we're talking about this tonight and why we're talking about it so passionately. mr. speaker, at this time i want to call on my colleague from tennessee, another new member, a delightful new member , already assuming leadership positions and going to do a great job here in the house of representatives, and i speak of representative diane black from tennessee. and i yield to her at this time. ms. black: thank you, mr. speaker. mrs. black: i rise as a registered nurse. and a member of the tennessee assembly who saw the devastating effects of tenncare on our state and was part of the effort to dismantle it. timely i rise as a representative of the sixth district of tennessee with hi -- my constituents have told me over and over how they do not want obamacare bankrupting our

nation and getting between them and the doctor. mr. speaker, i know that the health care industry and i know that the new health care law is not the solution to our problem. pretty soon, the health care law will be the problem. i know this because for many of us in tennessee, the president's new health care law is like a bad dream all over again. let me tell you what i mean. tennessee was the pilot project for universal health care. the experiment was called tenncare. put simply, the experiment failed. after tenncare passed, we watched the costs grow expo nene rblely. those of us in the legislature now if we didn't do something, tenncare would bankrupt our state. the sheer size of tenncare was more than government could hand. the government could not perform all the if you thinks of the medical insurance

industry and promises of care and access were made and promises were far beyond what our state could possibly do. it didn't take long before tenncare became riddled with waste and fraud and abuse and i can remember talking with people who had gone from doctor to doctor and specialist to specialist, using tenncare to fill more than 50 prescriptions. 50 prescriptions is what they would put in front of me and tell me tenncare was paying for. it was all on the taxpayers' dime. tenncare became the monster that even the creators could not control. today, tenncare is gutted. only available to a small group of people and tennessee has been brought back from the brink of bankruptcy. republican governors wrote to ask the administration, weigh the bill's costly mandates and grant states the authority to

choose the benefit rules that meet the specific needs for those citizens, close quote. the governor were asking for common sense solutions like waiving provisions that punished consumer driven plans like the most popular plan and the cost-effective plan of health care savings accounts. give the states the ability to do what states can do best, and that is derl what's best for them. but the president shows no sign of granting states some flexibility in how they will apply obamacare. only yesterday, president obama said he's supporting letting the states propose their own health care plans by 2014. however, that would be only if he will not change the mandaters in states in the current law. so in one side of his speech he said, yes he will allow flexibility, on the other side, he said, there still must be certain mandates. mr. gingrey: if the gentlewoman will let me reclaim my time,

it's kind of like you can keep what you like until you can't. that's why as i pointed out earlier, 733 waivers, just in this year 2011, have been granted by secretary sebelius to try to fulfill that promise. but they can't co-it. there's a need for a new waiver every tai. i yield back. mrs. black: thank you. dr. gingrey, as you said, states will still be forced to comply with benefit levels and mandays that are set by federal bureaucrats, not by the states themselves, that certainly doesn't give states rights. secretary of health and human services kathleen sebelius said if the state were to propose its own plan, they will be forced to provide with comprehensive coverage and that coverage will be defined by government. so so much for being able to keep your plan or for the

states to make a determination on what plan best suits them. so now president obama wants every state to live through its own version of tenncare with ballooning budgets for each state and no way to kur b the health care costs that will crip they will states in the time of already strapped budgets. it's simply unacceptable. mr. gingrey: if the gentlelady would yield for a second. i would say it's unconscionable and unacceptable. i yield back. mrs. black: we averted this disaster in tennessee by dissolving tenncare. now i will work to stop this financial and fiscal daster that obamacare will bring to our nation. this health care law must be replaced and i believe this house can do it. thank you and i yield back the balance of my time. mr. gingrey: i thank the gentlewoman from tennessee. i failed to mention, of course that she is also a part of our

g.o.p. house doctors caucus and as she pointed out, registered nurse if more year -- many years in the great volunteer state. we appreciate representative black being with us tonight. before i go to our next speaker and yield some time, i wanted to, mr. speaker, go back to this current chart and i tried to -- i wish i had brought a magic marker, i didn't, but i circled this, i guess third, bullet point because i think it's really telling in regard to what's happening at the state level. as a consequence of the provisions of obamacare. this bullet point says to the boss, the government, the boss prohibits 16 million patients from buying private insurance, trapping them in medicaid. and that's really what they've done, mr. speaker.

by expanding the medicaid eligibility from 100% of federal poverty to 138%, that means that a lot of folks out there today who are uninsured, can't afford health insurance, who are not eligible for -- they're not poor enough if you will, will be eligible for this safety net program known as medicaid, in the federal government, the boss comes along with this idea of letting people buy the health insurance in an exchange in each state. maybe other the internet. and if they are low income, then they get a federal subsidy, not a federal state subsidy, but a federal subsidy. clearly as a democratic majority and president obama were crafting this thing, they figured out, well, you know, if we can shift more of these people into the medicaid

program where the states have to pick up some of the tab, then we'll get them off our back. you know. we'll lower the cost. we'll make this thing work. unfortunately, the poor states, and they are poor, all have to balance their budget. and the federal government doesn't. that's why we owe $13.4 trillion and now they even talking about wanting us to raise the debt ceiling so we can borrow more money. it's a smoke and mirrors game. maybe a ponzi scheme in my opinion, mr. speaker. let me make sure that we don't run out of time. i think we have about -- mr. speaker can you tell me how much more time we do have in the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman has approximately 18 minutes. mr. gingrey: thank you, mr. speaker. at this time, i want to yield

to another member of our g.o.p. house doctors caucus, a gentleman from west tennessee, i don't know whether the area is called pell mel or pal maul, maybe he'll -- pell mell or pall mall, maybe he'll explain it to us but i'm talking about representative desjarlais. mr. desjarlais: i yield from marion county, south pittsburgh. i had the opportunity to serve as a primary care physician. in 1994, tennessee embarked on an experiment known as tenncare. unfortunately, it never accomplished its goal of improving on the flawed medicaid system. to the contrary, it became a breeding ground for waste,

fraud, abuse and inefficiency. i witnessed the frustration of my patients, my staff and myself as we struggled to combat this bureaucratic web that forced us to spend time navigating administrative hurdles rather than focusing on quality care. another problem that rapidly evolved was overutilization of the system. often only one family member was ill but other family members were requested to be seen simply because it was more convenient than making other arrangements for the nonill members such as children to be cared for elsewhere. this also became and continues to be a problem in the emergency rooms. there is no cost difference to the patients, so there is no disincentive to ute liz the e.r. for nonemergency care. in fact, this is a national problem with up to 80% of e.r. visits being deemed nonemergency. this leads to longer wait times

for those patient whors critically ill and it should be noted that e.r. visit are obviously much more expensive than office visits, further driving up costs unnecessarily. a simple solution to improving the problem of overutilization would be implementing a nominal co-pay system in which office visits cost something like $5 per visit and e.r. visits might cost $20. this simple step would likely have far-reaching effects to reduce costs, overutilization and thus increase availability of care for those who need it. we should see tenncare as a warning of the many problems a government-run health care model creates. there are certainly issues with our nation's health care system that need to be addressed and the g.o.p. doctor's caucus has no shortage of good ideas on how to make health care more affordable and expand coverage. but what we stand firm in saying is that obamacare is not the answer to the problem but

rather it creates an even bigger problem. i yield back my time. mr. gingrey: i thank the gentleman from tennessee and i thank him for making sure i know exactly what county and counties he represents. i know it's a great state, a great part of the state, we're very proud of the good doctor. at this time, i want to yield to another freshman member of our class, their class, of 87 strong, fantastic class, mr. speaker, we're awfully proud of each and every one of the new members, but especially those who have that health care background, that experience to come to this body to this chamber -- chamber, to this town and bring some professional expertise. we don't have all the answers, mr. speaker. and i'm proud of these physician colleagues of mine because they're not no it -- know it all bus they know what they know and they know it well.

at this point, i would like to yield time to the gentlewoman from new york, ophthalmologist dr. nan hayworth. ms. hayworth: thank you, mr. chairman and mr. speaker. i observe that you have brought a sign to the floor that talks about stealing america's liberty. and one of the fundamental problems that i perceive, and i'm not alone in this, but in this entire scheme if you will, that's represented by the affordable care act as it's been called is that there was a failure to understand the very nature of american medical care. when it's at its best and we recognize, every colleague of mine, all of my republican and medical colleagues have also appreciated certainly that we

want to see all americans have access to good, affordable care and to have affordable, portable health insurance. that's not in dispute. we honor those goals. but the means by which the a.c.a. endeavors to achieve those goals go against the grain of the american culture. our culture is one that has always allowed us to choose, that has allowed us to pursue in terms of our medical care the best that the world has to offer in terms of innovation and quality, motivation, inseptemberive to invent and to do better. and the american medical consumer, our patients, expect no less than the best. nor should they receive anything less than the best. that's a very different way of thinking about care in a

consumer society than is the case in so many other systems around the world that were cited as exemplars when the a.c.a. was being formulated. we do not have, i can tell you from my experience with patients who have had care, who have lived in europe for variable periods of time, some americans who have spent sojourns in europe because of business obligations and working with colleagues from europe, historically, it's rather a different model than we have here. american doctors are accustomed to jumps and doing and doing all they can and doing it fast and my colleagues can certainly attest to that. . patients don't expect quite as much overseas. it's not the same sort of thing that we have here. and indeed, that is constant with the fact there isn't any other country's dream than the

american dream. my mother came here in 1948. no british dream -- not necessarily german dream or japanese dream but the american dream. mr. gingrey: would the gentlelady yield back to me? what the gentlewoman from new york is referencing is something that i have heard from people in other countries that have government health insurance. and they say, well, i'm real happy with my government health insurance. and i know what's going on over here and i'm thinking, my goodness gracious, what are you happy about? well, you get to see the doctor within five minutes and you come out with at least three prescriptions. if that's the definition of success, mr. speaker, and my

colleagues, that's not what american, good old u.s.a. medicine is all about. it's time, quality time spent with that doctor and maybe no prescriptions. and i yield back. ms. hayworth: it is precisely and thank you precisely the point that i'm agreeing on with you and we have all been driven to philosophically, we need to have solutions that empower our doctors, our patients and our providers to do all of them, to have the best and to do the best and consumer-based solutions are possible. our doctor's caucus is working hard on providing those ideas, real liability reform, which has to be part of this. we cannot possibly continue as we have been. that was a glarring omission from the a.c.a. but in addition, we need to

recognize and appreciate and act upon the knowledge that our medical care can cost less. we do need to pay teaning to costs, but we need to pay attention to our doctors, providers, to use their best judgment, not empower something like the independent payment advisory board to make those decisions for us. that is a very dangerous thing and something that americans will find very distressing and disturbing and that is the inevitable result of the a.c.a. is that you can trace it out, but end up having less choice and the government will be making choices for us. we need our consumers and providers to be able to make those decisions. and i yield back. mr. gingrey: i thank the gentlewoman from new york and i appreciate her time. if my clock watching is active, we may have eight to 10 minutes left and i will try to conclude.

