the electronic registration system and they went over the heads of all of our local property recording offices, our titling offices. that's at the heart of capitalism itself. you think there would be a roar out of other interests. say, fellows, you almost brought down the whole marketing economy. they did. if you see the damage still rippling through this country, and yet they are not being prosecuted. think about that. mr. ellison: if the gentlelady will yield. it's also an interlocking mess. . we have been told since the days that milton friedman first hit the scene that regulations were a problem in our economy and that having rules to protect health and safety and fairness simply were disrupting the market and we need to get rid of these job-killing regulations, what our republican friends call

them all the time, rather than commonsense protections to protect people. so we got rid of those things. we didn't enforce the laws we already did have. we shrank government to the point because we didn't want to pay any taxes, we shrank government to the point where government couldn't even afford itself. so we didn't have the people to make sure that consumers were being treated fairly. that mortgages were fair and that rules were being abided by. and then as the technology and everything changed, we didn't change it, we weren't able to change regulation so it would keep up-to-date with the necessity of the market. what i have in mind now is the heroic figure named brooksly barn who tried to tell them this is opec insurance market, credit default swap market that needed to be regulated. instead of regulating it we

passed a bill in 1999 that it would not be regulated. and then as a result when the music stops in 2008, we were at the mercy of what $54 trillion -- ms. kaptur: if the gentleman would yield at that point. when that bill was passed, i would venture to say 99 percent of congress didn't know it was in there. it was buried in an omnibus appropriation bill. nobody even knew it was in there. so that was sort of the final straw that broke the camel's back. i wanted to say to the gentleman, i'm sure minnesota verified this to me, like ohio, business after business tells me, marcy, we can't get a loan. the normal banking system isn't working. and what they are trying to do at the federal level is focus attention, just on the secondary market activity, rather than the loan originators. so they are saying, oh, the problem with it fannie mae and freddie mac. fannie mae and freddie mac why second in line. first in line were the originators, the very

institutions we are talking about here, citicorp, ban of america, goldman sachs is involved in that, wells fargo, hsbc, all these institutions, and they originated through their intermediaries like countrywide was involved and then when the loan was made, the bad loan was made, then they sold it to the secondary market. so now most of the prosecution has been of the secondary market activity which really soured about 2007, 2008, but the real perpetrators started well over a decade earlier. that's where we need to go. to the originators. who created the schemes that allowed, as you say, the lid to be blown off the regulation of derivatives and of these fancy schemes. right now, yes, we are trying to get a hold of the secondary market activity, but they only received the ball from the original passer. i call them the coach. the ones that were actually

developing the game plan. you have to go back a decade. that's why we need robust prosecution at the f.b.i. mr. ellison: absolutely. does the gentlelady have any more news to report about the settlement? ms. kaptur: all i know it is big news. it's an important first step. i think it's like somebody just hit a solid 1sh hit and we've got some other -- solid first base hit. we've got some other bases to go around. i thank the gentleman for allowing me time today. this is a helpful step. i want to thank the obama administration and wish them on and do even better and let's get those agents hired. i hope the president's budget when it comes up will allow us to hire 1,000 agents at the f.b.i. to get this job done, not just in the secondary markets, you but to go after the originators. mr. ellison: if the gentlelady has a few more minutes. i would like to pose one more question. so, we have had about 23 months of private sector job growth.

january job growth numbers were very good. and we are happy to receive those. unemployment has ticked down to 8.3%. so it looks like the trajectory of the economy is going in the right direction. but until we address this housing problem, would we still have a drag on the economy? i yield to the gentlelady. ms. kaptur: i'm so happy the gentleman has asked that he question. i have served on the housing committees my entire career in congress. there has been no modern recovery in our country that has not been led by housing development. if you talk to realtors, if you talk to home builders you'll see how poor that market is right now. we have to fix the housing sector. there hasn't been on the part of the majority here any serious hearings on this. have we gone out to the country? we used to go out to the country. when there is a crisis you go out to the country.

if louisiana loses part of its southern edge, we go down there. we try to help. we try to figure out what's going on. on this housing problem there has been such timid action, almost no action, by this congress. so we just let it fester and hemorrhage across the country. what an erie -- history will show this is -- -- this is one of the irresponsible periods that damaged our housing stock from coast to coast and we'll pay for it in years to come in shattered lives, in shattered communities. if i chaired the committee we would be all over the country. we wouldn't be shipping here in washington doing nothing. we would be going out to these communities. i yield to the gentleman. mr. ellison: our republican friends who are in the majority, they tell us that let laisez faire capitalism take over, let the housing market bottom out. government shouldn't do anything. just let all the houses' value

go down to nothing, and eventually somebody will buy those houses that are just sitting there idle after people have been unemployed, can't afford them, and have to be foreclosed on. they tell us that so we should be laisez faire with that. they also tell us that we should not put deregulations in place, we should cut taxes so that the government doesn't have enough revenue to protect the people. to me this whole crisis seems like the product of a philosophy that the rich people don't have enough money and the poor have too much. this seems like a culmination of a philosophy that for the people through their democratic institutions to hold business accountable to play fairly and by the rules is sort of totally

-- this philosophy has seen its full manifestation. and the full manifestation of this philosophy has brought us to financial ruin. and they won't even admit that. we haven't even seen, we haven't seen any hearings on how to address the foreclosure crisis because they believe just let the market bottom out. they haven't -- even though there's been 23 months of prife sector job growth, you never hear them say anything good about that. while we are adding private sector jobs, they are trying to cut public sector jobs. what is really going on here, and why isn't our majority addressing the job crisis? their job program seems to be to attack the e.p.a. that's all they -- they basically are making the case that americans who want to breathe and drink clean water are the problem of our economy.

what is this laisez faire, get the government out, no taxes for the rich, what is this philosophy brought us to? ms. kaptur: i think what it's brought us to is the philosophy of only being for the 1%. if you look at what's going on, they have the big banks confiscating private property. in other words, where people had equity he they took it away, right? people walked away from their homes. they didn't get legal advice. they had a leg to stand on, but they were so afraid, the ordinary family walked away from their home, many could still be in their homes. they are confiscating private property and then at the federal level they want to take and cash out public property. that belongs to the american people. in our parks. in our lands. think about what they are talking about. so a few want it all. and we are saying that's not what america is about. america is about everyone. we the people. all of us. not just the few but about the 99%. not just the 1%.

