H144 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — HOUSE January 9, 2009 

(Mr. DEFAZIO addressed the House. 

His remarks will appear hereafter in 

the Extensions of Remarks.) 

f 

THE $700 BILLION GOVERNMENT 

BAILOUT IS NOT WORKING 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a 

previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. KAPTUR) is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, in 

2008, Wall Street’s biggest banks got 

Congress to hand over to them $700 billion of your taxpayer money. Now they 

want more. 

Yesterday, Neel Kashkari, the Interim Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability, gave a speech at the 

Brookings Institution. He gave fancy 

sounding bureaucratic names to the 

$175 billion that he has already forked 

over. He called it Capital Purchase 

Program, Asset Grant Guarantee Program, Targeted Investment Program. 

Essentially he was talking about the 

$20 billion that went to Citigroup. 

He asked rhetorically, when will we 

see the new banks making loans? Well, 

that is part of his job, to get them to 

make the loans. But he said as long as 

confidence remains low, banks will remain cautious about extending credit. 

Oh, Mr. Kashkari, we know that well. 

The reason the auto industry is in 

trouble is because credit has dried up. 

Car loans can’t be made. 

So let me get this straight: He wants 

more money, because he has only given 

$175 billion from the taxpayers’ money 

out there in the country to the biggest 

banks that did the wrongdoing to begin 

with, and they are still reluctant to 

lend. 

Let me give Mr. Kashkari a dose of 

reality. Your program isn’t working, 

and it is not working for Main Streets 

across this country. 

PNC Bank of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of the Nation’s largest 

banks, now the fifth largest bank, has 

received $7.5 billion from Mr. Kashkari. 

b 1415 

And instead of providing additional 

lending capacity and loan workouts for 

those mortgages to help resolve the 

problem, PNC took the money. And 

you know what they did? They came 

across the border to Ohio and they 

bought National City Bank in Cleveland. 

I see my dear colleague from the city 

of Cleveland, Congressman KUCINICH

here this evening. He understands this 

well. 

National City has been a 

headquartered institution in Ohio, 

headquartered in Cleveland since 1845. 

Now, Treasury’s money, the taxpayers’ money, went to PNC and they 

came to Ohio and bought National City 

Bank, putting all those people out of 

work. And PNC became bigger. So what 

Mr. Kashkari did was take our money 

and give it to PNC, that hasn’t worked 

down any of those loans, but they came 

to Ohio and bought out National City 

Bank. So PNC gets bigger, our banking 

system gets more concentrated, and 

PNC becomes more powerful. Some say 

they actually have price control power 

on the western side of Pennsylvania. 

So, PNC gets $7.5 billion. Cleveland 

and Ohio lose a Fortune 500 company, 

and Ohio, where foreclosures are raging, gets nothing. We get nothing. We 

just get more foreclosures. 

In 2008, Citigroup, one of the main 

culprits that caused the financial meltdown, was given $25 billion. They got 

more than PNC. They got it from us, 

the taxpayer, and then they have foreclosed, just in my district, on another 

235 families in Lucas County, Ohio. 

Last November I found an advertisement in my local paper that said there 

was going to be an auction in my home 

county. I was surprised. I didn’t know 

the company coming in, called Hudson 

and Marshall of Dallas, Texas. So I 

went. 

Guess what? Citigroup was one of the 

banks selling properties. I attended and 

watched homes in my community sold 

for as little as $7,900, a price so low 

that the original owners could have 

gone back into those homes. Not only 

was Citigroup auctioning homes that 

night, but so were TARP money recipients; those are the banks that got the 

money through the Treasury from us, 

Wells Fargo, US Bank, Deutsche Bank, 

ABN/Amro, Chase Home Finance, Fifth 

Third Bank, Standard Federal and LaSalle. They all got money. 

It is clear that some of the recipients 

of the Treasury money are unwilling to 

craft real workouts. And so what happened in our region was people got 

kicked out of their homes. Wall Street 

hired the auction company from Dallas, Texas. They came to our region, 

they sold all those properties for very 

little money, and they’re going to get 

big, huge tax losses written off on their 

IRS filings for the tax year of 2008. 

But where are our families? Out on 

the street. Our people lost their homes. 

I would like to invite Mr. Kashkari, 

Secretary Paulson and all the PNC executives to come to Ohio, and I want 

them to live in the neighborhoods that 

their actions have affected. We’ll give 

them a little heater, Bunsen heater 

overnight so they don’t get too cold in 

the houses; and we’d like them to experience the results of what they have 

done to the American people. 

Last year, 4,100 homes in my region 

were foreclosed upon. In the last 21⁄2

years, 10 percent of the properties in 

my home community have been foreclosed. 10 percent of the housing stock. 

And as foreclosure rates continue to 

rise in places like Ohio, it’s pretty obvious that’s what’s happening here in 

Washington isn’t connecting to Main 

Street. 

Sadly, Hudson and Marshall, the auction house that Wall Street hired to 

sell all those homes in my community, 

are coming to your town too. This 

month alone they are slated to be in 

several cities in Michigan, Arizona, 

Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Jersey, and they’re going 

to auction another 1,455 properties. 

They’ve now sold over 70,000 homes in 

the last few years, and expect another 

30,000 in the year 2009. 

Mr. Kashkari, your program isn’t 

working. 

Madam Speaker, I would like to 

place the additional remarks that I 

have in the RECORD. 

What is happening is an outrage to 

the American people, and they’re being 

asked to pay for it. There shouldn’t be 

any more TARP bills clearing this Congress until hearings are held in the 

communities that have been affected. 

We need to use our power in order to go 

out to the voters that sent us here. 

Equity is bleeding profusely from our 

communities. The sheer volume of the 

properties sold at auction is disturbing. 

Financial institutions which have been 

capitalized through the TARP Program 

have failed to do mortgage workouts— 

FDIC and SEC should do their jobs, and 

they are not—and must be required to 

do mortgage workouts, rather than 

foreclosing on homes and participating 

in auctions. Hudson & Marshall stated 

in a press release that they have made 

$1.2 billion doing auctions. 

The intent of the TARP was to help 

stabilize our financial system, which 

includes in large measure our housing 

industry. Yet, we financial institutions 

enriching themselves, merging, and yet 

foreclosing on families rather than 

working to stabilize families in their 

homes. A stable home permits people 

to focus on obtaining and maintaining 

employment, purchasing food, and contributing to society in positive ways 

rather than relying on social services 

funded by State and Federal dollars. 

Furthermore, we see communities falling apart. Community members and 

local banks are effectively locked out 

of the opportunity to reinvest in themselves because monies from the Department of Housing and Urban Development which would allow community 

banks and members to purchase foreclosed homes have not yet arrived. 

No second round of TARP money 

should emerge from this Congress unless regular hearings are held and the 

victims of this crisis can have their 

voices heard in the deliberative process. The Committees should travel to 

the communities most affected. Why 

should we trust Wall Street Banks 

again as more families teeter on the 

edge. 

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The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. 

GILLIBRAND). Under a previous order of 

the House, the gentleman from Indiana 

(Mr. BURTON) is recognized for 5 minutes. 

(Mr. BURTON of Indiana addressed 

the House. His remarks will appear 

hereafter in the Extensions of Remarks. 

f 

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a 

previous order of the House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. NEUGEBAUER) 

is recognized for 5 minutes. 


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