but i would like to see if my colleagues would like to weigh in with additional comments. we do have time if any of those who are still on the floor would like to bring more light to this subject. yes. i will glad to yield. >> we do need to discuss obamacare is not the answer. and we have all discussed this over and over again. i would say it is probably a good reason i was elected, because i ran on repealing it, that and cutting taxes and cutting spending and all ties in together. but, you know, those of us in health care, we have been aware of the need for reform for quite some time. i think any of us can say that, that we have seen the cost increases. we have seen the cost of health insurance increase and yet we have felt that our hands were tied and didn't know how to

address it. the bureaucratic system, as my colleagues have pointed out, just dealing with billing and trying to get the care for patients alone can just take over your office. and we have seen these things. we know there are problems that exist, but we all agree that it needs to be a patient-centered, doctor-nurse-patient relationship that we have to be putting forward and has to be in the private sector. and there are ways to do this. there is a role for government, especially when we are talking about medicare, medicaid and those who are unfortunate, less -- you know, we want everyone to have health care and there are ways to address it. and it's not a health care crisis, but a crisis of culture. we have to change the culture that we're dealing with. we want everyone to have affordable health care and there

are simple solutions we can put in place to do that. mr. gingrey: the gentlewoman from north carolina yields back to me and i'm glad i called on her and she brought up this point, colleagues, because what ms. ellmers just said is absolutely the truth. we are not, on this side of the aisle and those democrats who agree with us, we are not opposed to reforming the health insurance industry to eliminating abusive practices, such as cancelling policies after the fact or denying children with pre-existing conditions. and that's exactly what the the gentlewoman from north carolina was referencing. and the pledge to repeal obamacare is because in our humble opinion, it's too bad to fix. that doesn't mean that when we replace it and we may have to do

it piece by piece, bit by bit, that we don't incorporate some of the things in there that most people would agree are good, like allowing youngsters, young adults, mr. speaker, to stay on their health insurance policy of their parents until they are 26 years old. with this economy and the destruction of jobs because of bailouts and stimulus -- trillions of dollars that don't work, unfortunately, our young college graduates have no job to go to. otherwise, they would have health insurance from their place of work. so they darn well need to stay on their parents' insurance policies maybe until 36 unless we get our act together and get this economy going. let me yield quickly, because i realize we have a member who just came and was with us earlier and had an engagement

and had to be there, and so he has returned, dr. phil roe, and i yield. mr. roe: when i came, as we all did, physicians tend to look at a problem when a patient comes, the first thing we ask them, why are you here today? it's called the chief complaint. when i came to washington, d.c.,, i asked the same thing about the american health care system, what is the problem with the american health care system and i thought there were three. number one, it was too expensive. costs of health care has skyrocketed way above inflation. way too expensive to see the doctor and go to the hospital. the second issue is a segment of our population didn't have access to affordable health insurance coverage. this isn't in our states, but

folks, carpenter and the wife stays at home, a job, small business and can't afford it. there's that segment that didn't have it. and lastly, there is a liability crisis in america. and our trial lawyers will say that's not the case. but let me give you a personal example. when i started my medical practice and probably the same time you and i did, it cost $360. in 1977, the first baby i delivered, i was out of the army. and my first year's salary was $32,000. that was my first salary. and the next year, i was up to about 6 ,000. when i came to congress two years ago, the malpractice in tennessee was $74,000. and there's no value that we get that patients get from that. and we'll go into that when we

have another hour, but the thing about the obamacare plan that bothered me is that it did nothing to bend the cost curves. if you look at plans, medicare came on board in 1965, $3 billion program. there was no congressional budget office then or folks that make the estimates. but the government estimate ateors said in 25, this will be a $15 billion, the actual number was over $100 billion and today, $500 billion. in tennessee, 20 years ago, we had the same problem. unfortunately, no one has listened to us and we said we have lack of access and we had prices rising back in the early 1990's, exactly the same debate, except today it's more severe. we spent $2.6 billion in

tenncare. 10 budget years later, $8.5 billion, the costs had tripled. when you see the cost estimates and remember the same c.b.o. and these are good folks and i'm not pointing the finger at them. it's very hard. they are given a set of data and crunch the numbers. they missed this year's budget deficit by $400 billion. i'm to stand here and believe given the examples i have given you, this is going to be budget-neutral. no where it will be. we have a lot to discuss. i'm sorry i was late. i had folks from the great university of tennessee. but i look forward to continuing this discussion and i yield back. mr. gingrey: you need to be with those folks from tennessee. i know the time is rapidly coming to a close, but, mr. speaker, i guess the last slide, basically says it all, cuts

right to the chase, obamacare steals america's liberties. life, liberty, pursuit of happiness to the inalienable, that means can't be taken away from you. obamacare is the boss, it lets the boss steal liberty from every american by forcing them to buy health insurance whether they want it, need it or not. we can encourage them to have it and try to make it possible and affordable, but to force them to do it, the next thing we know, everybody will be eating broccoli by government edict because it is healthy, healthy food. going to have a hard time to get me to eat broccoli. the judge in florida, judge vincent and judge hudson from virginia, got it right.

we need expedited processing of those suits so the supreme court will tell the american people this is unconstitutional and will not stand. with that, i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, the gentleman from california, mr. garamendi, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority. mr. garamendi: madam speaker. thank you. today, march -- march 1, marks the 50th anniversary of the

united states peace corps. in 1961, president john f. kennedy, together with sargent shriver established the most remarkable, long-lasting and incredibly successful united states peace corps. on the announcement of the establishment of the peace corps, countries wanted americans of all ages to come to their country and assist in the economic development of their countries. to date, some -- over 200,000 americans have followed that call to service and have served in over 130 countries. today, some 77 countries have peace corps volunteers and another 20 countries request the presence of peace corps volunteers. my wife patty and i are proud returned peace corps volunteers. joining me today to celebrate

this 50th anniversary are two other returned peace corps volunteers and together with sam farr who unfortunately cannot join us, comprise the four members of congress who are returned peace corps volunteers. i would like to call upon my colleague from california, mike honda, to join us here and to express his own experiences and his work here in congress and how it may have -- how his peace corps' experiences may have reflected upon his work. mike, if you will join us. . . >> thank you, john.

i rise to recognize the role peace corps has played. mr. honda: thame fostered cultural understandings. communities all every the globe celebrate the peace corps and look forward to its continued growth. i was in ethiopia a couple of years ago, representing the ethiopian caucus here and traveled extensively through ethiopia the days i was there. i ran across some folks in the upper part of ethiopia and talk about peace corps. a lot of young people brightened up and said, did you know garamendi? it was at that moment i remember that our colleague garamendi had served in ethiopia. but what struck me most was the impact, the long-term impact and memories that people that

we have touched when they were youth stayed with them and the impact, the influence we've had with young people in the different countries had stayed with them and they had become leaders in their own right in the countries they served in. the same happened in el salvador, i'm sure the same happened in somalia where our other colleagues served their time. peace corps has -- it provides a unique opportunity for volunteers to help the most impoverished people in the world. work that change theirs global perspectives. i met another person at stanford university, a visiting scholar, he was not much more than 5'1", articulate in english and spanish and he said that he was an aberration of statistical probability. in saying that, he meant that he was a young boy in the

mountains of peru and it was a peace corps volunteer that touched his life that allowed him to learn more about himself and his country, that pushed him to learn english and through the peace corps volunteers he was able to go to school. he became president of peru. now he's a visiting scholar and now he's also running again, perhaps serving his country. but not only serving his country, he serves all people of this world by the fact that he was able to express the idea that he was probably an aberrational statistical probability in that he has attained a position in the global stage a leadership position, because of a peace corps volunteer. this story is replicated over and over again with over 195,000 volunteers that have

served. i just want to pay special attention to sarget shriver, the person who -- to sergeant shriver, the person who -- to sargent shriver, who took this innovation that provided opportunities for young people to grow in themselves. filling shriver's shoes will be difficult and president clinton was right when he said, never has america had a stronger warrior for peace and against poverty than sargent shriver. shriver said it best when he said the peace corps represents some of, not all, of the best things about society. it stands for everything america stands for and everything we hope to achieve in the world. i want to thank my colleague for putting this together, i want to thank my friend mr.

petri for his friendship on the other side of the aisle. i say -- we say the other side of the aisle but i don't think the aisle exists with our commonality in the peace corps. the peace corps allowed me to go up, to believe in mist. peace corps was responsible for me being here today, to be able to speak fervently and hopefully convincingly to encourage other young people that service to this country through the peace corps are two years you'll never, ever, ever regret and never exchange for 10 years of regular life in this country. thank you. mr. garamendi: congressman honda, thank you very much. let me turn to our colleague on the republican side, tom petri, who also served. you can share some of your experiences with us. mr. petri: i'm delighted to have the opportunity to join with my colleagues in

recognizing the 50th anniversary of the founding of the peace corps. it was my pleasure some 25 years ago to work with a fellow whose picture is up by the podium, sargent shriver on some of the arrangements for the 25th anniversary of the peace corps and they had a gala reunion and program at the kennedy center with such luminaries at that time as harry belafonte and many others. it was a memorable occasion. sarget shriver, of course, was a great leader in many different areas and he didn't really much like, i met him in a reception line, i said it's

great to meet arnold schwarzenegger's father-in-law he didn't want to be known as arnold schwarzenegger's father-in-law, he wanted to be known as the first an most dynamic director of the peace corps. he worked on special olympics a and variety of other good work he is did with his lifeful he all had our peace corps ex-pierces. i had the opportunity to serve in the neighboring country to ethiopia, somalia, a troubled place, it's a great experience though, and people ask about the peace corps and i always say that one of the things you have to remember about the peace corps is that you get a lot more out of it than you really give. you are serving other people, you are learning about another culture and at the same time you're learning about your own country and your own experience because of of the points of contrast. what a wonderful thing it is

that america has a large number, tens of thousands of people who served in the peace corps and returned and are now working in every walk of life they work in international organizations in business organizations, knowing different cultures, knowing different languages and thereby providing a dimension to our own national life that we would otherwise not have if we did not have people who have the experience of serving in the peace corps. so for a whole -- and one other thing. i still can remember the quizzical but interested reaction that so many people in somalia or i'm sure anywhere in the world, who are you? why are you doing this? explain that to me again. how the spirit was kind of catching. and they would participate in all kinds of volunteer activities and things that they

hadn't necessarily thought of doing themses. one thing, when i was in -- and of course the peace corps volunteers are not representatives of the american government. they are representatives of the american people. and that was always emphasized very, very strongly to all of us as part of our peace corps training and the way we were living aamong the people, not behind these diplomatic bunkers that we sometimes see in this world today and experiencing life in the country in which you're serving. one thing, just as an example, peace corps volunteers do their assignments but there are people -- they do volunteer work of one kind and another. when i was in one of the big hits when i was in moe gandhi shoe in the peace -- in

mogadishu in the peace corps, there were 50 or 60 people who were teachers, community health workers and community school construction workers, they would come to mogadishu for a couple of days off and five or six of them got together and started playing some american young people music. and the next thing you know, they were invited to a restaurant in mogadishu and crowds of hundreds of people gathered, it was the sensation of the town for a couple of weeks. of course they couldn't be paid for doing this sort of thing but they might have gotten a couple of free meals from the restaurant, that kind of thing. what a wonderful sort of natural way of building bridges. the people in this country has never really seen something like this. they weren't on the tour for any of these international

shows. and they just thought it was the most wonderful thing to see live music played by american peace corps volunteers and that was the face of america that they were presenting in this country and it was one that i think served our nation very well. so thank you again for giving me the opportunity to participate in this special order you organized to mark the 50th anniversary of the peace corps. mr. garamendi: what year were you in somalia? mr. petri: i was there in 1976 -- 1966-1967. mr. garamendi: the same years we were in eethyopeyasm mr. petri: we were there in the peace offul years. peace corps has been in somalia then pulled out because war erupted between ethiopia and somalia, the people on the horn of africa have great respect

for each other but also strong rivalry. it's an interesting thing to learn about. mr. garamendi: it's not exactly the case. it's not unusual to find wars going on. as mike honda was talking about the president of peru who started his climb up the economic and educational ladder as a result of his experience with a peace corps teach for the peru, the same thing happens in countries in which you and i and other peace corps volunteers serb. i recall in 1990 -- vol doors serve. i recall in 1999 or 2000, a group of us became interlo cutors trying to get these two -- interlocutors trying to get these two sides to get together, because we had so many peace corps volunteer we were able to meet with the

leaders of the countries and talk to them about peace, about why they were fight, why this war was going on. it had killed nearly 100,000 soldiers at that point. and it turned out they were willing to talk to us. the reason was that in their high schools, they were taught by peace corps volunteers. and they had this trust. they knew we didn't represent the american government, they knew we were there searching for peace as we had when we were volunteers. it turned out that that conversation, those conversations led to the essence of the settlement of that war, the peace treaty. and i'll never forget a day when actually a gentleman who is here in the gallery at the moment was one of our team and another fellow, mike mccaskey, who was then the president of the chicago bears and he was part of our team and we sat down with the foreign minister

of ethiopia and we were talking about where we served in the peace corps and mike was saying he served in the northern part of the country and the foreign minister said, what school? and mike described the school. it turned out that mike was the teacher for the foreign minister and and immediately there was a connection. an that connection then led to the meeting we had with melius and the -- ultimately the peace treaty. the africa union carried on. those are the relationships that count. we never know when they're going to materialize. it's quite possible that the people you taught may one day be the leaders in somalia once again. these are the foundations upon which the peace corps is built.

i know you have another appointment to get to. my wife, when she was the associate director of the peace corps would say a peace corps volunteer leaves to search for peace and returns and throughout one's life continues that process. and our work here in congress is part of that. thank you so much for your service. mr. pe try: thank you for organizing this occasion. mr. garamendi: thank you. the interest in the peace corps is in the just shared by those of us who are returned volunteers. it's also served and the interest is found by others. i'd like to invite here to the well a colleague of mine from california, congresswoman lois capps, who represents the santa barbara area, up into santa maria. would you care to join us? thank you so very much for doing so. .

mrs. capps: i thank my colleague, mr. garamendi, for inviting me to join him here and bringing the likeness of sargent shriver so i can stand next to him and pay tribute to him and the importance of the peace corps as i have experienced it. this is the 50th anniversary of the founding of the peace corps. actually this day, apparently, that's what you mentioned in your remarks, mr. garamendi and you were scroined by two members of congress -- who were joined by two members of congress. mr. petri said it's because of his experiences in the peace corps he could say honestly that is why he is now serving in congress and i have heard other colleagues say that as well. both mr. honda and mr. petri speak eloquently as you do, mr.

