from today as the senate prepares for a cloture vote this afternoon on legislation democratic leaders tout as a second stimulus package senate republicans are cautioning against a provision in the bill that would allow bankruptcy courts to write down the principal on primary mortgages on the previous order the senate will proceed to the motion to reconsider the vote by which cloture was not invoked on the motion to proceed to h r thirty two twenty one the motion reconsider is agreed to and there will now be conversation this morning and a few moments ago we have reached an agreement on how to go forward on the housing bill and that agreement is us policy that senator dodd the chairman of the banking committee and senator shelby the ranking member would come together after we invoke cloture on the motion to proceed and come up with a bipartisan substitute to be offered as an amendment to the bill upon which we're cloture to proceed and that would be the underlying bill that would enjoy the confidence and support the two leaders of the banking committee most of my conference is very comfortable with that we understand fully that will be amendments after that but that would at least give us an opportunity to get off on a bipartisan footing reminiscent of the good work that we were able to do earlier this year not only on the foreign intelligence surveillance bill but also on the economic stimulus package where we were able to come together and by significant bipartisan majorities to pass legislation we all know we have problems with housing in this country most of us believe that we need to enact legislation to try to improve this situation many of these proposals are supported by people on both sides of the  techniques that diminish majority is certainly free to do but which have a way of kind of locking down the process on the minority side so this has been a very good discussion leading up to a process by which i think we can go forward and  hopefully get something important for the country actually by a good friend the leader of the banking committee here on the floor to get something important for the country accomplished here in the senate this week and i want to thank the majority leader for his approach to this i think it's  entirely appropriate and gives us a good opportunity to move forward on the floor gently smoke housing prices foreclosures the fire is the general economy because a housing crisis has caused economy b s t of distress and the chairman of banking the senator dodd made such an outstanding presentation this morning when he talked about almost eight thousand homes every day today tomorrow and the foreseeable future will be foreclosed upon not the beginning process of foreclosure but determination of foreclosure someone by the name of joan smith or whatever their name might be will lose their home a family home what does that do to the neighborhood every time there's a home foreclosed upon it causes immediately the rest of the neighborhood to be worth less money what does it do to the government and where that home is located the government entity loses the ability to get tax money no one benefits from foreclosure so mr president this is a step in the right direction in nevada for example one out of every hundred sixty five homes was in foreclosure in february imagine that one out of every hundred sixty five homes that's the highest rate in the data and we're fortunate we have a lot of construction that's not housing related that's going to pull us through this but it is important we move forward on this legislation mr president the underlying bill is a so called democratic bill this bill if we're able to accomplish something will be a senate and democrats and republicans can go home and take credit for doing something to help the problem are we going to bruise be able to resolve all the problems and housing of course not but we can make a tremendous step forward and that's what we intend to do i have worked with senator shelby from the time we were in the house together we shared office space his office the longworth building was next to mine and i have the highest regard for him i've spoken with him this morning and i believe that he and the chairman of the committee senator dodd are going to be able to come up with something i hope i can support but is going to be bipartisan they're going to agree on this and after this is a first amendment when we get to this legislation if it if something goes wrong the way th we there's mr someone being mischievous about that legislation senator mcconnell i'll meet again the goal is to do something about housing we're not going to solve the problems of iraq on this bill bring on us we're not going to solve the tax policy the country on this arac we're not going to solve global warming on this housing bill but we really need to step forward and do something the american people recognize is bipartisan as it relates to housing and we're going to do everything we can our two distinguished senators to come up with the substance we need some deadline and that's as good as any unless my friend has a better time tomorrow i would say to the majority leader i think it makes sense because events that we're all operating in good faith there  shoot very well here this is a problem that is growing by the hour it demands our attention this is a problem the contagion effect we've read about now spreading far beyond the housing issue per se it's now leeching into all aspects of our economy it's even gone beyond our shores obviously to other nations as well that are deeply affect by what happens here economically so this is a moment when we really have to come together as a body here and try to come up with some responsible answers i will say in advance none of us can say with any certainty that that w offer is going to solve the problem per se but i think we bear an obligation to try to do one thing that's more important that any specific idea we've proposed and that is to help restore the confidence of the american people and those directly involved in the financial wellbeing of our nation and confidence is what is missing and we need to get that back again and i think by the very fact that leaders have called upon us to pull together here is going to be a confidence building measure it will be complemented by what we do but it begins with the offer made by the distinguished majority leader accepted by the republican leader that we sit down and try to work this out i can just tell you in advance the american people will react favorably to this and hopefully will offer a product that will compliment that but beginning with the idea we're going to work on this problem together that i commend the leaders for and i thank the majority leader in the republican leader for that report the motion to invoke culture we the undersigned senators in accordance with provisions abroad twenty two of the standing role of the senate hereby move to bring to a close the debate on the motion to proceed to counter number three forty h states toward greater energy independence and security developing innovative new technologies reducing carbon emissions creating green jobs protecting consumers increasing clean renewable energy production and modernizing our energy infrastructure shall be brought to biden mr being a man mr bond this is boxer mr brown mr kennedy to carry robert to rockefeller mr salazar interest anders mr schumer mr sessions sessions and white house no sen about it in the negative to nelson nebraska i so the senate has agreed to move ahead with home mortgage foreclosure legislation motion to invoke closure cloture was invoked the vote ninety four to one republicans dropped their opposition to the measure and democratic and republican leaders have agreed that an outline of the bill will be brought to the senate floor by noon tomorrow senators will be allowed to offer and mammoths now for the rest of the day today we expect just to hear general speeches on the floor of the senate over on the other side of the capitol the houses working their way through a number of suspension bills to day votes very shortly on the floor of the house and then special orders speeches tonight you can watch house coverage live on c span our coverage of the senate live here on c span to list goes on but at the top of the list is the the economy remembering hogback to the clinton campaign in one thousand nine hundred sixty stupid has been for a long time and it certainly has again to today during the time that i spent in delaware for the last couple of weeks out of place in my state including a number of schools one of the questions that a group of young people ask me to school is what i like about my job or what i like most about my job and there's a number of things i enjoy about serving in it and i love helping people have the opportunity t colleagues the other thing among the other things that brings me a great great joy in my work here is from time to time when we're able to take the folks who have different views on a particular issue and actually pull them together to to work as one to develop consensus around around issues and we need to develop a consensus on a path forward with respect to our housing situation the meltdown that we've seen especially subprime mortgages but how the threats that meltdown poses to sort of binding together tightening up bringing to a halt the flow of money through our economy through the banking system i'm very much encouraged by the vote we just had here a few minutes ago where ninety four senators have voted to proceed to the housing bill and our democratic leadership has pulled back and said we're not going to just try to push forward with the five or six actually very constructive elements in an earlier version of our proposal for housing recovery but to provide time for senator dodd and senator shelby to to work with others in the banking committee and others of our colleagues who are on the committee to or to put together the a broader consensus that builds on the package that we voted not to proceed to two weeks ago which says we are we can do those but more as revenue bonds the procedure which could be used to it to help folks refinance their mortgages people are in danger of losing their homes i hope we can can do that and i'm not interested in eroding bad behavior i'm not interested in warding investors or bankers or made bad decisions or frankly folks  individuals borrowers who have made decisions that were inappropriate or wrong or where they've written misrepresented their financial standing i don't think we want to reward bad behavior there's a lot of people though who are in danger when we have eight thousand people going to have their homes foreclosed on today tomorrow or the next day the next day that's a clear signal to me at least that we need to do something and we can and we can do some things here that will make a difference without breaking the treasury let me just mention a couple of  of what i hope will be in a housing package that that we might bring back to the floor later this week and vote on one of those is f h a modernization some people recall that seventy five years ago the federal housing administration was established people wonder what a thirty year fixed rate mortgage ever come from in the first place it came from f h a a lot of people in this country own a home today because their mortgage their loan was guaranteed by by f h a in my case my first home loan was guaranteed by the v a for the house that i bought when i came back from southeast asia at the end of the vietnam war can not even ten years ago but five ten years ago twenty percent of the people in this country got a mortgage on a home almost twenty percent out a mortgage on a home that was guaranteed by the f h a almost twenty percent of banks were reluctant to to provide a mortgage without the guarantee that f h a or maybe a v a would offer but f h a guaranteed mortgages dropped from twenty five almost twenty percent of all the  to refinance a mortgage and those people are stuck and a couple million of them have been stuck with adjustable rate mortgages high teaser rates that are going up and finding it difficult to get out of that situation we want to make sure i want to make sure that the that we  make for those folks that have been in that situation maybe people with somewhat marginal credit people or first time home buyers i don't want them to look at these exotic to desperate mortgages for salvation i want you to think that maybe the f h a can be relevant in their lives as it was maybe in the lives of their the house has passed an f h a modernization and they i think very close to a consensus my hope is that they can find that consensus and when we take up later this week hopefully a bipartisan housing recovery bill a center number of other good ideas that that hopefully will be part of the package senator jack reed from rhode island has a very good idea that seems to be accepted on a lot of fronts to provide for greater transparency for for borrowers as people go to the or sold are actually real and not just an appraisal put together on a pull out of thin air because somebody told by a house and slap a value on it just by looking at it through the windshield i think center martinez has another good idea with respect to  licensing mortgage brokers it may not be perfect but something can be worked on further but it's something along those lines to be should be part of this this this this package i center isaacson has as an idea it's actually something i think it was done maybe when president ford was  value their own properties are the center isaacson suggesting we do is to provide a tax credit i think he's saying five thousand dollars per year to somebody who would come in and not just buy that home but live in that home as the owner and the occupier of the home and to the extent they do that to get a five thousand dollars tax credit he suggested we do that over three years which means fifteen thousand for three years that could be pretty expensive and i've suggested to him that we try to find a way to bring down the cost of his proposed my hope is that we can do that include that in money to take on this in foreclosure and to to do something to to prepare to to be sold and to restore the value of that of that home and to restore the vitality of the neighborhood which is now decaying in short there is no shortage of good ideas here some of them are offered by democrats authored by democrats in some cases there are authors and offered by our republican colleagues in some cases their idea that they enjoy a bipartisan support at the end of the day  early this actually last month from our democratic leaders was a provision dealing with bankruptcy and what it extended to bankruptcy judges the ability to go in and now and just to adjust interest rates on on mortgages for homes that are in foreclosure about amend his earlier proposal to make it to address the concerns that are going to raise legitimate concerns that have been raised and i think he's done he's acted in good faith understand respect he has a little different proposal on this this approach and i think