the speaker pro tempore: on this vote the yeas are 278, the nays are 125.

the speaker pro tempore: on this vote the yeas are 280, the nays are 128. 2/3 of those voting having responded in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, the resolution is agreed to and without objection the motion to reconsider is laid on the table.

the unfinished business is the vote on the motion of of the gentleman from tennessee, mr. cohen, to suspend the rules and agree to h. -- house resolution 1337 on which the yeas and nays were ordered. the clerk will report the title of the resolution. the clerk: house resolution 1337, resolution expressing the sympathy and condolences of the house of representatives to those affected by the flooding in tennessee, kentucky and mississippi in may, 2010. the speaker pro tempore: the question is will the house suspend the rules and agree to the resolution. members will record their votes by electronic device. this is a five-minute vote. [captioning made possible by the national captioning institute, inc., in cooperation with the united states house of representatives. any use of the closed-captioned coverage of the house proceedings for political or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited by the u.s. house of representatives.]

the speaker pro tempore: those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. 402, the nays are zero. 2/3 of those voting having responded in the affirmative, the rules are suspended and the resolution is agreed to and without objection the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order.

the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to rule 13101 of the high-tech act, public law 111-5 and the order of the house of january 6, 2009, the chair

announces the speaker's reappointment of the following member to the h.i.t. policy committee for a further three years. the clerk: mr. tierney of massachusetts.

the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from virginia seek recognition?

>> mr. speaker, i ask to address the house for one minute for the purpose of inquiring about next week's schedule. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the gentleman is recognized. mr. cantor: i thank the speaker and i yield to the gentleman from maryland, the majority leader, for the purposes of announcing next week's schedule. mr. hoyer: the house will meet at 12:30 p.m. on tuesday and 2:00 p.m. for legislative business. with votes postponed until 6:30 p.m. on wednesday and thursday the --, mr. speaker, the house will meet at 10:00 a.m. for legislative business. on friday the house will meet at 9:00 a.m. for legislative business. we will consider several bills under suspension of the rules, a complete list of suspensions will be announced by the close of business tomorrow. in addition, mr. speaker, we will consider senate amendments to h.r. 4213, the american jobs closing tax loopholes and preventing outsourcing act. i yield back. mr. cantor: i thank the gentleman. i ask the gentleman, given the

fact that he's announced only one rule bill for next week, i'd ask the gentleman if he pects the house to be in session -- expects the house to be in session next friday, and i yield. mr. hoyer: i thank the gentleman for yielding. i want to tell the gentleman although i announced only the america's jobs bill, my expectation is we will also deal with the competes act next week as well. that bill we believe is a very important bill. we think it's very important for jobs, we think it's very important for investing in our future and we intend to bring that bill to the floor as well next week. mr. cantor: i thank the gentleman. mr. speaker, in keeping with the gentleman's announcement about next week's floor schedule, i'd also like to announce an additional item that we republicans would like to see and bring up for vote on the house floor next week.

yesterday, house republicans laumplingd an unprecedented online effort called you cut, and this can be found at republicanwhip.house.gov/youcut . this allows the american public to vote on wasteful programs they'd like to see the house cut. over 70,000 americans have thus far voted in the program called you cut. i'd say, mr. speaker, we will announce the public's choice this coming monday and then provide for debate on the cut of their choosing during our first rule bill of the week which is, as the gentleman has indicated, the tax extenders. and, mr. speaker, therefore, i'd say to the members that in addition to the majority leader's announced schedule, there will also be a vote on the consideration of one of five possible savings proposals. the first is to eliminate the presidential election fund, and that would amount to $260

million savings. the next could be the elimination of the taxpayer subsidized union activity, a $600 million savings to the taxpayers. next could be the elimination of a h.u.d. program that funds doctor disor take. that is a $1 million savings. and also we could see the elimination of new nonreformed welfare programs that could save the public $3.5 billion. also, mr. speaker, among the items that the american public is owe pining on right now online is eliminating the wealthy communities from the sdbg program. that would offer a $2.6 billion saving to the taxpayers. so i say, mr. speaker, we on the republican side of the aisle, as i have told the gentleman before, stand ready to work with the majority in hopes of trying to encourage

legislation that would reflect these cuts and encourage the majority to bring those to the floor. but having not received any bit of cooperation or at least recognition that we need to do something like that, we intend to bring those votes forward on these items and whichever items the american people vote on first to the nor next week -- floor next week. i notice that the majority leader did not indicate whether or not we would consider a budget next week. it's now been four weeks since the april 15 deadline for completing a budget, and i'd ask the gentleman, does he still consider a budget -- does he still think the house will consider a budget prior to memorial day, as he stated before, and i yield? mr. hoyer: i am certainly hopeful that we will deal with the issue of spending levels by the time we bring appropriation

bills to the floor. we are working on that. i will say to my friend, who has just given us a position on his new program, which is -- and he gave the website address, i think that first of all, let me say that we welcome the interest in the republican party in cutting spending. of course, spending was substantially increased when you had the presidency, in the house and the senate very substantially, as you know. at twice the increase it was increased during the clinton administration. we also believe that many americans have useful suggestions. i also urge them to make their suggestions to the commission which the president has appointed to get a handle on

not 16/100 on the spending but the real dollars that confront us and which the american public are very concerned about. the commission that the president's appointed is to look at how we can bring spending down, how we can address the deficit, and how we can get back to the place where we were at the end of 2000, at the end of the clipon administration when we had a $-- clinton administration when we had a $5.6 trillion surplus. unfortunately, that surplus was turning into this administration inheriting a $5.6 trillion deficit while your party was in total control of the house, the senate and the administration. but we certainly look forward to the suggestions that you have or anybody has in the public as to how we can bring spending under control. your party's talked a lot about

earmarks. as the gentleman well knows in 1994 there were some 4,000 earmarks between -- for our 50 states and 435 districts that was escalated under republicans to 15,000, quadrupled the number of earmarks. now, the gentleman is against earmarks, at least wants a suspension of those. we think that perhaps that's progress, but i will tell the gentleman we hope you'll cooperate with us in the findings of the commission. you have three very outstanding members that have been appointed from this house. hopefully they will make substantive suggestions to get the budget deficit under control. as was done in the 1990's when, for the first time in your lifetime and in mine -- and i have a lot more lifetime to count than you do -- we had a

balanced budget for four years in a row. that's never happened in your lifetime or in mine other than during the clinton administration. that was important. unfortunately, in the following decade that we've just been through, again, the deficit was exploded. but certainly any efforts to get suggestions from anybody, including the american public, of how they think we can reduce spending, bring the deficit under control is welcomed. and we look forward to hearing suggestions, but i want to say that while some of the programs you have mentioned, i have one of those programs being a $200,000 program, you have it at $1 million. it's worth looking at to see if they have value to invest any dollars in. but you and i both know that in a $3.56 trillion budget deficit

that we have to look at the big numbers where we're spending money and what policies we've adopted in order to get to where i think all of us want to be and that's back to where we were in fiscal year 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000. i yield. mr. cantor: i thank the gentleman for his sentiments. i would say, mr. speaker, that first of all, if we can't start here and instead have to wait until after the upcoming election, what does that say to the american people? i also have noted that the gentleman has issued statements about the relative size of the proposed options online under the you cut program. and nowhere else, nowhere else but washington could these cuts be deemed to not be significant

. just because they're less than 1% of the federal budget doesn't mean we ought not at least start there rather than kick the can down the road like washington has under both parties' leadership. and the gentleman knows i am the first to admit that our party was -- much on the account of runaway spending, but we have the opportunity to work together to actually begin some progress rather than continue to say shift it to a commission that the president has created. the fact are, mr. speaker, we've considered 63 resolutions naming post offices this year. 62 resolutions congratulating sports teams, and we've even supported the designation of pie day. yet, you don't think -- and i really can't imagine why we

wouldn't have time to debate proposals regarding the type of savings that i enumerate. and that's why, mr. speaker, i'd ask the gentleman if he doesn't want to engage in the votes that we are going to present next week, why can't we have a bill brought to the floor with these measures? he and i can sit here and debate in a colloquy, but i think the american people would like to see the house actually engaged in these debates. again, i appreciate the gentleman's indication that he wants to work with us, but time and again we see ourselves here on this house floor taking up resolutions naming post offices instead of trying to do the people's business, emphasizing their priority, which is let's do something to cut the debt that is being imposed on our kids and their kids once and for all. mr. hoyer: will the gentleman yield?

mr. cantor: i yield. mr. hoyer: we've done some very substantive things, much of which your party has opposed. we passed last year the american recovery and reinvestment act. i don't know whether you had the opportunity to -- which you voted against and which your party voted against. i don't know that you saw that people paid the lowest tax rates that they have paid since 1950. we reduced over $300 billion in taxes for individuals and small business. now, you can make fun of the resolutions that your party introduces and my party congratulating people for things or noting that post offices are being renamed or things of that nature, but that's a reuss, that's not substance of what we do here. members want to acknowledge their hometown folks.

i've been in the legislature for a long period of time. they did that in the state senate. they do it here. and sometimes it's easy to make fun of, but we have done some very substantive things. the gentleman knows that. it's one of the most productive congresses that i served in over the last 30 years. in terms of very important pieces of legislation. your party has voted in many instances against that legislation. the proof of the pudding, of course, is that -- you didn't ask where the jobs are, which you normally do. 220,000 jobs created. 230,000 jobs the year before that. the month before that. and an average of 100,000 jobs have been created per month over the last four months. the gentleman over the last four months has mentioned jobs. apparently because he thinks perhaps we found them where frankly the previous administration lost them wherever they were lost.

we need to bring them back. we are investing in bills to get jobs back. we're investing in making sure that people who have lost their jobs have some sustnens to support themselves and their families. we don't think that's diminute muss legislation. we think it's critically important. we're passing legislation to make sure that people have health care, that when they lose their job they lose their insurance, they get sick that they have a cobra coverage that they could count on. we don't think that's is de minimis. we are working on legislation to make sure that docs get reimbursed at appropriate levels so they can support the seniors under medicare. we don't think that's de minimis action. i could go on and on i'm sure you know and our colleagues know, but we're passing a lot of legislation to respond to a deep crisis of economic depths,

unknown since 75 years ago in the great depression. that we inherited and we're trying to respond to and we're now creating jobs. we're now expanding the economy. somebody that you may agree with most of the time, larry cud low, said you ought to stop talking down the economy. the economy speaks for itself. real g.d.p. growth three quarters in a row. stock market up and down and up , little glitches, but it's up some 75% on the dow. 80% on the s&p. and almost 100% on the nasdaq. none of that we think is de minimis, i tell my friend, and to -- and both sides, by the way, do what you say. we did it to you, make fun of resolutions that don't take much time but are meaningful to the constituency and appreciate the fact that their efforts

throughout the country were acknowledged in one way or another or that somebody that has great respect in their community was honored, many soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines are being honored by having post offices named after them in their communities. others are being honored. so i tell my friend, we need to be serious. we have a critical deficit confronting us. we have a critical long-term deficit confronting us. we have a critical problem of an unsustainable entitlement regime confronting us. the peterson institute is running hearings all over this country to say, americans, tell us what you think. i don't think your idea is a bad idea of asking americans. we all want to ask americans. what do you think, so we can come together to solve what we both agree is a very serious economic ditch into which we have fallen. we need to get out of it.

we need to work together to do that. the american public expects us to do that. can't thank the gentleman. and, mr. speaker, i would say, first of all, i think the gentleman knows that i have never, never rooted against this economy or this country. mr. cantor: in fact i've gone out of my way to make public statements, when we have positive job growth, to say, when we see jobs growing it is a good thing, period. and i have been consistent in that message. so i just wanted to speak to that and correct the gentleman's assertion that somehow i'm not giving credit for job growth. but i would say, i'll yield in a second, mr. speaker, i would say we do have much work to be done. and he indicates that somehow this last year was the year that americans paid lower taxes than ever before in recent memory. i would say they paid lower taxes because we have a progressive tax system and the fact that the recession reduced income by over $200 billion last

year versus 2008, that's the reality. if you want to get serious, that is the reality. not some fantasy that we have somehow lowered tax rates when we know good and well at the end of this year tax rates are expected to skyrocket again. on top of what we've just done with the new entitlement bill and the health care bill. so i would say to the gentleman, i am not questioning his intentions, i am not saying that there haven't been substantive proposals brought to the floor. i'm saying there have been a disproportion number of time -- disproportion at number of times we've been on the floor doing things we could have been spending time on others to do more productive things for the people of this country. i agree. the gentleman says we're at a cross roads. yes, we are. and the problem is with the substance and the policy proposals that the gentleman and his party have been bringing to the floor of the last year and a half have serious consequences.

and they are aggravating the future prospects for growth in this country. he just indicated, mr. speaker, that entitlements, if we don't get a handle on entitlement, we could see our standard of living go down. you're absolutely right, mr. speaker. the gentleman's correct on that. but what did we just pass a few months ago? the largest entitlement ever. so, again, we can say things and we can have good intentions, but when they're matched with the deeds, something just doesn't add up. and i would say, mr. speaker, the issue is about spending. it is about the debt we are amassing. so when the gentleman points out that they brought to the floor the stimulus bill of $800 and some billion, that has proven to not be a good quote-unquote investment and has now in fact saddled our kids and their kids with even more debt and send as signal to the global investment community that america may have trouble paying its bills.

mr. hoyer: will the gentleman yield? mr. cantor: that's why we are intent on trying to bring forward the you cut proposals to begin changing the culture here in this town in this body, to begin to save taxpayer dollars, not with an emphasis on spending. and i yield. mr. hoyer: i thank the gentleman for yielding and, you know, maybe the public gets tired of this back and forth, but the gentleman talks in ways that indicate that all of a sudden in 2009, january, when president obama took office, somehow the world fell apart. and point of fact, as the gentleman knows, in the last year of the clinton administration we gained $1.9 -- -- 1.9 million new jobs. last year the bush administration, under the policies that the gentleman supported and his party was very enthusiastic about, we lost 3.8 million jobs. that's a 5.7 million-job

turnaround. yes, we were in dire straits and conservative economists, republican economists, mr. zandi and others, as well as progressive economists, liberal economists, call them what you will, all said, if you do not invest in this economy, if you do not invest in stabilizing this economy, very frankly, you're going to lose $800,000 in additional revenues which meant you'd be in the same debt position, whether you invested that money or didn't. now, in investing that money, i say to my friend, with all but maybe two months over the last 15 months we have had a straight line out of the almost 800,000 jobs that, under your policies, were lost in the last month of the bush administration. almost 800,000 jobs. we've been on a straight line to

now where the last five of the last six months we've had positive job growth. is it snuff? it is not. should we do more? we should. should we cooperate in doing that? absolutely. that's what the american public expects us to do. but don't forget the facts of how we got here. don't forget the fact that an awful lot of economists on your side of the aisle said we needed to invest or the economy was going to fall even further. and we wouldn't have that straight line of, out of the departments of the loss of jobs, into the positive numbers of creating jobs. let me also say to you, you mentioned taxes. and you mentioned the fact that somehow it was because incomes fell. incomes did fall and that was unfortunate. they fell because, we believe, we don't agree on this, is because the economic policies that were pursued. and we think our facts are valid. i would remind you, 216,000 jobs

per month for 96 months under the clinton administration, average 216,000. 21 months of over 400,000 jobs. the bush administration had five of those months. and the bush administration's average job creation over 96 months was 11,000 jobs. 216,000 versus 11,000 jobs. so the economy was in great distress. yes we had to invest, yes we had to borrow, because if we didn't our grandchildren and i have grandchildren, i have a great-grandchild, i'm very worried about what they're going to inherit, and i knew that we could not allow the economy to fall through the floor. but let me say this, this is from "usa today", from an article that appeared, taxes paid have fallen much faster than income in this recession. your proposition was, taxes fell because income fell.