garamendi, about the effect of this experience on you. and i have seen it from friends of mine. i don't think it's possible to say enough, a positive about this wonderful organization. having a special order this afternoon, this evening is an opportunity for us to come together and celebrate the commitment of the united states congress to communities around the world as they experience it through volunteerism, through ordinary citizens of this country who volunteer to share in the life and experience of a culture different from their own. as the peace corps celebrates the 50th anniversary, it's clear that this work that our citizens and volunteers have done and today, is never a more important than we see it today and also more relevant to what's going on in the world today. i am very proud to represent a congressional district, the 23rd in california, with a very

active returned peace corps volunteer community. the alumni association numbers over 150 members on their active in our community. and i think -- i know firsthand knowing many of them that the community has been strengthened because of their experiences in peace corps and they readily testify to that. at the university of california at santa barbara, this campus consistently ranks towards the top of colleges and universities for volunteer recruitment among the young graduates. when i have the opportunity to meet with folks from the peace corps administrative office, the first thing they mention when they find out where i'm from is the high concentration of former and future col volunteers from my congressional district. i know on the alumni working and living among us, the importance of service, of community, of

open-behindedness, the value that peace corps, the way our civic life is conducted in our country as our returned peace corps volunteers bring their services back to their home communities and places of business. it's a win-win on both sides of whatever body it is that separates us from our countries around the world. there is an institute on my campus that i'll reference and named for my husband, capps center for public policy and they sponsored an event, they had a series of events this past fall celebrating the 50th anniversary of the peace corps. and at that occasion, it was a privilege to welcome aaron williams, who is the national peace corps director and pay tribute to the peace corps and

we invited three former peace corps volunteers to honor their service, but also to invite them to form a panel discussion so the rest of us could listen and respond and have questions about their own experiences. one of them was shara shays, former n.p.r. correspondent and prominent author and founder of an organization in afghanistan. she spoke of her experiences there. she served in morocco from 1984 to 1986. also present to be recognized and also to participate in the discussion was gordon radly, former president of lucas films and served from 1968 to 1970 and

western samoa. third person i spoke, i acknowledge these people, because they are example of community leaders in the country who were influenced both tremendously by their experience in peace corps. one i know well, because he is a constituent of ours in the congressional district, but also with his service is thomas tigue, president and c.e.o. of a very influential of direct relief international, which provides emergency services and disaster aid to countries around the world and head quartered in santa barbara and before he came to this position he served as the associate general counsel and c.o.o. of the peace corps and served in thailand from 1986 to 1988. their stories -- and i mention these three, because now the

library of congress is collecting stories from previous volunteers. and i think it's a great idea that the stories that peace corps volunteers remember from their time of service can be would he haven into the library of congress archives and therefore permanent record. some of us in congress, mr. garamendi, are old enough to remember the passion and enthusiasm from these 50 years ago when president kennedy announced the creation of the corps. the idea that americans from all different backgrounds and walks of life would have an opportunity to work for and to learn from other cultures. you know, in that time, that was a radical concept, but i marvel, don't you, as to how far we have come? since 1961, when the first volunteers went abroad, nearly 200,000 volunteers have served in 139 countries around the

world. these are talented and selfless americans who made lasting contributions in agriculture, in business development, in sustainable infrastructure, in education, in health, in come baiting -- combating hiv-aids. collectively, each volunteer's work represents a legacy of service that has become a significant part of america's history and the positive image that we have abroad. i know that mr. farr is going to speak after me and he has just joined the group. he and i are part of an organization here in congress, which has some connections to the peace corps. and it is called the house democracy partnership. and last week, we traveled literally around the world. and one of the places we were, one of our partner countries whose parliament we work with

closely is the country of indonesia. for many years, the peace corps was not there. just this past year, volunteers have been welcomed back and we had the chance to meet these active volunteers, as we have met during other visits to other countries with our work in the house democracy partnership. some are indonesia and mal arch wi. and a family will ask us to bring some item that this person has wanted. and it was because of mr. farr's insistence that we invite four of the current volunteers. they have just come back, the presence of peace corps in the country. mr. farr, i hope you will expand on this. they had dinner with us. here we were in a coastal community -- large city in indonesia and these four young

people who are teaching english as a second language and the high schools in the region, came and shared some of their stories with us. it moved me then, as it has over the years and to see these young faces. not all peace corps volunteers are young. but these were young people who were caught with zeal and enthusiasm with what they were doing. so, you know, doing times of both war and peace, our volunteers through peace corps have exemplified some of the best qualities that this country has to offer the world. general rossity, tolerance, hard work, ingenuity, friendship and compassion. they have exhibited critical attention to detail and an unwaivering commitment to sustainable power. i'm offering tonight and i'm

standing right next to the likeness of sargentshifere as i offer my congratulations to the peace corps on its 50th anniversary that we all joined in celebration. i want to take the opportunity to encourage anyone who is thinking about it to serve either abroad or find a way in one's own community to serve with this kind of volunteerism. and i appreciate the leadership you have shown in calling us together. i want to thank you and my colleagues in congress. this history you share -- and you can add this to the kind of peace corps volunteerism that you did when you were younger and a spirit that has never left you. so i got a signal from mr. garamendi and it is a tribute, because mr. farr is a dear friend, but also my neighboring

congressional district representative and he never misses an opportunity, whether he's at home or abroad, to bring up the topic of serving in the peace corps and how fitting this evening, mr. farr, thaw are here to add your words and your stories to this celebration. i yield directly to you. mr. farr: i'm so fond of you and the service you give and your wonderful district to santa barbara communities. i was with congresswoman capps when we hosted a dinner with peace corps volunteers and some of their assignments were tougher than the one i had in colombia, that women live with muslim families, because indonesia is the largest muslim

country in the world. they teach in schools. very interesting how it is progressive and allowing the american women not being covered and to essentially be themselves and represent this country and how fond the students are of their teachers and the faculty of the teachers. so peace corps is there and it's interesting that we pay tribute on the 50th anniversary, that there is no age limit to joining the peace corps. we are in 77 countries now. we are about half the full size. we were 15,000 volunteers and down to 7,000, growing. congressman garamendi and others have been trying to increase the peace corps budget because it's the only thing standing in the way of more volunteers overseas. there are 20 countries that want peace corps. there are 20,000 people that apply to the peace corps and

there is only every year half of 7,000, about 3,500 jobs available, one in three or four get a chance to be accepted and that's not fair and we need to double the size of peace corps. and lastly, 1/6 the amount to send a soldier -- let me get my figures right. for every soldier we sent to afghanistan, we could send 12 peace corps volunteers abroad. so we have a good bang for our buck. why i rise tonight and try to be quick before we give it back to mr. garamendi, is to -- on behalf of all four of us who are returned peace corps volunteers now serving in congress, we circulated a letter asking the president of the united states to issue a proclamation honoring the 50th anniversary of the peace corps.

signed by 136 members of congress. today on the 50th anniversary of the peace corps, the president of the united states said the following, in 1961, president kennedy signed an executive orderer establishing the peace corps. it wasn't done by a congressional act, forever changing the way americans see the world and the world sees it. today, one of president kennedy's leg asies can be found in the 200,000 returned peace corps volunteers who have given half a century of service to the cause of peace. on its 50th anniversary, the united states peace corps remains an enduring symbol for our nation's commitment to encouraging progress, creating opportunity and fostering mutual respect and understanding throughout the world. peace corps volunteers have served in nearly 140 countries, bringing a wealth of practical assistance to those working to build better lives for themselves and their

communities. from the first group of volunteers to arrive in guantanamoa in august of 1961, they have been goodwill to the far corners of the will, strengthening the ties of friendship between the people of the united states and those of other countries. working and living along side, volunteers address challenging complex global needs in education, health, hiv-aids, business and information technology, agriculture, environmental protection and youth development. with each village that now has access to clean water, each young woman who has received an education, and each family empowered to prevent disease because of the service of a peace corps volunteer, president kennedy's noble vision lives on. in our interconnected world, the mission of the peace corps is more relevant today than ever. returned volunteers enriched by their experience overseas bring

a deeper understanding of traditions back to their home here in the united states. lasting accomplishments continue to strengthen the partnerships with leaders and countries around the world. this year, we mourn the loss and pay tribute to the life of sargent shriver. the founding director of the peace corps. the impact of his decades of public service will echo forever in countless places across the globe that have been touched by the peace corps. on this anniversary, we honor the men and women from across the country who have carried forward our nation's finest tradition of service and we rededicate ourselves to fulfilling the dream and continuing the work of all those who aspire and yes or no for peace. now, therefore, i barack obama, president of the urens of america, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the constitution and laws of the united states, do hereby claim march 1, 2011 as the 50th

anniversary of the peace corps and i urge all americans to observe this day that honor the peace corps and its volunteers past and present for the many contributions to the cause of global peace and friendship. and witness whereof i set my hand this 20 -- 28th day of february, in the year of our lord, 2011 and of the independence of the united states of america 235th, barack obama. . in that honor i'm pleased my friend, john garemeppedy, asked us to pay tribute to the peace corps on its 50th anniversary and i yield to my colleague who set up this special order. mr. garamendi: if there was

wisdom, it was because you suggested it. don't run off. i'd like to ask you a couple of questions about your service. i think if we ask the chair if it would be possible, the speaker, if it would be possible to enter the president's proclamation into the official house record, it might actually happen. so i would request that and we -- the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. garamendi: thank you so much. the president's words were very touching to me and i know they were to you because we were part of the peace corps, and we still are. not so much because of our role here in congress, but rather because once you're a peace corps volunteer, you never leave the service of peace. talk to me about where you served and the work that you did as a peace corps volunteer. mr. farr: john, i went into the peace corps after graduating from college in 1963. i knew i wanted to be called for that service.

i'd done air force rotc in college and i'd worked overseas for a cousin who had a factory in argentina and was my cross-cultural experience and i realized once i was bitten by wanting to see other languages and cultures, when the peace corps was announced, that's what i'd do. i thought when i went in the peace corps and i left, i thought i'd leave and become a high school biology teacher. my background was science and i did urban community development. and we listened to -- to the needs of a very poor bario, and we were taught, don't just go down there and tell them what you want to do based on your values because you'll be in a country that doesn't have infrastructure and your main thought and idea will be about cleanliness because you haven't lived in dirt before and you don't have garbage pickup and

you don't have that infrastructure. don't let your values not -- open your eyes and ears and listen. look before you leap. and that was really great advice because i think in politics you really do have to be a good listener. so we listened to the community and what they wanted to do was first build a soccer field. i thought that's odd. i played soccer but i have no idea of the dimensions of the field, i don't know how you do this. it didn't matter. it's like ok, they need a motivational force and i'm there, ok, how do we do this? we've got shovels and picks, where do you want to do it? and we did it. what was interesting, they'd never worked together in a community project so the teachings there were community development, how do you get together, and from there on we went to build schools and we put in sewers all by hand, bied way, -- by the way, and we had to go downtown to get the sewer bags and cement and the petitioning of government and a long story but quickly, it woke

me up to thinking i'm in another country, i can't vote here, i'm petitioning government and won't be able to vote for or against it. we've got poverty in america. the book had come out, "the other america" which showed there was a lot of poverty in the united states. why don't i go home and petition my own government to right wrongs and here i am in the united states congress. mr. garamendi: before you arrived here you spent years in the california legislature where i had the privilege of working with you. you started the discussion of your own peace corps experience by answering the call to action. president kennedy's very famous call, ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country. i know that for you and for myself and even more so from my wife patty -- mr. farr: you did it even more so because you were married, you were a rock star athlete in california, you were at the university of california, berkeley, and to be married and take that risk of sort of

walking away from what was just the ideal life to go off to ethiopia. it must have been an incredible pull. mr. garne mendy: -- mr. garamendi: the pull personally but what patty exhibited on me, i had the opportunity to play football but turned that down and got married and spent a two-month honeymoon in ethiopia where there was no running water and we lived in a mud-walled home with corrugated tin roof and an outhouse out back and turned on to be the most marvelous honeymoon and is still going on now almost 46 years later. it was a beautiful opportunity for us to serve. and then the rest of what you said is, a peace corps

volunteer never leaves a life of service. we transform it in many ways. lois capps talked about four or three examples of her own district of return peace corps volunteers and the way they inserted themselves into their communities for service and in one case international food. mr. farr: would you share for me, i got here a little late and maybe you already did, but i think you did one of the most remarkable diplomatic missions ever in being asked to come back to ethiopia with some colleagues of the peace corps by the president of the country to see if you could help settle the dispute with neighboring eritrea. and as i recall, it was a band of peace corps volunteers that put that together. mr. garamendi: it really speaks to the thousands of peace corps volunteers that worked in ethiopia and eritrea in the