senator dissenters i've been working along with senator frank over the house kind of a variation of an earlier idea suggest i think by the head of the office of thrift supervision the folks who supervise the savings and loan industry to try to make sure we dress the issue of a homeowner whose home is in not in foreclosure but whose mortgage is underwater i gave an example you got a home and bought for two hundred thousand dollars today the home is worth one hundred sixty thousand dollars and the person who owns the home is is thinking about literally just walk away from their mortgage walking away from their home you can do that today for about a thousand bucks i'm told to to work through a company that will help you walk away from your home mortgage the person walks away becomes a renter and they have the obligation that they have to continue to perfect idea but a good idea that they can go forward requires some sacrifice on the part of the lenders require some sacrifice and give on the part of the borrowers but also leave the home at the end that has in which they still have at least a little bit of equity and a reason a good reason not to walk away from their home and and to trigger a foreclosure the other the last thing i'll mention this is an idea that it's not new but it's we've been hearing testimony about this for a couple of years we have three major government sponsored enterprises not counting an animal called the federal home loan banks there's about twelve or thirteen and finding twelve of those throughout our country the way we buy a home has changed a whole lot over the years i used to be and i when i bought my first home in delaware i went to a bank they agree to make the mortgage or the money and about forty thousand dollars a via the money and they held my mortgage and they have my mortgage and every month it's in my statement i send the check to pay my my payment and they mortgage for years and years and years doesn't work that way anymore there you go to your local thrift or our bank and they make the mortgage to help you file a person buy a home and the bank may decide to hold the mortgage they may decide to originally more years across the country put them together and into investments called mortgage backed securities and those mortgage backed securities are sold investors all over this country and all over the world the problem with the those mortgage backed securities is when you have a drop in home values we have a problem with homeowners borrowers not making their mortgage payments we have a problem with the underlying homes that make up these mortgage backed securities going into foreclosure and mortgage payments are not being collected the dries up there's two things that can help but nothing can help like the start of a recession and one of those is when people think we're going to go into a recession become a self fulfilling prophecy probably because people stop spending money they stop spending money and blow the whole way and up for the recession another way some of that as well the problem with with fannie mae and freddie mac is a run into trouble of the last couple years because they don't have a very strong regulator they don't have a strong independent regulator with hearings that was ill for a couple of years trying to figure out how do we provide a strong independent regulator and at the same thing to make sure that fannie mae and freddie mac don't repeat the sens the mistakes of the past few years how do we do that in a way and at the same time create affordable housing f country for those of us who want to buy homes and sell homes because with this going back to beginning of the year as our economy started to just slip into what may be a recession we'll find out in another quarter or so if it really has been a recession but as we began to slip the federal reserve actually starting last fall began to to use its monetary powers first of all to lower the federal funds rate the rate at which banks charge one another for lending money between themselves at the at the end of every day they started lowering the federal funds rate rather dramatically in fact more dramatically than i've ever seen in and in my life the federal reserve has made it possible for and encouraged more ban confidence of of our constituents and us to to so that's one thing that's happened second thing that we've done congress and president working together have agreed about two months ago on a stimulus package is it the stimulus package that i would have written or the presiding officer in probably not but on balance it's it does more good than bad and we expect to see a boost for our gross domestic product in the second half of this year to be maybe one one half percentage point and that's to be a nice lift to the economy as we struggle to either shorten recession or to avert one all together the thirty should still waiting to be done after the federal reserve has acted in a variety of ways that i just described after the fact of this stimulus package begins to democrats and republicans including the administration a lot of the ideas have merit my hope is that we'll have an x day or two the opportunity to bait those individual puzzles for folks who want to amend them some cases striking allocations to to add new  that are shall be in the in our staffs are going to be working on two hours to get things done to get things done the people of our my family didn't see me here to talk about our problems they sent me here to to do something about them and we have a great opportunity to to take th the next step and say the third in a trilogy of steps that will help get our economy out of the ditch and may be headed in the right direction the best thing that can happen is if we can demonstrate here in this chamber that people this country the democrats  republican election year can set aside our political differences figure out the right thing to do to help stabilize the housing situation and put us on the road to recovery that's going to lift the spirits of a lot of people and will give the our friends in the media a different kind of to report not the story they report day after day after day a drumbeat of all the things are going wrong in this country but start reporting some things that are going right in this country and is always more positive uplifting aspirational stories began to  with senators reid and mcconnell shelby and other members both the leadership in the banking committee and it was a very good meeting because at their senators reid and mcconnell empowered senators dodd and shelby to get together and try to come up with a compromise has a package that's the best news we have had in this housing crisis in weeks and weeks the eyes of america are looking at the senate and saying what are you going to do about the housing crisis since we last adjourned we had a near meltdown on wall street since we last adjourn new numbers of come out that showed thousands more are losing their homes weekly since we adjourned we've seen that buying power is down the average person and housing values are down for most people housing is their piece of the rock mr president that's really their largest asset and when they are worried about their home they are worried about everything and when the middle class consumer gets worried the economy catches cold and that's what's happened and yet for weeks and weeks the senate has been paralyzed in terms of doing things about housing you know we were very quick fed to go rescue wall street and they were looking down the abyss i don't think they had any choice i was supportive of that but i am not supportive of a bifurcated policy that says when a major financial company gets in trouble we rush to their aid but when john and jane smiths homeowners have trouble we say you learn your moral hazard if we help you then everyone else will fall in to what will not repay their mortgages first the arguments unfair joe and jane are probably more blameless than many of those who undercapitalised their urns played it right at the edge and second this moral hazard argument makes no sense the statistics show that when a homeowner owns his or her home when a family owns their home they do everything to repay that mortgage they don't go on vacation they don't buy the nooses suit of clothes for the kid who starting school they cut back on what they eat that nice friday night out at the local restaurant which the family looks forward to goes all so they can pay their mortgage so there's maro hazard argument that if we help people who are blameless makes no sense and let me tell you about a typical person's foreclosed i've met many of them i actually sit down and talk to some of them from new york so that you can understand that these great thinkers up in their ivory towers you know in the conservative think tanks who are saying you better learn your lesson don't even know what's going on on the ground let me tell you about frank ruggero frank's a retired subway motor many lives in ozone park queens is increase i should say was because frank passed away a month ago but that doesn't have to do with the story frank had a good tension is union t w you provided him a good pension of twenty eight thousand and social security of eleven thousand me had a nice little brick house in ozone park a working class neighborhood in queens new york city that was worth they had paid sixteen years of a thirty year mortgage he hadn't missed a payment as most homeowners have not they pay whatever they can and frank got diabetes his healthcare plan would not pay for the treatment that the doctor said he needed and he was desperate so frank so an admin used paper and it said get quick cash read finance your home and he called up the number a mortgage broker came over and this mortgage broker is unregulated he didn't come from a bank he was an independent operator that's where most of the trouble was from these regulated mortgage brokers we're not dealing with that in this bill but we should in the future bill so bill was introduced this would deal with this issue anyway he asked the mortgage broker could i get fifty thousand he said yes and frank asked the right question he said how much will my mortgage go up and the mortgage broker said frank it will go up from eleven hundred dollars a month to twelve hundred january well frank figured i can afford that signs the mortgage agreement let me say three things that one happened to frank and frank is typical typical a his mortgage did go up to twelve hundred dollars a month the next january but the following january it went up to thirty nine hundred dollars frank's income was thirty nine thousand dollars a quick calculation will show you that thirty nine hundred dollars a month is more than frank could pay if he didn't spend one nickel for food clothing health care everything went page mortgage documents it did say the mortgage would go up but didn't say it in language you or i would understand it talked about the percentage about live board certain months after a certain thing happened in this and then the other thing that i think if you read it and i read it was deliberately disguise so there was no fraud there should have been but our laws for mortgage brokers don't say it's fraudulent to sell somebody a mortgage that's beyond what they can pay second point of the fifty thousand dollars that frank was supposed to get guests how much he got this the seven hundred dollars you say fifty seven hundred how could that be because in that disguise mortgage document it said that the broker would get a commission what it didn't say is the broker's commission from a mortgage company also on regulated also not a bank the higher the interest rate that frank that the agent got frank greater the commission if it was a no doc loan which this was no documents is another story for another day i'll be back on the floor this week if we're able to debate this bill and talk about all these things because i've studied this issue and been working on it for a long time no doc loans an absurd concept how investors bought no doc loans is again something we have to look at but you got an additional commission for that then a prepayment penalty if somehow frank would be prepay this ludicrous mortgage there'd be a big penalty to prepay where should that ever happen though should be outlawed and so this guy got twenty two thousand dollars the mortgage company got points of eleven thousand way beyond what any bank would charge and would be allowed to charge between the appraiser the lawyer everyone who came in with the package they all took their piece and frank got fifty seven hundred dollars all because of the structure of the mortgage company he said well what about the mortgage broker he's probably off in the sunset on his yacht with all the twenty two thousand dollars he made from duping the franks he had a piko score somewhere around seven hundred he had pay his mortgage payment religiously for sixteen years he had never missed a credit card bill frank was one of those old fashioned people who believe to pay your bills and so he was a p sixteen percent of those who have sub prime mortgages in or about to go into foreclosure are prime borrowers they pay their loans they're not trying to get anybody to disgrace and the sad fact is that frank had an answer that ad but it walked into a local bank because they're regulated they would have said to frank you need fifty thousand fine we'll sign you a thirty year new fixed rate mortgage and will cost you fifteen or sixteen hundred dollars a month instead of eleven hundred that would have been a stretch for the ruggero family but they might have made it they would have made it and they would have signed it he would have gotten his money in frank should be punished for what he did i asked some of those ideologues from the think tanks and even from the other side of the out what it frank do wrong what did frank do  what harsh lesson are we going to impose on the franks of the world and what will anyone else have to learn from so the moral hazard argument makes no sense we have to do something here now what this bill something that senator brown and senator casey and myself with senator murray cell have been working on for a long time if there were somebody on the ground today they could go to frank if frank were alive but the people like frank and they could help him rewrite the new mortgage that he could repay and he would lose his home now after six months of the administration opposing in opposing in opposing senators brown and casey and i again with senator murray's help were able to get one hundred eighty million dollars into the omnibus mortgage omnibus budget bill at the end of last year guess how much of that is used my colleagues hundred sixty already after about six weeks seven weeks since it passed we need more to me the most important part of this bill there are a lot of good provisions is the money for the mortgage counselors not because it's a great heroic thing to do not because it dramatically restructures our economy these things are needed because it saves people's homes it saves the franks of the world a little piece of the rock they struggled