New Direction for Energy Independence, National Security, and Consumer Protection Act and the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2007--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

NEW DIRECTION FOR ENERGY INDEPENDENCE, NATIONAL SECURITY, AND CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT AND THE RENEWABLE ENERGY AND ENERGY CONSERVATION TAX ACT OF 2007--MOTION TO PROCEED -- (Senate - April 02, 2008)

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Mr. REID. I appreciate my distinguished friend allowing me to speak for a minute.

I just completed a meeting with the Republican leader, Chairman Dodd, and Ranking Member Shelby. We have an agreement in principle as to what we are going to move forward on. The two managers of this most important legislation are now in the process of drafting the principles into legislative language. The staffs worked most of the night to get where we are today. I am not going to go into any detail as to what has been accomplished, but it is a robust package addressing the issues, some of which were just addressed by my friend from Florida. We will come back at 5 o'clock. They think they can have the language drafted by that time. It would be a substitute for the House-passed bill that we are working off of. At that time, we would hope that there would be some discussion of the substitute, that that would be agreed to, and then we would start amending that. Either people want to take things out of it or add legislative measures to it. I think we are moving forward. This is good news for the American people, and I am confident we can process it fairly rapidly.

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Mr. REID. Mr. President, the matter that we have to lay down as a substitute is done. The staff is reading it over. They found a couple mistakes. It happens on a bill this big, an amendment this big. So rather than have more time spent tonight treading water, we are going to lay this amendment down in the morning. We are going to come in at 9:30. Senators DODD and SHELBY have a very important banking hearing. It has been scheduled for quite some time. But Senator Durbin has agreed to manage the bill for Senator Dodd, and the Republicans will have someone here also. It is my understanding, after initial statements are made on the bill, we are going to go back and forth on amendments. Senator Durbin will lay down an amendment. That will be our first one--not a lot of time on that. Our second amendment would be with Senators SCHUMER and MURRAY. The third amendment will be Senator Feinstein. It is a bipartisan amendment. I believe it is Senator Martinez.

As I indicated to staff, of course, following the first Democratic amendment, there will be a Republican amendment, if there is one. Following the second Democratic amendment, there will be a Republican amendment. We will try to move through this as expeditiously and as well intentioned as we can. The progress that has been made in the last 24 hours is very significant. We have a piece of legislation that now has very important FHA modernization in it. It is not what everyone wants, but it is a good piece of legislation.

Senators DODD and SHELBY have agreed the limit would be $550,000. There would be a 3.5 percent downpayment. There are other things in it that banking minds can describe better than I.

There is the CDBG funds to assist communities devastated by foreclosures. That would be $4 billion. We would provide preforeclosure counseling for families in need. In the underlying bill, the so-called Reid amendment, we had $200 million. That has been reduced to $100 million. There will be efforts made to increase that. As I understand, that is what Senators SCHUMER and MURRAY intend to do. We have a combination of pieces of legislation that have been put together in one amendment. It is bipartisan. It started with the Jack Reed disclosure transparency legislation, and others had ideas on how to improve that. That is what Senators DODD and SHELBY have done.

It lengthens the time a lender must wait before starting foreclosure on a service member by some 3 months, which is important during this time of Iraq and Afghanistan. It raises the loan guarantee amount for VA-backed loans in high-cost areas. There is a standard property tax deduction; of course, what the President called for in his State of the Union Address, the mortgage revenue bonds to purchase used or foreclosed-upon homes; the extension of net operating loss carryback, extremely important to homebuilders. There is a tax credit for the purchase of homes in foreclosure. This is the Isakson amendment that has been talked about for several weeks now. The two managers of the legislation have modified the original Isakson proposal to have $3,500 for 2 years in succession, a total of $7,000. It will be for buyers of foreclosed homes.

This is the package. It would be great if the Presiding Officer and I and Senator Salazar could just say: OK, this is done. This is great, because it is bipartisan. Let's go home tonight, having done this. We can't do that. That is
the way the legislation is. But I think it is a tremendously important bipartisan package that we have. I commend and applaud the work to this point of Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby. They have done very good work. Their staffs worked most all night. And, of course, they have worked all day. Senators SHELBY and DODD were on the telephone last night at midnight trying to work things out. So I appreciate their good, hard work. They have been long-time legislators. As I mentioned, when Senator McConnell and I suggested they come up with a bipartisan package, they are experienced legislators. They both had extensive service in the House of Representatives before coming here. I feel we are in a good spot to be able to deliver a package that will go toward helping Main Street. We helped Wall Street.

We are all glad Bear Stearns was taken care of. But now it is our opportunity to take care of people on Main Street. They deserve that. I am convinced it would be the right thing to do.

As I indicated, we are going to come in at 9:30 tomorrow. I hope this gives everyone an outline of the legislation. I apologize, as I have to do often, that we were not doing more proactive stuff on the floor, but every minute that we were on the floor in the quorum calls or people giving speeches on what they thought should be done with housing or other issues, the staffs and Senators DODD and SHELBY were working very hard to get us to the point where we are tonight.

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