but when six banks control 2/3 of the wealth 6 this -- of this contry, that's something to be worried about because it's too much power in too few hands. mr. ellison: i want to thank the gentlelady. mr. speaker, how many more minutes do we have? the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman has seven minutes remaining. mr. ellison: we'll wrap up before seven minutes. all i'd like to say, madam speaker, is that the progressive caucus looks at an america where the american dream was of liberty and justice for all. and when those words were written, we had a society where only part of our society was legally allowed to fully participate. when they couldn't vote, women quont vote -- couldn't vote. but people who believe in the dream of america wanted to make progress and fought to make sure that women and people of color could vote in this country.

and people looked at that american dream and said, you know what, we have a dream of a big middle class, broadly shared prosperity, and even though the society may not have quite been that way at that time, they worked to fulfill that promise, that dream, the american dream, an idea that a good americans pursued to help bring in to fruition. we are trying to make progress on the dream. the progress of full inclusion, full employment. respecting our environment. believing in science. this is what the progressive caucus is all about. we are not trying to conserve the old way, where only some people had privilege and opportunity, we are trying to make progress. so this is what the progressive caucus is all about. the progressive caucus believes, of course, there should be a free market in america, but there also needs to be a public sector that will watch out for

the health, safety, and fairness of our country. and yet some people in congress are hostile to the idea of any government role, but we are not. we believe that government is how we come together in ways we can't do alone for the best benefit of everybody. and we urge the republican majority, they got the power, this is a winner take all-type system, to go out across america and do something and hear the people about the issue of foreclosure. to get some jobs going. pass the american jobs act. pass infrastructure bank bill. do something to get this country together. address the foreclosure crisis. stop ripping up americans versus americans. using loaded terms like food stamp president which is racial code. stop blaming the gay community for the failure in people's margetse. it's not their fault -- marriages. it's not their fault.

stop with trying to relegate women to a second class citizenship. let's embrace the fullness of what it means to be an american. let's make progress on the american dream. let's embrace the progressive message. and i just want to say, madam speaker, i yield back the balance of my time. i thank you for the time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, the chair recognizes the gentleman from georgia, mr. woodall, for 30 minutes. mr. woodall: thank you, madam speaker. i very much appreciate the time. and i appreciate my being able to follow my colleagues from the progressive caucus. there's not a lot that the

progressive caucus works for in terms of their techniques that i agree with, but there is so much that the caucus works for in terms of its overall goals for america that i agree with. and i think that that is a story that does not get told as often as it should here in this house. we can very often have common goals but have very different ways that we seek to achieve those goals. i think the way that a cheeve those goals is important. it's important. as my colleague said when he was speaking on behalf of the progressive caucus, america voted in 2008, america voted in 2010, in 2008 they elected a president. in 2010 they elected a new congress. and power has divided america. power has divided america. we have democrats controlling the white house. we have democrats controlling the senate. we have republicans controlling the u.s. house of representatives. and we have the american people who should be controlling all

three of those things. as we were coming into this new year, madam speaker, i was at home with my family back in georgia, and i heard the news that the president of the united states had decided to appoint members to boards, to positions in the consumer financial protection board, national labor relations board, to appoint positions that require senate confirmation to name people to those positions without getting that senate confirmation. . saying if i can't do it with the senate i'll just skip the senate. and i don't mind telling you, madam speaker, that really cast a damper on my christmas season. we're coming into this new year, a new year whereas my friends from the progressive

caucus laid out we have challenge after challenge after challenge that we as americans must face together, that we must come together in order to solve and we're coming into this new year, an opportunity to make that happen and i had high hopes. i had high hopes that despite this being an election year -- and i think that brings out a lot of what's worst about what washington, d.c. -- despite this being an election year, despite there being divided government in washington, i thought, we're going to have an opportunity because the challenges are so great to come together on behalf of all of our constituencies to move this nation forward. and i wondered, because even though you're new as i am, madam speaker, we've seen in years past that the closer you get to election the crazier things get in congress. the closer you get to an election, sadly, the more folks

stop worrying about doing the right thinking and start worrying about getting re-elected, doing whatever it takes to do that. now, as a freshman, madam speaker, i know you likely agree with me, i happen to think doing the right thing is the best thing for getting re-elected. i think if more folks spent more time doing the right thing instead of getting re-elected, their re-election campaigns will take care of themselves. but i had high hopes coming into this year this won't be a wasted re-election for the american people but we would work on serious issues together. the rulebook i use, madam speaker, i have up here on the board. this happens to be article 2, section 2, clause 3 of the united states constitution. but the constitution is a rulebook i use. i carry mine with me. i don't want to be far away because i believe that if we have the same rulebook to operate from, madam speaker, then it gives us that context for trying to achieve the goals

the american people sent us here to do. well, what happened at the very first of this year while i was home over christmas? here we have article 2, section 2, clause 3 of the united states constitution. madam speaker, i'll read it. "the president shall have the power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session." this is the recess appointment authority, madam speaker. you heard it said. the president has the power to make recess appointments. the president shall have the power to fill all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the senate undisputed. undisputed, madam speaker. article 2, section 2, clause 3. article 2, section 2, clause 2.

"the president shall have power by and with the advice and consent of the senate to make treaties, and he shall nominate and by and with the advice and consent of the senate shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers, consuls, judges of the supreme court and all other officers of the united states whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for." the president shall have the power to make appointments if the senate is in recess but if the senate is not, the president only has the power, the president shall, the constitution says, nominate by and with the advice and consent of the united states senate. that's the way our system works, madam speaker. that's the rulebook that was left for us by our founding fathers. that's the rulebook that has guided this country for 225 years. the president has the power to

appoint nonelected leaders, unelected leaders to lead this nation, but he can do so only with the advice and consent of the senate. now, back in the day, madam speaker, i know you're from the northern part of the east coast. i'm from the southern part of the east coast. it used to take us a long time to get to washington, d.c. i'm 645 miles away from the capitol down in georgia. if i had to get on my horse and ride to the united states capitol, it would take quite a few days to do it. and understanding that the business of the american people had to continue, our founding fathers looked ahead and said, if the senate cannot be reconvened, if the senate is too far away to consult, your first duty is to consult, but if you cannot, we want the country to go on. well, that's been the way it's been in this country, madam speaker. as you know, for hundreds upon hundreds of years.

until now. until now when for the very first time, when for the very first time this president of the united states said, i can't get my nominees through the democratic senate, so i am going to go around the senate. and he made appointments without the advice and consent of the senate. i have with me today, madam speaker, a page from the congressional record, a speech that was given on the senate floor and this is what it says. "mr. president, the senate will be coming in for pro forma session during the thanksgiving holiday to prevent recess appointments. my hope is that this will prompt the president to see that it is in our mutual interests to get nominations back on track.