so hard and long to own and to keep so we proposed another two hundred million to be honest we need five hundred million to compromise with the other side they hate all government spending some of them we've said on two hundred million and then if the mortgage counselor came around you'd still need money to refinance the mortgage that's why there are provisions for mortgage revenue bonds in the proposed there's also a proposal for cd b j money that seems to raise the ire of some government well let me say what the cd b g money will do the houses that are already foreclosed upon enervated are cancer's on neighborhoods and let's say you are a homeowner anywhere within a tenth of a mile or a home that's been foreclosed a vacant home in your neighborhood brings your home values down one percent each vacant home each foreclosed upon home so totally innocent person suffers no moral hazard here you could have paid your mortgage off and you're hurting because there a foreclosures and what this provision will do is allow the state the local governments to buy up that foreclosed home fix it up and sell it isn't that a good thing or a league and going to stay in our ideological ivory tower and say that's the government spending money of course it's the government's ending money spend money for soldiers that the next turn will cost foreclosed homes are also an external cost and so this is a good package the final provision is a bankruptcy provision which i support and i hope will stay in the bill i know it's controversial but senator durbin has wisely modified it you know the argument against it is it would raise interest rates because people would build in the cost of the lowered repayment when somebody was in bankruptcy into the original cost of the mortgage and so what senator durbin didn't an effort of compromise is actually say it will not only apply to it will only appl existing mortgages not forward looking ones not ones that are going to be signed tomorrow and so it can affect future mortgages so these are five good provisions now i want to say to senator mcconnell senator shelby and i think i speak for just about every one of us on this side of the aisle we welcome additions we welcome discussion senator johnny  georgia has a provision about a tax credit for first time homebuyers that might encourage the housing market to get going again i think it's a good provision i've asked him to send it to me i praised it while we're on break senator isaacson should get a chance to offer his a and there are many other amendments senator carper has worked diligently to try and see that f h a reform come forward senator dodd and shelby are close the only disagreement that i understand there to be is over what i would say to senator shelby and places like la an island where the average home costs about four hundred fifty thousand dollars we don't even cover half the homes right now and it was always intended that about eighty percent of the homes be covered not the very wealthy but middle class and down and hopefully they can come to a compromise on that but anyway my colleagues this is good news i know what's happened two weeks ago when we proposed the same thing we were blocked and i talked to some my colleagues on the other side of the aisle the wanted to put a bill together and they said well there were some who said the whole way the only debate that we should have on this is reduce the estate tax or make permanent the bush tax cuts in all due respect neither of those has anything to do with solving the housing crisis whatever your view is but then something happened we had a meltdown on wall street we had all these new housing figures that i mentioned during the two weeks we were away and i'm glad to see that the minority leader and others have now seen hopefully the price for inaction the price for a narrow ideological commitment no government as our economy goes down the drain and so i am hopeful and i hope pray that the negotiations that will go forward that are going forward right now between the senior and ranking members of the banking committee the chairman the ranking member of the banking committee will bear fruit let's hope we can spend the rest of this week far more productively lemoine spent the two then we spent the last week we are here in session let's hope we can debate housing let us hope that we can help the frank's of the world who have done nothing wrong and need help and when we help the frank ruggie arrow's of the world we help our economy the senate back in a quorum call or waiting for a member to come to the floor and speak in the meantime a story from congressional quarterly this afternoon senate leaders broke an impasse today over stalled housing legislation agreeing to launch bipartisan negotiations on proposals that both parties can embrace the deal paved the way for an overwhelming twenty four rather ninety four to one vote to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to a bill serving as a vehicle for the housing package christopher dodd of connecticut chairman of the banking housing and urban affairs committee and the committee's ranking republican richard shelby of alabama were assigned to hammer out a compromise version to be offered as a substitute amendment to the current legislation the agreement will allow both parties to offer floor memon so on housing related matters mcconnell mitch mcconnell the minority leader said that republicans had serious concerns about the version of the housing package that democrats had drafted they were particularly concerned about a bankruptcy provision that was strongly opposed by the lending an industry that provision which appears to be all but dead as originally conceived would allow bankruptcy court judges to change the terms of mortgages on primary residence thing cluing reducing the outstanding principal again that story from c q today the senate expected to just be in general speeches for the rest of the day again an outline of the new bill which will be brought to the senate by noon tomorrow senators will be allowed to offer amendments and our live coverage of the senate continues here on c span to states of america and that is the housing crisis the mortgage crisis and what's been happening to our homeowners or mortgage companies and to our communities i want to pay particular attention and thanks to harry reid  disagree agreed to agree and set a platform from which this senate only the way the senate can do it can deliberate the most pressing issue of the day i want to thank them for incorporating including me in those discussions and i want to share for a minute one of the things that i have shared with them and what i think is a key should be a key part of any solution that we offer on behalf of the housing market and the mortgage crisis one of the good things about getting older and i'm sixty three is you have a lot of experience hopefully all of the good but all of it isn't good i was in the real estate business for thirty three years because i came to the united states senate and was in it in one nine hundred seventy four when we went through one of the worst housing recessions ever i was we've gone through a period of easy credit and lousy underwriting except it wasn't on the mortgage side it was on the construction loan side and banks around the country if a guy came into the bank and he had a pickup truck and a hammer he qualified as a builder he went out and bought a lot and started building spec houses banks made the loans even advanced some of the interest some a and b loans the banks would own one hundred percent of the cost of acquisition and twenty percent for cost carried over the first couple of years crazy underwriting shoddy underwriting and what it led to was a plus new houses built and no buyers for those housed united states found itself in the position of having a three year supply of standing new inventory on the market and no b what happened values started declining grass started growing vandalism started taking hold on those vacant houses we had a horrible situation so the democratic congress and president ford came together and said why don't we stimulate the market to absorb these houses let's get the buyers off the sidelines and back into the buying houses so we passed a two thousand dollar tax credit to any family that bought an occupied is their principal residence a single family new house that had been built not a resale not any other house single family new house that had been built and was staying in inventory we passed that two thousand dollars credit was to give you some idea of perspective was about eight percent of the value of an average house at that particular time in the marketplace and what happened is overnight buyers we've been seeing on the sidelines came out they went and bought the standing houses that have been vacant and really were unseen for months housing values stabilized and began to go up the economy turned around and we went out of the recession into prosperity absorbed the end door and we didn't bail anybody else out we just motivated homebuyers do what they do best and that's by designated houses which were the problem i introduced two months ago a stimulus similar bill basic zacky on that experience except instead of two thousand was a fifteen thousand dollars tax credit earned over three successive years the first three years after the purchase of any one a category of three types of houses category number one a new house built and sold vacant and permitted prior to september of last year in a builder in america that permitted a house before september last year did so when times were good there was no looming indication we were going to get into the problem we're in now don't they got caught like a lot of these homeowners in junk bonds junk mortgages got caught in sub prime mortgages second is a house that qualifies as a house that has been foreclosed upon foreclosures been adjudicated and it's owned by the lender or the lenders designated agent that's a standing bacon house that's been foreclosed on is a resale and the third category is any house this  foreclosure pending adjudication that means it's being advertised foreclosure notice has been posted the house will be foreclosed on but it hasn't yet any one of those three types of houses which is where the group the growing inventory is in united states would be eligible to the bar to earn a fifteen thousand dollars tax credit allocated over the first three years in which they occupy the home if it's a speculator who's in foreclosure it doesn't qualify if it's a speculator who is trying to buy they can't get the tax credit this lighthouses being bought that are in trouble that are owner occupied principals who bought those as and it qualifies for people who are going to buy those houses refinance them pay off the loan and live in him as their residence mr president what's going to happen if the congress is able to come together and pass a tax credit flows like that is we will instantly stimulate the housing market and the marketplace consumers will begin absorbing the standing in mentor that's in foreclosure or pending foreclosure or is new and been sitting since september of last year that's precisely where the problem is that's precisely what we need to be absorbed now there are a few people have said well what about people who've been making their claim and aren't in trouble why don't you get the credit for buying their house if they want to sell it well that's not where the problem is number one and number two they're suffering from all these vacant houses being out there as well because housing values are declining appraised values are declining equities are shrinking after a lot equity lines of credit are drying up we need to focus targeted absorption by goal to see to it that the buying public goes out and solves our problem for us that's the right way to do it and one other feature of the proposal is the tax credit would only be available and able to be earned on a purchase of a designated property made between april first of two thousand and eight and march thirty first of two thousand and a one year window of opportunity that creates the urgency of the situation it motivates people to get into the marketplace or lose that opportunity and it will be a significant catalyst to the marketplace solving a significant problem for the united states of america so mr president i encourage my colleagues on the banking committee appreciate their consideration of this proposal in this concept i hope when the bill comes to the floor either in the base bill or an amendment process we can address a pass solution that decided let's make something work rather than figure out how we can just be against one another senator schumer has been a catalyst in this senator ensign's senator alexander senator reid obviously standard dodd senator shelby i want to pay tribute to tom carper the senator from delaware who was talk with me over weeks about the proposal i've just discussed in some way to find a way to bring it to the floor this that and get it out there so we can help address the problem that exist in delaware missouri georgia  all over the fifty states the united states of america i am very privileged to to be the author of them him and i'll be proud to be a part of a team that doesn't want to take credit wants to get something done but together a bipartisan bill that addresses the most contemporary administration announced their intention to create a new unified command the united united states african command or africa the u s africa command is a partnership between military and civilian communities that will focus on existing programs such as the training training peacekeeping forces that enable african nations in the region regional organizations to improve security on the continent the national security advisor stephen hadley said africa is a command that would be established for africa it will be a partnership between the military and civilians and its principal focus will be to continues to move its activities that we're already doing in try train peacekeeping forces so that countries in the region or organizations in africa can take more of a role in dealing with the conflicts in the problems on the on the on the continent it's ironic that go all over the world and yet africa is divided into three commands of pacific command the european command and the central command and yet africa is now become in my opinion the most significant continent that we need to pay more attention to i think i'm uniquely qualified to talk about this madam president i two days ago i made my ninety seven th african country visit the last country we were in this last week some five countries was ethiopia a very significant part of i also started my efforts in africa long before we had a lot of military interest in africa mine was more of a mission type of thing and i became very familiar with all of africa i now had the opportunity to sit down visit personally with the and develop intimate relations with the presidents of some twenty african nations their parliaments and many of the leaders there is matter of fact i was in ethiopia seven years