have the opportunity to finance that mobile home. Every American should have that opportunity.

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Every single American should have that opportunity, and it is the gentleman from Tennessee who is hearing their voices and is representing their voices on the House floor today.

Again, I want to thank him for his leadership and thank him for the thousands and thousands across the Fifth District of Texas that I have the privilege and honor of representing that, just because they are low income, he knows--he knows--they still deserve that chance for the American Dream. He is fighting for their American Dream.

This was compromise language, Mr. Speaker. This is not the bill I wanted; it is not the bill he wanted. It was compromise language. In fact, the ranking member supported even a broader provision in the previous Congress. But what has happened is, yet again, the left hand doesn't always know what the far left hand is doing; and the far left hand has decided that all of a sudden we are going to aim at Wall Street banks, and it doesn't matter if any person working at a Walmart or working at a Whataburger loses their chance at the American Dream.

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