personal income fell 2% last year. that's 2% too much. actually it's about 10% too much. because we would hope they would have gone up 5% or 6% or 7%. but listen to this next sentence. i know you'll want to get this next sentence. taxes paid dropped 23%. the b.e.a. classifies social security taxes as insurance payments. so, i tell my friend, we inherited a terrible economy from the bush administration. and we have been working very hard to bring it back and almost every indication indicates that in fact it is coming back. we invested in trying to keep the automobile companies employing people. and they are doing that. so i tell my friend, you know, i did not, as you recall, imply that you had talked down the

economy. what i said was, larry custody low talking to the -- talking to his fellow conservatives said, don't do it, because the facts don't warrant that kind of attack. so, we're going to continue to work, want to work with you, we want to get this economy moving, we want to create jobs, you'll have legislation on the floor next week. hopefully you'll work with us, that we think will do that. it will create summer jobs, it will invest in infrastructure, with the america bonds program, so there are a number things that you'll have an opportunity to vote on next week. hopefully you'll join us, which are going to stabilize -- continuing to stabilize those who don't have jobs and to create jobs for them in the new economy. mr. cantor: i thank the gentleman and i know that the gentleman knows having quoted the article that he did, in that same article the writer gives a lot of credit to the impact of the so-called bush tax cuts as

being economically genretive, causing some of the positive results. but, let's just point out in all fairness and transparency, at the end of this year -- mr. hoyer: will the gentleman yield on that? are you referring to the paragraph that says, presidents clinton and bush pushed through a series of tax changes, credits, lower rates, higher exemptions that slashed income taxes for poor and middle class families? mr. cantor: that is correct. i am referring to that. while we are on that subject, we know very well there's been no indication whatsoever that the ability for entrepreneurs to continue to experience an atmosphere that is conducive to their investment and assumption of risk will continue because we are facing the largest tax hike in american history at the end of this year and the majority has been unwilling to say that is not coming. that is hanging over this economy as a veil of uncertainty and i would say to the

gentleman, if he is so excited about the positive results that he indicates, largely due to the fiscal policies in place that will be not in place after the end of this year, i would say that maybe we should consider extending the rate cuts and cap gains and dividends and marginal rate reductions that are in place now. i would also say to the gentleman, listen, we have been now for weeks, months, been through this, your fault, our fault, your fault, our fault. the public and the american people are upset. they don't want blame game anymore. they want to stop the spending. and just next week the gentleman's talking again about bringing more spending and he indicates all economists supported the stimulus bill. he knows that's not true but like a good lawyer he's going to present his case. but what i would say to the gentleman, let's stop the spending now. that's why we have started and launched the you cut program and

if he alleges an incremental modest steps, fine, join us in that, but let's stop the spending, mr. speaker. i would ask the gentleman, he mentioned the -- mr. hoyer: will the gentleman yield? mr. cantor: i yield. mr. hoyer: i don't want to get too perm on this urk but what do you think about cutting the spending for the high speed rail between richmond and washington? mr. cantor: i would say to the gentleman, i have always, way before we have even encountered that stimulus bill, supported job-generating projects. the studies in the metropolitan area from which i come and represent indicate virginia could grow 165,000 jobs with that kind of investment. that's always been my position. but when we're looking at some of the items that we're discussing here on the you cut options, these are items that are niceties.

they don't -- they may be well-intentioned but if we're worried about job creation and we're worried about deficits growing, we ought to begin to take action now. i'd ask the gentleman, he mentioned the tax extenders bill for next week and i would wonder if he could tell us the content of that bill, will there be a markup on the bill? reports have indicated and perhaps the gentleman has said that the bill will be nearly $200 billion and what kind of rule, whether it be open or not, would he expect? i yield. mr. hoyer: i don't think i mentioned a figure on the extenders. i'm pretty sure i did not. not today. or frankly any other day. because it hasn't been completed by the ways and means committee. as you know they're working with the senate finance committee as well. and working with republicans, as you know this was a bipartisan bill when it came from the senate, republicans supported it.

we hope it's a bipartisan bill as it leaves here. but let me say, the package the senate sent us, we're working on. the process that we will consider it has not yet been finally determined so i can't tell the gentleman exactly what that will be. but some of the things i've already mentioned that would be in it, you, i and cobra, build america bonds for local infrastructure programs, summer jobs programs so we can get young people to work this summer so that they will have some livelihood and can help their families who are in distress, and we also, as i said, are going to deal with the s.g.r. to ensure seniors can keep their doctors and we'll conclude provisions to close tax loopholes, crack down on outsourcing of jobs overseas and protect american jobs here at home. those are all things that i think will be in it. that's not necessarily an exclusive list but that

certainly is a bill that we think will be probusiness in cutting and confirming many of the tax benefits that are given to businesses, as you will know, that we regularly continue including the investment tax credit so that we can encourage businesses to grow and invest and to create jobs. so that's an outline of it, the process has not yet been decided. i'm sure there will be discussions about that tomorrow, with the rules committee chair and with the committee and perhaps we can know at a later date. mr. cantor: to clarify, mr. speaker, does that mean the bill are not go through committee? i yield. mr. hoyer: the bill, as you know, is a bill over from the senate that was bipartisan in nature, and i think that we need to move this bill before memorial day, and i think that the committee is going to have

to decide how to get that done and in the fastest way possible so that many of the expiring issues do not expire which would be very detrimental to docs, to many other people. mr. cantor: i thank the gentleman. mr. speaker, the gentleman and i have been working together for some months now on the iran sanctions bill and also crucial to the national security of this country is the war supplemental. he's indicated before that the iran sanctions conference report and the war supplemental would be coming to the house floor prior to the memorial day recess, and i'd ask whether that's still the case. i yield. mr. hoyer: i'm sure everybody listening would be glad to hear there is some cooperation and agreement. the gentleman and i are both strong supporters of the iran sanctions legislation. we believe that not only is the middle east region at risk but the international community is

at risk as long as iran is pursuing its intent to harm itself with nuclear weapons. i tell the gentleman that i've been working very closely with mr. berman and it's my hope and expectation that this conference report will be reported back to us before the memorial daybreak, and it is my intention to have that sent to the president before we leave here for the memorial daybreak. mr. cantor: and -- memorial day break, and it is my intention to have it sent to the president before we leave here for memorial day break. mr. hoyer: we won't be in the same position because the senate is working on the bill, as the gentleman knows. we're working on a bill. i've talked to the chairman and

he is trying to get the matter together for the committee. and my urging is we pass it through the house prior to the memorial day break. we would not have a conference at that time, but we want to do so very shortly because clearly we need to make sure that resources are available for our men and women in harm's way and both iraq and afghanistan and other troubled spots of the world. mr. cantor: i thank the gentleman, mr. speaker, and in closing i'd like -- i look forward to continuing to work with the gentleman in a fiscally responsible manner which starts with passing a budget blueprint this year just like the american families have to do. i thank the gentleman, once again, for his time and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. mr. hoyer: mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from maryland rise? mr. hoyer: mr. speaker, i ask

unanimous consent that it may be in order at anytime on thursday, may 20, 2010, for the speaker to declare a recess subject to the call of the chair for the purpose of receiving in joint meeting his excellency, felipe calderon, also president of the united mexican states. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the

gentlewoman from ohio seek recognition? ms. sutton: i ask unanimous consent that when the house adjourns today it adjourn to meet at 11:30 a.m. tomorrow and when it adjourns on that day it meet at 12:30 p.m., may 18, 2010, for the morning hour debate. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. the chair will entertain requests for one-minute speeches. for what purpose does the gentlewoman from california seek recognition? >> i ask unanimous consent to speak for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. the gentlewoman is recognized. ms. watson: mr. speaker, i rise today to honor the life of william alkin jr. called bill alkin, who was born january 20, 1920, to william and virginia wilkins. he sadly passed away on may 12 of this year. he was born and raised in los

angeles, california, where he was known for his civility, loyalty, discretion, diplomacy and dedication to civil rights. he was the right-hand man of the late mayor tom bradley for 40 years. before, during and after the mayor's term as the first african-american to hold that high post and as the elected official who held it the longest to date. he left the future mayor while -- he met the future mayor while they attended middle school in south los angeles. their friendship strengthens in college and work for the city of los angeles. a fwrad wit of jefferson high school, young bill left college to serve his country by enlisting in the army and was assigned for four years to

italy during world war ii. he returned to earn his bachelors degree in political science at ucla where he and tom bradley pledged the fraternity country. he worked for the country and the county together as a probation officer and earned his juris doctorate from southwestern university law school, once again, taking classes with lapd officer tom bradley, who was the best man at his wedding in 1945. he then became the director of team teen post. it was an inner city after-school program, and he rose to be the general consul right next to our mayor, tom bradley. may god rest his soul. the speaker pro tempore: for

what purpose does the gentleman from indiana rise? mr. burton: unanimous consent to address the house for one minute and to revise and extend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. burton: mr. speaker, i listen with great interest to the majority leader, the democrat majority leader's comments about the accomplishments that have been made by this congress. i would just like to say briefly this -- the american people don't want to hear this hyperbole. they don't want to hear these long dissertations what's being accomplished around here. what the american people want to do is to cut spending and get this economy moving again and create jobs, and blowing money like the democrats are doing and creating a debt that our kids will never be able to deal with is not the answer. and so i'd like the next time they have this discussion back and forth for 45 minutes that they get -- they cut to the chase and say we're going to do this to cut spending. we are going to do this to create jobs. and we're going to cut taxes like ronald reagan did to get the economy moving again instead of all this other stuff that's going on.

the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from minnesota rise? >> to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. ellison: mr. speaker, i come to the house floor today to congratulate palestinian authority chairman mahmoud abu and president benjamin netanyahu on talks. i believe the national security interest is directly linked to the resolution of this long-standing conflict. i believe that other conflicts, the israeli-palestinian conflict can be resolved, especially with an active and even-handed leadership of the united states. congratulations to president obama and envoy mitchell who got right to work on middle east peace right after the president's inauguration. and despite huge hurdles, have both been persistent. i hope the president continues to urge all parties to

negotiate seriously and move from proximity talks to direct negotiations to reach agreement on final and permanent status issue. the world needs a secure israel, and it needs an independent viable palestinian state. however, simply declaring support for one side or the other doesn't really help either side. both sides benefit from peace. we need to build a constituency for peace, and that means support for each side to make the necessary concession. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from texas rise? mr. poe: i ask permission to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. poe: mr. speaker, the new supreme court pick, elena kagan, has never been a job. news report says she's never had trial court experience as a lawyer. as a lawyer she never questioned a witness or made an argument before a jury. she's never been a trial judge so she never had to make a constitutional ruling in the

courtroom in a heated trial. she never heard a civil case. she never heard a criminal case. she's never even heard a traffic case. she's never ruled on the rules of evidence like the exclusionary rule. she's never instructed a jury on reasonable doubt or sentence that convicted a criminal. why should elena kagan be appointed to a lifetime appointment? she would be judging trial lawyers, a trial maybe she's never even seen. she's an academic elitist that's never tried a place. that's trying putting somebody in charge of a brain surgery unit that's never done a brain operation. and that's just the way it is. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from pennsylvania rise? >> mr. speaker, request unanimous consent to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. thompson: thank you, mr. speaker. mr. speaker, stamp collecting

is a hobby that teaches history, art, geography. stamps have branched out into film and iconic figures, there seems to be no limit to the subjects it covers, from elvis to dinosaurs. i rise today to honor stamp camp u.s.a. the camp is -- her camp introduces stamp collecting using creative three dimensional and creative format. they learn stamp cash. there is a whole network of supporters, including the boy scouts, girl scouts, ymca, ywca, americorps, vista. it has expended to other regions of the country. this month we celebrate the 15th anniversary of the camp and attempt to break a new again is world record for the

collection of rainbows on stamps. we wish them luck in the competition and continued success in teaching children the love of collecting stamps. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: are there further one-minute requests? the chair lays before the house the following personal requests. the clerk: leave of absences requested for mr. rangel of new york for today after 12:00 p.m. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the request is granted. for what purpose does the gentleman from texas seek recognition? mr. poe: mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent that today following legislative business and any special orders heretofore entered into the following members may be permitted to address the house, revise and extend their remarks and include therein extraneous material. mr. neugebauer for today, mr. burton for may 18, 19 and 20. myself, mr. poe, for may 20. mr. jones for may 20. mr. moran for may 18, 19 and

20. and mr. wolf for today. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. for what purpose does the gentlewoman from ohio seek recognition? ms. sutton: mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent that today following legislative business and any special orders heretofore entered into the following members may be permitted to address the house for five minutes, to revise and extend their remarks, and include therein extraneous material. ms. sutton from ohio, ms. woolsey of california, ms. kosmas of florida, mississippi kaptur of ohio and mr. defazio of oregon. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. . the speaker pro tempore: under the speaker's announced policy of january 6, 2009, and the previous order of the house, the following members are recognized for five minutes. ms. sutton of ohio. miss sulton: mr. speaker --

ms. sutton: i rise today in recognition of national police week. in 1962 president john f. kennedy signed a presidential proclamation that setaside may 15 as national peace officers memorial day and the week of may 15 as national police week. since that time we have dedicated this week to honor those who have fallen in the line of duty. during this week, police officers and their families and people in our communities throughout the country come together to honor and remember those officers who have fallen in the line of duty. it's a week to honor their service, their sacrifice, and their life. but this week is also for the surviving family members and fellow officers of the fallen. it's a time of tribute and it's a time of healing. northeast ohio has experienced the tragic loss of two police

officers recently this year. at the end of his watch on march 15, 2010, officer james of the owe leera police department was shot and killed in the line of duty. just two days earlier on march 13, officer thomas patton of the cleveland heights police department collapsed and died while in pursuit of a suspect. office -- the officers gave their lives in protection of their communities. these brave men knew the risk of the profession but they also knew the rewards. our policemen and women are part of the foundation of our community. they risk it all as they walk the beat and patrol the streets, keeping our families and neighborhoods safe. police officers go to work every day, committed to the oath that they take to serve and protect. too often when officers fall, we are reminded of the cost and the

sacrifice of the protection they provide us, but we must not only remember their service in times of loss, we must not only appreciate all that they do for us during this one week, we must appreciate their service and support them every week, every day. we must commit ourselves to the mission of supporting the service of our police and giving them the means to fulfill their oath. that's why this year and in previous years i supported full funding to the community oriented policing services, known as the cops program. congress created cops in the 1990's to address increasing crime rates, and it has succeeded in putting over 117,000 more police on the beat. cops funding had been cut significantly after the 1990's, but i'm proud to say that i have fought to make sure that this funding is continually improved and restored.

and the recovery act that was passed and was supported by the f.l.p. provided $1 billion for this competitive grant, aiding police o forces that were facing drastic cuts in the face of the declining economy. 165 officers' jobs were saved throughout ohio. and in my district alone 30 officer positions were save by cops funding in the recovery act. that doesn't even take into act all of us who were saved and safer because they were on the street. we must continue to fight for funding and support our police. just as they fight for us every day to keep us safe. just as officer cursteder and officer paton kept us safe and gave their lives to protect us. let us always be there for them. i yield back.

the speaker pro tempore: mr. jones of north carolina. for what purpose does the gentleman from texas rise? without objection. mr. neugebauer: mr. speaker, the national police week provides an opportunity for all of us to reflect on our law enforcement officers, countless contributions to building a safe community not only in the nation but also in the 19th congressional district. this week we pay tribute to those police officers who sacrifice so much for our safety. i'm honored to stand behind those who risk their lives on a daily basis to keep our families and our neighborhoods safe. during this week we also take time to remember those officers who we have lost in the line of duty. and their families. this week the lubbock county sheriff's office is in washington to attend a candlelight vidge until honor of fallen police officers across the nation, including lubbock county sheriff harvey.