ago when we came upon a little girl little girl was an orphan she was three days so she was very healthy didn't look like she would live at all and she had nothing they put her into  a an orphanage where they did the very best of what they had like so many orphanages orphanages in in africa she was actually put in a bucket and they had this cute little girl in there just feeding her intervene usually through her scalp at that time anyway there's a long story that goes with that but the short version is that my wife and i have been married forty eight years and have twenty kids and grandkids and one of our daughters molly a rape or  had only boys and she wanted a little girl and so she adopted this so this is my adopted african granddaughter kind of funny she was she was found just abandoned as an orphan and i say to the presiding officer and this is the granddaughter of mine was the speaker that night seven years ago so i have more than just a passing interest in in in africa it's a family interest to during my time on the continent i've seen significant strategic place in the world the african holds it's the sheer size of africa people don't realize if you go from east to west from  to ethiopia it takes seven hours flying if you go from north to step in cape town up to algeria it's nine hours it's a huge continent and during by the rest the  world is now realizing the importance i think our tiny's really good this is only a year ago that we embarked upon this idea that we're going to be really holding up africa and supporting a lot of people don't realize it's significant that africa that africa is the area where as this squeeze takes place in the middle east on terrorism a lot of it goes down through the horn of africa through through the djibouti and that area and spreads out throughout africa and other countries are realizing how important it is and they're doing something about it the new french president sarkozy said during a recent trip to south africa the africa should have at least one permanent seat in the u n security council in that france would no longer accept major world affairs being discussed without a leading african country being involved and there are many countries like  expanding influence in africa i can tell you madam president that that is if you as you go through africa anything that is new in showing me a bridge or colosseum anything like that is given to them by china china is trying to get a foothold in there china has the same problem it is dependency on outside sources for for for oil as we do and they're beating us too to the some of these air he is in largest trading partner united states and france are first in second i've also seen in my many travels to africa the great strength and perseverance in the african people in their fight to overcome great obstacles such as a aids malaria poverty wars and in order to achieve security and stability we've got to work to eliminate the root causes of poverty and poor governance fighting terrorism in the region has become really critical in the examples of the terrorism we remember it wasn't too long ago the bombings of our embassies in tanzania and in kenya and morris recently the bombings in morocco and  african countries have become more vulnerable as al qaida has infiltrated into the horn of africa and as the surge is working you know yesterday also after leaving africa went to the european command  and looked at the progress that we're making we're just yesterday afternoon in iraq really good things are happening there and the surge is clearly working now as the surge works what happens is as i just described a lot of the terrorist activities go down into the most convenient place to go and the most vulnerable and that is the continent of africa it's been reported that terrorist networks in somalia and eritrea are working together to increase in their little levon twelve thirteen fourteen year old kids teaching him to be soldiers and once they learn to be soldiers they have to take an automatic weapon and go back to their villages and murder their family and if they don't do this they maim him they cut their ears off their lives off this thing going on for a lot of these horrible things that are going on and it's a lot of that's because we haven't given the attention and the free world hasn't given the attention to the africans should have had a long time ago we see the conflicts in kenya that are taking  now that young democracy that unfortunately exploded into tribal conflict killing more than a thousand people after the december elections last month there are five hundred european union troops were sent to protect chad's capital from being taken over by the rebels three thousand seven hundred troops are presently protecting thousands of refugees along chad border with sudan as well as the neighboring central african republic in february the security on the african continent thomas jefferson was the first president to send american troops to the coast of africa to ward off the barbary pirates pirates playing in the mediterranean in threatening the security of europe and  colonies it's kind of funny that was that was thomas jefferson and today the same thing is happening in the in the sea of guinea they have new discoveries of oil so there's pirating going on and we're over there trying to help the surrounding countries defend themselves this is this this command is going to go a long ways to doing that we continue to support african nations in the areas for security and stability and health and education and mission is the in two thousand and three the united states helped to bring stability to liberia in djibouti the combined joint task force the horn of africa has been involved in development activities including building schools digging wells i've had occasion to be in eritrea several times it's probably the least known country in africa becoming better known because of all the atrocities that are taking place there the administration recently pledged fifteen billion dollars through the president's emergency plan for aids relief and see differently is contributing to the fight on aids and by the way one of the things to show a lot of people complain and say why are we spending money to help the africans and hiv aids that's their problem that's not our problem think is really doing the best job is the the wife of the prime minister of ethiopia the prime minister mehlis his wife was a had is is heading up a group that is having a great quip programs on the armed services committee and it's one of the strongest programs we have to develop close relations with other countries it's called the i m f program but it's a military program where we invite might add that if we don't do it other countries such as china are willing to do it we have dramatically improved our train and equip sections so that we can help commanders in the field training equip other countries and primarily my concern is there in africa so that's happening these programs have proven to be vital resources by aiding developing countries in the professionalism of their militia militaries so africa is avenue that the united states can use to recent conflict in chad in continuing conflict in sudan and emphasize the need for the united states to respond to these conflicts and to be unified the africa becomes operational these divided responsibilities were no longer exists it's set up to be operational by by october this next now this year and we've got a great guy that's going to be the commanding general he's already been confirmed is general william kip ward ward's military service includes tours all over the world that with a real interest is an interest in africa he's confirmed he was confirmed by the senate in september general ward has expressed a vision of hope for africa and for the role of the u s plays in that vision and general ward believes that the need to address the crisis situations before they arise in to address them at a micro level at the prospect of of the individual victim is critical in bringing about solutions afrikaans will be a preventative approach on the local level giving hope in times of adversity in a way forward for the future in both security and development so general words the right guy for the job he was stressed at the purpose the command was to enable the the african solutions to african challenges to support african leadership rather than to serving the or suppressing african leadership in sovereignty i think is very important we decided in the wisdom that is the right military decision for us in the united states to become interested and helping the africans develop five african commands these would be north south east with and central only to the locations have been determined right now but we make it very clear to africa we're not doing this we're not the ones who are putting big aids in there we're helping them to put their own brigade so they can take care of their own problems in somalia african countries such as ethiopia bruni in uganda has sent in troops to help stabilize the transitional government there and fight against the  a renegade leader has declared himself president the development of the african standby brigades is a good example of how we are helping them to help themselves so africa is expecting to be comfy fully operational in the first of october of two thousand and eight it's going to be at least temporarily located in germany my personal preference would be to have some place in africa right now there's some resistance to that so we're just going to go ahead and keep it in for the time being fiscal year zero eight congress appropriated seventy five million to the command and in fiscal year zero nine the president has requested three hundred eighty nine million know that sounds like a lot of money but i can't think of any place where we can actually save money more than by helping africans build up themselves in bring their allegiance in two so we've got to support africa with the adequate funding to enable that command to be fully equipped to face the challenges that they have o in africa so i'm introducing a resolution i've already introduced a resolution it's the senate resolution for a tow i'm joined by about twelve or fourteen members here i invite my friends from both sides of the aisle who have a heart for africa who believes in what we're doing to join in this resolution resolution encourages the department of defense and the state department and usa id to work cooperatively together with our african friends to bring hope in the continent it's important they work together all so often when you try to put together a program such as train equip the state department seems to think the department of finance is taking away some of their some of their power it's it becomes a turf battle we don't want that to happen and it looks like it is not going to happen in this case the resolution emphasizes that africa is expected to support and not shaped by the united states foreign policy in africa so that we would be working together and find that like encourage my friends in africa to work together with africa to find solutions to issues facing africans today under general or to leaders ship i believe african can provide that hope to the african people and i believe that is going to african and i became convinced looking around the table all the people who are working the first time you see many of the bureaucracies sitting around the same table and this didn't happen before because it was not a unified command this unified  will allow that to happen there's no place in the world that needs more attention bias right now as i said when you talk the war on terror the next area that we're going to concentrate on is africa and by taking these steps now africa will be prepared to handle their own problems and not have us have to do for them so i'm very pleased with the successes that we've had as we've been talking about a new african command for about ten years and finally it's going to become a reality this year so we need to encourage a lot of people to to get to start participating maybe to the same level that i'm participating with the with the country of africa it's a beautiful thing that's happening right now and i believe that we are going to make great progress as a result of the african command i you know the floor cincinnati who bravely served our nation in iraq sergeant mope and had been listed as missing captured for nearly four years he went missing on april ninth two thousand and four after his he will convoy seven twenty fourth transportation company was ambushed just west of baghdad since that tragic day sergeant maupin's mother and father his family have worked tirelessly to locate their son my prayers  those who have endured years of gut wrenching uncertainty and unfathomable heartache we owe this family a tremendous debt of gratitude not only for their extreme sacrifice but for their determination to prevent other parents from experiencing an information vacuum when their deployed son or daughter goes missing there are three other soldiers currently missing captured in iraq the nightmare isn't over for their families on their behalf appropriate place in the congressional record without objection so thank you madam president for months and months almost every newspaper in the country has been filled with stories of the tremendous toll the housing crisis has taken on communities across our nation my state sat on an invisible record for foreclosures last year more than eighty three thousand according to a high oh supreme court that's more than two hundred every day of the week monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday saturday sunday more than two hundred every day of the week every week fifteen hundred families lost their homes four percent of all home loans in ohio are in foreclosure the highest rate in the nation and the end is nowhere in sight in ohio there are another one hundred twenty thousand home loans that are delinquent nationally and one rating agency is now predicting a fifty percent default rate for sub prime loans made in the fourth quarter of two thousand and six many of which will reset in the fourth quarter of this year fifty percent default rate think about that one of every two sub prime loans made in the fall of two thousand and six will go bad that's not linda madam president that's gambling with someone else's home and fi in the face of this crisis the bush administration is largely taking the view that prosperity around the corner the government need not do anything phone syria efforts and market forces will be enough last summer and earlier in the year the bush administration was still arguing the problem was contained in so long as the problem was contained in places like ohio and michigan to nevada and california the administration was content to do almost nothing but what difference an address makes when the problems move from america's main streets to wall street administer the administration sprung into action in a single week in executive branch jump to rescue the investment bank bear stearns from bankruptcy if the government can leap into action to