with an election year looming, significant progress can still be made. but that progress cannot be made if the president seeks controversial recess appointments and fails to make others." with the thanksgiving break looming, the administration informed me that they would make several recess appointments. i indicated i would be willing to confirm various appointments if the administration agreed to move others, but they would not make that commitment, and as a result, i am keeping the senate in pro forma session to prevent recess appointments until we get this process back on track. do you hear those words from the united states senate, madam speaker? do you hear those words? this was the majority leader in the united states senate speaking out, telling the

president, you cannot, you cannot, you cannot make appointments without the advice and consent of the united states senate. you're trying to go around us. we will not allow it. we're afraid you are going to do it while we go home for thanksgiving. so instead of going on recess, instead of recessing the senate, we're going to stay in pro forma session, not just through thanksgiving but through the christmas holiday to make certain the president seeks our advice and consent. sounds like a speech a republican would have given, madam speaker, to make sure the president of the united states followed the constitution. but it's not. it's not. this is actually a page from the congressional record november 16, 2007, madam speaker. these are the words that then senate majority leader harry

reid spoke to president bush telling president bush the law of the land is you can't do it without us unless we're in recess. we're not going to go on recess. we're staying here in pro forma session. and in fact, then majority leader and still now majority leader, harry reid in the united states senate, kept the senate in session, pro forma session every day until president bush's end of term and no recess appointments were never made. why, madam speaker? because the senate never went on recess. harry reid said, mr. president, the senate will be coming in for pro forma session during the thanksgiving holiday to prevent recess appointments. that's how he opened his speech that day. he closed his speech that day

by saying, as a result i am keeping the senate in pro forma session to prevent recess appointments until we get this process back on track. harry reid knew, madam speaker, that the president could not, could not under the law that govern our land, under the rulebook that is the united states constitution, he could not make appointments if harry reid kept the senate in pro forma session. 2007. then majority leader harry reid talking to then president bush. fast forward, madam speaker, to the holiday season, 2011-2012, same majority leader sitting in the united states senate, harry reid, same pro forma session, continually through thanksgiving and christmas, the same pro forma session that

harry reid said clearly would prevent constitutionally the president from making any appointments. and what did this president do? he made four. for the first time in american history, he made four and he said, you know what, it's been so hard to work with the senate, this going around the senate and skipping them altogether is working so well i might do it again. if i can't work with you, if i can't work with you, i'm going to go around you. and it worked out so well this time, i might do it again. madam speaker, while i disagree with my colleagues on the methods that we use, i share a common set of goals with them

of what we want for america. when we lose that common fiber, when we lose what i would call that american dream, that almost tangible spirit that unites us more than it divides us, that sense of who we are as a nation that you can almost reach out and touch that makes it clear that we will continue no matter what our differences towards a common end, i would tell you the constitution of the united states, madam speaker, contains much of that spirit. the constitution is clear, and this president for the first time, for the first time decided it just didn't matter. he had ends that he wanted to achieve and he said the means

as unconstitutional they may be justifies those ends. same circumstance, same senate yort leader, same season on the calendar, same pending election year in 2007, harry reid took to the floor of the united states senate, spoke out on behalf of the american people and said the constitution matters. don't you dare. the silence from the senate this year is deafening. deafening. we only survive as a republic, madam speaker, if the rules apply to everyone consistently. this is not a matter of party. this is a matter of country.

harry reid was right when he called out a republican president and said, don't you dare, it's unconstitutional, and that republican president, president george bush, didn't because he knew also that the constitution fore bade it. where is the indignation from the senate, madam speaker, where the same thing that's going on but the only thing that changed is the president in a different party. if we're willing to trade away those fundamental truths that unite us as a nation, madam speaker, in the name of party, we have nothing. we have nothing. this is not a republican crisis. this is not a democratic crisis. this is a constitutional crisis and one that every single american has to be on watch for . madam speaker, i'm not proud of everything that happened when republicans ran the house and

republicans ran the senate and republicans ran the white house. i'm certainly not proud of everything that happened when democrats ran the house and democrats ran the senate and democrats ran the white house. the temptation to go along with party leaders is strong. . but the requirement of the oath that we swear the day we come to this institution, madam speaker, is not to follow party leaders, it is to follow the united states constitution. and to defend it against enemies foreign and domestic. we cannot trade away these principles that have guided our republic, that have protected our freedoms in the name of party. when the president was elected, madam speaker, i think he believed that. i remember the spirit of the country in those days right after the president was elected.

it was magical. i actually happened to be in down, madam speaker, when the inauguration was going on there in the spring -- in january of 2009. president obama being sworn in as president of the united states. and there were men and women weeping in the streets. weeping in the streets because they had joy in their heart that their voice had been heard and their president had been elected and that better days were on the horizon for america. men and women weeping in the streets. president obama was not my choice for president, but i love, i love that while he and president bush agreed on virtually nothing, president bush took the keys to the white house and the suitcase full of nuclear launch codes and he handed them to president obama.

not a drop of blood was shed. not a bullet was fired. the leadership of the most powerful nation on the planet, the most -- best military the earth has known, the beacon of freedom the likes of which has never been seen, the keys of that kingdom were hand interested one leader to the next, leaders who disagreed on almost everything, hand interested one to the next with no blood, and no gunshots for one reason and one reason only. because the american demanded it. because the election required it. because the freedoms that were laid out in the united states constitution that said the only power in washington is the power that we the voter give to it. lend to it. lease to it a small period of time. that is the only power in this town. and when we the people speak, washington must listen. all under the rules. the rules of the united states

constitution. president obama knew that when he was elected. here's what he said. this is from his election night victory speech in 2008. president obama said this, resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettyness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for far too long. he was right when he said it. resist the temptation to fall back on the same party zahnship and pettyness -- partisanship and pettyness. and the immaturity that has poisoned our politics for far too long. that was his victory night speech, madam speaker. before this christmas season when he decided he can't work with the senate he's going to go around the senate, when he decided he couldn't pass it with the people's representative, would he just skip the people's representatives, he said i'm going to choose a new path. but in december of last year,