late 1990's, a war broke out between those two countries and there is here in washington today well over 100,000 people from ethiopia and eritrea, they were getting riled up and choosing sides, and so those of us that served in ethiopia, together with chip, who is here in the gallery, set out to try to get these people here in the washington area to work towards peace rather than to get into an argument among themselves over which country was right or wrong. from there we very quickly found ourselves invited to travel to both ethiopia and eritrea where we were able to meet with the heads of state. in both cases, the team that was assembled, there were five of us, myself, i was then just leaving federal government service as the deputy secretary of interior, mr. dombach had

just left the return peace corps volunteer association, a federal appellate court judge who served in ethiopia who was then on the bench in arizona in the ninth circuit, mr. mccaskey, the president of the chicago bears, and a gentleman involved in african relief issues. and we journeyed and sat down and met with first the president of eritrea and had a three-hour conversation with him about the war and why the war was underway, what his goals were. we then traveled to ethiopia where we met first with the foreign minister of ethiopia who actually was a student of mike mccaskey. and there was a bond

immediately established between them and shortly thereafter the foreign minister arranged a meeting with the prime minister. and again, we spent nearly three hours with him asking him about the war from his perspective, what there was. and it came to the five of us that there was a way to find peace, that there was a path that could bridge these differences that these two countries had that at that point had resulted in nearly 100,000 soldiers on both sides, both ethiopia and eritrea having been killed in that war. we turned that information over to the organization of africa unity who was then working towards some sort of a settlement. and shortly thereafter, within a couple of months, the basic elements of the peace treaty were developed, and they were based on the work that we had done. we received a -- there was some more back and forth that took place, but our team was invited

to algeria for the signing of the ceremony of peace. so the work for peace really never ends. and i know you're doing it here in congress. mr. farr: i never -- it's one thing to be a peace corps volunteer and one thing to bring two nations at war together living in peace because you are peace corps volunteers and think that is a great tribute. you mentioned chick dombach when he was going in volunteer service in the peace corps in colombia and seems like you and i have developed a fondness for chick and maybe he's more important than either of us because he's been so instrumental in your life and what happened in ethiopia and atreea and been instrumental in my life in colombia and i'm glad he's here tonight because he really is part of the peace corps legacy. mr. garamendi: another example of an individual that devotes his life to peace and heads up an organization which is a

consortium that are dedicated to searching for peace around the world and trying to dissolve disputes before they come to war. we would be derelict in our duty if we didn't make a heavy duty pitch here for people to join the peace corps. everywhere i go on campuses, people, the young men and women that are graduating and older people, i think it's 7% of the volunteers today are over 50 years of age. the next election may give us an opportunity to return to the peace corps. who knows what will come of that. but whatever age, the peace corps offers you an opportunity to serve. sam? mr. farr: i'd also like to mention we could use a lot more peace corps volunteers because these countries want us to come in for the first time and want us to grow. vietnam is interested in getting the peace corps. we were just in east timor and were there and pulled out when

things got unrest. they're now in peace and they want them back. in indonesia, i think there are 18 volunteers now, they could grow that to hundreds of volunteers because the country wants it. the one thing we have to do here in congress is give them more money. frankly, i want to salute the president of the united states, because in these tough fiscal times where everything else has to be cut back, this year he's asked congress to give peace corps more money than they gave them last year and that's one of the programs. we've gotten strong bipartisan support on this and hopefully in this congress, which is going to be mostly a cut, squeeze and trim congress, that we don't throw the baby out with the bath water. as you said, what an incredible opportunity at a time when peace might be breaking out in the middle east, they're going to need a lot of this -- they're going to need a lot of community development -- you're going to need people to understand.

i could go on for hours what i just saw in east timor where women had three, four, five babies in houses with no electricity, mud floors before anyone got to them and said, you know, you need to go through a prenatal discussion and some post natal treatment, and even in that poverty, what they're just trying to do is sequence the babies so they won't be born so quickly, one next to each other because there's a high risk of low birth rate. . you know who's there on the ground doing that, that's what peace corps does. the war on poverty never ends. the war or the path to peace, the process for peace as we've seen hopefully breaking out in the middle east, that we can get a democratic society, they're all going to need teachers and as we need them here at home, we need them abroad. teachers not just traditional reading, writing and a arithmetic, but teachings of health care and h.i.v.

prevention and so on. and i know you and patty have dedicated your lives to that work and what a wonderful way to celebrate on this 50th anniversary. mr. garamendi: as you were talking about the peace corps volunteers working with young families, our son and daughter served in paraguay in the peace corps and her work was precisely that, working with the families in her community in paraguay. they were also in a rural area, working on family health. on the issues of raising children, healthy children, and providing them with information about how they could better take care of their families and have a better life. our son was involved in community development work. our two daughters also served in the peace corps. and for the young men and women and others who are not so young, the peace corps offers an incredible opportunity to serve

the world, serve this country, and to serve the needs of individuals in a one-on-one relationship in some 77 countries now and hopefully with a small increase in the peace corps budget which stands just at $400 million, you issued, you gave a statistic earlier in your discussion that is really, i think, important. for every soldier that we send to afghanistan, we could send 13 americans somewhere in the world to work on the issues of poverty, the issues of education, social development, society development, and peace. so it's a 13-1 ratio. a great investment. erin williams is the current peace corps director -- aaron williams is the current peace corps director. he was a volunteer in 1967 to 1970, served three years. mr. farr: he met his wife there, too.

they're happily married and the peace corps doesn't just -- some peace corps volunteers comes home with new families. mr. garamendi: there are many, many opportunities that the peace corps developed and, yes, indeed, they can come home with a new family and a wife and you're quite correct about aaron. 8,655 volunteers as of today serving in 77 countries, urban, rural, in all kinds of work, just some of the statistics are i think interesting. education, 37%. and we were teachers and community development and actually patty and i were involved in the smallpox eradication program in ethiopia being one of the last countries to eradicate smallpox. health, hiv-aids, 22%. business, want to be a graduate of harvard business school and really get some experience? 14% of the volunteers do that.

mr. farr: we had small business development in colombia and there were a whole bunch of people working on educational television which the country was implementing and needed teachers of how to do that and technicians of how to run the studios and set it all up. we also had architects helping design public facilities and parks. you don't work on your own, you work with host country counterparts who are professionals like you are. mr. garamendi: and a great example, there's a television reporter-cameraman that's in the bay area and that's about to retire. every time i see him, the san francisco bay area, every time i see him he says, i'm going to go into the peace corps. i said, have you gone online? peacecorps.com, to put your application in? he says, no, and i said, well the next time i see you, i want you to tell me that you have your application in. he wants to take his knowledge of reporting and television camera work, he wants to take that overseas to work with

countries that are developing their own media, for the purposes of providing that foundation for a democratic society. and he would be terrific. he's a great reporter. mr. farr: i think that's very important. one of the things i did today, when somebody asked me about it, he was my age, i said, go look up the peace corps on the internet. not only that, it shows every one of those countries, 77 countries they're in, and what jobs are in that country. you can go out and look around the world and see the country you want to go to and find a job that you think you're qualified to do and that gives you a motivation to do that. it also, you know, it's not all peace corps volunteers live in mud huts. if you're teaching in a university or in a school in an urban area, you could be in a much more comfortable middle class setting than people distribute image of sleeping in a hammock in a mud hut. so it's all kinds of opportunities, just depending on

the skill sets of you, the individual, and the needs of the host country. we're always there as a guest being asked by the country to be there and we do the jobs they discuss to do. -- ask us to do. and we have enough innovation that sometimes if the job isn't working exactly as they described, you look around and see what else is needed and adapt yourself. and that's a lot of fun. that's a lot of creativity and i think a lot of satisfaction for the volunteer. mr. garamendi: sam, we're just about out of time. today, march 1, 2011, marks the 50th anniversary, 50th birthday of the united states peace corps. it's been an incredible organization all of these years, over 200,000 americans have served, both young and old, in some 139 countries. and so for all of those out there that want to do something very, very special with their life, well, you can google it or

you can go directly to peacecorps.gov. put your application in and see what the toughest job you ever love will bring to you. congressman sam farr, thank you so very much for joining me this evening, for tom petri and mike honda, the four of us who are in congress that remain peace corps volunteers, and for loisca -- losi capps joining us and giving her perspective. happy birthday, peace corps. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. pursuant to the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, the chair recognizes the gentleman from iowa, mr. king, for 30 minutes. mr. king: thank you, madam speaker. the gentleman from iowa is pleased to be recognized to

address you here on the floor of the house. i want to express my disappointment in the gentleman who spoke before me. i usually come here to pick up my steerl for rebuttal. as i listened to you talk about your affection for the peace corps, i didn't come up with a single thing i seek to rebut here tonight. i'll go off on a subject matter that i came to address, madam speaker. and that is, the situation where we are in this country today, with the deaf and deficit, and the growth in deaf government and the things we must do to turn this country back around and put it on the right track. this house here this afternoon voted to pass a continuing resolution that has within it an aggregate of about $4.1 billion in cuts over a two-week period of time, that if you multiply or extrapolate that out to the fiscal year it comes in that neighborhood of $61 billion in cuts. which arguably holds the reductions in place. but it did specifically go in and make the cuts in areas where

the president had recommended those cuts. it dialed down the contention and tried to find a way to find a solution and a resolution, list the of the president's recommendations i have, but i don't think i'm going to take the time or the trouble, madam speaker, to read them into the record. i'll just say that it suffices to show that a number in the neighborhood of $2.7 billion would be to earmark savings and the termination of program savings is about $1.25 billion. so we get to that number that's just slightly more than $4 billion. it is perhaps a victory, it's perhaps a success, it's perhaps a temporary one, i think it's most likely that it is. these cuts that were offered here today were -- will most likely be met with an agreement down on the other end of the capitol building, in the senate that's run by the majority leader, harry reid of nevada, i think i saw some language in

this appropriations bill that might directly affect him. that might be what helps convince him as well. but, madam speaker, this is a short-term piece that was designed to be a period of time that would allow the senate to mull over the house position which is h.r. 1. h.r. 1 is the bill that has the highest priority for the speaker of the house, it's been traditionally the case. and two weeks ago this congress negotiated, debated, offered amendments, some 500 to 600 amendments were filed, nearly 200 of them were debated, and voted upon, and many of them that went in that were cuts in spending or prohibitions from using that spending to implement certain policies that have been since rejected by this congress, and, madam speaker, we need to remember that there was an election last november 2 of

2010. and to quote the president of the united states, he's famously said after the election of november, 2008, he said, we had an election and we won. which means that he dictates the policy. well, madam speaker, to the president of the united states, i would say, if we had an election november 2, you didn't win that one, madam speaker -- mr. president. in fact, you declared it to be, i quote, a shah lacking, closed quote. it was a shalacking. and the republicans won the majority in this house by huge numbers, we're looking today at 87 new freshmen republicans, nine freshmen democrats, to give you a sense of the proportionality or the disproportionality. the seats that were picked up have dramatically changed, the gavels all changed hands in the house of representatives, the agenda changed, has gone from an agenda that's been driven under

the speakership of nancy pelosi for four years, of an agenda of accelerating spending, increasing government, pushing socialized medicine, which is what i have long declared obamacare to be, that doesn't shock anybody, madam speaker, it's common vernacular in the central part of the united states at a minimum. we saw this push to grow government, we saw the president participate in as a united states senator and accelerate his efforts as the president of the united states in the government takeover first promoting a $700 billion tarp bailout program that was designed to pick up toxic assets that could have been far better picked up by the private sector if he would have identified them and we would have exempted capital gains taxes on the profits that would be made, we would have seen private money go in and pick up these toxic mortgages in a large way and be managed, managed for a better result that would have kept more people in their homes. the list of good things goes on that might have happened had we

had more free market solutions and less government intervention. but that $700 million tarp plan was a mistake in my view, madam speaker, and behind that aim, the call for the economic stimulus plan, which was $787.5 billion that now rolled up to over $800 billion, around $816 billion, in the economic stimulus plan. not all of it spent, but it was to keep unemployment below 8%. we know that it sailed up into the upper 9%, 9.7% and above, it's dialed down now to around 9%. but we have a lot of people that have given up and stopped trying. and it's clear that the stimulus plan didn't stimulate the economy at all in the way that it was described or the way it was promised to us, but it surely added to the debt. we've seen about $3 trillion in unnecessary spending driven by this president. we watched as proud companies became -- went into hoc to the

federal government and found the federal government engaged in managing some of those companies. three large investment banks taken over by the federal government, at least by the power of management or influence. a.i.g., the insurance company, over $180 billion that flowed into a.i.g. to protect other investors that had an interest in a.i.g., the insurance company, or in policies that they had offered that were guaranteeing the return on mortgage-backed securities. . >> three large investment banks, a.i.g. the insurance companies. we saw fannie mae and freddie mac transition from kwasi government to taxpayer guaranteed stepping in to play a role in the majority of the mortgage loans in the united states. guaranteed by the taxpayers. i recall standing on this