prevent the bankruptcy of a single bank how can we turn our backs on the tens of thousands of ohio families in the millions of american families that need our help congress must act in the face of this crisis majority leader reid try to months ago to bring legislation before the senate that would take several steps to help for homeowners faced with foreclosures in the communities they live in now we are trying again today we are we are we seem to be able to afford to spend three billion dollars in one week every week fifty two weeks a year in iraq but this the the president hasn't been able to find four billion dollars in one year to help the towns in the cities across the country th being gutted by foreclosures were able it seems from chairman bernanke you to spend thirty million thirty billion dollars buying a basket of mortgages from bear stearns at j p morgan wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole so why can we help cities rebuild the needs of communities are critical because this crisis has an impact far beyond just the people who lose their homes as big as those numbers might be whenever a home goes in foreclosure the value of neighboring properties is reduced in many areas local vandals move in quickly to strip the copper pipe and the aluminum from siding from a home crime goes up just when property tax revenues in the cities are plunging and the resources of a city in town are stretched to the limit senator reid's bill would include some four billion dollars in funding for the community development block grant program so communities that have been the hardest hit could renovate or rebuild in some cases raising these properties the bill of provide an additional ten billion dollars to housing finance agencies to be used to refinance mortgages to help first time homebuyers and create more multifamily rental housing majority leaders legislation would also provide two hundred million dollars in supporting the efforts of nonprofit agencies across the country to consul homeowners on how to work with a lender to stave off foreclosure we have great neighborhood conflict organizations in columbus and in toledo and in dayton and in cincinnati and all over my state this is no easy task once upon a time you took out a loan with your local bank to buy a home if i borrowed money from a local bank the banker had just as much interest in my painting my paying down my loan my staying up to date on my loan he had just as much interest as i did in making sure that i paid my mortgage you knew the people to bank they knew you you had that kind of relationship today especially for sub prime low matter madam president that sell in the case so help a navigating the mortgage maze is essential that's why those neighborhood conflicts organizations are so important the majority leader's bill would also approve disclosure of the terms of a mortgage in the last year last fourteen fifteen months since i came to the senate i tell'd about ninety five roundtables and sixty of ohio's counties talking to people about what issues matter to them the most in the communities i've heard from one ohio and after another from from marietta to lima from brien to chillicothe a from trims amesville to youngstown i've heard from one ohio and after another who never understood the real risks and dangers of the mortgages they were sold senator reid's bill also provides bankruptcy judges the ability to modify the mortgage on a primary residence in the same way that a judge can today with a vacation home or investment property or even a boat we know that lenders and their servicers cannot keep up with the flood of foreclosures they're facing much has been made of the number of loans that have been charged as a result has been charged as a result of voluntary efforts i don't discount those efforts at all but tacking late fees and penalties on the back of her alone does not do much to help a family make their monthly payment one woman who called me reported a loan modification that reduced the interest rate or a loan from eleven percent to ten percent with the late fees and penalties folded in her monthly payment barely budged modifications like these are simply not going to help to central that we permit the bankruptcy courts to serve as the backstop my republican colleagues apparently think it's ok a bankruptcy judge to modify the mortgage on a multimillion dollar vacation home but it's not ok to provide the same relief to a family facing by bankruptcy and their one hundred thousand dollar home when lenders are recovering only thirty five cents on the dollar in my state little higher nationally only thirty five cents in my state on the dollar in a foreclosed property i don't think they have anything to fear from an alternative profit says supervised by bankruptcy courts that may result in  foreclosure the bankruptcy provisions are a significant change a lot to be sure but they're responsible reaction to some extraordinarily irresponsible underwriting i understand the importance of protecting contract rights but think for a minute about the contracts that are in question here the vast majority of sub prime loans went to refinance homes they were designed to do three things to generate cs to strip out equity in quickly to become an affordable do we really want to take the position that these contracts should be beyond the reach of a bankruptcy judge i think that a president we have much work to do dealing with this foreclosure issue every day we delay to more than two hundred people twenty two hundred people more than twice the membership of this body every day loses its home in my state they deserve more from us  bipartisan piece of legislation that will come to the floor this week that will help congress do what needs to be done and hopefully what will actually work to try to relieve some of the crisis caused by the prime lending credit crunch and the slowdown in the the housing industry we have all acknowledged that this slowdown we've seen in our economy over the past few months and we've resolved to work together to try to give the american people the confidence that if there is something we can do that we will try to do it in a way that actually works and relieves the problem in  bipartisan way and i think frankly that's met with some measure of relief by people across the country i think we got off to a pretty good start when speaker pelosi and republican leader john boehner and hank paulson the secretary of the treasury came up with a stimulus package that passed clips from bipartisan majorities i think as much as anything it demonstrated that we are capable of acting together in a bipartisan way rather than just engage in gridlock and finger pointing and i hope will continue all along that trend here as we consider the legislation that senator shelby and senator dodd are working on so maybe one of the best parts about the stimulus package that we passed was the small business bonus depreciation provisions which gave the small businesses that invested in new equipment the opportunity to write that off on an accelerated basis provided a great incentive for them to purchase that new equipment and hopefully allow them to continue to create jobs it's no secret that about seventy percent of the jobs created in america are created by small businesses and we ought to do everything in our power to try to help them continue to generate jobs for hardworking americans during the during the laurier today i had a colleague come up to me and say basically said well we have to do something to deal with this crisis and of course i added well i hope we do something but more than that i hope we do something good or something that will actually work and certainly not something that will actually make things worse i think alike the medical profession we ought to consider in the senate taking a hippocratic oath of our own that first we do no harm because frankly on the earlier stimulus package where we we felt it was necessary to act to give the public confidence that we could on a bipartisan basis basically we ended up spending about one hundred fifty billion dollars to do so i think extraordinary measures were called for but th more than a little trepidation that i voted for that bill which added to the debt and particularly when we are not doing a good job of dealing with the deficit in other areas and unfunded liabilities of the federal government particularly when it comes to entitlement spending but for the same reason i voted for tax cuts in two thousand and three which i think helped contributed contribute to about fifty months of consecutive job growth in this country about nine million new jobs i think sometimes extraordinary measures are called for to help stimulate the economy but i do think that the very best stimulus package we could possibly pass would do to lighten the tax load on small businesses  american taxpayers it it works we know that when people can work hard and keep more of what they earn then the it generates not only more income from them and greater incentive to work hard it  also ironically generates more revenue for the federal treasury because more people are working more people are paying taxes and a bus helps us deal with the deficit in a way that that is is constructive  by putting people to work but at the end of the day i think what we need to do this week is to make an immediate palpable difference in the lives of families with distressed mortgages the housing market ought to be our focus and helping people with distressed mortgages not have to unload those through foreclosure and perhaps lose everything that they have have invested and that's why i'd like to see the provisions from something called the safe fact become law the safe fact which expedite the delivery of the full one hundred eighty million dollars appropriated for the fork for foreclosure counseling just last december and helped stabilize the housing market itself the state say fact includes a fifteen thousand dollar tax credit this is been proposed by our colleagues in georgia senator isaacson of leaves senator stabenow on the other side of the aisle has something similar but basically what it would do is provide a tax credit that would give people an incentive to buy existing inventory of new housing or housing that was currently in foreclosure proceedings obviously our housing market has a big impact on employment and it has a big ripple effect on the economy generally and this fifteen thousand dollars tax credit over three years i think would provide a powerful incentive for people who were are in the market to purchase a single family home in foreclosure or a new home from existing inventory which now in many cases just sits vacant this would make it more affordable for families looking to start buying a home and will provide an incentive for people to re enter the market in the coming year finally to make sure that the same problems are avoided in the future we need to focus on increasing transparency and information for prospective borrowers now i agree with senator mccain who said we should not be about bailing out lenders unscrupulous lenders who made bad loans or people who  made a mistake of borrowing money they could not pay back perhaps betting on the continuous bubble in housing prices in the housing market but what we do owe the american taxpayer the american consumer is transparency in information which will allow them to consider for example when they buy an adjustable rate mortgage that they shouldn't understand what they're getting into and that means letting  details of any new introductory rate and payment and what their new adjustable rate will be and how much they can expect their payments to be we must ensure consumers fully understand their mortgages and that they have a completely free and well informed choice when it comes to their loans that's the only way i believe we can really hope to avoid future problems in the housing and banking industries in the future beyond making sure that  that underwriters don't to don't intentionally loan money to people they know can't pay pay it back but those have to be resolved on a on a transaction by transaction  basis perhaps by the courts the senate should make sure that any proposal does not produce insurmountable challenges for perspective and current home purchase homeowners too often the work we do in the senate has the has the effect of unforseen and unintended consequences and here again we should do no harm and i think be careful not to not to cause problems while we're trying to fix problems for that reason i'd be hesitant to support any proposal that increases the size of the government's budget at the expense of the family budget i could not support proposals that actually make homeownership more expensive encourage costly litigation or expand washington programs the senate should not be making homeownership more expensive for working families that's what i believe for example the bankruptcy provision that would allow bankruptcy judges to actually cram river or reduce interest rates thus devaluing that particular financial instrument would actually in the long run i think have the unintended consequence of raising interest rates and the cost of mortgage i think every member of this body can agree the last thing the senate should be doing is making things harder on families and making it more difficult for small businesses to grow and create jobs here at home when this se passed the economic stimulus package it affirms the basic principle that economic growth is best served through tax payers and people who are earning the money being able to keep more of it it would be in comprehensible to me to now turn around and pursue a mortgage plan that would take that money away through bigger government programs or higher costs or homes or mortgages let me say that in my home state of texas we continue to enjoy strong job creation and although there's been a downturn in the housing markets by and large we're running at a countercyclical fashion to much of the rest of the of the nation our unemployment rate is at a thirty year low and over the past year texas says let the sobbing lead the nation in job creation we have accomplished this by some things that are pretty obvious but i think they're worth noting things like low taxes commonsense regulation and an economy based to a large extent on free trade all of these factors give businesses the tools to grow and families the stability to live and it not coincidental glimpse of dentally allows or encourages job creators and businesses to move to our state thus creating in the last well since two thousand about three million people have moved have moved to texas i think people tend to vote with their feet where they find opportunity and i think this formula of lower taxes less regulation a right to work without having to join a labor union you can if you want but you shouldn't be forced to do so just to get a job those in addition to common sense tort reform and some medical liability reform which is reduce the cost of medical liability insurance some seventeen percent as encourage a lot of physicians to move to our state and create a lot