he was killed on april 26, 2009, in a vehicle accident while on duty. he is joined in -- he joined the lubbock county sheriff's office in 2001 and was a member of the texas tactical peace officers association. corporal harvey was a dedicated father to his sons and loving husband to his wife. corporal harvey as name will be engraved on the national law enforcement memorial and revealed during a ceremony in honor of 116 officers who were killed in 2009. i will have the great honor to meet his parents, danny and diahanna, and his brother when they are in washington and welcome the lubbock county sheriff's department honor guard. we cannot and will not forgive the service of corporal harvey and many others who lost their lives in the line of duty. we sometimes take for granted every day that seven days a week, 365 days a year that men and women go out and put on a different uniform than our nation's military, they put on a

uniform of keeping the peace in our country. keeping our homes safe, keeping our businesses safe, keeping our streets safe. we thank those men and women that do that. sometimes i think we take them for granted. i hope that the american people will use this week to go up to a peace officer, a law enforcement officer and take that opportunity to say thank you. but also maybe you live in a neighborhood where a sheriff's officer or police officer lived in your neighborhood. maybe they lived next door to you. i hope you will take time to say to their family thank you for supporting your dad or your mom or your husband or your wife and allowing them to serve our country in this very special way. because truly it is a team support because -- sport because without the support of their families these men and women could not do the job they do. what we learn is this is a dangerous job and unfortunately

every year we lose officers in the line of duty. we have already lost at least one in the 19th congressional district this year. and so from all the people in the 19th congressional district, and i think i can speak for all the people all across america, thank you peace officers, law enforcement officers all across our country and may god bless you. may he continue to bless the united states of america. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from michigan rise? >> mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent to remove my name as co-sponsor of h.j.res. 76. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. ms. woolsey of california. for what purpose does the gentlewoman from california rise? >> for unanimous consent to speak for five minutes. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. ms. watson: today i would like to acknowledge the loss of one of hollywood's brightest stars, the legendary, lena horn.

lena horn broke barriers as a performer. she began her career at age 16 making a name for herself as a dancer at harlem's renowned cotton club in the 1930's. she became the first black performer with a major hollywood studio contract. in 1942, lena moved to los angeles where she appeared in such movies as "cabin in the sky." , "meet me in las vegas" and "the whiz" her role in the film "stormy weather" included her rendition of the title song which became her trademark. a remarkable charismatic entertainer, horn became one of the top earning performers of black hollywood by 1945. lena is now credited with paving the way for many black actresses in hollywood who aspire towards larger roles in film production. though primarily known as an

entertainer, horn also was noted for her work with civil rights and political organizations. as an actress she refused to play roles that stereotyped african-american women, and by the 1960's she became a prominent celebrity voice in the civil rights movement. she joined in the march on washington when martin luther king gave her, "i have a dream speech" and spoke at a rally with medgar evers. her one-woman show, lena horn, the lady and her music, garnered many awards, including a doctor ma -- drama critique circle award, and special achievement tony award. in 1984 horn received a kennedy center honor for lifetime contribution to the arts. and in 1989 a grammy award for lifetime achievement.

as a pioneer black celebrity in a time when blacks went in the backdoor, lena horn sang out and she sang out front and entertaint the nation and world. -- entertained the nation and world. her smile and her presence opened doors in a time when blacks were denied their basic civil rights. she lit up hollywood. and we join the nation, her family, her friends, and colleagues in mourning the loss of this legendary entertainer and civil rights activist. i yield back, mr. speaker. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady yields back. mr. poe of texas. mr. poe: thank you, mr. speaker. mr. speaker, how long is congress going to site idly by while the federal reserve destroys the value of the u.s. dollar? on friday, may 7, our dollar was worth only 1/1,200th of an ounce

of gold. that means it's lost 3/4 of its value in just nine years, since 2001. let's not kid ourselves and think the value of our dollar in terms of gold doesn't matter. where gold prices go, other prices follow. we are going to see the dollar price of gold fall or we are in for a blasted inflation that will crush the middle class and lead to another recession. if you think that can't happen, let me remind you that is what happened in the 1970's and early 1980's. do we want to go back to the 1970's? do we want to have double-digit inflation followed by double-digit unemployment? that will happen unless we stabilize the u.s. dollar. let's not kid ourselves and think that because the dollar is rising against the euroall is well in america. the euroand dollar are both headed off the financial cliff. euro is just jumping first. how can we expect a stable

economy or financial market without stable currency? the dollar is involved in every single transaction we do. it if moves around, it takes everything with it. we have seen in the past two years just how the high cost of an unstable dollar can be. the nobel prize winning economist and advisor to president reagan said that it was the federal reserve that caused the real -- real estate bubble and bust. he said the fed is responsible for the economic crisis we are in today and that makes sense. it takes a lot of power to do this much damage and there is no economic power greater than money. here's what happened and people are not stupid. when the price of gold heads up, people sense inflation is on the way. the way you protect yourself from inflation is to buy real real estate or real assets with borrowed money. the longer the inflation goes on, the more leverage builds up and the bigger the ultimate crash. we got the bubble and real

assets in 2001 to 2007, and the crash came in 2008. do we want another one? isn't 9.9% unemployment high enough? mr. speaker, i have right here a pocket constitution that many members carry around with them. and when all else fails probably ought to read the constitution. it says in article 1, section 8, congress shall have the power to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and a foreign coin and affix the standard of weights and measures. what this means is congress is supposed to set the value of the dollar. it's the constitutional duty for congress to regulate the value of our money. but congress ignores its legal obligation and does not regulate the value of money. what congress does, it gives the fed the responsibility to regulate interest rates. but the constitution does not give the fed or any other government agency the power to

regulate interest rates. there's a lot of talk about how important it is the federal reserve should be independent. well, mr. speaker, i don't believe that any part of the government should be independent of the constitution. all the feds fought for independence is two boon to bust cycles in 10 years, the second one worse than the first. there is wisdom in the constitution, that's why i have introduced h.r. 835, which is called the dollar bill act. this bill would fulfill congress' constitutional responsibility and define the value of the dollar. by doing so, we can stake the lives of the -- stabilize the value of the dollar and american economy. mr. speaker, we need to hold hearings on this bill. the american people want a stable economy and stable financial market so we need a stable dollar. it's time for congress to buck it up and fulfill its constitutional duty and regulate the value of the dollar. and that's just the way it is. i yield back.

. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. ms. kosmas of florida. mr. burton of indiana. mr. burton: i ask unanimous consent to address the house for five minutes. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. burton: you know, mr. speaker -- you know, mr. speaker, one of the things that really concerns me about war is we lose so many fine young men and women in conflict in the combat area. one of the finest men in my district from marion, indiana, is captain brandon barrett, who was 27 years old, died wednesday while serving in afghanistan. he was born january of 1983 in albuquerque, new mexico, and as a child, brandon was friendly and energetic, made friends

with everybody he came in contact with, played sports and dreamed of serving in the united states military. he wanted to be a marine. after he graduated from marion high school in 2001, he went fought united states naval academy, and he was very proud of that. he graduated from there in 2006. and upon graduation, brandon was assigned to the first battalion, second marine division two expeditionary force in camp lejeune, north carolina. brandon was deployed twice to afghanistan in support of operation enduring freedom. once from march of 2008 and another in 2009. he received multiple awards for his service. the awards he received included the navy and marine achievement medal, the national defense service medal, the global war on terrorism service medal, the afghanistan campaign medal and the nato international security force assistance medal. he's also recently been

postumeyussly been given the rank of lieutenant. he was nicknamed bull. "bull" brandon will be known as a natural born leader. those who remember him best will remember him for not only the loyalty and perseverance that served him so well in the marine corps but also his unwavering dedication to the friendships of his youth in marion. throughout his life, brandon kept the city of marion to his heart, coming home nearly every leave. to the citizens of the state of indiana, his fellow marines and the countless others that he touched, brandon will be forever remembered as a hero. our thoughts and prayers and deepest condolences go out to his mother, cindy, his father, brett, his brother and sisters. i would just like to add one more thing, mr. speaker.

one of the things that we never really think about is the impact it has on people in the corps or in the army or navy when they lose one of their beloved fighting buddies. and his captain, his commanding officer said in an article, it's really surreal. he said, every day i expect to see him walking around his unit with a great big smile on his face. we can't believe that he's gone. he said, everyone that knew him knew he was a leader, an officer and a great man. he's really soarly -- sorely missed. i say our deepest condolences goes out to you. and everyone in the country and in indiana are very happy that he served this country with such great distinction. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. ms. kaptur of ohio.

mr. moran of kansas. mr. defazio of oregon. mr. paul of texas. mr. neugebauer of texas. mr. wolf of virginia. mr. wolf: thank you, mr. speaker. i ask unanimous consent to revise and extend. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. wolf: mr. speaker, i rise today to bring to the attention of my colleagues the precarious situation of christians and other religious minorities in morocco. in march, moroccan authorities deported approximately 40 u.s. citizens and scores of other nationals, foreign nationals. the individuals deported were charged with one that is against the law in morocco. however, authorities are refusing to turn over any evidence. among the individuals who were deported or denied re-entry was businessmen, social workers, many who resided in morocco for over a decade in full compliance for the law. those deported were reportedly forced to leave the country for

-- in two hours leaving all their belongings behind. they have been shuttered. one organization, which has been adversely affected, is the village of hope in the mountains. "time" magazine reported, the village of hope deportations are part of what appears to be a widespread crackdown on christian workers in morocco, end of quote. a new zealand native and staff to the orphanage, one told "time," quote, most of the couples were foster parents and have raised these children since infancy, end of quote. one couple from colorado were among those expeled from the village of hope, forced to leave their two moroccan sons behind. they told 9 news of colorado that his 2-year-old son didn't understand what was happening and it wasn't good. he went on to describe the heartwrenching story of the

sudden separation, the son jumped into his father's arms and said, quote, i want to go with you, daddy. they call into question the longstanding friendship and mutual cooperation between the united states and morocco dating back to the letter of the sulton of morocco sent to george washington at valley forge declaring that american businesses were permitting to take refreshments and enjoying the same privileges and immunities as those of other nations. this signed the first official recognition of our fledging nation. i work with moroccan and u.s. officials over the last two months in an attempt to find a satisfactory solution to this matter. unfortunately, the moroccan government seems to be unwilling to compromise as evidence by a recent letter i received from a representative of the king. earlier this week, 10 additional foreign nationals were asked to leave the country. it is our responsibility, i think, to speak out on behalf of human rights that have been

perpetrated by the moroccan government. president reagan modeled this approach by consistently speaking out on behalf of the persecuted and tirelessly defending human rights and religious freedom. today, i sent secretary of state clinton a letter asking her to issue a travel advisory for morocco so that all u.s. citizens are aware of the potential risks. additionally, the human rights commission, which i co-chair, will hold a hearing on june 17 to further explore the iruse of human rights and religious freedom in morocco. i call on the government of morocco, again, to uphold its commitment to the principles of religious tolerance and freedom so that for so long made it a moral topperans in the arab world. -- tolerance in the arab world. again, i call on our embassy and i think our apple bass door should be speaking -- ambassador should be speaking out and the white house should be speaking out to raise issues

of the moroccan government. mr. speaker, i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. pursuant to section 301 of the congressional accountability act of 1995, 2 u.s.c. 1301, the chair announces on behalf of the speaker and minority leader of the house of representatives and the majority and minority leaders of the united states senate, their joint reapointment of the following individuals on may 13, 2010 to a five-year term on the board of directors of the offices of compliance. the clerk: roberto of illinois, barbara, washington, d.c., chair. the speaker pro tempore: under the speaker's announced policy of january 6, 2009, the gentleman from minnesota, mr. ellison, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.

mr. ellison: mr. speaker, my name is keith ellison and i will claim the time on behalf of the progressive caucus. the progressive caucus is that

body of -- within the congress itself, that group of people who are dedicated to the ideals that have made america fairer, america more open, america more inclusive and america more peaceful over the years. the progressive caucus who believes that working people of america deserve fair wage, worker rights, things like that, who believe that our country should be at peace with the rest of the world and who believe in diplomacy, who believe in talking it out, who believe that war is rarely a good idea and when it is it should be executed with the most amount of care for our soldiers and our veterans and who believe that diplomacy is almost always the right answer. the progressive caucus who believes that immigration reform should be humane and that we should put ideas of family reunification and a path towards citizenship upfront. the progressive caucus, which believes that during this time of financial few jilt and --

frew jilt and uncertainty that we need a robust strong reform bill that will hold -- that will hold wall street accountable so that the money of the american people is cared for in a safe and proper way. this is the progressive caucus, and this is the progressive message where the progressive caucus comes to the house floor to talk about issues of the concern of the american people to explain the position of the progressive caucus to the american people and to talk about things that really matter and to make sure, mr. speaker, that the american people know that there is a progressive voice in congress. that voice is the progressive caucus, and this is the progressive message. mr. speaker, today the topic for the progressive message is wall street reform and jobs.

wall street reform and jobs. a lot of people, mr. speaker, think about this wall street reform package that is moving its way through the congress at this time and they think, you know what, i know that this thing has a lot to do with me but i'm not exactly sure what. people know it was tax money that was pulled together during september and october of 2008 and that the troubled assets relief program was pulled together and salvaged some banks, american banks to stop the whole system from going down. the american people know that. it was unpopular. nobody wanted to do it, but people knew it had to deal with them and their tax money. the american people knew it had to deal with credit default swaps and had something to do with mortgage-backed securities. the fact is, mr. speaker, this stuff is a little bit confusing and it makes a lot of sense for us to talk about it. but it makes sense to talk about it from the standpoint of jobs, of businesses, particularly small businesses.

it makes sense to talk it from the point of view from the consumer. so we are going to talking about that today over the course of the next hour, mr. speaker. before i do i want to dive no a few things about jobs, about the state of our economy. the fact is is that it's good news that we have seen some positive job news. on may 7, justice just a few days ago, the department of labor reported that 290,000 jobs from created in april. this is a good thing. but i'm quite certain, mr. speaker, that if you look around the neighborhoods and the farms and the rural communities and the urban centers and in the suburbs of the united states there's still a lot of people who are not working. positive job growth, yes, because the democratic congress, led by a progressive voice, helped to make that happen. but the fact is there's still a lot of people out of work. much has been done -- much needs to be done because this 290,000 jobs in april is good, but the fact is is we need

about 300,000 jobs added per month in order to keep up with the population. if we do less than that, the unemployment rate will remain high, and that is something that is wrong and we should do something about. but i do want the american people to know that we have seen 290,000 jobs added in april, good sign, and then we saw 231,000 created in the private sector. and that's a lot of jobs and that's good. most of that growth coming from the private sector. . those jobs added in april larger than expected and the largest since march, 2006. that goes to show that addressing health care, addressing the stimulus package, and the american recovery package are things that will help the american economy and are getting our economy back on the road to health. but the question is, mr. speaker, is that what does it mean for so many people still

out of work? we still need a jobs bill. we still need to do something about jobs. and we need something to stimulate job growth in our public sector and in our private sector. this is work that still needs to be done. we want to celebrate the good news but we want to also talk about what else needs to be done. the good news is this is the fourth consecutive month of job growth with 537,000 jobs added since december. this is nearly a half million jobs added, 84% of which is in the private sector. some friends on the republican side of the aisle have said, yeah, you spend a lot of money in the recovery package, yeah, you are going to get positive job growth in the public sector. but these jobs have been because it's been in the private sector. which moons the stimulus bill worked and the -- which means the stimulus bill worked and the american people are benefiting from it. also true in march sales of new homes increased about 27%.