floor, the floor of the house of representatives in october 26, 2005, listening to the most immediate past chairman of the financial services committee argue that he was never going to participate in bailing out fannie and freddie and if anyone was considering buying stock in either one they should not do so under the consideration that barney frank from massachusetts would be engaged in bailing them out. so he later became chairman of the committee, and that's what happened. there was that -- we saw dodd-frank become law which gives the federal government massive regulatory control over the financial institutions in america. we saw the government, the white house takeover of general motors and chrysler. and we saw then obamacare pass, which i've declared to be the nationalization of our skin and everything inside it. and by the way, it includes a 10% tax on the outside if you go to the tanning salon. that's over 50% of our economy

swallowed up by the obama administration and supported by the pelosi congress and the reid senate. and we come to this point where america can't take it anymore, madam speaker. we can't take it anymore and all over the world too much spending has put america in debt and put our currency in question and put our economy in an unstable position and it guarantees we will be in a long, drawn-out recovery because we have the overspending, where we have to pay the interest and then eventually pay off the principal. and we're borrowing money from the chinese and begging them and from the saudis and begging them. we're looking at a foreign policy that's conflagration in the middle east, country after country is seeking to throw off

the yoke of its leader and replace it with we don't know what their ideals are, but they've hit the end of their patience line. but here we are with a continuing resolution the government is operating on today that was negotiated and passed here in the house and senate in december that extended the funding of the government over until march 4 of this year. midnight, around march 4, which is maybe thursday night, there's been an action taken here on the floor to pass a continuing resolution to do a career stopgap funding to keep the government running another two weeks, up until march 18, and that c.r. has now been messaged to the senate and the senate can decide if they want to take it up tomorrow or the next day, get it to the president's desk and the president signs the c.r., the government keeps running. if the president doesn't, the government shuts down. and i'm watching as my colleagues seem to think that

there's one data point of message for them to learn from , that because there was a government shutdown in 1995, it was one that was pushed for by republicans and driven for by republicans, they wanted to face president clinton down and insist that they pass a balanced budget, and to get to a balanced budget. in spite of all the things that happened in 1995 and in early 1996, that was the result, madam speaker, that shortly had a balanced budget and that balanced budget came a lot sooner than it would have otherwise and lasted at least until such time as we were hit by september 11 and the calamity that sent this america into an overspending binge. i think we could have faced the calamity of september 11 without having to blow our budget in the way we did but that is not what happened. but what did happen in 1995, if

that's the only data point, i want to make this point, madam speaker, that first of all, there are thousands and thousands of students all over america who are studying political science, some of them are watching tonight. some of them are reading in the paper the things we say and do and analyzing it and listening to their professors analyze what goes on in congress and are listening to the instruction of the rules, the standards, the axioms that come from certain data points along the line of the continuum of political history. and that one data point on the line of the continuum of political history is the government shutdown of 1995 and some of it drug over into early 1996. and the argument is that house republicans lost that because they had to concede their position to the president and to the senate. well, it is a fact that the house had to concede. they did concede. it's also a fact that the republicans that controlled the

senate at the time passed a unanimous consent agreement to go ahead and spend the money demanded by bill clinton and send it over to the house. the house was in a position where they couldn't push that chain back uphill and president clinton and the senate got their way and imposed it over the house. but i will still say that there's not a dime that can be spent by the federal government if the house of representatives insists that it not be spent. we have to concede and go along with it at some point or it won't be spent. and that the negotiating position that was there for the house republicans in 1995 was one that was marginally stronger because they had at least a majority in the senate. that's the difference in the dynamics. but it was also about $300 billion, as i recall, on medicare spending. and so whenever you put down a dollar figure and you try to stand on that as a principle,

it's a different substance -- stance than if you put something that's principle down and stand on it. for example, whether we're going to spend $300 billion on medicare, 1995, or $250 billion or $200 billion or $150 billion or $100 billion or no more, you will lose or gain people along that line of that continuum. if you want to cut medicare by $350 billion, you'd lose some people that might be with you at $300 billion. and if you move the line up $400 billion, you lose people that might have been with you at $350 billion or $400 billion. money is something that there's a sliding scale, and there's not -- you cannot find a principle there that you can stand on. it's like going to an auction and seeing something that you want and maybe if you go to the auction and you decide, hey, i want to buy a bicycle and i'm willing to pay $100 for that bicycle, if you go to the

auction and the auctioneer is crying out he's got a bid for $100, now he wants $101, do you pay that extra dollar and go home with the bicycle, something to show for it or do you say, no, that was my principle. my principle was i'm not going to spend more than $100. some people live by that principle, i do, occasionally. but it's not a principle that's tied to anything that is definable from a sense of right and wrong, it's a percentage scale, if $100 was the right number, it's only 1% wrong to pay $101, with -- if you get it for $99, do you have any more virtue? no. you just got a bargain from what you anticipated. but if you stand on a principle, it's a different story. the principle here that's better for the house to stand on than the principle of the $300 billion in 1995 is the principle that we must not be funding obamacare willfully with the appropriation bills in

the house. we must not do so because every republican and a handful of democrats, and there will be more, voted to repeal obamacare. they passed the repeal and sent it over to harry reid. and furthermore, now that that's happened, every republican, whether they're with h.r. 1, has voted to shut off any funding that can be used to implement or enforce obamacare. that's also a fact. they're principled votes. they're not votes measured on the dollar figure. in fact, most people that voted in that fashion didn't know how much money it actually saved us for voting to repeal obamacare. and it's hard for me to take a position on that. i'll just say that the chairman of the budget committee, paul ryan, has used the words about $2.6 trillion is the spending that is saved by repealing obamacare. that's the best number we have and i don't disagree with that. i accept that number. but it's hard to come down to

something and argue that we're doing it because of the money savings? did we vote to repeal obamacare because it would stop the spending of $2.6 trillion? i think not, madam speaker. i think it's part of the equation, we can't afford it. but there are many other principles and the most important one is obamacare takes american liberty and puts it into the hands of government to manage our -- the most -- i'll say the second-most sovereign thing we have is our bodies and our health. that's what's wrong with obamacare. it's the matter of the principle. it's the takings of american liberty that must be stopped. and no, we can't afford it and it's money that's better spent by doctor-patient relationships and individuals making decisions on their health insurance and moving on down the line within those conservative principles. but we need to stand on principle. and we have this opportunity here in this 112th congress to stand on principle. and the stance needs to be that

we will not vote to fund obamacare. and i'm going to add to this, that neither shall we vote to fund planned parenthood. and i shall be looking for ways to unfund every other entity like them that promotes abortion or provides abortion as a matter of practice in their facilities. planned parenthood is invested in promiscuity. it's a longer discussion than i'll engage in tonight, madam speaker. but i think these two issues are tied very closely together going forward, that obamacare funding must be shut off, and we cannot be asking our members to vote again to appropriate funds that can be used to fund obamacare. and some will be saying if we didn't have obamacare funding in this short-term c.r., as they said there wasn't obamacare funding in the c.r. that passed at the end of december that takes us to march 4, but here's the answer to

this, there are at least 21 different components to obamacare that are beneficiaries of funding that goes into the various departments that there's no prohibition of that money from going into for being used to implement or force obamacare. at least 21 different areas. and when you look at the money that's in there, we discovered altogether the automatic appropriation is something like $4.9 billion that went into -- for the balance of this year that were automatically appropriated, that's not prohibited in this c.r. we didn't get it into h.r. 1, actually, either. but the 21 programs are there and the money is there for them. and i can roll those into the record, madam speaker, but there's another component to this that's a blanket component, and that is language in obamacare that gives the authority to the secretary of health and human services, kathleen sebelius to do

intradepartmental transfers so she can use that money to implement and enforce obamacare at her discretion. now, we failed to shut that language off, too. so this appropriations bill that passed today, h.j. recent 44 -- h.j.res 21, and there are 21 places that fund obamacare and still allows for the secretary of health and human services to take intradepartmental transfers to use at her discretion at will. which funds obamacare, and the pence language, the pence amendment he's worked on so valiantly and so long to shut off all funding to planned hainthood was passed by this house in h.r. 1 and became a component of the first position of the house that was delivered here about 4:30 on a saturday morning a week ago last saturday morning. those components, i believe,

need to be part of everything we do going forward. and i will stand and promote those and i will stand with those who will stand for life, and simplify it when i say defense language that shuts off funding to planned parenthood, but there are other components that also were left out, and that's the dorn amendment that prohibits funding for abortions in d.c., the mexico city policy which we've always done, not part of it, that shuts off funding to abortions in foreign lands, the international population control and family planning fund gets money still, along with planned parenthood. this is what's taken place, madam speaker, in the short-term c.r. it's hard for many members to vote for it, they want to be team players. and i appreciate that sentiment from my standpoint, i have an obligation to my constituents and to god and country to do

the best job i can to serve. and it goes in the opposite order, god, country, constituents right up there with country, and sometimes the best interests of my district are not always going to be the best interests of america. i haven't had that conflict that i can articulate yet, but if that comes, i'm pretty confident my constituents will understand the priority. we have to do the right thing for the long term for our country and the right thing is for us to stand on principle and to shut off this funding to obamacare, shut off this funding to planned parenthood, and make sure that we are standing on a solid, moral principled ground and that we've got a firm place that we can then negotiate those things that are negotiable with the senate, which by the way is a proxy for the president of the united states. . if it can be negotiated with the senate, it's also negotiated with the president in my view.

but i also want to add this and in a moment i'm going to look forward to yielding to my friend from texas who has just arrived on the floor, but for weeks now, the democrats in the house and the democrats in the senate have been clamoring for a government shipdown. they seem to be determined to shut -- shutdown. they seem to be determined to shut the government down. they seem to think if they win the government shutdown they're going to pick up seats in the house and the senate and they'll be able to impose their government growth, government expansion proposals that they've been pushing that has failed, that the american people have rejected. and we should not be deluded into believing that democrats somehow want to be -- go through this period of fiscal austerity. they want to drive this spending up and they want to have more excuses for increasing taxes. if government grows and taxes grow, at some point the taxes grow to the point where they consume everything and then those business entity it's that i take -- that i talked about being taken over by this white

house become the small part of a long list of business entities that are taken over. i've spoken of this before. on the website, the socialist website, they say, we don't want to nationalize everything like the communists, we're just socialists. we only want to nationalize the fortune 500 companies, thanks a lot, give the barber and the butcher and the candlestick maker some relief, thanksas a lot for thatment and then they want to manage the fortune 500 companies for the benefit of the people affected by them, closed quote. that's the unions. and the president handed shares and general motors and chrysler over to the unions who had no skin in the game, no equity invested and he handed it over to them anyway. it's right off the socialist website and the progressives that are left in this congress adhere to the agenda of the socialists on the website. but democrats that are clamoring for a shutdown fail to understand that the american people are more sophisticated

today than they were in 1995, they've seen this movie before. and they fear it ends with republicans giving in to the demands of tax consumers. i have that same fear, but i'm encouraging all of us on this side of the aisle and those discerning democrats who remain, and there are some, to join with us in putting an end to obamacare, putting an end to funding for planned parenthood, putting an end to overspending, let's get serious about real cuts, let's get serious about holding the line. what every republican in the house voted to repeal obamacare and every republican voted to defund obamacare, that's what we must do, that's what we shall do. madam speaker, i'd be happy to yield to the gentleman from texas, my friend, judge gohmert. mr. gohmert: and i thank my friend from iowa, i've been

listening to your well thought out comments. this is a serious time not just in american history but in world history. and it's a little difficult to get beat up from our friends from the other side of the aisle over what's going on right now over a continuing resolution when there's one reason we're doing any continuing resolution, it's because they didn't do their job last year. this was supposed to have been done last year. they didn't do it. why? i guess they were concerned that if people saw exactly a budget that's required by law that wasn't done last year, just ignored that, just like the president's now going to ignore the defense of marriage act, i didn't know presidents could pick and choose the laws that were passed and signed into law

and just say, we don't choose to defend that anymore. but to get beat up by people across the aisle over what's going on is a little tough to take because they didn't do their job, now we're having to do it and then to further get beat up over spending issues because we're trying to cut spending, and i know my friend from iowa as i did voted no on the c.r. today because it didn't continue the hard-fought battle that was won in h.r. 1, where we were defunding obamacare, but i recall in 2005, 2006, my first term in congress, getting beat up figuratively speaking by friends across the aisle because they said rightfully we were spending too much money.

and that we were going to run, you know, $100 billion to $200 billion in deficit over the amount we were going to receive in. and that that was irresponsible. well, they were right. we shouldn't have been spending $100 billion to $200 billion more than we were getting in five and 2006. they said we were spending too much, they were right. and what happened in november of 2006, they promised they'd get the spending under control, if they were given the majority. they got the majority and they immediately started spending more than we had spent and so here we are after a democrat president gets elected, promising home hope and change, and people didn't realize that the change was going to be the few pennies left in their pockets after this government was spending so much and leaving little that banks can loan for new businesses and small businesses, to hire people.