more access to good quality health care so from my standpoint mr president we kind of know what works what helps encourage the economy what helps stimulate the economy and what provides the incentives for american works workers to work hard and  businesses to be attracted to a particular state or location i would urge all my colleagues to join me in supporting a well reasoned and well reasoned and proven measures such as these while rejecting other proposals that would increase onerous regulation drive of housing and loan costs and build a barrier between more families and homeownership we've worked well in the past when we've worked together and i hope that this will be this week will be yet another example of good work we can accomplish when we put partisan politics aside to work out solutions in a way that addresses the real problems that face the american people mr president you the floor present senator from tennessee president noticed the center from texas was talking about all those people moving to texas there was a point in our history in this country when half of tennessee moved to texas back almost every texan you find is that a tennessee ancestor whether it's davy crocket or sam houston or some other person i want to follow up the senator from texas remarks with and his focus on the family budget his focus on the way this senate is working senator mcconnell our republican leaders said often that in the united states senate that process is often substance now when i was a governor of tennessee i didn't understand them very well because the job of a governor is to see an urgent need and develop a strategy for meeting the need and then persuading half the people you're right so i left the process to somebody else in probably didn't show as much respect for the process as i should when i was a university president i was humbled a great deal in learned a little bit more about process and now that i'm in the united states senate i understand even more that the republican leader is a very wise man when he says process is often substance so the first thing that i would like to say this afternoon is that what we saw this afternoon when the majority leader democrat harry reid and republican leader mcconnell stood together with others of us and said we're going to work together and try to produce a housing bill that helps stabilize home values for american families and as it does that helps restart our economy that was a very important event although it was was process out of this messy situation we have here where one hundred of us have a right to actually bring the senate to a halt we had two leaders with a consensus about process and assigning to two of our more respected members the senator from connecticut senator dodd senator shelby the center of ramallah bama the job of coming back to us in the middle of tomorrow and giving us the next step in recognizing that in the united states we have a housing problem and it's one that by and large may have to correct itself because of our huge free market that we hate but there are steps that we can take in the united states government to help stabilize home values that would be good for the family budget it would help to restart the economy it would be good for the country and so i want to commend senator reid and senator mcconnell for their for their stands and to say they're on the right course and i say that as i see the senator from colorado who has done so much in this body to help us keep our eye on the ball and do what the american people expect us to do the american people don't expect us not to have differences of opinions of course we have differences of opinions that's really why issues are here if they can be easily solved they would have been solved at the county commission or in the state government but these issues have been kicked up to the national level and they're hard tough issues and we're expected to have differences of opinion and we have democrats on that side republicans on this side because we have different principles that we emphasize sometimes usually the same principles they're often in conflict and we and then we have to work those work those out so we're going to have a big strong rousing debate here about housing no one should should misunderstand then but what the leaders of say that is what the leaders ought to say in the united states that is we see a real problem here in housing in the united states of america we see families who are word we see home values that are risky and we believe there are some steps that we can agree on that would be good for the country within our budgets and that would help stabilize home values and restart the economy help the family budget they said that's what we're going to do of all the things that people say to me in tennessee when we talk about issues they basically say a lot i don't you guys or something less flattering why don't you senators stop the pettus petty partisan bickering or in my words stop the kindergarten politics and go to work on big issues affecting our country and try to get a result that's what senator from colorado spends a lot of his time here in the senate trying to do i try to do that most of us try to do that we're all here i think to get some result and the leaders have given us an opportunity to try to get one here there are some good precedents for this when people see as debating they shouldn't think that there's something wrong with that we have big principle debates here it's what they don't like is the kindergarten politics when we are just here to stick our fingers in each other's eyes the american people can smell that a mile away and they hate they don't like but that's not what we did on the america competes act last year senator reid and senator mcconnell mcconnell co sponsored it because so many of us supported the idea wasn't so easy the pass was thirty four billion dollars of authorization to try to help us keep our jobs from going overseas by keeping our brainpower advantage here but we had no limits on the debate everybody who wanted to amendment and we passed the legislation it's now in place and we're working on funding it and it's helping low income kids who couldn't afford advanced placement tests have them it's helping universities train more math and science and physics teachers it's put us on a path to double funding for the physical sciences in the office of science and in the national science foundation things we must do as a country if we want to keep our standard of living so we did that together at the end of last year we brought up an energy bill senator salazar and i worked together on on many energy ideas but this was an especially important bill krishna national laboratory of tennessee said to me repeatedly the single most important thing you could do to reduce dependence on foreign oil and stop sending dollars overseas to some people who are trying to kill us is to reduce the consumption of oil by passing a fuel efficiency standards so that we would increase the average amount per gallon of all cars and trucks we did that now we had a argument about whether to have twenty billion more dollars of  taxes and we voted that down some of us did but we didn't just stop there and go home take our football leave the floor we came to a result and we did the most important thing we could do to try to reduce our dependence on foreign oil which by the way is the real way to stabilize and begin to bring down the price of the gallon of gas so we did that together and then at the beginning of this next year this year the president and the house of representatives got together with what we call economic stimulus package in fairly record time we approved provisions that will have in the state of tennessee two point seven million tennesseans receiving six hundred twelve hundred or in some cases eighteen hundred dollars of they've got a happily kids of their own money for the most part back so they can spend it and fifty billion dollars for small businesses in some of our smaller counties there are hundreds of small businesses who can take advantage of keeping a little bit more of their money maybe adding a job and that's coming in time to hell we hear on the news today that consumer confidence is a problem well the rebate checks and the small business deductions are a bout to go into effect and that was something that we did together we had principled disagreements but we came to a result and one other example on intelligence i mentioned a little earlier a very wise man once said samuel huntington that most of our conflicts are about principles with which we all agree for we all we we agree all of us that the senator from colorado in the senator from tennessee and every american that the prince of the liberty is important and so is the principle of security that each one of us when they came in conflict when we begin to debate what are the rules for overhearing a conversation from an al qaeda terrorists in the middle east calling into the united states for six months we debated that but we came to a result liberty versus security so no one watching the senate should think there wasn't a debate here there was a vigorous debate and impassioned debate kind of a we ought to be having but it wasn't about kindergarten politics it was about liberty versus security and then we came to a result so on i'm on the competitiveness on energy efficiency on on economic stimulus on intelligence in the united states senate we came to result what senator reid and senator mcconnell said today we're going to try to do the same thing in housing we're going to try to do the same thing in housing now the second thing i'd like to say is that there are several things going on about our financial situation today several solutions and less sort them out secretary paulson and others have suggested some a badly needed fresh look at our financial institutions and how they're regulated that's going to take a while that is easy to do very complex and it ought to be it ought to take a while in this country of ours we produce about thirty percent of all the money in the world every year and we do it in this great big free market with many different parts to it and so anytime we begin to change things about the regulation we need to be careful about what we do but what we're talking about and what the leaders of the senate announced today is not down the road it's today and tomorrow what we do today and tomorrow to help the family budget a stabilizing home values which we hope will help to restart the economy and there are a lot of there are a lot of good ideas out there there's some that we may be able to agree on fairly quickly now the last thing i want to try to do is to do the work of senator dodd senator shelby for them they've got a big task their assignment from the leaders is to take a day and so they and their staff to be working most of the night to see if there are of few things that most of us can agree on that can form the basis of what we're going to do and then as i understand it we'll begin to have votes hopefully on issues related to housing and my guess will be that if they're important and controversial issues in most cases it will require sixty votes in other words will have a core of a bipartisan core hopefully that senator dodd senator senator shelby will propose and then we'll have some a series of votes to try to improve the bill and well as some differences about what improves it and what doesn't improve it for example one thing that i think doesn't improve it and many on this side don't think improves it is the idea of letting bankruptcy judges rewrite home mortgages for homes that are in foreclosure it sounds good might help a few people but here's what else it would do it would raise the risk for all those who bo mortgages in the future if the risk is higher interest rate is high if the interest rate is higher what does that mean for the family budget it means higher monthly mortgage payments now the congressional budget office says there could be higher interest rates the mortgage bankers association said there will be higher interest rates they suggest in the state of tennessee it might be about one hundred twenty dollars on the average now i don't think it helps the housing slump if we pass legislation that has the effect of raising most home mortgages by one hundred twenty dollars a month that's a big raise for most people so we think that's a bad idea my guess is that will be offered on the floor we'll debate it and i hope we defeated but at least we'll be here debating it and offering our reasons for against it i i will be saying if it comes up in that form it reminds me of junk bond something that was cooked up in the early one nine hundred eighty s they call them junk bonds because they were higher risk by and when they were placed into the marketplace investors said well we'll buy em but we're going to we're going to require more of an interest rate return now there came to be some other problem with these high yield junk bonds but that's not the the other probs aren't what i'm talking about i'm talking about the very simple equation that if we introduce more risks into home mortgages then when people buy those home mortgages they're going to require a higher interest rate and if there's a higher interest rate that's a higher lovely mortgage payment for families in tennessee the estimate is maybe one hundred twenty dollars a month so that's not one of the ideas that i hope is in the final result but an idea that might be in the final result has substantial democratic support and i think republican support is taking an amount of money maybe ten billion dollars in new bond authority for refinancing senator bond has that in his legislation for example that would be tax exempt bond authority that could be used to refinance sub prime loans to provide mortgages for first time homebuyers and multifamily rental housing that would mean that you could if you've got a sub prime loan and and suddenly your adjusted rate has jumped up to a level you can't afford and that's going to happen with a lot more mortgages in the next few months then the state housing agencies could make a deal with you to refinance that loan in effect pay off the old one avenue and at a lower interest rate that you're comfortable with so the money gets paid back or most of it and the house is not in foreclosure and there's more stability in the market that's an idea that i could personally vote for and i know it has support on both sides another idea which has come from the republican side but has attracted some interest on the democratic  senator isaacson's proposal now senator isaacson may be the junior senator from georgia but he's no spring chicken he's this is a real estate business for a long time before he came here and he's been around long enough to see the housing slump in the one nine hundred seventy s so he said let's not just invent some ideas that might help let's look back in our his a little bit and see if there was ever anything that worked in a similar circumstance that we could use to help preserve home values today and he has pointed out that was introduced legislation