about had 11,000. the strongest since last july, the biggest monthly increase in 47 years. home prices in february rose 1.4%. posting the first year to year gain in more than three years. the unemployment rate as i mentioned before, unfortunately, increased to about 9.9%. it went down to 9.7% and dipped back up to 9.9, about 10%. this is the result of over 805,000 people entering the work force because people feel that this is a time they might be able to find a job again. these people need to find that job opportunity and that's why the congress needs to pass more job legislation. on the past three months we added an average of 187,000 jobs per month in contrast to 727,000 average jobs lost per month

during the last three months of the bush administration. no one should ever forget that in the last month of the bush administration january, 2009, january, 2009, this economy lost 741,000 jobs. and that was about an average for the last three months of the bush administration. right now we have seen 290,000 job increase. the stimulus package worked, the democratic caucus is working, and we need more job growth in order to make sure that young people coming out of school the next few weeks will have a job to do and those folks who are still among the ranks of the unemployed can get work. so since the recovery act, stocks have gone up across the board, the dow has gone up over 70%. and the s&p 500 is up 80%. nasdaq is up about 100%. last year americans' tax bill was the lowest point in 60

years. since the truman administration. so just going on, mr. speaker, talking about the state of our economy, before we get to wall street reform, job growth seems to be moving up. we seem to be moving from this state of job loss to now job growth. still we have 10% unemployment and we got to do something about it. during the 111th congress, this congress, democrats have taken a series of steps to make these positive job numbers a reality. i want to talk about those tonight, mr. speaker, because it's important that the american people know that with the progressive vision often led by the progressive caucus, that this democratic caucus has been doing the right thing for the american economy. for example, we passed the hire act. this is a bipartisan bill to create 300,000 jobs with tax incentives for businesses that hire unemployed americans. this is helping people out and

the hire act is helping small business add people on their rolls so that they can work. the american workers, state, and business relief act. this bill offers tax incentives again to spur business innovation and tax cuts for families with kids headed to college and disaster relief for states combined with economy boosting, unemployment benefits, and health care for americans hit by the recession. we also passed the small business and infrastructure jobs act. this bill extends aid to states to provide subsidies to employers, including small businesses who hire unemployed workers that is on track to put over 160,000 americans back to work. that's good news. and then of course last week we passed the home star bill which will create much needed jobs in the manufacturing sector by --

no, the home star bill -- yeah, we passed the home star bill which gives tax incentives to renovate homes, but also one bill that's been introduced is an important bill that will create much needed jobs in the manufacturing sector by providing tax relates to homeowners who install energy saving products. that's right. that's the home star bill. mr. speaker, also the congress and the president have worked together to enact a whole array of broad tax cuts that working families and middle class families and small business owners can have which ends the era of republican tax breaks for cussed only on the wealthy. -- focused only on the wealthy. it's important to point out, mr. speaker, democrats, even progressives, don't object to tax breaks. we just object to tax breaks for the people who don't need a tax brake. -- break. american people can use them and we are in favor of them. all in total congress has enacted 800 billion tax cuts

with another 285 million making their way through congress in order to help spur innovation and employment for people who actually need it and can use it. congressional republicans threaten to take back the failed policies, take us back to the failed policies that created the economic crisis. in fact, creak, i'm going to be talking about -- mr. speaker, i'm going to be talking about wall street reform which is the reform we need to correct what the republicans have created which is a failed economy which the democrats right now are trying to pull the american people out of. congressional republicans are trying to take us back to these old policies. they want to side with the special interests with wall street banks, credit card companies, big oil, and insurance companies. this is wrong, mr. speaker, and we are here to do something about it. these economic and fiscal policies created by the bush administration created the bush

recession, the worst financial crisis since the great depression of the 1930's with job losses of nearly 800,000 and up during the bush administration. and nearly doubled our national debt. it's amazing when you hear republicans talk about spending, giving all the spending that they did. putting our economy at risk. republicans have voted against every single piece of economic legislation from the recovery act to wall street reform. choosing the special interests over the american worker and families and small businesses. so, mr. speaker, the democrats, the democrats in congress will continue to take america in a new direction, working to create american jobs, and a new strong foundation for our economy. protecting main street and the middle class and we are getting results. i'm going to talk about one of those major reforms in just a moment. but during the last three months of the bush administration we

lost an average of 726,000 jobs, mr. speaker, in the last three months we created 186,000 jobs, the current unemployment rate is 9.9%. so we are coming back. we are moving up. we got much more to do. but that then sets the stage, mr. speaker, for wall street reform discussion we are going to have tonight. mr. speaker, let me start out with a very simple proposition, a very simple proposition. wall street reform is good for main street. very simple proposition. wall street reform is good for main street. wall street reform is good for main street because if wall street creates a situation where they got to have massive bank bailouts, that's coming out of the taxpayer which is

represented by main street. we've got to make sure that we pass financial reform legislation that stops the bailouts, that stops the tricky and fine print and the hidden terms and ununderstandable and indecipherable contracts for credit cards. wall street reform is good for main street. we need to create a situation, mr. speaker, where people who want -- if you want to sell a loan or you want to sell a mortgage, you got to keep some skin in the game. you can't just sell that mortgage and now you don't care if it's well underwritten, you don't care if you made sure somebody will pay that loan back because you sold the paper. that's something that's got to change. wall street reform is good for main street. main street, one of the main streets in minneapolis, my town, or los angeles, or peoria, illinois, or in laverne,

minnesota, or any small town across america or any big town across america or any suburb or anywhere, wall street reform is good for main street. it protects our tax dollars, it protects consumer, and it makes sure that there are clear rules for wall street to live by. not unfair rules, not rules that are bad for wall street, but rules which allow good actors on wall street to remann good and -- remain good and allow the inscrupulous actors to get punishment for what they have done. but you got to understand if we don't have clear rules, clear rules of the road, some actors on wall street will think, you know, by not doing shaky things, we are losing out. so we better go do them. we don't want that. we want clear, fair rules to keep good actors good and keep bad actors out and accountable when they are not out. that's what the main message is for the day, mr. speaker. wall street reform is good for main street. very important.

mr. speaker, i just want to talk to you for a moment about what wall street reform means. some people think, what does wall street reform mean? this is a lot of complex stuff. we are talking credit default stuffs? derivatives? are we talking about resolution authority? what does all this stuff mean? you know what? it's not very complicated at all. it's actually pretty simple, mr. speaker. wall street reform means policing wall street, meaning have regulators up there to hold some people accountable. no more bernie madoff's, no more folks who made off with the money. also also reform means ending bank bailouts. everybody hated the bailout. in my opinion it was the necessary thing to do, but it was one of those kind of things that we all hated to do. we need to end taxpayer funded bailouts forever and that's why we need resolution authority and i'll talk about what that means. and we need also, mr. speaker,

to stabilize the economy. we need to stop these wild bubbles. this bubble the first decade of this century created a housing bubble which led to a what? a bursting of the bubble and we saw where we were paying $2.8 million foreclosures last year alone, mr. speaker. we cannot revisit that kind of situation again. and stop gambling with worker pensions. some folks don't even realize how deeply involved main street is with wall street. if you have a 401-k or pension or anything like that, mr. speaker, your retirement money is on wall street. we can't allow it to be gambled by people who are looking for no more than a quick return with very little accountability. that's what it means. wall street reform means policing wall street, ending bank bailouts, stabilizing the economy, and stopping gambling with worker pensions.

now, mr. speaker, i think it's important for people who are out there listening, mr. speaker, to understand what it is, who is on the side of the people and who isn't. whose side are you on is what this board asks, mr. speaker. whose side are you on? and the question is, democrats represent main street. and that's why democrats support jobs bills as i just talked about. support unemployment insurance. democrats support curtailing excessive wall street bonuses. we'll talk about those in a minute. democrats represent creating new consumer protection agency so that the fine print, the tricky terms, they say 9.9% on the credit card until it's not. when is it not? whenever they say it's not. we have to stop that kind of thing. and democrats support tax cuts for small businesses and worker

families. and democrats support regulating wall street and preventing foreclosures. all these things are what the democrats are all about. all these things help the american people. now, what are the republicans talking about? because they are complaining a lot and they always have a lot of criticism for our side, but republicans, they oppose the jobs bill and the unemployment insurance. you know, mr. speaker, i don't believe one of them, not even one of them voted for the bill, the stimulus bill, that helped to create that 290,000-job we got in april. none of them even supported the stimulus bill which has led us back to positive job growth. they were against it even though they spent money on wars, spent money on iraq, spent money on giving the richest people tax cuts, they oppose it when we are trying to get average working americans some jobs and

unemployment insurance. . by the way, it's amazing, but they're against curtailing wall street bonuses. they had the nerve to say, well, should we curtail the bonuses of professional athletes? should we curtail bonuses of this person or that? look, that's irrelevant. those guys aren't asking for the american people to bail out their bank. this is about saying if a big wall street c.e.o. wants to get a golden parachute after running the company into the ground like stan o'neill did at merrill lynch, then the meryl people may have something to say about it. if you want a bunch of money from the public, you shouldn't be flying around on jets just to come testify, getting bonuses. that's not fair. this is what we're talking about. the republicans oppose creating a new consumer protection

agency. you mean to tell me the american people, the american people having gone through 208 million foreclosures in 2009 alone all based on no doc loans, liar loans, loans where nobody wants to figure out whether you can pay back the loan or they just put pressure tactics on you just sign, sign, sign, sign, sign, you mean to tell you don't want somebody to watch and make sure that these loans are fair, that the terms of the loan are clear, that people understand what the interest rate is going to really be, that they really understand that the total amount you're going to have to pay for this house over the term of the loan, that you understand what negative amortization is, what this teaser rate is not going to stay at $700, it will jump to $1,100 after the two years or three-year period is over, you mean to tell me you don't want anybody to protect the american people from that kind of stuff? they say no. they say buyer beware.

if you have a fair product at a fair place that you're willing to disclose, go out and use the american enterprise system to do it, but don't trick the people, don't trick the people, don't sell somebody a horse that can't see and then when the person asks about it you tell them it sees just fine. don't do that. be honest. be a good business person. that's what the democrats are saying. the republicans are saying buyer beware. they are saying we don't care, just sell them whatever you want to, at whatever cost you want. they oppose tax cuts for small businesses and working families. the american recovery and reinvestment act, mr. speaker, actually gave tax cuts to about 95% of the american people. the american reinvestment and recovery act gave tax cuts to about 95% of the american people. how many votes did the

republicans give? none. they didn't want to help on this one. they were busy. they were against it. they were worried about other things when they were working -- when we were talking about helping the american people out. so they oppose regulating wall street and preventing foreclosures. they not -- they're not in favor of that. let me tell you, you know, democrats were working on anti-predatory regulations during 2005, during 2006, during 2007, but we were in the minority during 2008. the republican caucus blocked it every step of the way and now that the democrats are in charge we are moving full steam ahead to pass bills that will prevent predatory lending and stopping foreclosure. and we would like a little help, but so far, mr. speaker, we haven't gotten any.

i talked a moment ago, mr. speaker, about wall street's record on -- wall street's pay record. and i talked about how the republican caucus was against coming -- bringing into these excessive bailouts and those excessive -- these excessive bonuses for wall street c.e.o. 's who, by the way, get tarp money, public-to-public money. wall street's record pay. after receiving trillions in taxpayer-funded bailouts, the top 38 financial firms gave record pay to their employees in 2009. they give your money, mr. speaker. they gave them the taxpayer's money. we are trying to stop that. we are trying to make sure they don't do that but we're not getting any help from the other side of the aisle. so they gave record pay to their employees during 2009 during the great recession. wall street pay in billions.

2007 their bonuses was $137 billion. 2008, $123.4 billion. 2009, del 145 billion. that's incredit -- $145 billion. that's incredible, especially during a recession. the democrats are saying no more, we will not allow you to do that. now, mr. speaker, as a result of democrats working hard to pass jobs bills, to push on this issue of consumer protection, to passing the credit cardholders' bill of rights, what we've seen is this downward trend in the economy during the bush administration breaking sharply upward during the obama administration.

during the bush administration $15 trillion of weight was destroyed between july, 2007 to january, 2009, as home values plummeted during the foreclosure crisis. this is what happened during the bush administration. when obama comes in the numbers start going back up again. the road to net -- to recovery. u.s. household net worth going back up and the going back up every day. what we have to do is stay the course and keep on building and strengthening our economy by holding wall street accountable, by passing job promoting legislation and by letting consumers keep some of that money and giving a fair deal. so, mr. speaker, let me just talk a little bit about some of these issues about how wall street reform is good for working americans. so i just want to go to my first board.

so wall street reform is good for americans. mr. speaker, we're here today to talk about ending decades of failed policies that ultimately cause a near complete collapse of our entire economy. we're here today to talk about what brought us the greatest recession since the great depression. wall street reform is good for main street. the crisis is the product of reckless actions, of massive private financial institutions coupled with deregulation and nonregulation and no oversight while congress was under the watch of the republicans and the bush white house. these policies have come with an enormous cost to the middle class.

mr. speaker, do you realize that $14 trillion of net -- of net worth has been lost when we drop -- when we watch home values plummet during the bush administration? 22% in decline in net worth for individuals. pensions fell. pensions, mr. speaker, fell by $24.8 billion. pensions, what americans rely on to care for them during the golden years, the value dropped. people hoping to retire cannot do so. last year alone 2.8 million homes lost to foreclosure in 2009. 12 million americans relying on payday loans just to get by. 12 million americans relying on payday loans just to get by. $33 billion in bonuses for wall street executives.

mr. speaker, when we passed financial reform, when we passed financial reform including the consumer product agency, those 12 million americans relying on payday loans to get by will have a watchdog watching over them to make sure they're not abused by fine print and tricky terms and conditions. so when you hear republicans talking about financial reform and how we shouldn't do it and they don't want this or they don't want that, just think of the 12 million americans who are relying on payday loans just to get by, relying on credit cards just to get by. who's going to make sure those terms are fair, that they disclose those terms, that somebody is watching out for that consumer? it will be the democratic caucus and the president who pass financial reform. i do hope we get at least one republican to vote for it, but i'm not holding my breath.

you know, it's important to point out, mr. speaker, that when you hear republicans talking about cutting red tape or letting the markets sort it out, actually that has very severe complications for the american people. cutting red tape means getting rid of regulations. it means like calling a police officer on a beat red tape. it's like saying a regulator to make sure that financial products are fair is red tape. it's not red tape. it's regulation that's necessary to make sure that the american people are treated fairly. let's talk about what they really mean when they say cutting red tape and letting the markets sort it out. it means no accountability and no responsibility for multinational corporations and wall street c.e.o.'s who gamble with our national well-being. and it means our basic assurance that if they have their way we will be back, back in bailout bill again, we will

be back in this mess again and that's why we got to pass financial reform. since taking back control of congress, we've seen the democratic caucus take real action to help consumers. in december -- in december, 2009, the house passed the wall street reform and consumer protection act. the senate is moving its bill now. the senate is currently working on that bill and it looks like it's going to come up soon. the house bill will protect consumers and investors and small businesses and put in a broader financial system on a more stable footing. in the house bill, it will place badly needed regulations of things like derivatives, hedge funds and credit rating agencies. mr. speaker, let me just take a moment to help the american people know what a deriff it

tif is. it's sort of -- derivative is. it's sort of like a hedge. when the value of it goes down, the derivative is expected to help that fallen value and make sure you don't lose all -- altogether. a form of derivative is a credit default swap, and basically what that is when you have a mortgage-backed security that means a security that's traded but is backed up by mortgages that if the value of that security falls down that credit default swap is supposed to pay. unfortunately, mr. speaker, this instrument, this credit default swap is like insurance but it's one of those air quote like insurance. it's not insurance but it's like insurance because if it was insurance it would be regulated by a state insurance

commissioner who would make sure that that insurance company had the money to cover claims if there would have been a claim. a regular insurance company says, you know what, if you're going to hold yourself up as an insurance company and you are going to write policies for people you have to have money if there is an auto accident or tornado or there's a loss of life or whatever we have insurance for. but when it comes to these credit default swaps there was no such regulator, nobody made sure that there was enough money to back the loss and pay the claims on if those securities wept down in value. and because of that when these -- when the mortgage-backed security market went down and these asset -- because people were not paying on their mortgages because they were in foreclosure and they began to make claims for those credit default swaps, there wasn't enough money to cover them, and the american people had to bail out a.i.g. so they could pay those creditors.