madam speaker, after three years as our president, when asked about the partisan tone that the rhetoric was taking, he said this, it was going to take more than a year to solve it. it was going to take more than two years. it was going to take more than one term. probably takes more than one president. on victory night, madam speaker, he said deliverance is coming to america from the temptation of partisanship, pettyness, and immaturity. in december of 2011 he says, it was just going to be too hard. couldn't do it in a year. couldn't do it in two years. couldn't do it in a whole term. probably can't even do it in one presidency. madam speaker, his sights are set too low. he can't if he has the courage to do it. august of 2008, right before the election, madam speaker, president obama says this, as he announces his vice presidential

candidate, after decades of steady work across the aisle, i know that he'll, talking about vice president biden, be able to help me turn the page on the ugly partisanship in washington, so we can bring democrats and republicans together to pass an agenda that works for the american people. madam speaker, he knows, he knows in his heart what the right thing to do. he knows -- he wants to move past, turn the page, he says, on the ugly partisanship in washington so we can bring democrats and republicans together to pass an agenda that works for the american people. that was right before the election, madam speaker. this year he's decided for the first time in american history if he can't get along with democrats and republicans in the senate, he'll just go around them. doesn't matter that the constitutional rule book says no. he has somewhere he wants to go.

he wants people in power that he can appoint. and the fact that the senate won't sign off on those folks, the fact that the voice of the american people's representative in those 100 men and women in the senate won't sign off on those votes doesn't matter to him. he has an agenda and he wants to go after it. what happened, madam speaker, to try and turn the page? november, 2010, president obama recognized his failure. when asked about that bitter partisanship he said this, i neglected some things that matter to a lot of people. and rightly so that they matter. maintaining a bipartisan tone in washington. he knew, november, 2010, he knew, he promised it, he knew that we the america people were hoping he would deliver it. were praying he would have the strength and conviction to deliver it in november of 2010. he said i neglected it.

but in november, 2010, he said i'm going to redouble my efforts to make it happen. i know in my heart it should happen, he said. i'm going to redouble my efforts. that was november, 2010, madam speaker. and here we are having the president go around the constitution for the first time ever in american history. because the senate does not approve of his nominees. he cannot get senate approval rather than nominating people with whom he could get senate approval, he said i want what i want. the will of the people is expressed by the senate does not matter if i can't work with them, i'm going to go around them and it worked so well i'm likely to do it again. madam speaker, i don't want this to sound like a partisan

discussion. this that is happening with the constitution today, this constitutional crisis, with these nonrecess recess appointments, it is wrong whether a republican tries to do it or democrat tries to do it. we know that to be true because we remember it from 2007. it wasn't that one president ago that we last confronted this circumstance. and what we concluded was, it's unconstitutional. you can't do it. we are going to keep the senate in pro forma session and that prevented president bush from making any more appointments for the remainder of his presidency. this is what president obama says back when he was senator obama. senator obama. these are challenges we all want to meet and problems we all want to solve, even if we don't agree on how to do it. but he says this, madam speaker. but if the right of free and

open debate is taken away from the minority party and millions of americans who asked them to be their voice, i fear that the already partisan atmosphere of washington will be poisoned to the point where no one will be able to agree on anything. that doesn't serve anyone's best interests, he said. and it certainly isn't what the patriots who founded this democracy had in mind. madam speaker, when president obama was senator obama, and he sat in the senate with the responsibility of representing the men and women, he knew what the truth was. if the right of free and open debate is taken away from the minority party and the millions of americans who ask us to be

their voice, i fear the already partisan atmosphere will be poisoned to the point where no one will be able to agree on anything. he was right, madam speaker. he was right before the election when he said he was going to fight partisanship. he was right after the election when he said he wanted to bring openness back to washington. he was right when he was a united states senator, and he said the people's voice needed to be heard. he was wrong when he ignored the united states constitution less than 45 days ago and said i can't work with the senate. the people's representatives had it all wrong. and if i can't work with them, i'm going to go around them. you can't make that choice, madam speaker. the rule book is right here, it's the united states constitution. again, senator barack obama, we need to rise above an ends

justify the means mentality because we are here to answer to the people. all of the people, not just the ones wearing our party label. this was april 13, 2005, as a united states senator president obama knew. he knew when he had the burden of responsibility, the pleasure of responsibility of representing men and women of illinois, he knew ends justify the means mentality. we must rise above it, he said. we must answer to the american people not just the ones wearing our party label. he was right. madam speaker, he was right then, he was right before the election. he was right after the election. he is wrong today. what has happened, what has happened in three years of his presidency that he knew where we could go as a nation, he knew where we should go as a nation, he knew that the rule book that has been guiding us for over 200

years would get us through to better days tomorrow, he knew it. and he's forgotten it. and we are on the brink of constitutional crisis. madam speaker, i have here a quote from senator chuck schumer . you don't change the rules in the middle of the game just because you can't get your way. our constitution, our system of laws is too hallowed, is too important to do that. democratic senator from new york, chuck schumer. madam speaker, i have said it as long as i have been here, you and i have been here just over one year. truth does not have a republican or democratic label after it. truth is truth. right is right. wrong is wrong. the president knows what's wrong. he knew it as a senator. he knows it as a president. his colleagues in the senate know what's wrong.

you don't change the rules in the middle of the game just because you can't get your way. our constitution, our system of laws is too hallow, is too important to do that. chuck schumer was right, madam speaker. there's no process, there's no process in this constitution for reining in that executive that just throws the constitution aside. we can't sue him. we can't go down there. we can have a pick the but it doesn't make any difference. he knew it. he knew it was wrong. he knew it as a candidate. he knew it once he was elected. he knew it when he was a senator. and he did it anyway because the ends justified his means. madam speaker, all we are as a nation comes from the very few

words that make up this united states constitution. constitution on your bedside, bible on your bed cy -- bedside. those important works of american history by your bedside, madam speaker. we have a national identity and that national identity is defined by having one set of rules that apply to everybody. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. mr. woodall: madam speaker, i'm grateful to you for making this time available to me today. i encourage every american to look at these facts and judge for themselves what the next step is on our constitutional journey. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: i thank the gentleman from georgia. i now -- the chair now recognizes the gentleman -- under the speaker's announced policy of january 5, 2011, the

chair now recognizes the gentleman from maryland, mr. bartlett, for 30 minutes. mr. bartlett: thank you, madam speaker. i want to begin today with a chart that i usually use near the end of this presentation when i talk to an audience, and i think we don't have time to develop the charts as fully as one might. so i thought that today i'd