of which i'm a co sponsor and many others are senator bond has included in his legislation as well that would create a three year five thousand dollars a year tax credit for home by of homes that are in foreclosure or or or that are new for a limited period of time now some work would have to be done to make sure that this wasn't just for speculators but the idea is a pretty simple one let's create some more home buy because that's good for homeowners not just those with foreclosed homes the person who's got the foreclosed home on the block but for everybody else on the block whose house isn't foreclosed because if we stabilize the housing market by an influx of new homebuyers that will help preserve home values for everybody else on the market and that will bring more confidence to the economy i think that's a very good idea because the money ten or twelve billion dollars it would cost in the form that it was originally introduced but maybe it could be done it a little less of a cost and one thing we know it was tried before in the one nine hundred seventy s senator isaacson says that at that time we had a three year inventory of unsold homes and that this tax credit at a lower figure than because the dollars were a little less than that tax credit help reduce the him and torrie of unsold homes from three years to one year that's an idea that's worthy of consideration there's a lot of talk on both sides of the aisle about counseling of people buying homes i bought a house sold some homes i'm trained to be a lawyer i've been in government i wouldn't think of buying or selling a home without a lawyer's help and i'm not sure i can understand all the forms that i signed the most recent time i did this we can do much better than that the basic information ought to be up front so people can understand that this is first how long your mortgage lasts what the interest rate is during the whole time what the monthly cost is those are the basic things and then there's some other things so full disclosure  the senator from texas was talking about that earlier loan counseling those are ideas that we can that we can help with senator martinez a former secretary of housing and urban development was a part of the press conference this morning that the republican leader called to offer the several republican ideas that we have which we hope are considered in this debate tomorrow which we believe now will be because of the process that we were undertaking he has simple proposals about f h a loans which are the loans that first time homebuyers often have and for how to deal with the big agencies that by mortgages fannie and freddie freddie mac so there is a lot that we can do mr president in the united states senate to help preserve home values and the way to find out what we can do is to do exactly what the democratic leader and the republican leader have given us the opportunity to do now finally i would like to i would like to say this as i said at the beginning of my remarks no one should believe that because the democratic and republican leader and the rest of us standing behind them put us into a process to try to achieve a result that it will be easy that there will be a debate or that there's any guarantee of success senator dodd senator she is not an option i believe that too but we're going to have to discuss it to get there it may take a few days we're dealing with a a big a big economy so process may be result process may be substance but this is the beginning of the process toward a result also at least from my point of view i would not want anyone to think that i believe that the government by itself can can can solve this problem we sometimes forget and particularly at a time when we have an economic slowdown as we did today when a fortunate country we are and what a strong economy we had i mentioned a little earlier year in and year out this economy in the united states of america and it will do it again this year as it did last year and it will do it again next year produces thirty percent of all the wealth in the world is measured by gross domestic product for just five percent of the people of the world five percent of us over americans live here yet we we produce we will produce this year about thirty percent of the wealth in the world according to the international monetary fund now we're in a little bit of slow but i think it's important for the american people to understand we're being honest about that it is a slowdown it is a housing slump we've got a problem but we've also got a big strong economy not just a big strong economy we've got the biggest strongest economy and the freest market and our fundamental approach here in the government obvious make sure that it stays that way and so for me and for many on this side of the out maybe others over there too there are some very fundamental long term propositions t hat the way to really balance the family budget is to have low taxes and have less government and have two year budget so we can have more time to have oversight and review regulations which means less regulations the way to have a strong economy is to have the right labor management relations and that means in the state of tennessee for example when we were recruiting automobile plants it meant the right to work law was very important to us it means that we also need to have a first class education system for all americans and that means dealing with disagreeable subjects like paying teachers more for teaching well or giving low income kids more choices of good schools that wealthy pay it to stop runaway lawsuits so doctors don't move out of rural areas and and and pregnant women have to drive sixty miles to memphis to see a doctor for prenatal health care to have their baby that drives up health care costs and also means we need to work together to find a way for every american to have health insurance i'm giving a long list of things here but if we really want economic strength that's what it takes i learned this in a very small way as a governor the third poorest a the one nine hundred eighty s my goal was to raise family incomes and i kept working over eight years to find ways to do that there was never just one way to do it we already had low taxes and we had a right to work alone but our good location helped and we had to get rid of the usury limit and then we had to begin to improve the schools and then i found we needed four lane highways said there are many parts there are many parts to a good strong economy so these temporary measures that we're taking hopefully in the next few days will asshole help preserve home values by stabilizing housing and restarting the economy i see no reason why we can't create more transparency and more counseling and make it possible for more mortgage to be refinance and give tax credits to homebuyers to create more homeowners we can do that but these are short term measures then we can have other principal debates here in the united states senate about whether we're going to have lower taxes and whether we're going to have less government and whether we're going to have fewer runaway lawsuits or whether we're going to have to be willing to pay teachers more for teaching well or have a research and development tax credit so our companies won't go overseas or whether we're going to create opportunities for skilled researchers and workers to come into the united states so we can in source some of the brainpower that creates all this wealth that we've enjoyed for so long so i'm glad to be have the opportunity come to florida day to congratulate senator reid and senator mcconnell i think they've done what leaders ought to do they put the senate in a position to do what we should do and that is to stand on our principles offer our best ideas working good faith across party lines and try to get a result and help the american people the american people like to see us acting that way and i'm glad i've been a part of the united states senate that acted that way on the american competes act that did that weigh on the fuel efficiency standards that acted that way on economic stimulus that acted that way on intelligence and on the intelligence bill we just passed recently and that is preparing to act that way on housing thank you mr president i as the president the senator from new jersey lost their homes since then we've been watching home prices fall we've been watching foreclosure rates skyrocket and we have been watching tens of thousands of americans lose their jobs in my home state of new jersey over the next two years we expect more than fifty seven thousand homes to be lost to foreclosure that means fifty seven thousand families who will have to hand over the keys to their homes fifty seven thousand families who will be forced to say goodbye to the place where they were nurtured and comfortable place where they live the good and bad times place they came home to every night the place they celebrated birthdays and wept over losses in the words the families will know what it feels like to lose their homes they feel like they've lost nationwide the number of foreclosures that are going to happen if we don't act is unfathomable two million two million american families are in line to lose their homes over the next two years and everyone stands to lose from foreclosures lenders report losing tens of thousands of dollars on each foreclosure neighbors see the value of their own homes drop and when we see that sixty three thousand americans lost their jobs just a month ago when we see weak earnings reports from businesses wild swings in the stock market and the collapse a major firm on wall street we can see that this housing crisis is truly shaking the entire economy to its core it clearly has a major major major ripple effect we all know that the heart of this economic downturn is the housing crisis so the question is how long are we going to watch before we realize it's time to take action now mr president i marveled when a year ago a year ago this past march i said at a senate banking committee hearing we're going to have a of foreclosures and the bush administration said oh no that's the over dramatization and i said then i hope you're right and i'm wrong the reality is we haven't even seen the crest of tsunami take place now not only did they say it wasn't real but they refuse to act in any meaningful way but when it was clear that a major investment bank on wall street was in trouble the bush administration rushed to the scene life firefighters responding to a five alarm blaze thirty billion dollars but up to ensure a j p morgan chase could could buy bear stearns now regardless and we will be reviewing the both the propriety and the way in the standards that we used to pursue that whether that is the appropriate standard the way bear stearns ultimately was priced but a full here into the subprime mortgage crisis they have done nothing but the snooze button on the alarm as millions of americans watched their dreams of homeownership go up in smoke so it's time we react with the same urgency and seriousness no matter if the people who are in financial trouble are occupying a suburban home in madison or a row house in newark or can do now i'm hopeful that today finally there is a glimmer of hope for homeowners who have been left to fight this battle alone it's clear that members on both sides of the aisle have gotten the message that it's time to act and it's clear what our goal has to be helping families keep their homes and in doing so helping our economy which affects all of us all of us so i'm pleased that we've made what seems to be an important breakthrough in the chamber i have the utmost dodd and ranking member shelby that they understand the urgency of hands that they will do their best to put it forward in a workable solution that we can all support and i certainly hope it's one that i can support as well but i strongly support the reid bill a majority leader's reid's bill as it is and i understand the nature of compromise and negotiation so i know it will change but i would hope that bipartisanship won't mean that we will stray far from providing the direct assistance that homeowners need to stop foreclosures so here are a few key steps that final bill i think has to take first we need to provide funding for counseling in order to reach and keep families at risk of losing their homes many american families i started on this recess where we are working back in our states many american families are sitting around their kitchen tables looking through their mortgage bills their finances and yes their bank notices and they don't know where to turn they don't know exactly what to do not like they've got a pot that was of money sitting in the bank they don't try to keep it together keep their families together keep their hopes and dreams and aspirations together counsels can offer them real solutions and options to help them avoid receiving that foreclosure notice or even worse foreclosure itself the read bill puts forward two hundred million to make sure accounting reaches those who need it the most and i think that's incredibly important second we need to provide funding to allow communities with high foreclosure rates to access community development block grants communities can use these funds to purchase foreclosed properties for rehabilitation rental resale now having a foreclosed homes that are abandoned in a community doesn't benefit anyone and this is one of the key points that i always make when i talk about this issue mr president because a lot of people say well you know that's not about me i i got the right mortgage i'm paying for it this is about some people who made the wrong choices and i don't want to pay for their wrong choices the problem with that is first of all i'll talk about in the moment people were led to choices where maybe they didn't have the financial literacy maybe they didn't have the wherewithal to fully understand the nature of what they in many cases were being misled to into a mortgage products they should have never been in but you know even looking at it in that respect the bottom line is it affects us all why because a foreclosed home that sits abandoned in the community doesn't benefit anyone it decreases surrounding home biology values and it can attract crime and vandalism the bottom line is that foreclosures destabilize neighborhoods the funds in this bill allow communities to stop that death spiral before it starts now some argue that stepping in to help our communities recover from the housing crisis would somehow be a blow to the concept of personal responsibility because some homeowners as i that made bad choices in signing up for sub prime mortgages well first of all let me say don't get me wrong personal responsibility is important and that's why we need greater support for homeowner education or foreclosure counseling and financial literacy so when the one thinking about buying a home will be able to understand the terms of their mortgage even the fine print and have the tools to protect themselves mr president what i have a problem as i listen to somebody in the chamber is it seems that personal responsibility