so the economy's struggling. i mean, this government has sucked up all the capital that there is to create jobs and to get the economy going. so, one of the things that's troubled me is hearing people complaining about wanting to cut hundreds of billions of dollars, in fact, trying to cut $1.5 trillion of the president's proposed $3.65 trillion budget, $3.7 trillion, it's over -- we're only supposed to get in about $1.-- 2.16 trillion total of all federal revenue and this president's proposing a budget that's $1.65 trillion more than that. so, i keep wondering, since our democratic friends across the aisle were beating up on us in

2006 for spending too much money , what would be wrong with saying, not cut $100 billion, but cut $1.65 trillion and let's get back to where we were in 2006? that was only $200 billion over what we were receiving. what would be wrong with -- the democrats were right, republicans were spending too much money in 2005 and 2006. what would be wrong with going back to that budget? and yet here there's all this rancor over just cutting $100 billion and the president's talking about $1.65 trillion more than we received in. i don't know if my friend from iowa noticed but two weeks ago when the president came out with his absolutely irresponsible budget that was going to spend $1.65 trillion more than we

brought in, not the $160 billion more that we got beat up for spending more than, but 10 times that, $1.65 trillion, i noticed in the paper the next day that the chinese were selling off some of their u.s. bonds, some of their debt from our country, what immediately came to my mind, if i were china and i were holding our debt, and i saw that the president of the united states, despite making almost daily speeches about how we're getting spending under control, it would be irresponsible, he says, not to get spending under control, and then he reveals his budget and it's spending $150 million being -- billion more than he did last year, i'd start is hing off our debt, too. i'd be thinking, these people are so crazy. i mean, the dollar is the currency of the world.

nations around the world have been advising us as friends, look, you don't realize what you're doing but people are getting ready to dump the dollar as a reserve currency for one reason, well, two reasons. one, a lot of them are jealous. but, number two, we're being irresponsible with our economy and with our spending. and so i couldn't help but vote no today on the c.r. with my friend from iowa. and i also -- i heard a lady yesterday talking about 30 people had lost their jobs because of obamacare and what this administration is doing. i've heard from people who are extremely upset back in texas who have lost their health care just because obamacare's been passed. i talked to doctors who have

said, i'm done, i can't play these games anymore, i have not saved as much money as i'd hoped before i retired, but i'm done. and they're giving up medical practice. talked to a doctor just this morning who said the very same thing. it just keeps bringing back, if you care about people, if you care about them having jobs, if you care about their self-respect that comes when they have a meaningful job, earn their own keep, instead of having the government luring them into servitude where they're servants of the government, and just running around, wherever they can find a government that will hand them a check, and demanding checks, we just -- america deserves better. there are people that have given that last full measure of

devotion to make sure that freedom existed around here, not freedom to go begging to government for a check, not freedom to go begging the government for health care, to pass some law that we're going to take someone's money that they earned, they don't want to give up, force them to spend on people who don't want to work, but we owe them better than we've been doing. and so when we hear our friends talking about how we shouldn't even have to go through this process, i couldn't agree more. they've done their job, if they had cut spending instead of putting the dollar in jeopardy, putting our economy in jeopardy, then they're right, we shouldn't have to be going through this. but we have got to defund obamacare before too many more people lose their health care and end up having rashed care, heard about more doctors --

rationed care, heard about more doctors today who are no longer taking medicare or medicaid. we owe all of the people across this country better than what they've gotten the last six years? and what they've sure been getting the last two years. this is dire circumstances and we just can't keep this going. i mean, we are really in serious trouble. and i know my friend knows that or he wouldn't be spending his time here when he could be doing so many other things. but i appreciate my friend from iowa more than he can possibly know. i appreciate his courageous stance and i look forward to -- i can't really say that, i don't look forward to the battles ahead, but i look forward to having a friend as we go through them and i yield back to my friend from iowa. mr. king: reclaiming my time, thanking the gentleman from texas, sparked some things in my mind that in the about six

minutes we may have, a little bit of dialogue with regard to that. one of the points i wanted to make about what's going on with the strategy on obamacare is this, that i've spoken significantly about how this house has voted to repeal it, this house has voted to shut off the funding to it, and every single opportunity -- at every single opportunity. if there's a strategy out there that says we're going to do death to obamacare by a thousand cuts, i'd ask those folks that are concerned about a real showdown with the president on obamacare to think about what really happened not so much in the 1995 shutdown, which i said earlier i don't think is applicable under these circumstances, there's a better issue to understand and that is, in 1998 when the impeachment of president clinton was brought up, when america found out about what was going on in the oval office, and in the room next to the oval office, in too stark of

detail for the children of america to be so rushed into the birds and the bees discussion in the way that they were, madam speaker, but what happened was, as appalled as america was -- the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. mr. king: madam speaker, i apologize. i didn't hear your gavel earlier. even though it's abrupt, i'm happy to yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, of january 5 -- under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011,, the chair recognizes the gentlewoman from california, ms. speier, for 30 minutes. . dd ms. fire ms. speier

ms. speier: thank you, madam speaker. and i appreciate the opportunity this evening to talk about something that we're not talking much about right now. we talk about the loss of jobs, the unemployment, but what really caused it? you know, a few weeks ago, the financial crisis inquiry commission actually submitted its report to congress. the good news is it's on the bestseller's list. the bad news is that i'm fearful that it's going to be gathering dust in the chamber here and throughout this building because in this document, it speaks volumes about why we are sitting where we are today, why our economy has tanked, why there are 15 million people unemployed in this country, and why there are four million people who now have been foreclosed on and

another four million who are under water relative to their mortgages. so, this evening, i am joined by the distinguished member from the financial services committee, my good friend from the state of north carolina, who is a powerful voice on consumer protection and the financial crisis that we've endurred. and we're going to spend the next one half-hour just talking about it. first and foremost, what was this commission? this commission was a bipartisan, independent, 10-member committee composed of private citizens with experience in economics, finance, housing, market regulation. they held 19 public hearings in affected communities across this country, including washington, new york, miami, sacramento, las vegas, and baker field. -- and bakersfield. 115 witnesses appeared in sworn

public hearings, including leading figures in the crisis. in addition, the commission interviewed over 300 people, virtually all the key players in the financial collapse, including angelo mazillo of countrywide, richard fold of lehman and joe kozano of a.i.g. products division and examined thousands of documents, all of which are posted on the web, a totally transparent process. and the singular most important statement they made was this crisis could have been avoided. now, they gave just a few examples. the securities and exchange commission could have required more capital and halted risky practices at the big investment banks, but they did not. the federal reserve bank of new york and other regulators could have clamped down on

citigroup's excesses to the run-up on the crisis. they did not. policymakers and regulators could have stopped the runaway mortgage securization train but they did not. so this document has line and verse of what went wrong. but one of the most telling parts deals with the mortgage fraud. and i would like to just put this up. how many executives have been held accountable for their actions in this financial crisis? well, as you can see, two have been criminally charged, there have been zero convictions, zero sent to prison. well, what happened when the savings and loan crisis occurred in this country decades ago? well, the results there were

much different. 1,188 were criminally charged, 915 were convicted, and 592 -- 582 went to prison. convictions included more than 260 thrift c.e.o.'s and senior executives, including, of course, the famous mr. keating. so it is very important for us tonight and through the next year or two to not only study this document, but to put it to paper. to put it to paper i mean legislate around it. now, the dodd bill is an incredible effort in that regard. the dodd-frank effort was one that we were successful in moving through. but as this report points out, there were powers that many of

these regulators already had but chose not to use. now, the second poster -- talks about mortgage fraud. and the compelling information in the report that i think is important to point out is that, again, there were people that were looking at the problem and saying, wait a minute, we need to do something about this. one in particular was the deputy director of the f.b.i. who began to look at this issue and thought, something is wrong here. according to the f.b.i., 80% of the cases of fraud involves insiders. so if there were fraud being exercised in the mortgage

industry, it was coming from the inside. the f.b.i. assistant director, chris swecker, began noticing a rise in mortgages fraud in 1999 and in 2002 led a successful criminal prosecution against the owner of beneficial mortgage in your state, my dear frend from north carolina -- friend from north carolina, for selling fraudulent loans to fannie mae. first they purchased the loans from fannie but proceeded to resell them to ginnie mae without any interference from fannie. fannie later paid $7.5 million in restitution to the government for allowing the sale. the assistant director swecker told an executive committee that if mortgage practices became unrestrained and systematic, it would ultimately place financial institutions at risk and have adverse affects

on the stock market. boy, was he prescient or what? here is an interesting chart that shoulds -- that shows how we've seen an increase in fraud reports at financial institutions. now, these are really undervalued and probably five times higher because many institutions do not actually report like they should. but what is even more disturbing is that while the number of mortgage frauds have increased, the number of actual prosecutions have slowed down. so as we are trying to kind of somehow come to some understanding of why this all happened and how do we make sure it doesn't happen again, if we don't have enforcement tools, if we don't have those who have the enforcement tools

seeking to go after the mortgage fraud, then in all likelihood, it will continue to happen. so i know that my good friend from north carolina is interested in weighing in on this issue. i think that as we discuss this issue, it's important to know, one, that there are enforcement tools, but they have to be used. i yield to my good friend. >> thank you. and thank you for organizing this special order of the night to talk about an issue that we should not turn our attention from because we need to remember how we got here if we're going to figure out how to get out and how to make sure we don't get here again. this has been the worst economy since the great depression and need to make sure the mistakes that got us here are mistakes we avoid in the future.

our colleagues across the aisle said the greatest issue is those who want big government and those who want small government. the real issue is which side government is on. for too long government has not been on the side of working in middle class families trying to make an honest living, who are trying to support themselves, support their families, do the right thing, do something useful with their lives. mr. miller: government has been on the side of the people trying to make a killing by getting themselves into a position where they can take advantage of the economy where they can extract money, what economists call rent-seeking, doing nothing particularly youthful but taking a piece of other people's productive work. there's been a lot of gloating in the last little bit about how successful the financial rescue has been, and by many measures it has been. the banks have not actually collapsed, the financial system

didn't collapse. we did not have a great depression. as painful as this has been. but the financial collapse and the rescue profoundly offended american sense of justice and it defended my sense of justice . what led to the financial collapse was not some perfect storm of unforeseeable macroeconomic forces and this weird combination of events that no one could possibly have seen, it really was a result, as the fcic report concluded, it was not just preventable, it was a result of blame-worthy conduct, that we should never have allowed to happen. i first got involved in this issue not knowing it would result eventually in a financial crisis through working on the issue of mortgages. knowing that the mortgages were terrible for consumers, for

homeowners. and the way that they have been portrayed as a good-faith effort by the financial system to try to maholm ownership available to people who otherwise could not afford it was completely different from what was really going on with subprime mortgages. there was an explosive growth of subprime mortgages. they grew from 8% of all mortgages in 2003 to 28% in 2006. that is an enormous growth in three short years. and they certainly were not about helping people buy homes who otherwise could not have afforded homeownership. in fact, every study that's looked at it concluded the great majority of people who got subprime loans qualified for prime loans. they got cheated. they got steered into loans that obviously were not in their interest. they weren't about helping people into homeownership. in fact, subprime was almost

entirely a creature of refinancing, 70%, even during that 2003-2006 period, 70% were refinance. and people already owned their homes but they needed to borrow money. some of them lived beyond their means, no doubt about it. some were using the equity in their home at an a.t.m. machine. but in the past generation the means of middle class families have not been enough. americans, as the economy has grown, as the nation has prospered, that prosperity has not been widely shared as it has been in the past. so when americans got into trouble, when they needed to borrow money from somewhere, when someone in the family got sick, when someone lost their job, when they went through a divorce, when they needed to borrow money, the only way to borrow money was to refinance their home. 70% of subprime loans were refinances. and again, the great majority, "the wall street journal" estimated 55%. most other estimates have been

more than that who were people who qualified for prime mortgages. 90% were not fixed rate 30-year mortgages. they had a quick reset. after just two or three years. they were 2-28's or 3-27's. people who got those loans didn't know that and didn't know the initial payment they had to make, the monthly payment, would be subject to a quick increase and the increase after a couple years was generally 30% to 50% a month. to get out of the mortgage, the great rate majority had to pay a prepayment penalty, usually like 3% of the outstanding balance of the mortgage. now, those were not mortgages designed to help middle class families. those were mortgages designed to take the equity in their home, to strip them of the we canity of their home as house -- of the equity in their home as house prices were going up. there would be no way to pay off those mortgages in the

course of 30 years and then invite their friends and family over to have a ceremony where they burned their mortgages, earlier generations of americans have done. they were mortgages that had the effect of trapping people in debt and taking from them the equity in their home and made sure that ended up in the pockets of the financial sector, not in the pockets of the middle class families. other practices in that last decade that should never have happened, overdraftees. now, overdraftees serve a useful purpose. in another generation, we use criminal laws to prosecute people who wrote bad checks. there are a lot of perfectly honest folks who got themselves in a little bit of trouble or didn't balance their checkbooks that ended up with prosecutions for writing bad checks, but overdraft fees were -- became a source of profit for banks. . typically an overdraft fee would be $40. the biggest banks developed