begin with this chart. as i said before, if you had only one chart that you could look at to get some idea as to where we are relative to the liquid fuels, our situation in the world, this would be this chart. let me first make a comment or two about energy in general. there's a lot of discussion of energy, and sometimes we talk about the various kinds of energy as if they were interchangeable. we will talk about electricity, we will talk about natural gas, and we will talk about oil. and when we have a sudden increase supply of one, natural gas today, the assumption is made by some, gee, we don't have a problem with oil, do we, because we had a problem with oil? now, for some uses, these

energy sources are fungible, they're exchangeable. you can use one or the other. for instance, if you want to ride in a bus, we used to have buses that had charlie on top and wires up there and they were run with electricity. you can see them run with natural gas and some from petroleum product that comes from oil. so with proper engineering you can use any of these energy sources to run a bus and street cars, of course, were bused on -- we've taken them out most of our cities now. but you'll never run an airplane on anything but some product from oil. you cannot possibly get enough energy stored in a battery to do that. and natural gas, those molecules are very small and they don't like each other at all and they try to get as far apart as possible so we squeeze

on and put them close together -- squeeze them and put them close together under considerable pressure but we cannot get it liquefied. so for our airplanes, for instance, we are stuck with some product from oil. for our automobiles, we could certainly run them on electricity. we can certainly run them on natural gas. we now run most of them, about 97% of our transportation comes from oil. but to do that we have to make a lot of changes in engineering and manufacturing and it takes a long while to do that. the fleet out there runs about 16, 18 years before you turn the fleet over so it would be a long while before we introduce a meaningful number of cars running on something other than some product of oil. and then we have to develop the infrastructure to support that. we have been now 100 years in this country developing our current infrastructure in this

country, in the world. we are finding the oil, we are transporting the oil, we are pumping the oil, we are refining it and hauling it to the service stations and there are millions of them around the country wherever it's convenient and customers will come there and the owners will make a profit. one might note that government was hardly ever involved in any of these activities. it was a marketplace that drove this. but today we are going to be talking about oil, and we face a special crisis in oil and it's not there in natural gas and not there in electricity. for those who would have you believe that because we can put in more nuclear power plants and wind and solar and micro, hydro, we don't need to worry about oil because we can do it through electricity or natural gas, we can do it through natural gas but we cannot change that quickly to avoid a

crisis with oil if indeed we can't find enough oil to meet our demands. if we had one chart this would be the one that would tell you the most about where we've come from and where we're going with oil. this is billions of barrels per year that our -- have been discovered and these are the years in which they have been discovered on the bottom and the bars here indicate the volume of that discovery, and you can see we started discovering it way back in the 1930's a little bit and bunch in the 1940's and the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's and even in the 1980's we were discovering oil. if you add up all of these bars here you get the total amount of oil that the world has found . and the amount that we have used is represented by this heavy dark line here, and the amount that we've used is the

same amount we have produced because we are not storing anywhere any meaningful quantity its of oil so the production rate and the consumption rate are essentially the same thing. several interesting things about this chart -- notice from about the 1970's on we've found less and less and less oil, and that was while we had a greater and greater interest in finding oil because we had a greater and greater use for oil. the dark line here shows our use rate, and you notice that it was increasing exponentially up through the early 1970's. had this curve continue and you can extrapolate it will come out through the top of this graph, but a very for tuesdayties thing happened -- fortuitous thing happened.

it was the arab embargo. you would have long lines at the service station and some disagreements occurred in those lines. it was a difficult time for america. but that woke us up. by the way, this was only a temporary disruption to the supply of oil because they just decided because they didn't like our friendship with israel they were not going to ship us the oil. there was plenty of oil to ship us and we knew it would be after this temporary crisis. but it did wake us up. we thought we should be more -- we set out being more efficient in the way we use this energy. so a lot of things are more efficient today than they were then. both oil and electricity. your air conditioning is probably three times as it is today than it was then so you

are using less electricity now than then. we became more efficient in our use of oil. the arab embargo in the 1980's there and now the growth rate is slower. that's very fortunate because now the reserves that we have will last longer. notice that about 1980 we for the first time started using more oil than we found. but no matter because we have a lot of reserves back. you see everything above this curve represents reserves. all of we have used represents reserves. we cannot find enough to meet today's use, and that's been the situation since these curves crossed back here in about the 1980's. so now we have been dipping into these reserves back here to use -- to find the oil that is above the oil that we found

to meet our demands for it. and by and by these reserves, of course, will be exhausted. and so this was the prognostication made. it was made in about 2004, this prognostication was made that we were going to reach our maximum oil production here in just about this time, isn't it? just about this time we were going to reach the maximum oil production and then production of oil would fall off after that. now, it's anybody's guess as to how much oil we will find, and we're finding some meaningful fields of oil. if you find a one billion field of oil, that's a pretty big field of oil. so where is that on this chart? this is 10 billion. one billion is way down here. just barely gets off the baseline here. and a really, really big find of oil is 10 billion barrels of oil. that's here. well, you can see that the big discoveries that we are finding

today are dwarfed by the discoveries we found a number of years ago. one of these discoveries was the great oil field, the grand daddy of all oil fields in iraq. it's been pumping oil now for 50 years. and we don't know how many years yet before it's exhausted in that field. by the way, that 10 billion barrels of oil that you find will last just exactly 120 days because every 12 days we use a billion barrels of oil. this is about sixth grade arithmetic. we are using about 84 million barrels of oil a day. and if you multiply that by 1 it's about 1,000 and 1,000 million is a billion so about every 12 case we use about a

billion barrels of -- days we use about a billion barrels of oil. so 10 billion barrels of oil will last 12 days. you can actually have that curve going up and some do if you think we're going to find enough oil to make that happen. but, you know, this is the rate at which we have been finding. remember, these ever decreasing discoveries have occurred while we had better and better technologies for finding oil. we had pretty poor technologies back here but it was near the surface and readily available so we found an awful lot of it. now what we find is deep and hard to get out and we have better technologies to find it. despite these improved technologies for finding oil we are finding less and less and less oil. the next chart shows us what

has -- what happened in our country and what is happening today in our country. and i need to get a more recent one of these charts because it will show a little bit of a pickup here at the end due to the oil. this is the production of oil in our country. and whenever i present this chart i generally talk about the prognostications of the person i think gave the most important speech of the last century. it wasn't recognized then. and i think shortly now it will be recognized that the speech given by m.k. hundred ert on -- m. king hubbard was the most important speech in the last century. was given to a group of oil people in state of the union, texas, and he made -- people in san antonio, texas, and it was