is always talked about as it relates to the consumer personal responsibility isn't just important for homeowners however every participant in the life of a loan needs to step up and take real responsibility and actually what what got us to where we are today in my mind and bridles unbridled free market extra extreme successes without appropriate regulation or without the attention of regulators has brought us to where we are now i believe in the free market but when it is on br this is what happens every broker or lender reliques or every appraiser regulator credit rating agency and investing firm needs to make changes if we have any hope of quieting the storm and not reliving it and not reliving a time for blame games are over the time for action has come there and i hope this body looks carefully at a provision that could help more than six hundred thousand famil stuck in bad loans keep their homes and i know some of my colleagues are very concerned about this provision which would give judges in bankruptcy proceedings the discretion to modify loan terms but the fact it is this provision is very narrowly taito tailored it is a one time limited fix and in the end it's a win win i believe not only for borrowers but lenders allied this provision alone would help over fourteen thousand families in my state of new jersey of void for closure that would be a savings of about five million dollars in home values alone my good friend senator durbin has done i think an excellent  hammering out a compromise and i hope my colleagues will give a careful consideration you know it's interesting under the existing bankruptcy law if you happen to have the good fortune of having a second home a vacation home a leisure home well guess what the bankruptcy judge you can go ahead and change your financial obligations on that home but the very essence of the american dream which is the home in which you live and raise your family go through good and bad times  that that can't be renegotiated but an interesting set of values for a leisure home we can go ahead and bankruptcy judge can change the terms but for those who are sucked into a sub prime mortgage we should have never been in those types of mortgages and for which the regulation wasn't there to ensure that there was transparency and make sure that there was oversight oh no we can't touch that in a place that talks so much about values i just don't understand that s mr president as we in this congress are debating how best to help homeowners how best to end the heils in crisis and how best to get this economy back on track we have to see the bigger picture there's a lot at stake no matter who we are no matter if we have a sub prime mortgage or not no matter whether we are making our obligations meet or whether we are finding ourselves in distress we are all in this together when the house next to ours gets voided up it affects the value of our property too and how safe we feel walking around our neighborhood at night and when that value goes down when that value goes down it reduces the equity that we have in our homes on upon which we can borrow to put our kids through college to take care of an uncovered medical bill or emergency or even for the resources will have for our retirement no one is immune so this sense of personal responsibility yes but understand that we all have a stake when a neighbor of ours has to declare bankruptcy and is forever saddled with debt they can't pay they shop less that our stores purchase few of the services that our community offers and obviously the more foreclosures we see in a neighborhood property values decline when those property devalues decline rate will bases go down at the very way in he's ultimately received their resources which means what either taxes have to go up to cover the existing services of police firefighters education or other or we cut the service we all in this together on a nonprofit organization in jersey city is close to finishing the building of its new arts center so we can give kids an opportunity to do something productive after school and stay away from the gangs and they can't get the last bit of money they need because of this credit crunch in this housing crisis that affects us all dr martin luther king reminded us that we are quote we are all high in a single garment of destiny and that we cannot walk alone mr president this is a crisis in which we are all in together as a nation and there is no reason we can't all work together to end it is in the american interests to do so and i hope that the senate which is shown a moment of a possibility of what can be done seizes that moment on behalf of our fellow citizens but also on mr president in florida mr president i ask consent to speak as if in morning business without objection mr president i wish to speak to any issue that is all too familiar to my state of florida but has now taken on such importance that it is a subject that is all too familiar to the entire country joined by our sister state michigan and it's an issue that is sacred to our democracy and it is the issue of the right to vote and to have that vote counted as it was intended a year ago mr president the florida legislature passed a bill to move florida's presidential primary to an early date on the national election calendar and their thinking was to give our large and diverse state which is a microcosm of the entire country more of a say in the selection of presidential nominees this bol aided the two national party's rules and the threat was made that if florida moved ahead both the republican national committee and the democratic national committee would take away half of florida's del florida legislature despite that changed the date of florida's election by law moving it one week earlier than the imposed deadline by the two national parties florida legislature is controlled by the republican party and the democrats in the legislature through their democratic leader in the florida house as well as the florida senate offered an amendment to put the date of the florida primary back to february the fifth so they did did not violate the two national party rules that amendment was defeated the bill went on to final passage and in addition to the january twenty ninth date for the presidential primary it was primarily a bill about election machines and accountability so on final passage it was clearly going to be a near unanimous vote and therefore the florida legislature passed and the republican governor signed into law the new election date i repeat that story because people who want to penalize florida  missed the fact that it was not florida democrats that changed the day well we all know what happened after that both national parties decided to punish florida because there those party's rules reserves the early presidential contest to a handful of other states the republican national committee pursuant to their rules took away half of florida's delegation the democratic national committee decided to extract an extra pound  flesh and took away all of the delegates of florida's delegation now for eight months now mr president i have been immersed in a fight to get the chairman of my party to in the stalemate and to seat florida's delegates and to honor the january twenty ninth primary vote and it was on that date it was a historic turnout some three point six million citizens headed to the polls and cast ballots in florida's democratic and republican presidential primaries and for me mr president it's pretty simple it's a case of fundamental rights versus party rule so when there could not be a compromise as worked out last august september and into october i sued my own party in federal district court and in december the federal judge ruled against my motion and at that late date it was too late to appeal i have continued to push for my party to find a way to seat a delegation from florida while giving floridians a meaningful voice in the selection of their party's nominee and this fight has been based on the principle that in america every citizen has an equal right to vote it's based on a premise that floridians are entitled to have their votes cal as intended and it's been based on a belief that we all deserve a say in picking our presidential nominees so more recently i had along with others asked the national democratic party to look into paying for a mail in revoked the party declined the state party proposed it few people could agree on the specifics and certainly the candidates themselves couldn't agree on the specifics and now we are at a point where reaching a solution is critical and so i have when we were last in session about two and a half weeks ago i proffered to the two candidates who happened to be the two democratic candidate that's who happened to be on the floor that day when we had a session that lasted most of the night i asked them to consider a proposal whereby they would go back to the original rules of the democratic party and see the delegation with half of its vote but still based on the january twenty ninth results this is allowed by the democratic rules as it was done by the g o p and if nothing else all of this brouhaha that we now find ourselves in this election is proved and it is certainly provided further evidence that our system is broken and yet as to our right to vote and to have that vote count there can be no debate the goal is simple the principle is very simple it's one person one vote well last fall i filed legislation here in the senate to require that no vote be cast for federal office on a touch screen voting machine starting in the next presidential election four years from now and i also join the senior senator from michigan senator levin to propose a system of six rotating inner regional primaries from march to june in each presidential election year and very soon i am filing a broader based alexion reform bill and this new legislation will abolish the electoral college which it will be a proposed constitutional amendment and therefore gives citizens direct election of their president by the popular vote we have seen in the history of this country a few times when one candidate gets the most votes but it's the other candidate that wins because of the archaic electoral college process provided in the constitution and in this new package it will have the six rotating inner regional primaries that will give both large states and small states a fair say in the nomination process this legislation will establish early voting in each state to make it easier for the voter to vote instead of going just on one day it will eliminate machines that don't produce a voting paper trail so that if you have to recant you don't have just a piece of software you've got the actual paper trail in order to be able to do the recount in an accurate way and this package will allow every qualified voter in every state to cast an absentee ballot on demand in some states you can't cast an absentee ballot unless you fill out some affidavit that says that you're not going to be in your city on the day of the election or that you're sick and you can't get to the election we ought to make it easy for the voter to vote the package will also give grants to states that develop ma balloting and grants for pilot studies to study secure internet voting mr president we've had too many of these questions arise in my state of florida over the years and perhaps this is why floridians are so sensitive about this so i'm reaching out to my colleagues i respectfully ask each of the senators to make suggestions to make this a better bill let's remember that it was more than two hundred thirty years ago that our founding fathers declared that all men are created equal but the country still had to wait another eighty seven years before president lincoln signed a proclamation freeing the slaves and then it took another fifty seven years before women in america were allowed to vote in eighteen seventy two susan b anthony was arrested for voting and after that she delivered a speech on women's right to vote the ballot she said is the only means of securing the blessings of liberty provided by this government let me repeat that profound words the ballot susan b anthony said is the only means of securing the blessings of liberty provided by this government and even still it took another ninety three years before our nation belatedly enacted a president this country cannot afford to wait another ninety three years before we fix the flaws that we still see in our election system the blessings of liberty cannot wait and mr president with what we've seen thus far in this election cycle the time for election reform is now mr president i yield the flo without objection mr president i ask unanimous consent that the health committee be discharged from further consideration of s two seven five six and the bill be referred to the committee on the judiciary is report center resolution four ninety five designating april two thousand a as financial literacy month without objection the senate will proceed to the measure mr president i ask  the resolution be agreed to the preamble be agreed to the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate and that any statements related to the resolution be placed in the record at the appropriate place as if for it is their objection without objection so ordered mr president i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar six one seven s nine eighty the clerk will report cal number six seventeen s nine eighty bill to amend the controlled substances act to address online pharmacies without objection the senate proceeds to the men mr president unanimous consent a feinstein substitute amendment at the desk be agreed to the committee substitute amendment as amended be agreed to the bill as amended be read three times  passed the motions to reconsider be laid on the table with no intervening action or debate and any statements related to the bill be placed in the record at the appropriate place as if read is the objection without objection so ordered mr president i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to executive session to consider calendar numbers for seven one and four seven three that the nominations be confirmed in block the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table in block and the president be immediately notified of the senate's act and the senate return to legislative session is very objection without objection so ordered mr president i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today the senate stand adjourned until nine thirty a m tomorrow wednesday april second that following the prayer in the pledge the journal of the proceedings be approved today the morning are be deemed expired the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day and that the senate resumed consideration of the motion to proceed to h r three two two one and that all time during any adjournment recess or period of morning business cal host cloture further that at twelve thirty p m the majority leader be recognized without objection so ordered mr president if there is no further business to come before the senate i ask that it stand