that's what a derivative is. derivatives are going to be regulated under the new financial reform. there will be that commissioner. there will be that regulator to make sure that this market works properly and that it doesn't cost catastrophic losses in our economy. hedge funds, hedge funds are large fundses generally held by large -- by wealthy individuals. they'll be regulated. credit rating agencies, these are agencies that issue ratings for bonds like a a. a. rating or a a.a. rating or a d.d.d. rating or other types of ratings that they can give. the fact is, these credit rating agencies, some of them when they said this security was a.a.a., it wasn't. some of these assets that they said were good, were not good. and when they went down in value, the people who relied on the credit rating agency were

caught by surprise. and this is why these credit rating agencies are going to have reform. and it's a good thing, mr. speaker. now, let me just say, the other thing that we're going to do in reform is i mentioned mortgage-backed securities. a lot of people don't -- like, what is that? well, a mortgage-backed security is a security where, imagine that you have a house and you have a mortgage on that house. and then the bank is going to receive the money that the homeowner is paying on their mortgage. and imagine that the bank says, you know what? i have -- this homeowner owes me a string of income. if you want it, i'll sell it to you. and the person says, well, i'll buy it. and the person starts buying up a lot of mortgages and then they take those mortgages and they bundle them up and that's a

mortgage-backed security. and then they take that mortgage-backed security and they bundle those up and that's called a collateral debt obligation. imagine a mortgage at m&m, a bag of m&m's is a mortgage-backed security and a box of m&m's is a collateral debt obligation. imagine that somebody somebody were to take that box or bag of m&m's and slice them up and sell them off. what might look like -- what it might look like is something like this. you might have these -- these things are called traunches. a traurge is nothing but a french word, it means slice. and a slice is something that you have if you look at this mortgage-backed security. this top traunch mortgage-backed security is made of up these traunches, each rated a little riskier than the next. so this is a a.a.a. traunch. that's the one that the rating agencies tell us is a a.a.a.

traunch. and we rely on them and expect that they'll be honest and have done a good job in rating the risk of that top-rated traunch. but in the next traunch might be one down here. this would beat the a.a. traunch and one of the riskier traunches, so maybe down here you have b.b. here -- b.b.b. here. so these things, you get it in a document, it's usually a document and you can buy this mortgage-backed security or you can buy a piece of it and you will have an interest in it. and it will entitle to you a stream of income. but how valuable is it? how safe is it? how sound is it? it all depends on how well the rating agency has rated risk for each traunch. so, if you look at this particular mortgage-backed security, this traunch's performance is referenced by multiple unrelated investment vehicles in 2006 and 2007. so, if you have one of these

things and you look at it, it will say that this is an index called the a.b.x..here you have a mess anyone fund. that means it has a lower rating for risk and you have these down here. abacus, you have this one. and they're all down here. , so these are all down the line and these are all hot. so this is what a mortgage-backed security could well look like as you look at the various traunches that defend in order of risk. the problem with this is that when the -- is that they were not -- the risk was not properly assessed and evaluated and when they began to decline in value they began to have real trouble in our market. and it's because of the lack of regulation which is going to be taken care of as congress moves through financial reform.

now, what does all this mean? i'll return to this in a moment. what does this mean for working families? working families might think, i don't know what a traunch is, i don't know what a credit default swap is, all that's true. but perhaps the portfolio manager of the pension or your 401-k knows what it is and therefore it affects you directly. well, what this means, what it means is that financial reform is going to mean that bank loans, mortgages and credit cards are going to be fairer, more affordable, more understandable and more frns parent -- transparent. financial reform is going to mean that there's going to have to be real disclosure and the government's going to take some real responsibilities to make sure that these credit rating agencies are properly assessing risk, making sure that the companies do it are properly assessing risk, are going to make sure that consumers are treated fairly, are going to prevent bailouts and are going to make sure our economy is more

stable footing. financial reform is going to mean that -- it's going to ensure that consumers get the information that they need in the clear, precise format regarding banks, mortgage servicers and credit card companies. financial reform is going to prevent the financial industry from offering predatory loans to people who can't afford a repayment and that these loans are going to be properly underwritten so that people don't get in over their head. financial reform is going to put in place commonsense regulations to stop abuses by the financial services industry as payday lending and exorbitant overdraft fees. overdraft fees. that's when you swipe your card, if you're 30 cents over you may still have to pay $39 for that overdraft fee, even if you went out and asked for a debit card so that if did you go over by mistake, the charge would be denied. and you might have to solve that problem some other way, but at least you wouldn't be deep into

your account and have a negative balance. protections against financial reform is protections against reckless wall street financial schemes, bad home mortgages for short-term profit, bad credit cards with hidden penalties for the average consumers, and it means protecting workers' life savings, pensions, and stopping wall street consuming. it guards against massive unemployment rate due to the near total collapse in our economy back in october, 2008. financial reform also, mr. speaker, means putting into too big to fail financial firms. too big to fail means too small to save. too big to fail means reckless behavior by firms that are so large that no matter what they do, they know that we've got to bail them out because if we don't, it will have real harm to all of us. that's what we're talking about. we're talking about doing something to stabilize our

economy, defend our economy, protect our economy and to make sure that the average american is not at risk and our financial future is secure. may i ask the speaker how much time we have left? the speaker pro tempore: 17 minutes. mr. ellison: thank you. so, let me just go through some of the highlights of financial reform. i do want to -- before do i i just want to talk about some of the root causes again. to do that i want to get this mortgage-backed security back up here. if you want to talk about what happened and therefore what we should do to fix it, you have to start at the fact that way back in the 1930's, mr. speaker, our economy went through a catastrophic drop known as the great depression. and during that time forward thinking politicians put things in place to try to help protect our economy.

things like glass steagall which said that if you're a financial firm, you have to do what your core competence is, meaning that if you're a depository bank, you go do that, if you're an investment bank, you focus on that, if you're an insurance company, you focus on that. and it went along that way very well, mr. speaker. a lot of up until the mid 1990's when travel insurance and citibank came together, an insurance company and a depository bank coming together, they wanted to do it, there was a big court case about it, and a lot of people at the time thought, you know what? that old glass-steagall stuff is so yesterday. let's do something new and innovative and really unleash innovation. that's what they said. it so happened that glass-steagall was not such a bad idea as we look back, but at that time they wanted to pass a bill called graham-leech-bliley. this is a bill that would basically allow firms to

basically go out of their area of core competence and so you'd have a citi, you'd have a citibank purchasing an insurance company or you'd have a depository bank purchasing a brokerage house or a investment bank and you just had everybody doing everything. what happened is you had bigger firms, they kind of dabbled and did various areas and -- but as the business reality was changed because they were deregulated, congress did not see fit to put in the kind of regulation that was required to make sure that the system was still essentially safe and essentially sound. reckless schemes began to emerge. we began to see more deregulation. in fact, in 1999 we passed -- when we passed regulatory reform in the financial world we also said the things like credit default swaps would not be

regulated. they would just be out there on the market because they figured the people who deal in these things are arm's length and they are sophisticated investors and they no what they're doing and what they -- won't harm the rest of us. i guess we were wrong about that. what began to happen is that in the mortgage markets we began to see people being -- who wanted to buy a home, going into the mortgage market and they were beginning to be sold things that were called predatory loans. now this is what we call it. that's what they are. what they were called is adjustable rate mortgages. arms. they were given arms and sometimes they were given mortgages where they would get, for two years they'd pay a low rate and then after two years they'd have a balloon payment that would go up or after three years you'd pay a low payment and then it would balloon upward. now the mortgage market -- the

housing market is a market that had consistently gone up. and it kept increasing. so even if that happened, when you got the balloon payment, perhaps you could go back to a lender and you could simply refinance your mortgage. how many americans tried to do that? let me tell you, a lot. but we assume the housing market would always go up but what if it flattened out or went down like it did over the course of the last decade? the fact is that it was in the mid 1990's when congress passed a law that told the fed that they could regulate the mortgage market to make sure that when people got into loans that were not good for them that they could regulate. some of these 228's and 327's i mentioned had terms like prepayment penalties. if you wanted to pay off the loan early you couldn't do it or you had to pay an extra penalty. they had things like year-spread

premium which meant that if you were a mortgage broker and were able to channel somebody into a higher cost loan, then you as the person who brokered that loan might be able to get the spread of the difference between the lower cost loan that they are qualified for and the higher cost loan that you got them to bite on. so you incentivized people pushing people to get into loans that were not as good as the once that they actually qualified for. over time we also had something called securitization which meant that, as i said before, once that mortgage was inked and somebody bought the house and got the loan, the paper on that mortgage could be sold and then pooled together into a mortgage-backed security. and we didn't require that the original lender kept any part of the risk of that loan so that they could just sell it off and it wouldn't make any difference to them if that loan was never paid off or not. so therefore their

responsibility for underwriting that loan carefully, making sure the person could pay that loan, began to go down. because they weren't going to keep it on their books anyway. and so what began to happen over time, mr. speaker, is that we saw these instruments like mortgage-backed securities, i mentioned before, mortgages being sold to somebody who packaged them together and then packaged them to even a bigger box and set them up in these tiered investment vehicles with the highest being supposedly the most safe investment all the way down to the bottom with the most risky investment, doing so, and then people buying parts of it. then these instruments being hedged with things like credit default swaps which didn't have anything to back them up if people made claims when these instruments lost value. what began to happen is that credit began to get cheaper, we got cheaper, low interest loans

for long periods of time, as money was cheaper people bought more houses and people bought more houses, the price of them went up, obviously. and we began to experience a bubble in the housing market. and you began to see, like now housing prices have dropped quite a bit. the problem is that people who bought at bubble prices now are under water, meaning the loan on their house is higher than the amount of value that is in the house which is a problem. negative equity. but what's going to happen, mr. speaker, these mortgage-backed securities, as people began to lose jobs, as the housing market started to flatten out, people began to not be able to pay and the people who probably never should have qualified for a loan couldn't pay and the value of these mortgage-backed securities began to decline. and as that happened people started to get in really difficult situations because

what began to happen is the neighborhood all over america, houses began to get abandoned, people began to be foreclosured on. either they had a house that they never could afford but they bought it on a teaser rate, and so when it ballooned they couldn't keep the house. or when people could not afford it when they lose their jobs and the foreclosures began to seriously mount. they began to get really big. and then as the market began -- that began to happen to the housing market, people began, who went to go back and refinance their house, had no equity or negative equity, the banks said there is no equity in the home or negative equity in the home. and then at that point, mr. speaker, we got into a crisis. what happened? what happened? the fact is that we began to have a real catastrophe. very little oversight from

government. government allowing people just to do -- to let the market just go on as i said before. and real pain began as the real foreclosures mounted, as the failures continued on, as unemployment began to slump because housing is a huge part of our economy, and if the housing market isn't moving, then a lot of people aren't working which began to have an even -- which began to increase the cycle of the bust. so, mr. speaker, what we see now is a real need to do something about the situation that we're in. a real need to take real affirmative action, to take real control over our economy. so let's talk about what we're going to do to solve this problem. we are going to talk about reforming the financial sector

of our economy. we are going to talk about adding greater oversight. we are going to talk about what it is we need to do to make sure we don't find ourselves in a very difficult situation yet again. what we're going to do, mr. speaker, is we're going to do something about that predatory lending that i talked about, we are going to stop predatory and irresponsible mortgage lending. tough new rules on the riskiest financial practices. rules to stop excess speculation in derivatives and grow credit default swaps. we are going to require investment advisors to act for the benefit of their client under the law. we are going to empower investors with a say in electing the company board members. some of these companies that urged, urged, urged their employees to sell as many mortgages as they possibly could. stories from countrywide was a

huge mortgage -- predatory mortgage lender who sold many houses that they lended money for going into foreclosure. we're going to stop the shallow banking system of small predatory institutions such as payday lenders, check cashers, mortgage loan originators and others who disappeared as quickly as they arrived on the scene and we're going to start regulating the unregulated. we are going to stop too big to fail, mr. speaker. we are going to stop too big to fail by saying we are going to have fund that these big firms have to pay into based on the riskiness of their activity so if one of them goes down the people who will pay their creditors would be from that fund, not from the american taxpayer. it's kind of like fdic insurance. banks pay it so if banks pay into a fund so that if a bank goes down depositors are covered and that is the money that goes to -- to make sure

the depositors are covered. we call this ex-anti means before it would be paid -- and it makes a lot of sense to do it because the people who are in business, who are doing these risky practices are the ones who should pay. now people are saying we need to fund after a company goes down. that would mean that the one who engaged in the risky behavior would be gone after everybody else had to pick up the pieces. that's not good economics, mr. speaker. we oppose that idea. we are talking about the consumer products financial agency and they would have the power to stop unfair, deceptive and abuser consumer financial products. we would also have a board called the financial services oversight council, mr. speaker, who could study potential risks while a financial system and identify financial risk before it caused great harm to the

economy. and so, mr. speaker, that is -- that is the basic heart of financial reform. we need the american people to embrace it. it's good. policing wall street, ending bank bailouts, stabilizing the economy and stopping gambling with pensions. and now in the last few minutes, mr. speaker, i want to talk about -- i want to talk about a subject that i think every american should know about and that is the effort by wall street leaders to stop financial reform on wall street. a lot of money being spent to stop financial reform. a lot of money being spent to make sure that regulating derivatives, regulating the credit rating agencies, regulating credit card companies, payday lenders and making sure there is an ex-anti fund to help failing firms so

the american people don't fork it over, they're spending a lot of money, they're spending a lot of money, mr. speaker. wall street is spending billions to kill reform. in 2009, the financial industry spent $465 million in lobbying washington. $1.4 million a day in lobbying congress. $1.1 million per member of congress. actually more than that. like -- you know, more than $1 million. that's a rounding down. $3.9 billion in the last decade and employed 1,726 washington lobbyists just to persuade congress members to not make changes to wall street. now, the american people ought to know what they're up against, but let me just tell you a well-motivated constituent always trumps a lobbyist. so, mr. speaker, it wouldn't be a bad thing at all if people let their member of congress know how they felt about the importance of regulating wall

street. the top eight banks, mr. speaker, spent about $30 million in 2009 just on lobbying. jpmorgan chase spent $6.2 million lobbying last year. all to try to make sure that whatever comes out of congress looks good for them. during the first quarter of 2010, this year, the top 25 banks spent $11 million, which is an increase of 5% from the same time last year. what is going on during the first three months of 2010 that wasn't going on the same time last year? well, financial reform, mr. speaker. that's why they increased their spending. i would like to hear members of the republican caucus defend wall street's spending to kill financial reform. i hope they do say, well, it's

ok for them to spend money on financial reform. during the first quarter of 2010, the top 25 banks spent $11 million total, which is an increase of 5%. and the fact is is that of that $11 million that the top 25 banking firms spent on lobbying, the top six of them, jpmorgan chase, wells fargo, citigroup, goldman sachs and morgan stanley spent $6.9 million on lobbying in the first quarter of this year. that's a lot of money. that marked a 4% increase from late last year, a jump of about a third from the first three months in 2009. but what is going on that wasn't going on then? wall street reform. they're trying to slow reform. so with that, mr. speaker, i'm going to yield back and just

say it's been a pleasure coming to the special order on behalf of the progressive caucus. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. under the speaker's announced policy of january 6, 2009, the gentleman from iowa, mr. king, is recognized for 60 minutes under the designee of the minority leader. mr. king: thank you, mr. speaker. i'm privileged to be recognized by you to address the house of representatives in this most deliberative body that we are. and i often come here in the 30 or so minutes that i spend waiting and anticipating my opportunity to address you, i also can't afford lending an ear to the gentleman who often presents ahead of me. and i sometimes think about what it would be like if i could walk in here in the last