given in 1956 and here we are in 1956 so this is the amount of oil we are producing. oh, the orange on top here is natural gas, liquids that won't be in your gas tank. it is propane and butane and things like that. oil from texas and oil from the rest of the united states. we are in 1956. we had to put this in context of where we were as a country. the united states was king of oil. we were producing more oil. we were using more oil. we were exporting more oil than any other country in the world. and m. king hubbert said 1970 would reach its maximum oil production. no matter what you do the maximum production will fall off. we may at another time go into how he made those predictions and why he was relatively certain he was correct in

making those predictions. no one else had done that, and because we had always found huge amounts of oil, more than we were using, he was relegated to the line particular -- you knew it really happened, couldn't you because you said, 1970 was really the peak and we are falling off the peak so m. king hubbert was right. he didn't figure oil from alaska and oil in the gulf of mexico. he only looked at the lower 48. so the huge find in alaska, a four-foot pipeline up there. i've been up there where the pipeline begins. we are producing about a fourth in all the country that flows through that pipeline, so it made a little blip here in the downhill slide. not many years ago, those fable discoveries and production in

the gulf of mexico, and you see it here. it's the little yellow here that made barely a ripple in the top line. well, this is the expeed yens of the -- expeedians of the united states. today we have drilled more oil wells than all of the rest of the world put together. we're the most creative, innovative society in the world. . we could not reverse this decline that m.k. hubbard said was going to happen. he also predicted that at just about this time the world would be reaching its maximum oil production. now, if the united states, if we, with all of our creativity and innovation, could not reverse this decline, when the world reaches this peak oil, from which point you go down the other side, if we could not reverse that, what chances do

you think there are that the world will do what we could not do? i think most people believe that we probably can do more, better than the rest of the world. this is a chart of a couple or so years ago, and this is the -- these are the data from the two end of these -- the world's best job of tracking the production and consumption, which are essentially the same thing, of oil. this is the international energy association a creature of the oecd in europe, and the energy administration, these are the two curves here. you can see that they are very similar. and the caption up here says, peak oil, are we there yet? because they appear to be leveling out. they appear to be leveling out. this chart was drawn when oil was a bit under $100 a barrel.

you remember it went to $147 a barrel. these did not go up. roughly here at 84 or 85 million barrels of oil a day. that's where we have been for five years now. with increasing demand and no more supply, the price finally went up to $147 a barrel. and the economy with some pem by the housing crisis in our country, came crashing down, and oil dropped down to i think below $40 a barrel. this has been a steady climb as the economy picked up from that time on, and oil as you know is now about $100 a barrel. the next chart here, i want you to remember this one because you are not going to find it on the internet when you go there, these both appeared on the internet is where we got them. these are charts produced by the

i.e.a., international energy association. and this was called the world energy outlook. this top one here they did in 2008. and i want you to note some interesting things about this chart. the dark blue here is the production of oil, what we call conventional oil. if we went back to the other side of the chamber here and started up 100 years ago you would start at zero an it would come up and up, slowly up. always producing just the amount of oil that the world wanted to use. because it was there and we could produce it. so we always met the demands for the use of oil in the world. one time it was 10 cents a barrel when it started. within fairly recent memory it was $10 a barrel. pretty cheap compared to $100 a barrel, isn't it. so they are saying now this conventional oil that we have been pumping is going to reach a peak here. we reached that peak in our

country in 1970, remember? after we reached that peak it's now going to fall off. it's going to go down the other side. we are now producing total liquid, we say it's oil, some is natural gas liquid, it's about 84 million barrels a day, the top orange here is natural gas liquids, the green bay here is unconventional oil, that's oil like the tar sands of alberta, canada, that is really sticky stuff. that a shovel lifts 100 tons, dump it in a truck that holds 400 tons. and they cook it with stranded natural gas, natural gas where there is not a lot of people. we say it's stranded and it's cheap and they use that for heating and softening this oil. and they put some solvants in it so it will remain a liquid so they can pump it. the dark red, it should be part of the blue because it's simply enhanced oil recover youy. it's sweezing more out of --

squeezing more out of conventional oil. they are prognosticating by 2030 we'll be reducing 106 million barrels of oil a day. that will be possible in spite of this fall off in the production of our conventional sources because there will be huge productions that come from the fields that we have now discovered, the light blue here, too tough to develop. and the red ones, yet to be discovered. these represent pretty big wedges. i want you to look at the relative magnitude of these wedges to the amount of oil that they say we would be producing from our conventional wells by 2030. now, two years later in 10 they produce the chart on the bottom. several interesting things about this. they reversed the two things on top. they are exactly the same things. different colors and they reversed them, this is unconventional oil and this is

natural gas liquids. and they now have incorporated enhanced oil recovery up here with where it should have been and the conventional oil. notice now they are showing an even more precipitous dropoff. now they go out to 2035. they go out to 2035. reality is setting in. because now five years later, five years beyond this, they are not producing 106 million barrels a day. now they say the production will only be 96 million barrels a day. but to get to that 96 million barrels a day you have to postulate huge wedges in here from developing fields yet -- that we have discovered, that are hard to develop. like one in the gulf of mexico under 7,000 feet of waterer and 30,000 feet of rock. and the darker blue here, fields yet to be discovered. we were at this tipping point in 1970. and there's nothing we did in our country that kept this top

curve going up. i have a lot of trouble understanding why people believe the world will be able to do what we could not do. notice the huge wedges that are supposed to be produced by just 2035. that's not very long from now, is it? i think that there is little probability that these wedges will be produced. i think what's going to happen is the world will do what the united states did. that this will tip over and the total production of oil worldwide will decrease. the next chart is a very recent chart from the deutschy bank -- deutsch bank, and this shows the growth in oil production capacity versus demand. this is not how much we are producing, this is the growth in how much we are producing. i think this chart is -- they think it tells a grim story. i think it tells an even grimmer

story. i don't think we are going to have any increase in production. i hope we do. but we have not for five years now. i think we are stuck at where we are. but even if we have this increase in production, this is the increase in demand and they say that increase in demand is going to fall 20% short of the production. and notice where most of that demand is. red. red china. that's where most of the increase in demand is. china last year used 6% more oil than it did the year before. worldwide there was no more oil than there was the year before. so where did china get that oil? we used less. we used to use 21 million barrels a day. now we are 18 1/2 million barrels a day. we are driving less, more efficient cars, there are more people in the who have who have lane. our military really had a very aggressive, very successful program to be more energy efficient because energy is a