fee-harvesting software. if you had an overdraft agreement, unless you specifically asked not to have one, and you went to an a.t.m. machine and you asked for your balance, it wouldn't tell you how much you had in your account, it would say the funds available. that meant how much your balance was, plus what they would allow in overdraft fees. and they would run the bill through in a way that would maximize your overdraft fee. so you were like a lot of people and you got to the end of the month and there was more month than there was paycheck, and you went and you had $100 in your account and you went to the a.t.m. machine and you took out $20 and then you took out another $20 and then you made a $20 purchase and then another $20 purchase with your debit card and then maybe a $15 purchase and then you wrote a $100 check or a $105 check, the banks would put the $105 check through first, putting you over your limit, charging you $40

overdraft fee on that and the $20, the $20, the $20 and the $15. that's just crooked and that was legal. ms. speier, my colleague from california, has pointed out the lack of prosecutions, perhaps the greatest scandal of this financial crisis is what was legal, not the illegalality was blinked at but what was legal in this. we have now passed legislation that should reform much of this. but we have to stick to it, to make sure that those reforms are enforced, they are given meaning and that the regulators do not fall into that tendency to be controlled by the people they're supposed to be looking after. they're supposed to be the cop on the block and they are -- they have to exercise independent judgment on behalf of the american people. we need to make sure these reforms work because we cannot

allow what happened in the last decade. it truly offended the american sense of justice, that the people who caused it have come out unscathed. not only have they not been criminally prosecuted but they're making statement kind of bonuses they made before and the people who have suffered, suffered the most, the working and middle class families who have lost their jobs or even people who had good moralities, have now seen the -- mortgages, have now seen the value of their homes collapse and with the loss of the value of their home, one in four people who own mortgages are under water. with that they have seen the loss of their life savings. that is a life savings for most middle class families, the equity in their home. of course there's a knot, people have a knot in their stomach, they have a knot in their stomach about whether they're going to keep their jobs, they have a knot in their stomach of what they really own in the world. when they have seen the value of their home collapse in the way that it has. so i thank the gentlelady from

california for calling, for organizing this special order so we can call attention again to the kind of misconduct, the kind of corrupt rent-seeking looting of the economy that we have seen in the last decade that got us to where we are. ms. speier: i thank the gentleman. reclaiming my time, you know, you had said earlier that our friends on the other side of the aisle were bemoaning the big government and yet if any of the records that have been established by this commission are really studied, without the kind of government to do the kind of investigation and enforcement, then we are setting ourselves up for another financial crisis.

mr. miller: i am reminded from one of my favorite quotes from will rogers who is responsible for many of my favorite quotes, that in the new deal, even after the financial collapse, and even after the stock market collapse and the revelation of all of the conduct that had led to that stock market collapse, the securities industry fought tooth and nail, wall street fought tooth and nail the regulation of the securities market, the stock markets. and will rogers said, the boys on wall street don't want a cop on their block. well, they still don't. they still do not want someone standing between them and the kind of profits that they made in the last decade. ms. speier: you're absolutely right and so is will rogers and i think that it's important for us to communicate to the american people that while we don't want bloated government, we want to make sure that there's a government that has

the cops on the street. and if you look at the savings and loan crisis and those who are criminally charged and those that are convicted and those who went to prison, the f.b.i. deputy director at the time testified before congress and said that there were 1,000 people working on the s&l crisis at its height within the f.b.i. 1,000 people. that compares to about 240 agents working on the mortgage fraud cases last year. so you see, no numbers in terms of convictions and you can see that if you don't have cops on the beat, then you are going to have people that are going to take advantage, that are not going to follow the rules, and that frankly will not be charged nor convicted for their crimes. i'm reminded, too, that during much of this review by the commission, they talked about

the action that some regulators did take in 2005 where they weren't really actually taking action against the banks but they did issue what they called was a nonbinding guidance and the guidance was to recommend that banks consider a borrower's ability to make the loan payment when the rate adjusted. what a light bulb going off. i mean, why wouldn't that be naturally part of the process when you were going to assess whether someone could carry the loan, is to see whether or not they could carry the loan after the rate adjusted. as you pointed out, they were all interested in the yield spread, they were all interested in churning, they were all interested in securitizing these loans and making more and more money. so it wasn't about making sure people could actually pay for the loans moving forward, i see we've been joined by another

colleague, welcome, the gentleman from new york. >> will the gentlelady yield? ms. speier: absolutely. >> thank you. i didn't come to speak on this issue tonight but another issue, but i can't help but look at the graphic message that's right there in front of everybody and in front of the country about the financial rate, recession, depression, of who is charged and how many were convicted. this is a very, very, very sad owe men. if we go back to the 1990's and into the first decade of the century, you will -- we understood what was going to come. you need to have a justice department that's willing to stand up and fight the very people who many times fund our campaigns. mr. pascrell: if you can't say it, then you shouldn't be here. a.i.g. is a perfect example. they became the poster child of

everything that was going wrong in our financial institutions. but a.i.g. in 2003 and 2005, rather in 2003 and 2005 got what is called deferred prosecutions and deferred prosecutions to me are the very sent, the very apecks of what is corrupt -- apex of what is corrupt about those money lenders in the temple. and what is a.i.g. all about? they made and pack anded many of these financial deals that we've read about for so many years and people look at this and they read about it, they may not know all the specific definitions about every one of these packages, these financial products as they were called, but they do understand that nobody ever pays for anything and nobody ever is held accountable. so how can people, the average person, whose struggling,

particularly now, see it's all right when things are going well, the a.i.g.'s become simply a thought, a sand pebble on the beach of our brains, but the fact of the matter is, when things get tough, then you wonder where this money is going. because money doesn't disappear into the ocean. it doesn't disappear into the atmosphere. into the sky. it goes someplace. and it winds up in someone's pocket. it's simple one-on-one mathematics. beyond the course. before the course. when we look at deferred prosecutions and how many corporations got deferred prosecutions, where the government said, where the state, where the justice department said, look, if you straighten out and fly right and we'll have a federal monitor there to make sure that you don't do the financial practices that you did before, then we'll let you go, no one will be

prosecuted and no one will be taken to task and no one will go to trial and no one will therefore ever be convicted. my friend, it did not work with a.i.g. and it hasn't worked with any of the large corporations. and you know what? i don't blame one party for this. we were part of the situation as well and until we stand and tell the truth about our own implications in this thing, this is never going to be changed. people want to be confident in their government, in their justice department. to get to those people who made money on the backs of the working men and women of this country. and i yield back and thank you for bringing this subject to the floor. thank you, brad, you've been both very, very stunning tonight. ms. speier: thank you. yes, the gentleman from north carolina. mr. miller: thank you very much. i think we all struggle with

what phrase to use to describe the people that have been hurt by this. i think weual oo us auto -- i think we use middle class families, sometimes we say ordinary people, sometimes we say regular people. but the phrase that keeps coming to me is, people who are trying to make an honest living. and i think my model for that was my own parents. i'm a child of the middle class. my father worked for the post office, he managed -- at the end of his life, he worked there almost all of his life. he died in 1965 at the end of his life when i was 12. he was a manager of a neighborhood branch of the post office. and after that i saw my mother support me on her own as a widow when i was 12 forward and i remember my law school graduation, my mother being -- trembling. i thought she was overcome with pride since my generation was

the first in our family to go to college. and she later admitted to my sister that she'd actually -- after my father died, prayed that if her youngest, me, could just get through school, he could take her at any time, so she was expecting to be struck dead at any moment. and was trying to negotiate a new deal with god. and i am deeply offended by the suggestion that my parents, both of whom were public employees, my father worked for the post office, my mother was a book keeper for the local school system, were not making a contribution to society. that they were taking -- that they were takers and not givers. i saw how hard they worked to do right by me and to do right by the people who were paying their salaries. and i am deeply offended by the arguments that public employees are people who are taking from our society and not giving back.

and the idea that they are takers and the people who came up with this stuff are the ones doing something useful to society, that they're the ones who are making a valuable contribution, offends me deeply. ms. speier: thank you. it offends me as well. and as we conclude this half hour, i just want to say to our colleagues, that this commission report must not gather dust. this commission report has got to be read by everyone, particularly our colleagues on the other side. and that we have got to take it to heart. one of the points they make in this report was that $2.7 billion was spent by the financial services industry over 10 years to lobby all of us. and another $1 billion was given out in contributions to members of congress. so, no surprise that the enforcement hasn't been as strong as it should be.

thank you for sharing this half hour with me and let's hope that we can continue to shed light on this issue. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman's time has expired. under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, the chair recognizes the gentlewoman from new york, mrs. mccarthy, for 30 minutes. mrs. mccarthy: thank you. i ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of my special order, which is gun violence. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mrs. mccarthy: thank you. . i want to talk a little bit about, number one, why i came to congress and why i'm up here tonight talking about gun violence. i want to give you a little history. on december 7, 1993,, a deranged man named kyle ferguson got on the long island

train and changed my life and others forever. as the train pulled into garden city, he took out a handgun and opened fire on those passengers on the train. he killed six people, including my husband. he injured 19, including my son, who was shot in the head at close range. thankfully my son did survive. and while it's been a difficult struggle for him, he has a rich life now with a wife and two children. i consider them my miracles and am very grateful he did survive. what i did after that incident was become an advocate for reducing gun violence in this country to see if i could help others not have to go through the same pain with what my family and the other families of the long island train massacre went through. as often happens when you become an advocate for a cause, any cause, that led me to work with elected officials and the government to try to change

policies that i thought were hurting the american people. and also, as often happens, when i discovered that there was only so much i could do outside the government, i ran for office myself. i was never a very political person, but i believed so strongly in this cause that people saw and gave me the chance to be their congresswoman. the members of this body embraced me, also. that was in 1996. even though i work hard on other issues like the economy and education, i'm still fighting that this struggle to reduce gun violence is the same battle i had back in 1993 and on. so let's go fast forward now. from 1993 to january 8 of 2011 on that fateful day in arizona, six lives were stolen from us. and 13 of our fellow americans

were injured, including one of our own, congresswoman gabby giffords. certainly it hit home for all of us, and it sent a chill down all of our spines. i know i'll never forget that day. the shootings had eerie similarities to our own incident in 1993, six people were killed, and over a dozen injured. like my son, gabby was shot in the head at close range. like my son, she's looking like she's making a wonderful recovery, and we're all rooting for her. there are a couple more similarities that bear mentioning. in both the shootings, the gunman used high-capacity magazines that allowed them to maximize their carnage. and in both shootings, the gunman was tackled by unarmed witnesses while they stopped the shooting when he was trying to reload. i ran for office and entered

government to make a difference. i came to congress to make our lives safer. i have a legislative proposal that i think should reduce the casualties in that supermarket parking lot on january 8. h. 308 is a bill to ban high-capacity magazines like the ones used in arizona and on the long island railroad. these are devices designed to hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition and feed them into a gun. the state law in my state, new york, where i already banned magazines holding more than 10 bullets, and that was also the federal law between 1994 and 2004. so we know that this president -- there's a precedent for this law on a state and federal level. there is no question about it being constitutional. unfortunately, most states like arizona don't have limits on high-capacity magazines. this is what allowed the shooter to walk into a common

store and buy the weapon right off the shelf. this is a reasonable, commonsense bill that makes accommodations for public safety and gun owners' rights. this includes exemptions for our law enforcement and military as well for testing purposes of the security guards looking after nuclear facilities. as i noted, often shooters are tackled and stopped when they run out of bullets in the magazine and stop to reload. that was the case for my family in 1993, and that was in the case of arizona. maybe if the shooter in arizona had fewer bullets in the magazine, we wouldn't have had the carnage that we saw. fewer people would have died, fewer people would have been injured. we would be looking at one less funeral or a few less life-changing injuries. immediately after the shooting in arizona, there was a lot of talk just about by everyone about putting partisanship and politics aside and working together for the common good.

i see this bill as an opportunity to do that. this is not a partisan bill. there is no democrat or republican way to become a victim of gun violence. and there is no democratic or republican way to reduce it. in the absence of a perfect, nonviolent society, we must make laws to protect the public. this is a very simple bill, a bill that our public health and our safety. we also have a moral imperative to protect innocent and law-abiding americans from the threat of dangerous weapons in the wrong hands. in america we believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. to me, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness include being able to go grocery shopping on a saturday or attend a public event on a saturday afternoon without being gunned down. this bill does not take away anyone's right to own a gun. let me make that very, very

clear. this bill does nothing to take away anyone's right to own a gun. i believe in the second amendment, and i support law-abiding hunters and sportsmen, but common sense dictates there is no need for the kinds of devices that this bill is addressing other than for killing as many people as possible in the shortest possible time. almost 100,000 people a year are shot in this country. suicides, homicides, and on and on, accidental deaths. that's over 260 people a day. every single one of those people have families and friends. think of how many millions of americans are affected by gun violence every single year. i want to remind us all that we can help lower these awful statistics. we can help save lives and we can help prevent lives from being shattered.