130ekds -- 30 seconds and not rebut the previous 30 seconds. i will compress this a little bit and get on to the subject hand that i came here to talk about. but, yes, many republicans and perhaps every republican will oppose this financial bill that has the barney frank bill sent to the united states senate and become the chris dodd bill. in fact, i don't know any two people that would probably have less favor in rewriting the financial laws in america than those two individuals. they've had a long time now to investigate what's happened with the finances in america and what's happened with the downward spiral of our economy. when this happened and it started before this seminole date. but the seminole date, mr. speaker, was september 19, 2008, when then secretary of the treasury, henry paulson, came to this capitol and asked for the $700 billion in tarp funding. then senator obama and now

president obama supported all of those moves. president obama as senator and later as president supported the takeover of the banks, the insurance company, fannie and freddie, general motors, chrysler. by the way, the student loan program. not to mention obamacare. and now we have the financial world that is -- our effort to take that over. i'll stand and oppose these changes. i'll stand and oppose them for a lot of reasons, perhaps an opportunity i can get into a little bit later in this hour, mr. speaker. the federal government should not be making arbitrary decisions on which businesses succeed and which ones fail. it should not be in position evaluating, and if there is credible evidence of an entity, a corporate entity, financial credit entity, credible evidence as to whether or not they might be in trouble, that would give the secretary of the treasury the authority to pull

the plug on the company, take it over by the federal government, bring regulators in to intimidate them before or after the fact. this is -- it gives this bill, this chris dodd bill or barningy frank bill, it gives -- barney frank bill, it gives the federal government the authority to take over any business that they so choose. now, i hope to get to this. but at this moment, mr. speaker, i'd transition this subject over to the subject that i came here to speak about and that is right now we have attorney general holder testifying before the house judiciary committee. i came directly here from there, i will say almost directly here from there, having listening to a measure of his testimony in response to the people that is on the judiciary committee. and as this unfolds yet, i come here because i'm dissatisfied with the responses that i have received from the attorney general. i actually think that he's a

fine fellow and would make a good neighbor, but i am concerned about the politicization of the justice department. and even though attorney general holder made remarks at the end of my question period that their office would not be political, they would be imparblee, they would function under the law, i happen to have a special view of attorney generals and whether they'd be state attorney generals or whether they would actually be u.s. attorney generals, they have to understand the constitution. they have to understand the rule of law. they can't know every federal statute. i wouldn't hold anyone accountable for that, but when they've had an opportunity to do an investigation or had an opportunity to brief themselves on subject matter that's bound to come up, i would expect that they would be conversent enough with the law and with the constitution to be able to make an argument that would defend the actions of the justice department at a minimum. and so i made the remark and

posed this situation. and this is off of the opening statement of congresswoman judy chu who said that arizona law -- and this is what attorney general holder, the solo witness before the committee, and he was the audience that she was speaking to -- she said arizona law is cruel and it institutionalizes racial profiling. she said that people are, and i quote, already being detained because they forgot their driver's license at home, closed quote. she continues to say it's burdensome and necessary for people to carry multiple forms of identity, which reminds her of living in a cold war state. and i don't know what cold war state she may have lived in. but i meat this point to attorney general holder and asked him if there is anything in his knowledge that the arizona law could be doing now that would affect the activities of the law enforcement officers in arizona in such a way that the allegations by ms. chu is accurate, that they are already

detaining people because they forgot their driver's license at home and that it would institutionalize racial profiling. mr. speaker, this is -- this is the highest level of the deliberative body in the world, and this dialogue has gotten down to this point where we have people that are representing a state law that's very well-known by now, that specifically prohibits racial profiling and prohibits the utilization of even the factor of race if it's the sole factor, that's by law. it's arizona law. to have a member of congress say to the attorney general in a hearing, when the attorney general is under oath, that people are already being detained, people are already being detained under arizona law, here's the kyo, -- quote, already being detained because they forgot their driver's license at home, closed quote. also said that the law is cruel

and it institutionalizes racial profiling. it's a fact that arizona law unless specified otherwise is not an act and it does not take effect until 90 days after the governor signs the bill which was some, couple or three weeks ago. it certainly wasn't 90 days ago, mr. speaker. as i point this out to the attorney general, one would think that a person that is at that high level in this country, with this very high responsibility, could at least concur that the arizona law hasn't been enacted yet, but you he could not bring himself to do that because that would have caused him to come into a political disagreement with the activists on the democrat side of the judiciary committee, the most polarized committee on the hill. now, that's a presumption on my part on his motive but it seems to fit a pattern. and he admitted that he has an investigation going on looking into arizona immigration law. and when i made the point that

the president of the united states had announced that he had directed the attorney general to look into arizona immigration law, i heard no rebut al and i -- rebuttal. so if the president of the united states directs the attorney general to conduct an investigation into state statute , on what basis is the follow-up question to attorney general holder? they've been investigating now for some weeks. what is the basis of your investigation? constitution statutory, the principle of federal preemption of state law. now, that's a general answer that you can pick up in any law school or many articles in the newspapers these days about arizona law itself. and so when i followed up with the question of, specifically where in the constitution do you have concern about arizona law? and where in the federal statute would you have concern about the

arizona law perhaps violating the federal statute? and stretching beyond the bounds of federal preemption? and i got a generalized answer that, well, it's been the practice of the federal government has dealt with immigration law. the practice, the implication. we have the justice department investigating arizona, we have the justice department investigating sheriff pile, the sheriff from the county, they have targeted him for months and months and months because he's politically incorrect. he enforces federal immigration law, it violates the activists that help support the president, but we can't find out that it violates any federal statute, any constitutional requirement that's there, i believe from what i've seen and i've visited tent city and sheriff pile on the border and i've gone on that border trip many times and i'll go back again, mr. speaker, but when we have an attorney general

that's committing the resources of the united states and the resources of the taxpayers to investigate a law in arizona that enjoys at least 70% support of the people of arizona, a significant majority of the support of the people across this country, that mirrors federal law, and when you have a secretary of homeland security, janet napolitano, who a a former governor of arizona, who admittedly had her tugs of war with sheriff pile when she was of the governor and he was the sheriff, one would think that an administration, a president of the united states, an attorney general, a secretary of homeland security would have jumped for joy that arizonans have decided to use their state resources to enforce the federal immigration laws that the federal government is not enforcing adequately enough. instead of jumping for joy, instead of going down and giving

sheriff pile a high five or maybe the governor of arizona another high five or a good atta girl for signing that bill and for the work that was done in the state legislature, particularly that led by russell pierce who i have watched for some time, we can't have the federal government supporting something that the american people want. the arizonans demand. it was almost a primal scream of desperation that caused the arizona legislature to pass the legislation that mirrored federal law so that they are going to prohibit sanctuary cities within arizona and require local law enforcement to support federal immigration law bisetting up a state law that makes it against the law to break federal immigration law. that's not technically correct but it is the analysis that best describes it, mr. speaker. and our attorney general is spending resources to investigate arizona and can't still point to a single place in

the united states constitution or a single federal statute that he thinks could be cause of concern. when i ask him, he said, well, it's under investigation and it's inconclusive at this point. well, i read through the constitution and i came to a conclusion. as far as the constitutional understanding, the concern is this, there's two places in the constitution that could be relevant with regard to arizona immigration law. one place where it says the federal government has a responsibility to guard against foreign invasion. well, now we could talk about what a foreign invasion is but when it's four million people a year pouring across our border illegally and we can interdict 1/4 of them, we have twice the size of santa anna's army coming across our border every night, one might find that an invasion. i would guarantee you there's been more weapons carried across that border in the hands of

people who are coming in here illegally than all the weapons that were carried in the handses of santa anna's army 150 years ago. so, mr. speaker, the constitution requires the federal government to defend against invasion. but it doesn't prohibit the states from defending themselves against invasion. i would hope the attorney general would understand that principle. there's -- but that's -- i address that because there's only two places in the constitution that address immigration. and the other place, and i think that i've handled that issue so it's essentially not rebuttable. then the other point is article 1 section 8 of the constitution, the other place where immigration is dealt with, where it says that the congress shall have the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization. uniform rule of naturalization. well, what can that be? that means that congress sets the legal immigration laws with

regard to how people come into this country and become citizens. we do that. we've set those standards. but there's nothing in the constitution that prohibits the states from passing their own immigration laws unless they are attempting to preempt existing federal law or unless those laws are unconstitutional. so one would think that an attorney general that had all of these resources investigating arizona law and was a winner -- aware of the investigations that are going on of sheriff pile when the allegations that there are violations of civil rights down in the county, all the resources pulled into that, i have yet to find any substance. and still millions of dollars are being spent, all kinds of time is being burned, there's all kinds of politicalization going on. and the attorney general swears there is not. his office will not be political. well, i'll submit, mr. speaker, that when the president of the

united states said, here's what could happen under arizona law, the mother and her daughter are going out to get some ice cream, somebody can come along and say, where are your papers? anybody remember that? i do, mr. speaker. and so that was making this law political. the president of the united states made it political. and he's the man that ordered a justice department investigation of arizona? and he allegation alleges, the president alleges, that it's race-based and racially motivated when the law that self specifically prohibits that from happening. we can't have the presumption on part of the president of the united states or the attorney general that the law enforcement officers in arizona are motivated by something other than race? maybe they're motivated to support the rule of law. couldn't we presume that that's it? that's the case, that's their oath? can't we tell by their practice that they have -- they have enough to do without targeting people because of race? look at the crime across

arizona. phoenix, the second highest -- the second highest in the hemisphere in kidnapping, and the kidnapping, the smuggling, the deaths, the murder rates, crime rates over the last 10 years in arizona have gone up. the illegal border crossings may have tempered down just a little bit, but on the other hand it might just be that janet napolitano's operation isn't as aggressive as it was under even michael cher enough. i -- cherd of. when you make the argument that your interdictions on the border have gone down therefore you're getting the border under control, it might be that you're not doing your job agressively before. there could be twice as many people crossing the border and could you pick up half as many as you were before but that doesn't mean the half as many are you picking up equates into fewer people crossing the border. that maybe. in fact i suspect it is true fewer people are crossing the border but it doesn't equate that the enforcement is better than it was. it may be better, it may be

worse. what is conclusive here is the department of justice has become political. it is a political tool. and it saddened me to see this and hear this and have to make this argument here on the floor of the house. but i didn't come, mr. speaker, lightly armed. i only point out the arizona component of this because that's the dialogue that just took place within the last hour or so. the department of justice investigating arizona for constitutional statutory violations but cannot point their finger to a single place in the constitution or a single controlling federal statute and by the way, i would point out also that according to federal case law, the precedence that we can find that there is ample precedent that local law enforcement has the authority to enforce federal immigration law, with or without a 287-g agreement and a memorandum of understanding which has been somewhat gutted by secretary

napolitano, the precedent that i would cite would be u.s. vs. santana garcia which establishes a supreme court decision that establishes that local government has the ability, local law enforcement has the constitutional authority to enforce immigration law. i would go on further with this that sheriff pile is on solid ground. they would have found a way to crack him by now if he were not. but it's been, i believe, politically motivated. the effort to go down and make race the issue when it's law enforcement that is the problem and the federal immigration law that's not being adequately enforced is the problem, and the attorney general should be able to aye at least defend the actions of the justice department even though he agreed that the president had directed that there be an investigation. based on what? the president's supposition that a mother and her daughter would be perhaps the wrong skin tone and they would be picked up and

asked for their identification because they went out to get some ice cream? it seems the president has an inclination to engage in these kind of things when he had an irish cop and a black professor, whode he side with? he jumped to a conclusion without having heard the facts and he ended up having to have a beer summit. maybe we could have a summit with the sheriff on the south lawn of the white house and they could sit down at the picnic table together and discuss these things so all of the resources the federal government don't have to be tied up in knots on these suppositions or the unfounded presumption that there's something unconstitutional about arizona law or something that violates federal statute. i see that i am joined on the floor by the ranking member of the judiciary committee who has just come from the hearings of the attorney general and i would be so happy to yield as much time as he may consume to mr. smith from texas and thank him for joining me here on the floor. mr. smith: i thank the gentleman from iowa for yielding and i also want to thank representative king for his good work on the judiciary committee.

i've just been listening to his last few comments and appreciate his pointing out so many facts about immigration law and about what is going on there. the reason i wanted to be briefly recognizeded is because we've had some recent developments and pollings just in the last day or two on some of the same subjects that the gentleman from iowa has been discussing. it's been no surprise, for example, that on the latest poll it shows that only 25% of the american public approve of president obama's handling of the nation's immigration policy it is not enforcing our immigration laws and in my judgment has failed to protect our borders. arizona, which is trying to do what the federal government has not done, continues to enjoy strong support for its policy. according to the most recent pew poll, 73% of the public support requiring people to produce documents, varyfying their legal status if police asked them to do that.

67% of the public support allowing police to detape anyone who can't verify their -- detain anyone who can't verify their legal status. there was a "wall street journal"/nbc news poll. one of them was about the arizona law. and 64%, according to "the wall street journal/nbc news poll, 64% support the arizona law. let me say that i think it's gone up from 60% last week to 64% today. almost 2/3 of the american people support what the folks in arizona are trying to do. and we probably ought not try to second guess what they are doing. the residents of arizona knows they have a problem on their hands. phoenix is the kidnapping capital of the united states right now. people in arizona see that human smuggling that crosses their border, they see the drug trafficking that crosses of their border.

several hundred people have been killed in arizona crossing the border. people in arizona are really crying out for help from the federal government to protect their border, but the federal government is not responding and this administration is not responding. and a message from the american people and the message from the folks in arizona is that we want to see immigration laws enforced. and believe me, the message from arizona is not we needham nesty for people in the country illegally, it's that we -- it's not that we need amnesty for people in the country illegally, it's that we need immigration reform. people supporting what arizona residents have done -- by the way, it includes, as i recall, 60% to 61% of independents. and most tellingly, it includes half of the hispanics across the country also support the arizona law that was just passed enforcing immigration laws and trying to make their best efforts to reduce illegal

immigration. so i appreciate the gentleman from iowa yielding. i just wanted to bring everybody up-to-date on the most recent poll. and the poll is even more surprising. the poll that shows that almost 2/3 of the american people support the immigration law that arizona has just passed. it's even more surprising because another research poll shows that in the coverage of the arizona law, the three networks, abc, nbc, cbs have actually aired 12 negative stories about the arizona law for every one positive story. so when you have a degree of media bias on the subject that is frankly been unseen. i think when it comes to immigration, the national media, including the three networks, probably do their worst job of reporting and show their greatest bias. this i consider to be a threat to democracy when the networks and the national media are not giving the american people the facts and instead trying to tell them what to think, that is a danger to democracy.