huge part of their cost. it goes up just a dollar a barrel. they have millions more cost in the military. for a lot of reasons we have been more efficient in our country, good news, because that meant that china could have more oil to use and the price didn't go above $800 a barrel. let me show you the next chart here and this one i think is a very interesting chart that kind of puts this in perspective. a worldwide perspective. the world seems to be turned upside-down with this. this is what the world would look like if the size of the country was relative to how much oil it had. we see some very interesting things here. saudi arabia, dominates the planet, doesn't it? in oil. it does. about 22% of all the known reserves of oil in the world are in saudi arabia. look at little kuwait, a tiny

little thing, it ought to belong to iraq and saddam went down there to take it. look at iraq, how much oil there. iran. iran is pretty big. in our hems sphere, venezuela dar of everything else. they have more oil than everybody else. here we are the united states, we have only 2% of the oil reserves in the world, we use 25% of the oil in the world. and guess who our number one importer is? it's canada. and look at canada. canada has even less oil than we do. but they don't have very many people so they can export the oil. until fairly recently mexico was the number two importer, and they also have less oil. they have a lot of people, but their too poor to use the oil, so they could export it to us. the second largest oil field in the world was in mexico, and it

is now in rapid decline. something like 20% a year. now mexico is our number three importer, and saudi arabia is our number two importer of oil. i want you to look at europe. you need a magnifying glass to find it. this is europe. bigger than we are. in terms of the economy. very little oil. really dependent on the huge supplies of oil from the middle east. russia, spanning 11 time zones up there, not all that big. they are the world's number one producer of oil now because they are pumping really hard in their oil fields. they have a lot of oil, it will last for a while, but nowhere near as long as saudi arabia and iraq. by the way, iran in a decade, if the current increase in use rate, and the current production rates remain the same, those

curves will cross within less than a decade and iran will be an oil importer. that's also true of mexico, by the way. they are going to be an oil importer within a decade if you look at the rate of increase in the use of oil and the production of oil. those curves will cross in less than a decade. the alarming picture occurs when you look at china and india over there. tiny little countries in this world according to oil. china with a billion -- 1.3 billion people, ending with over one billion people and very little oil. what is china doing about this? china is buying up oil all over the world. we use 25% of the world's oil, a bit less now since we slowed down a little, it's been 25% of the world's oil, 2/3 or more which we import. we are not buying oil anywhere. why wouldn't the nation that

uses the most oil and has the least, be buying oil somewhere else? there is no need to buy the oil because it doesn't matter who owns it, the person who gets it is the person who comes with the dollars. let's hope it stays dollars, that the global petroleum auction and buys the oil. why isn't china content to just take their money? they have a lot of it, why don't they take their money and buy the oil? i think that they understand that there will be a shortable of -- shortage of oil in the future, and i hope i'm wrong, but i think china may one day say that they can't share that oil and this is going to create some huge tenses -- tensions, political tensions in the world. what does this mean? it means we have a huge challenge in our country. this is good news to me because i think that we can once again become an exporting country. that we can create millions of jobs with the green technology that produces the alternatives

and inevitably will occur, one day we will produce as much energy as we use in this country, geology will assure that that happens. i hope that we get there through a really winning economy when we recognize that we have to rise to this challenge. i think america with the creativity and innovation can create the technologies and the products that will sell worldwide to help us in this huge challenge that we face. with the limited supply of oil and ever increasing growth and need for oil. thank you. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the chair recognizes the gentleman from maryland for a motion. mr. bartlett: i move we adjourn. the speaker pro tempore: the question is on the motion to adjourn. so many as are in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the motion is adopted. accordingly, the house stands adjourned until 1:00 p.m. on monday, february 13,

to complete work on payroll tax cut legislation by february 17. the current temperature extension negotiated last december expires at the end of this month. neihaus is back in monday for a pro -- the house is back in monday for a pro forma session. our live gavel-to-gavel coverage always here on c-span.

off the floor today, the senate judiciary committee voted 11 to 7 in favor of a bill that would grant authority to the justices to blocked cameras for any case by a majority vote. you can watch this in our video library at c-span.org. and cast your vote for whether you think the supreme court proceedings should be televised. the american conservative union's annual conference kicked off earlier today. is among the speakers -- texas gov. -- among the speakers, texas governor rick perry and house speaker john boehner. following that discussion, we have remarks from former presidential candidate herman cain and rand paul.

the conference begins at 3:45 eastern. house speaker spoke about the house-passed a version of the bill earlier today with supporters and was joined by eric cantor. this is about 15 minutes. >> good morning, everyone. as middle-class families and small businesses struggle in this economy, small businesses continue to focus on the number- one issue in our country, and that is jobs. the house has passed over 130

bipartisan bills in the senate at this moment. many of these bills were embraced by the president's own jobs council, and the president has made it clear he is in favor of a handful of these bills. so, the obama administration told us that if the president's plan were passed, unemployment would be at 6% today. i certainly think it is important to act if the president wants to accomplish anything this year. time is running short on the payroll tax, for example. we have a four-year extension of the payroll tax credit, fully paid for, as the president said it must be. but the president and senate democratic leaders will not allow their contemporaries to support a reasonable bipartisan agreement on spending cuts.

worse, they refuse to allow any alternatives at all except for a job-killing small business tax hikes that cannot pass the senate, much less the house. if the president was to get this done, he needs to let the democratic conferees and chairman bacchus' do their work. -- chairman baucus do their work. the house soon will vote on the american energy and infrastructure jobs act, the next piece of our plan for america's job creators. by breaking down government barriers to domestic energy production, they will ease rising gas prices and create more than 1 million new jobs. it will ensure we have reliable infrastructure in our country, which is critical for commerce. the american energy and

infrastructure jobs axed -- acrt t will be the first highway bill i have ever supported. in the past, highway bills have represented everything wrong with washington -- earmarks, missing dollars, misplaced priorities. this bill will have no earmarked. the last time congress passed the highway bill, there were 6000-plus your marks in that. this one will have none. -- earmarks in it. lastly, the american people have every right to expect the highest ethical standards from their elected leaders. the stock act, which was

approved by the senate last week has been strengthened and expanded in the house. the majority has done a great job of shepherding this bill through the process, and i look forward to this bill becoming law soon. >> some republicans have expressed reservations -- [unintelligible] >> i know the whip has been having listening sessions with the members, and as i understand it, they are having good conversations about how this bill is different from what we have seen in the past. >> [unintelligible] criticizing both the obama administration for some of the policies there -- [unintelligible]