now this bill is getting more and more support every single day. we have over 90 co-sponsors in the house and 10 in the senate, and every day there's another newspaper editorial or columnist supporting this bill. there are a lot of coalitions and organizations and leaders out there working to support this bill to reduce gun violence in our country. the brady campaign to prevent gun violence, the violence policy center, the coalition to stop gun violence. new york is against gun violence. new york city mayor michael bloomberg, the united states conference of mayors, philadelphia mayor michael nutly, richard aborn, the former president of brady, mothers against guns, faiths united to prevent gun violence, states united to prevent gun violence, and many, many more. even pro gun conservatives like vice president dick cheney say it would be reasonable to discuss reinstating the restrictions that was in the assault weapons bill and to do away with the large magazines. we're also hearing word that president obama will address the issue of gun violence

publicly soon. we don't know whether he'll talk about this bill or other measures that i also support, like strengthening our background check system or closing the gun show loophole that allows you to buy guns at gun shows without a background check. but the good news is people across the country are uniting in an effort to do something to reduce gun violence. i think one of the most important things i can do while i'm here with you is to ask for your help and ask the american people for their help. we also recently from the world events that the kind of change you can make happen when you have the power of the people behind you. and certainly we've done this before. we've come together as a nation, democrat and republican, to pass sensible gun laws in order to save lives and reduce injuries. if you're not a co-sponsor on this legislation yet, please become one. if you are still not sure whether you want to support this legislation or not, please feel free to talk to me or

anyone on my staff, go on my website, read the bill, and show that basically this is a very narrow bill. and finally, no matter what we do, whether you support this bill or not, let's please just look at ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves, after the shooting in arizona, will we sit by helplessly and do absolutely nothing, or will we do everything we can to save lives and protect innocent people for the future? i want to thank you again for listening to me for tonight and i want to say that even if we can save one life, one life, from all of our efforts, then to me it's been well worth it. my good colleague and friend from new jersey, bill pascrell, who has been certainly outspoken on this issue for many, many years, and i appreciate you being here with me tonight. mr. pascrell: thank you. i appreciate the gentlelady for

yielding, madam speaker. it's good to see you in the seat this evening. i support the second amendment. i was lucky enough to come into this congress with my friend from new york, mrs. mccarthy. she's been a champion for the issue against gun violence. i'm proud to be here tonight supporting her legislation, h.r. 308, the large capacity ammunition feeding device act. the mccarthy bill will reinstate the ban on large capacity ammunition feeding devices. that existed for quite some time from 1994 to 2004, as the gentlelady from long island has said. as it has already been stated, this bill bans the sell or transfer of high capacity magazines, those holding more

than 10 rounds. by nonlaw enforcement civilians. and i state that right now, madam speaker, for the -- to make it very, very clear, this is an issue close to my heart because i came to this congress in january of 1997 pledging my support to defend law enforcement officials throughout the united states of america. many times those who illegally have these guns or have illegal guns, many times they are better armed than our police forces. and just think about it. when we raise our hands, if we're fortunate to be elected or re-elected, we swear to uphold the constitution of the united states, of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, as you heard the gentlewoman just mention. part of that pledge, or a

reflection of that pledge is how we treat our law enforcement officials besides just patting them on the back. so we not only have a law enforcement person, a police officer out there who's well-equipped, who is well-trained, but is in a better position to defend us than those who seek to destroy property or limb. it does not make sense. the failure of congress in recent years to shoulder the ultimate responsibility of safeguarding our communities from gun violence is inexcusable. this is not rhetoric, it is common sense. these magazines which contain so many bullets that can kill so many people have no place in our towns, have no place in our cities. the tragedy in arizona was a gut-wrenching reminder of what

can happen when these weapons are legally available. we are not suggesting taking guns away from anyone who legally possesses it. and i can't emphasize that enough. and i know those who are very close to the gun community are very suspect of anything that will lead to a graduated taking of guns away from people. that has never been the intent of the gentlelady from long island, and certainly that is not my intent whatsoever, and that is not simply a assuaging of the argument, that's the fact. this is not about guns. this is about reason. this is about sanity. this is about peace of mind. that tragedy will always remain in our minds.

our sister is hurting, and we pray for her recovery. the perpetuator of that heinous crime fired 32 bullets in only 16 seconds. he killed six people and injured 13. that did not happen that long ago, and yet it is out of the country's culture mind. it is not there. it's not discussed. it's almost as if it didn't happen. . some people say that it's not the gun but the person that commits the act of violence. well, that may be the case. the shooter was taken down while reloading his weapon after those 32 bullets. if there had been fewer bullets in the magazine he may have been thwarted earlier, saving other lives.

so we're talking about this magazine that we want to take out of anyone's hands. we're talking about potential, we're talking about possibilities, we're talking about risk and getting more of a chance to protect ourselves and for a police officer who was there, could have been in the crowd, could have been, should have been, all valued lives, all valued lives, those are not the only numbers that are shown. nearly 100,000 people are killed by guns every year. over 260 people will be killed today by a gun. this results in $100 billion annually in medical, security and criminal justice costs. there is a reason that local

enforcement and the u.s. conference of mayors supported this legislation -- supports this legislation, because the ban worked when it was in effect for those 10 years. if it didn't work, we wouldn't be here tonight. records show that while the federal assault weapons ban was in effect the number of high capacity magazines collected by police fell dramatically. this is a return to the same standard we have in many states, including my home state of new jersey. and the law of the land from 1994 to 2004. there was no question that it is constitutional, it's not a republican or democratic issue, it's not. that this is not about talking all guns away from law-abiding citizens, it has nothing to do with that either.

this is about saving lives. and right now we pray for our own buddy, our own sister who was just here not too long ago. where is she? i didn't see her the last few days. she's healing, we thank god she's in the position to heal. we can do something about this reckless nonsense, without violating the institution of the united states of america -- constitution of the united states of america which we have all pledged to adhere to. i yield back to the gentlelady from long island and i thank you, mr. speaker. mrs. mccarthy: i thank my good friend. a lot of times there's a lot of propaganda out there that gun owners don't want to go anywhere with this, but the support for this bill and gun restrictions in general are also reflected in

public polls. the mayors against illegal guns showed that almost 60% of all americans and even 49% of gun owners support this bill. a public policy polling poll found that 55% of people in arizona, a state where gun rights are dealer cherished, support more restrictions on guns. a u.s. poll today also found that the majority of americans do support stricter gun controls . here's one of the issues that we face all the time, that the american people support but -- support what we're trying to do, but we're not hearing their voices. and i think that is something that the american people can do to make a difference. i also want to note that arizona and the long island railroad are not the only recent incidents in which high capacity magazines were used. in connecticut, a distributor on august 3, 2010, a shooter with a

large magazine killed eight and wounded two. fort hood, we all remember that day. november 5, 2009, shooter killed 13 and wounded 34. north illinois university, february 14, 2008, shooter killed five. wounded 21. virginia tech, virginia tech, right here in our neighborhood, april 16, shooter killed 32 and wounded 17. we can go on and on and on all the way back to columbine high school where the shooter killed 13, 13 students and teachers and wounded 23. going back to california, a shooter killed eight and wounded six. lovie's cafeteria in texas, the shooter killed 23 and wounded 20. these were all done by large capacity clips.

my colleague, congressman pascrell, talked about the health care. my son was shot 17 years ago. his medical bills within a couple of years were over $1 million. but the pain that he still has to go through every single day, which our friend gabby is going to have to go through, just to be able to do normal day things, tie your shoes, get dressed, my colleague mentioned $100 billion a year in health care costs. you know, we know that we can't save every life. i know that. i spent over 30 years as a nurse. i couldn't save every life. but we sure did our best to do everything that we possibly could to make a difference and that's why i stand here tonight

and talk about why i feel so passionately about this. you know, unless you're a victim , unless you're a familiar member or a friend -- family member or a friend who has lost a loved one or someone that was injured, it's very hard to describe the pain that goes on for many, many, many years. with those that survive, not only the mental trauma that they go through, but it's also the physical trauma that they go through which some will carry for the rest of their lives. again, i say there are supports and i want to read off a few. mainly from newspapers across the country. you know, here in congress everybody talks about red states, blue states. these are states that have people in them. we can disagree on certainly where we're going on certain issues. but when you have newspapers around the country, editorial boards that basically would not

usually support any kind of gun legislation or say it's time, it's time to have a debate on how do we reduce gun violence in this country? "the new york times" said as lawmakers in washington engage this week in moments of silence and tributes to representative giffords and the other casualties, they should realize that they have the power, we have the power to reduce the number of these sorts of horrors and the pain and suffering. the "the daily news" noted that the shooter in arizona squeezed the trigger again, again, again, and again over 32 times and that's just the half of it. as blood flowed and people screamed and dropped to the ground. where i live on long island we have gun violence on long island, you know, it's a suburban area, but unfortunately so many guns and large magazine clips are coming into our

communities and bringing with them death and pain. i know gun control of any sort is a tough sell in congress these days. but commonsense restrictions should be enacted. such large capacity clips play an obvious role in turning angry outbreaks of violence into massacres. "the washington post" said lawmakers should also endorse the sensible legislation induced by myself to outlaw the sales of the high-class ammunition clips that enabled mr. loughner to shoot some 30 bullets in a matter of seconds. drug abuse or history or not, no one in my opinion should be able to have possession of a weapon that can so easily and senselessly be used to slaughter so many of our citizens, our neighbors, in such a short period of time. the seattle "times," "theden

post," the "salt lake tribune," the charlotte observer." "the tennessean" all basically are saying, it's time to look at reducing the violence that is in our cities, our communities, our towns and one of the ways with we can do that is get rid of the large capacity clips. the "the arizona daily star" noted that no one outside of law enforcement and the military needs to fire 30-plus rounds without interruption. hunters do not, neither do target shooters or those who carry guns for self-defense. let me remind people that the gun that anyone uses that has a clip will still have 10 bullets and one in the chamber. that's 11 bullets that they can use for self-defense. there's no question fewer people with a have been killed on january 8 if the shooter had possessed a magazine with a capacity of just 10 rounds.

gale clins said congress should have a debate about representative mccarthy's bill to reduce fun violence. even traditional conservative pro-gun people, nick chris to have, talks about the contrast of guns with automobiles and turned it upside down to argue in reality, and this is true, motor vehicles for a long time were dangerous and slowly, slowly we made them quite safe. the tradeoff is we have modest curved individual freedom but we can save tens of thousands of lives every year. that's a model for how we should approach guns as a public health concern. i talked about individual leaders that support h.r. 308. and this is a long list. and many people have stood up, mayor bloomberg from new york city, my great city,

philadelphia mayor richard nutter, another member of mayors against illegal guns, also expressed support. i have mentioned vice president dick cheney, of all people, said with it would be appropriate to re-instate a ban on high capacity magazines like we've had before. other public officials and individuals around the country also support this bill. the new york police department had said that a legislative solution to eliminating extended magazines would be best. the president of the alabama sheriff's association is a supporter. the minneapolis police chief is a supporter. palm beach county commissioner, montana secretary of state and president bob brown, an n.r.a. member and hunter who owns 18 guns, supports my legislation. the nurse who treated ronald reagan after he was shot supports this. the fiance and family of gabe zimmerman, one of our own staffers who was killed in

arizonaer, support this bill. you know, you mentioned our police officers, bill. and if anybody would be interested in, we've had more police officers killed since january of this year to now than we've had in the last number of years. we say that we are there for our police officers. you were a mayor, i know you stood by your police officers. and i know that police officers around the country know when they're facing these large capacity clips and they're outgunned, as they were when we passed the assault weapons bill, so, you know, bill, i know you are where i am and i thank you for the support that you have given me because we did come in together. but it's people like yourself who are willing to speak out. mr. pascrell: will the gentlelady yield? mrs. mccarthy: absolutely, please. mr. pascrell: madam speaker, i would like you to take back to your side and i'll take back to

my side, i know this has been a great leverage issue for the republican party. it's been a third rail for the democratic party. we were told basically with so many words, stay away from it. look, let's lay is on the table. lay our cards on the table. i think that this is something we can agree to, come together on on common ground and be a little bit more reasonable about our approach. and i thank you, congresswoman mccarthy, for leading the way as usual and you know i'll always put in support of what i think is very important legislation for our -- the sanity of our country. mrs. mccarthy: i thank you again and i just want to remind the american people that might be listening tonight, i need your help. i can do this battle here. it's so easy to email your it's so easy to email your member of congress or your