also the media research center, for example, one out of 10 stories have actually mentioned that 70% of the residents of arizona support the arizona law. as i said, a great majority of the american people support the arizona law. and yet the media are not reporting it. considering that 12-1 negative coverage of the law and the fact that 2/3 of the american people still support it shows how strongly people across the country feel. there is nothing wrong with wanting to enforce immigration laws. there's nothing wrong with wanting individuals to respect law and order. the american people know that, and i thank them for knowing that, and i thank them for not being persuaded by very liberal media bias. and also, again, i appreciate the gentleman from iowa and his yeoman's service and hard work and diligence and commitment to such an important issue. mr. king: reclaiming my time. i ask the gentleman from texas yield to a question before he goes on to important duties and that is this -- i'm a bit

perplexed that the attorney general wouldn't or couldn't point to a part of the constitution that he thought might be violated by arizona law or point to a federal statute that might be violated by arizona law or point to a piece of federal case law that would prohibit the local law enforcement from enforcing federal immigration law. mr. smith: right. mr. king: would the gentleman from texas understand how that question might have been answered by an attorney general better informed? mr. smith: i don't think he answered the questions on that particular subject. while i was out of the room, i understand in response to a question asked by texas connolly, that he had not even read the arizona law. and if that's the case, that is both surprising and disturbing. again, i thank the gentleman for his comments on this subject. mr. king: i thank the gentleman from texas for illuminating the

subject matter, especially the polling matter of this. one would think the attorney general, as he was preparing to come before the judiciary committee, and historically the attorney general has briefed himself for several days people who would ask him questions and i would say play out the role so he would be prepared before congress, one of the things he would be briefed on is arizona immigration law. the justice department is investigating arizona and yet there seems to be not a realization of what's going on. he admits to the investigation or at least by -- he does admit to the investigation. and to not have read the law and perhaps not read the summary, mr. speaker, i need to put a little bit of this in the record from my -- from memory of what i have read of the immigration law which is actually most of it. it mirrors federal immigration -- federal immigration law and

it makes it against the law for -- to violate federal immigration law but it's the law that is set up -- it's mirrored and written by the state of arizona. and it seems as though i had a summary of it here. should i be able to find it i will speak to it factually, otherwise, from memory. in any case it allows for -- if a law enforcement officer encounters someone and in a normal practice of doing their duties they have to have probable cause to stop someone. probable cause might be speeding, an accident, a crime that's taken place, a traffic violation. once they pull over a vehicle, for example, they can ask for identification like they would for anyone that is driving under any other stop. and if that identification is not adequate, if there's then at that point they had probable cause to stop the vehicle or

encounter an individual, then if the identification isn't adequate for, let's say driving, then there's a reasonable suspicion for that officer to ask a few more questions. and that officer can ask some questions such as, where are you going, where were you coming from, where were you born, why don't you have a driver's license? and if they hand -- if they hand a me trick lahr counselor's card that means they are in the united states illegally. it's issued by the mexican consulate. it's not a valid u.s. i.d. if they are american citizens, if they are lawfully here they will have documents and ivings. they are required to carry on their person. so people lawfully present in the united states who are not

citizens -- let's say they have a green card, and that green card that allows them to legally work in the united states, they are required to carry it on their person if they are 18 years or older at all times. arizona law respects that and enforces -- that's a federal law. arizona law respects that as well. so this is probable cause to stop someone, reasonable suspicion that they're unlawfully present in the united states in order to follow through with any further questions or any further inquiry. now if people go out the back of the van and run into the desert, that's more than reason suspicion. and the objections that are coming from the people who are protesting against arizona law are the objections that we're hearing from, i guess before the judiciary committee and the person of representative judy chu who already ledges that arizona's law has resulted in cruel -- is cruel and it institutionalizes racial profiling.

no, it prohibits racial profiling as far as an exclusive component of reasonable suspicion or probable cause. and she said people are already detained because they forgot their crifere's license at home. who's -- driver's license at home. who is doing that? nobody is doing that under the color of this new immigration law because it's not enacted yet. we're already hearing the fears and the attorney general is investigating because the president has apparently decided for some political reason that they need to do something to suppress arizona from enforcing immigration law saying attaboy, attagirl, it's time that the states step up to help in immigration law. they lack the will and that's our problem. it's not lack of resources, it's lack of will to enforce federal immigration law. it's not lack of resources. three years ago or so or a little bit more we were

spending $8 billion to protect our southern border. that's 12,000-mile border. mr. speaker, i know you've done the math. that's $4 a mile. $4 million a mile to protect our southern border. i said then, if you give me $4 million to protect a mile of border, i'll be happy to take that check and warranty my work. we will not let anybody cross that border for $4 million. now it's gone from $8 billion to protect our 12,000-mile southern border to $12 billion to protect our southern border and there is still ineffectiveness because we have lack of will and lack of clarity and it comes from the top down. it's clear if the president doesn't want the borders enforced, the secretary of homeland security seems to not want to enforce against illegal workers in the workplace. she seems to just want to posture to enforce against employers. now, i admit there are many

border patrol officers and c.d.p. personnel that go to work and do their job very well. in fact, i congratulate them for that. they put their lives on the line every day. they deserve our support. but they're burdened by a lack of mission. and even though the mission is posted on the wall down at the station in nogales, that mission has got to be something that the top articulates. and if the president of the united states articulates something else, when arizona passes an immigration law that mirrors federal law and the president attacks arizona law and inflames public fears in an erroneous fashion, what more could he do to undermine arizona law and federal immigration law? he has said to everyone that's enforcing not just local law enforcement that's enforcing immigration law, he said to all

of the federal officers, ice, c.d.p., border patrol, all of them, well, he really doesn't want to see the immigration law enforced. and it's clear, of course, that he doesn't want to have racial profiling used. and i would agree as an exclusive component. as part of any indicators it ought to be used. when it comes down to enforce the law against international terrorism that a young middle eastern male cannot be considered as one of the factors, we've kind of said that when people go through the airport. i think it's wrong and foolish and i think, mr. speaker, it's downright stupid to set aside our common sense for the sake of political correctness. so arizona law goes to great lengths to make it clear that race cannot be the sole factor when evaluating reasonable suspicion or probable cause. how much further could they go? it reminds me of the official english law that i spent years

-- six years getting established in iowa. we had demonstrations and protesters and come into my office, sit down, tell me what your concerns are, hour after hour, we had witnesses before the committee. and it was about how the language would be disparaged. so we wrote in the law it was unlawful to disparage any language in iowa other than english. and you know i don't know if anyone's disparaged english either. these fears that are mounted by that 1% or 2% or 3% of that aggressive liberal, they can't come to pass. it didn't come to pass when we passed an official law language law in iowa or the 20-some other states. and furthermore, the fear about reasonable suspicion, giving a law enforcement officer an excuse to target someone that they don't like because of racial reasons, it isn't going

to come to pass. it may be a wild exception out there but it's not going to come to pass. this is a presumption that the law enforcement officers are racist and that they're biased and bigoted against a particular race, and many of the communities in arizona have a significant percentage and in some communities a majority of their law enforcement officers are hispanic and yet we are going to label all law enforcement officers in arizona as racist without one sin tilla of evidence and -- sen tilla of evidence and have ms. chu or the president of the united states or by his -- reluctance, i should say, to respond to the points i raised with him, the attorney general of the united states. it creates a perception that this is a racist society and that we can't even have logical laws that uphold the rule of law because somebody will abuse those and stretch the limits and targets someone. now, i will tell you, and we

heard from mr. smith statistically, the law enforcement officers in arizona have enough to do without that. they're faced with the highest kidnapping rate in the united states, the sec highest in the hemisphere, drug smuggling rates have gone up, violence that's gone up, the coyotes are taking the lawlessness from mexico into the united states. 90% of the illegal drugs consumed in america come from or through mexico. 90%. 100%, according to drug enforcement agency, 100% of the ill deal drug distribution chains in america have at least one link that's the link provided by an illegal in the united states. so if by some magical formula, everybody woke up tomorrow morning in a country they were lawfully residing in, it would, at least temporarily, sever

every illegal drug distribution chain in america. it probably wouldn't take them long to rebuild some of those, it would take longer to rebuild more of those and eventually we'd still have this eillegal drug distribution chain in america because the problem we have is that the demand for illegal drugs in this country is so powerful so great, somebody will find a way to meet the demand. until nation understands we have to line up against the consumption of illegal drugs and shut down that magnet that brings illegal drugs into america, we'll have billions of dollars come out of our economy that will flow through and to mexico to other points where drugs are originated. we have $60 billion a year wired out of the united states into points south. about half of that to mexico and the other half goes to the caribbean, central america, south america. $30 billion into mexico, about $30 billion into other points

south of here. some argue those are legitimate wages being wired back to families and loved ones. yes, i would agree, mr. speaker, some of that is legitimate wages being wired back to families and loved ones of the countries of origin of people working here in the united states. a lot of it is illegal wages going south that should not have been earned in the first place, but a whole lot of it is illegal drugen money being wired, shipped, laundered out of the united states to pay for the drug buys going south in places like mexico and on down through central america into colombia and other parts in south america. we don't have a drug enforcement agency that understand this is equation adequately enough to intercept this. i don't blame them entirely for that. the president of the united states has to articulate a mission. instead, he's playing race bait games to undermine the law

eners foment -- enforcement in the state of arizona and across the country and undermining the efforts of the border patrol, i.c.e., and the shadow wolves i admire so much and have such a good friendship with, and the attorney general isn't willing, cannot, asked the ranking member of the judiciary committee to point what in the constitution would prohibit arizona from passing a law, or what's in case law that might apply to to the that. of course, mr. smith, an excellent lawyer with a wonderful staff in his own right, doesn't fill out the answers to those questions because i don't believe there are any. i don't think the attorney general fills out the answers to those questions because i don't believe there are any. when i raise the issue that the office of the department of justice is playing -- is

politically motivated, of course he rebuts that. he's got to give the i am pure and we don't do political things within my department. well, mr. speaker, i will raise some points that i believe are definitive rebuttals to that. i believe that the justice department has demonstrated a political nature well beyond immigration and i would take us to the case of the most open and shut voter intimidation case in the history of the united states of america, and that was in philadelphia in a previous election where we have are video of members of the new black panthers standing outside of a polling place in paramilitary uniforms and berets and one of them is standing there with a billy club a night stick, smacking it into his hand, calling people, white people coming in to vote, calling them crackers, telling them they're going to take over

the country and he's going to be out of power, those whilet people. it was intimidating@individual who collected that film. a much earlier investigation that's gone on, this investigation carried on by the justice department before president obama was sworn into office and before eric holder became the attorney general, there was an open and shut case that was completed against the black panthers that were intimidating voters. i don't believe i need to say at this point, allegedly, mr. speaker, because i have seen the film. and it is the most open and shut case. but when eric holder took office, shortly after that, we saw the most open and shut case in the history of america of voter intimidation can selled by the -- can zelled by the justice -- canceled by the justice department. they had everything but a plea,

and maybe they had a plea, i haven't verified that. now, the new black panther party, there were two lawyers involved in the dismissal of this steve rosenbaum and loretta king. according to the article written in "the national review" by one of their writers, who has a personal knowledge of most of the lawyers involved in justice on these issues, that rosenbaum and king are two of the worst political hacks to be found in the career ranks of the civil rights division. that's an exact quote out of his article hefplg goes on to say, i have previously written about king's ambition to run for office in maryland on the democratic ticket. putting that aside, rosenbaum hasn't worked on a voting case since he left the voting section in 1994, yet he came in in 2009 to can sell -- can zell the most -- cancel the most open and shut intimidation

case. that's new black panther party members, standing in paramilitary uniforms and berets, billy club in hand, calling white voters coming in crackers and intimidating them and at least implicitly threatening them. they canceled the investigation when he was video of the most open and shut voter intimidation case in the history of america. then the author goes on to write in this article, loretta king hasn't worked on a voting case since she left the voting case in 1996. gentleman the assistant attorney general on that case was thomas perez who testified before the judiciary committee, i believe he did so dishonestly, not just desiptiverly, when he told us they achieved the highest punishment rate allowable under law. that was not true. they accepted simply an injunction to prohibit one of those four members of the black

-- the new black panthers party from doing the same thing again in the next election at the same location. that's the highest penalty allowed by law for intimidating voters in america? when the very underpinnings for our constitution are legitimate elections and even as important as legitimate elections, it's the american people having faith in the legitimacy of our elections. canceled the case. he said that according to tom perez, the assistant attorney general, who should have to answer for some of this, he had two attorneys that had deep experience and he relied on their professional experience. their 60 years. well, their 60 years didn't have to do with the civil rights case and voting rights case, at least within the last, since 1994 or 1996. there are others that were involved in this that actually did the information that had

substantial experience. in fact they had more than 75 years between the two of them, the investigators involved in the actual investigation of that suit. and by the way, tom perez, assistant attorney general, in his testimony twice claimed that rule 11 mandated the case be dismissed. rule 11 provides sanction against lawyers who bring or file frivolous and unwarranted lawsuits. so our department of justice investigators, our attorneys trained specifically in that, who are bringing a lawsuit against voter intimidation for the new black panthers party when we have them on videotape, were intimidated because they thought there would be a rule 11 brought against them and there would be damages that would have to be paid because their investigation was frivolous? frivolous or unwarranted, to be specific with the language. but to any lawyer, that's incendiary to allege that a

charge, a case that's being investigated, professionally and legitimately, might have a rule 11 brought against it and they had to drop it? he's insulted the professionalism of the investigating attorneys, whose names in this afrl are koets and adams and -- are coats and adams and prohibited them from defending themselves against such a charge that may may have pursued a frivolous case and the stonet attorney general has even ordered -- and the assistant attorney general has even ordered these attorneys not to comply with subpoenas before the u.s. commission on civil right whence the federal law directs they do so and directs all these federal agencies to, quote, cooperate fully with the commission, close quote. and the justice department isn't political when they can cancel the most open and shut voter intimidation case in the history of the united states of

america. i submit that that's starkly and bitterly political and the direction that was given by loretta king would not cause me so much to focus on her, if i didn't see her name pop up elsewhere. it turns out that loretta king, longtime supposedly not a political appointment of the department of justice, has been involved in some other cases. in cases in which attorney fees were awarded against the justice department. that would be rule 11. and the civil rights division of the justice department for filing a meritless case, lo rhett ka -- loretta king who perez says made the dismissal decision, was one of the lawyers on record in the case of johnson v. miller a redistricting case that went to the supreme court. and not only did loretta king lose that case, but both the

supreme court and the federal district court severely criticized the civil rights division's handling of the case. they found its practices, and i quote, disturbing, close quote. the district court found, i'll quote them, quote, considerable influence of the a, clu's advocacy on the voting rights decision of the united states attorney general. close quote. excuse me, i'll continue. again, start the quote, to be an embarrassment, close quote. to read this in its continuity, for pe the benefit of your attention, mr. speaker, the supreme court and the federal dict court severely criticized the civil rights' decisions handling of the case, finding its practices disturbing. the dwourt found the considerable influence of aclu advocacy on the voting rights decision of the united states attorney general to be an embarrassment. it was also, quote, surprising

that the department of justice was so blind, so blind to this impropriety, especially in a role as sensitive as that of preserving the right to vote. close quote. this is what's going on with the case loretta king worked on that was rejected by the drourt and the supreme court. went all the way to the supreme court. the american taxpayers were forced to pay $587,000 in attorneys' fees and costs to pay for an unwarranted lawsuit, one in which loretta king and other lawyers commanded the state of georgia, as the supreme court noted, to engage in, and i'll quote again, presumptively unconstitutional race-based districting. close quote. that's what we're working with. it looks like the antithesis of the allegation made by the attorney general, looks like loretta king has been involved

in cases that had to do with race-based quota direction and distorting equal protection under the law. i've named two cases for her now. she's a principal player in the dismissal of the open and shut case in the history of the united states of america. she's an attorney in a case reversed by the united states supreme court resulting in $587,000 in settlement costs because of the unjust case brought before the court, and now, i move, mr. speaker, to the third component of this, and this is kingston, north carolina, and kingston, north carolina, they had a referendum. they had a vote to decide to take their local elections and move them away from partisanship to make them nonpartisan. .

they would not be labeled as republicans or democrats or labeled as candidates. that is the case in most of the city government in the united states. nonpartisan. people want to elect a mayor that is not republican or democrat. they want to elect city council members of the same thing. they don't want them identified and i'm glad it's that way. and whatever local government passes a referendum to make their elections and their office holders nonpartisan, we should champion that. we should be working against partisanship. but the opposite happened in the case of the decision of the department of justice. now you might ask yourself, mr. speaker, why would the department of justice stick their nose in a local decision -- madam speaker, sorry, i just

chegged my rear-view mirror. you might be asking yourself why local government would want to have a referendum, why they would want to be nonpartisan. we know the answer. you might ask, why would the justice department inject themselves in to a local political decision and deny kingston, north carolina's decision made by a majority of their people that they wanted their people elected not as republicans or democrats but simply as nonpartisan servants to their community. kingston, north carolina is one of those covered districts that are defined under some of the voting rights act that was thourdsed, reauthorized some three -- reauthorized some three

or four years ago. they cannot change anything without being approved by the justice department. and so, if you are in a covered district -- covered districts are those districts that would have had a high percentage of minorities in them and presumably have a history of say the institution nationalization of jim crow laws or racism that goes back to the civil rights ira. when the civil rights act was passing in 1964 or 1965, these covered districts were restricted from making changes in their election practices without the approval of the justice department, the civil rights section of the justice department. in kingston, north carolina or many other places, if they had a voting booth in the old city hall building and it was falling down and wanted to move the voting booth across the street

into the new city hall building, they would have to get the approval from the justice department and the justice department would be doing an evaluation whether that voting booth would be moved for a race reason. that's what's going on and there are other ways to boil it down. this kingston, north carolina argument, theyp decided to have nonpartisan elections, i don't know how that has anything to do with race. well, they were denied and the will of the people in kingston, north carolina, was wiped out and negated by a decision that was written by loretta king and when the case referred to nonpartisan elections and i have the letter that goes to the city and it says this. imagine this thing. it is beyond my ability to get

my mind around this. it says removing the partisan qunch ueue will eliminate the single factor that allows black candidates to be legitimated to office. how does anyone get to this, if a black candidate is elected to office, you have to identify them apparently as democrats or otherwise people going to the polls wouldn't know how to vote for the black candidate unless they had a d behind their name. that's a stretch in my view. but she writes this and this is breathtaking. removing the partisan queue, the d or the r, in all likelihood would eliminate the single factor, it doesn't say one of the factors or a primary factor,

said would eliminate the single factor that allows black candidates. if you don't have a d behind your name, you can't be elected. that's the single factor, so she wiped out the will of the people of kingston, north carolina, with this justice department decision and she goes on and writes, in kingston elections, voters base their choice more on the race of a candidate rather than his or her political affiliation. wow. do i read that she is defining the people of kingston, north carolina at their core, they base their choice based on their race and writes, without loyalty or ability to vote the straight ticket, the limited support will diminish even more and given the

city's electorate is overwhelmingly democratic and the change may be partisan. the effect will be strictly racial. oh my gracious. these kind of decisions, the decision that wipes out the will of the people of kingston, north carolina, identifies them as a bunch of racists who can't decide who they want to be their mayor without d. a d indicates that you are a more minority candidate. there isn't anything here that has anything to do with law except that it tears asunder the equal protection clause that makes it a race-based decision on her part and sets up and accuses people of being racist. the voting rights act and the covered district component of

this labeled somebody's granddaughter who was born a generation and a half or two after her grandfather was labeled a racist, makes it you inherit racism under this covered district voting rights act. i suggest attorney general holder, if he is going to be a nonpoliticized justice department has an obligation to look at all of the actions of loretta king if she can go in and wipe out the will of the people of kingston, north carolina, define them all or significant majority of them as a group of racists and she can cancel the most open and shut voter intimidation case in the history of the united states of america and bring a case that is so unmerited that it ends up costing the taxpayers $587,000 under rule 11 and if the justice department under the direction

of eric holder and under the decision of testimony frr assistant attorney general tom perez, if the justice department can do the things they have done and argue that they had to close the black panthers voting intimidation case because of rule 11 when it's the other way around and the attorney general of the united states would sit before the committee and tell this nation that his office isn't politicized with all of this evidence to the contrary and put all of the resources that he has into the investigation of arizona immigration law, the constitutionality of it, whether there's a federal statute that prohibits it or whether there's any case law or case precedence that might affect it and not speak to any of those three issues. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. mr. king: resources of the

united states of america are being used in a politicized fashion. i have made my case. i appreciate your attention and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from iowa seek recognition? mr. king: i move the house do now adjourn. the speaker pro tempore: the question is on the motion to adjourn, those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the motion is agreed to.

>> we just >> we just had a time-consuming

piece of legislation, the health care bill that came into this year, usually it would not. we have several ways in which to use our responsibility in terms of bringing appropriations bills to the floor. >> on the re-election bid, i wonder how serious you think the anti-incumbent mood around the country is and how big a threat it is to the democrats' majority. >> that's not just a democratic question. we're talking about senator bennett in utah and -- in illinois. i think it relates to party politics in the district. mr. mollohan didn't lose to a republican he lost to a democrat he graciously made that point. as far as politics are concerned, i assume nothing. i take nothing for granted and

i enjoy campaign season, as you may have noticed, and -- asullingses -- assumptions when it comes to politics are stale. you have to take into consideration an overarching mood, but we win our leches one district at a time. if there's a disagreement, as there is in hawaii, as you saw in west virginia, as mr. mollohan had, there's a primary process to deal with that. i can't speak to what it means in terms of the republican party in utah. >> do you think the anti-incumbency movement -- the reporting on it is overstated? >> i don't think it's overstated, but in our case, we judge it one district at a time.

as i said, don't underestimate the power of such an idea or don't underestimate the strength of your opponent. but don't overestimate it either. >> "the washington post"/bbc poll, a national poll said less than 1/3 of the country wants to vote for their incumbent member of congress. in the national sense, what are you going to tell your members when less than a third of the country is planning to vote for their incouple bebt right now? >> nothing different than i told them before. they have to work hard to be the best representative they can for their district and i have confidence they are doing that and they have to build their organization at the grassroots level and they have to be clear with their message as to who they are and what they support in congress and how different they are from their opponents and we will be sure they have toe the resources to convey that

message. so it is -- we've been down these paths before and it's -- there's no question, at this moment, there's an anti-incumbent mood. but i have confidence my members know how to speak and communicate with their districts and i wouldn't tell them to do anything less than work as hard as they possibly can, assume nothing but don't be dragged down by assumptions that may or may not apply to them. >> [inaudible] >> i was pleased to join my leadership in joining -- inviting president calderon to address a joint session to the -- of the congress of the united states. we look forward to the message we hill bring. the one of friendship, one of common interests in our hemisphere and i'm not going to

tell him what his speech should be. but i look forward to hearing from him. >> what would you like to hear? what do you want to hear from him? >> i want to hear what hesas to -- what he has to say. that is why he's coming. if i knew -- in other words if we agreed on what it was, then maybe he wouldn't have to come, he could send us a letter. but we don't want that because his coming here is not -- it's about the message that he will deliver, that's for sure. that an overriding message is the friendship between our two couldn't rirs, the respect we have for the courage he's demonstrated to address the critical issues that relate to border security, migration issues, which are important to both of our countries, economic development, fighting terrorism, and it isn't -- i

know that he's very creative and we look forward to how he will frame those questions rather than having a blueprint for what we want to hear from him with all the respect to your question, the thrill of his coming is the message he'll bring and the manner in which he brings it. thank you all very much. >> the u.s. house has completed legislative work for the week. members spent yesterday and today on science and technology programs for the next five years, debating more than 50 amendments. the democratic leaders pulled the bill just before final vote after a republican motion was accepted to freeze funding at fiscal 2010 levels. and bar funds to pay workers disciplined for viewing pornography on their work computers. passed today, condolences for

flood victims in tennessee, kentucky, and mississippi. members meet tomorrow at 11:30 for a possible -- for possible speeches. next week, extension of expiring tax breaks. live house coverage here on c-span. an update on economic stimulus spending, of the $787 billion approved, just over $380 billion have been committed to the states. that's up $4 billion from last week. about $225 billion have been paid out for stimulus projects. read more about it at c-span.org. >> defending the united states against cyberattacks. saturday, homeland security deputy undersecretary philip reitinger on the department's work with the pentagon and white house and the role of private net yorks in cybersecurity. "the communicators," on c-span. >> eli in a kagan is meeting with senators in advance of her

hearings. hear more about this in the book "the supreme court" prrkviding unique insight about the court. available in hard cover and also as an e-book. >> the top u.s. and nato commander in afghanistan says it will probably take until the end of the year before the kandahar operation can be judged a success or failure. control of the southern city of kandahar is considered key to winning the war. general mcchrystal briefed pentagon reporters this afternoon. a note to viewers, due to a technical problem, we're unable to show you the first few minutes of the event. it's about half an hour. >> the bottom line, there's much more work ahead for afghan security forces but i'm pleased with the progress made thus far. while our strategic priority remains building the ansf, our

oirpgsal priority lies in securing the southern part of afghanistan, an area that includes kandahar, the spiritual center of the cubtry. we began expanding the afghan's -- afghan government's influence in key areas. there's been considerable progress in security and governance. progress is often slow and deliberate. this reflects the challenge of changing not only the dynamics, but security, governance and development. but also the attitudes of a population long pressured by insurgents. as additional forces flow into afghanistan, we'll reinforce ongoing efforts to secure kandahar, an environment that's uniquely complex and will

require a unique solution. this effort is being led by the afghans and will focus on the complex political and governance aspects of kandahar. i suspect you'll have several questions regarding kandahar, but i also want to make a point there will be considerable efforts in other areas of the cubtry as well that i'd be happy to discuss further. ultimately, our efforts across afghanistan are about changing the perceptions of people. afghans believe more of what they see than what they hear. this is a process that takes time. it will demand courage and resilience. we should expect increased violence as our combined security forces expand into taliban controlled areas. over time, security responsibilities will transition to half begans. thank you. i'll be happy to take your questions. >> can you tell us a little bit about the effort to head the major operations in kandahar to

secure local buy-in and support for that operation? you spoke ahead of the other operation about how important that would be and i know at one time it was part of the plan in kandahar as well. have you been able to carry that through? and what obstacles are you encouldn'tering as you get closer? >> that's a great opportunity you encountering? >> that is a great opportunity for me to describe what we're doing in canada kandahar alread. we're not using the term major operations because that brings to mind an attack to people. it is not a case of having to recapture and an area under enemy controlled as marshall was. similar to marcia, it is important that we engage the

leaders, political leaders, elders, so that their participation shapes how we go forward, and so that clearly we have their bagbuy-in for the operation. that has begun months ago. it is a process, not and then event. leaders from not just the city itself, but the district around it were brought in in a very candid series of meetings of two days they gave them their opinions. that is one of the processes. there are a number of other things that the government of pakistan is doing to try to shape the power of the governor, the effectiveness of the mayor, the capability of the police, and we are partnering with them on that, as well as being partnered with security

operations, which will happen inside the city in the area surrounding. >> there was a report that just came out saying that the kandahar for should be disbanded. i am wondering, do you agree with that? if not, what is the role of the militias in the upcoming missions? >> i think over time, all armed groups should be under the government. the control of the government of afghanistan, a book to protect the sovereignty and to protect it. there are private security companies that operate, and they have been a necessary requirement in some years pass and there have been other forces as well. i increasingly president karzai is committed to bringing those under government control, and i think that is the right to, personally. >> what will be the role of their forces and other groups? >> i will not discuss specific

groups like that, but i think " it will reflect president karzai's ability to bring under control. >> i wanted to ask you about the number of u.s. killed and wounded. these numbers have increased drastically. they have doubled from the same time last year. how has this impacted the force and affected you as their commander? >> before coming in this morning i spent time with president karzai, and walk through part of a cemetery. we ran into soldiers that had worked directly -- we looked at soldiers that had worked directly for me that had been lost, as did president karzai. every single casualty effects people. it affects leaders, but more

importantly it affects families, children, parents, spouses. each one of them is sacred. i think we all know that. the force is strong. the force believes in the cause. the force understands that what we're doing is important, but casualties are something i hope the american people will keep in their minds and hearts, not just the kilduled, but we also went o walter reed. life-changing moods also affect individuals and families as well. -- life-changing wounds also affect individuals and families as well. it is important we keep all of that, casualties are casualties. afghan partners our coalition partners.

they all matter, but i think everyone is committed to the task. >> as you know, the u.s. government has been investigating possible links between the times square bombing attempt in the pakistani taliban. can you give us a sense of your view of whether the pakistani taliban may indeed have more reached? this morning there were more detentions in the u.s. and pakistani nationals in massachusetts. talk if you can, broadly, how much have you been briefed on this investigation and the other bigger question about the pakistani taliban -- if indeed they are connected to these operations is that more of a threat than some of the insurgents who are fighting in afghanistan? >> i only know some of the

intelligence on this. i think what this does point out is the rise of extremist groups, whether it is ptb or others. they all represent to some degree the ability to generate threats that can go outside of the local area, so that the degree to which the government of pakistan is focused on bringing to an end the insurgency they face from the pakistani taliban, this highlights just how important that is. important for them and for our partnership with them to do that. >> can you give us an assessment of the ongoing security situation and? are you concerned that the fear that has spread will prevent you from reaching out to the population in gaining their

trust? >> it will not prevent us from doing that, but it highlights the importance of doing that. many use targeted assassinations to intimidate the population and undercut the government to establish effective mechanisms, and i think that is what we're seeing here. some of those murders may be criminally related, but there is a clear insurgent thrust to the primary part of the s. i did it is clear that we see just how dangerous a threat that is to the government and the highlights the importance of us in establishing security inside the city and around it. >> have they started writing their? >> we already have a number of u.s. military police partnered with the afghan nationals. that is increasing at the end of the month. >> i want to ask you about the

peace movement that is coming up at the end of the month. what are your expectations for a? what roles will and reconciliation plate in winding down this conflict? >> i think this is an opportunity for the government of afghanistan and more widely the people of afghanistan to come together in to discuss the way forward. i think that necessarily an appropriately includes how they will end this conflict, the resolution of peace. i think reintegration will be discussed. i think reconciliation will be discussed. i think it will try to come out with the essence of consensus, a sense of afghans, and i believe that puts president karzai in a position where he enters the and it can have an opportunity to lay out his case in front of the people of afghanistan the direction he thinks things need

to go. at think reconciliation is an afghan-lead process that they're doing a lot of thinking about. i think it is inappropriate effort on their part to help figure it out the way ahead for the nation because the way ahead cannot behas to have a resoluti. >> can you talk about progress and the trouble spots and how do think it is going with the government? i know there has been a lot of problems. he referred to the opening remarks to operations and other parts of the country, if you give us more detail on that. >> i focus most on the helman river valley. it is a rich agricultural area. it has had extensive television pressure for a number of years, dating back to 2005 and 2006.

some of the areas were under, until about 90 days ago, complete taliban control. what we did last july is put additional forces into selected areas along the helman river valley. we expanded those areas with the move of west into the marsha area. the intent is to create security zones that increasingly expand. so that a farmer, for example, could raise crops and drive his crops in pakistan. we are clearly those areas, and that is continuing. i am happy with the process -- progress of that.

i have been back in several times, and the change is stark. if you go every day, each day, it is not a dramatic change. if you go months difference, then it is. a counter insurgency effort is a long-term process. it is the process, not an event. when we come into an area and start to make a change in the security situation, we hope actaeon spring governance, it is halted and it is challenging. in an area where there has been little capacity before, to introduce that is hard. to convince the people is even harder. they watched the change in security. they watched the beginnings of development and they have to put -- they have to see it to believe it. they have to believe it is real. as i walked around and talk to

countless individuals, i am convinced it is absolutely what they want, but they remain to be convinced. i think that is the challenge over time. they must convince the people they have the capability to deliver in the political will to follow through. >> you said that can makandahars not controlled by the taliban. we have heard that they move around at free will. what is your sentiments of how much they control and the enemy force you believe you will be facing in that region. how strong? had they been stockpiling weapons? >> they do not control the city. >> they do not control the city.