>> we have been concerned for some time about the number of former detainees that have been released, and the fact that they continue to show up in pretty large numbers. so, this is the basis of our concerns. there is no more discussion about detainees being released, especially those from afghanistan or pakistan. we will continue to monitor this, but we have great reservations about releasing detainees, because of the clear evidence of the impact on the battlefield. the majority leader was detained on the floor. >> that is the polite way of

putting it. thank you, mr. speaker. i think we saw today on the floor what the two sides can do if they are willing to work together. the overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, 417 votes, for the stock act represents a we all have work to do to restore the trust of the public. i reached out to rep walls u.s. and actively engaged with this issue since he came to congress. we agreed to stay in touch and continue to work together. it shows what we can do when we want to put our minds together and work together in a bipartisan y. i also think 417 members put pressure on the senate to take up our bill and send a signal to

the white house that they should go ahead and accept a bill that expand the disclosure requirements to members in the executive branch. also, mr. speaker, i know you probably talked about the payroll tax holiday extension. we can work together if there is a will. hopefully, we will be able to do that and resolve the questions that link or in the minds of working people in this country and make sure they know that taxes are not going to go up. >> [unintelligible] >> think of the wording. "political intelligence daughters there is so much question about what that even means. there's a lot of discussion in this bill and elsewhere about what is the consequence of that provision?

are other constitutional questions. does it bring in the possibility for a constituent to ask us about the status of a particular piece of legislation, but that individual in the position of having to go register, just as a citizen interested in living his or her life? that is why we introduced the bill, to call for study. look at the issues involved in this. but i would say it is even more. this is a bill about ensuring that we abide by the trust of the people that sent us up here. is about making sure there is no perception or reality as far as members of congress, or those in washington, and their ability to use non-public information for personal profit. that was the substance of the bill. this question senator grassley raised is outside who we are and

what we do. >> can i follow up on that? you mentioned -- you have a fellow perception saying the perception is you are protecting wall street. >> and i would say the perception is there would be a possibility anyone would take -- anyone could take advantage of non-public information. that is the substance of this bill. we were not going to allow it. that is what produced the coming together to require disclosure upon transacting. >> [unintelligible] >> you know, i think there is a lot of input. again, i indicated i have been working with many members on this issue.

we thought it was very important to act with dispatch on this very important issue. the issue is, are members of congress going to be willing to be transparent in their actions as far as trading stocks are concerned? because we are privy to non- public information at times, in the same way as individuals in the executive branch. i think we accomplished the goal, given the fact that there was not a lot of objection on the other side of the aisle the way the bill came forward. >> mr. speaker -- [unintelligible] now you have republicans and the medical lobby calling for the sgr. are you open to that possibility? >> the fact is we are going to

spend less in our war effort in afghanistan and iraq. the use of those funds, those savings, to propel more spending does not seem to make a great deal of sense to me. >> [unintelligible] ray lahood has been very critical of your bill. have you spoken to him? >> i have not spoken to the secretary of transportation. let's understand this. this vision of trying to create more jobs by opening up american ingenuity -- american and reproduction as a result of our energy needs was the result of working with members. i do not died everything that goes on with every committee every day -- i day -- guide

everything that goes on with every committee every day, or for that matter, what happens on the floor every day. there were concerns about the bill. that is what we had a floor process that i expect will be more of what we've seen in the past on a bill like this. >> [unintelligible] >> chairman upton over at the commerce committee will take the lead on this. i have full confidence the committee will do this in a deliberate bipartisan fashion. it will be up to the chairman to make those decisions. >> [unintelligible] >> [unintelligible]

>> we appoint conferees between the house and senate to resolve these differences. but they need to get moving. i am not going to create an artificial deadline for me or you. i have been there, done that. the sooner, the better. >> [unintelligible] >> you all know that i have set myself out of this presidential race for over your. is not my job to decide to the nominee is going to be. people show up and vote in republican primaries around the country had yet to make that decision. rick santorum and i came to congress together in the 1990's. i am not endorsing him.

i am not endorsing my other good friend of newt gingrich, my other good friend mitt romney, or the guy i worked with for 18 years here, ron paul. they are all good people. the american people get to decide. >> [unintelligible] >> when it comes to the issue of religious freedom, i think the lines are pretty clear. our country has held this issue since our founding. i think the house is going to work again through the regular order, with real deliberations, about how we protect the religious freedom of the american people. that is the issue. and we are keenly focused on it. >> [unintelligible]

>> i do not know the particulars of the deal, but clearly, if there was wrong being done by some of these mortgage lenders, they should be held accountable. thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> so, we heard the speaker get asked about a $26 billion settlement between state and federal governments and the five largest mortgage servicing companies. eric holder and a sean donovan talked about that today,

including actions against the company's that used fraudulent -- against the companies that used fraudulent mortgage practices that helped cause deep financial crisis of 20008. this is just under an hour. -- the financial crisis of 2008. this is just under an hour. >> good morning. i am pleased to join with secretary sean donovan, the attorney general for the state of iowa, the associate attorney general, the director of the consumer financial protection group, a record trade -- richard cordray and others to announce our latest step forward in writing the wrong of our nation's economic crisis and housing collapse. with the department of justice

and the department of housing and urban development and other federal agencies, we have reached a landmark $25 billion agreement with the four largest mortgage services -- bank of america, wells fargo, citibank, and ally bank which was formally gmac. in addition to addressing many of the most egregious mortgage loan servicing abuses, it establishes significant new homeowner protections to help prevent future misconduct. in fact, it is the largest joint federal-state civil settlement in the history of this nation.

while the american people can be encouraged by the settlements and the progress is achieved, i realize more work must be done. that is why we are taking steps to ensure the claims we are realizing through this settlement will not interfere with our ability to move criminal prosecutions for word. -- forward. let me be very clear on this. involvesay's agreement civil claims, it does not -- it does not -- prevent state and federal parties from pursuing criminal enforcement actions and it reserves extensive claims reserve to the mortgage securitization activities, including the focus of the new residential mortgage-backed securities working group. it does not prevent any claims by individual borrowers who wish to bring their own lawsuit. this underscores the point i

brought up less than two weeks ago when secretary donovan and i announced the first meeting of the financial fraud enforcement task force with new mortgage- backed-based securities. with our collaboration and bringing a powerful government resources to bear, we can improve our ability to identify and prosecute misconduct in our financial markets, to prevent losses, prevent fraud, and to all those who violate the law law -- the law accountable. multiple federal agencies including doj, the office of the inspector general, the office of housing administration, the board of governors of the federal reserve system, the federal-state commission, the special inspector general all played key roles in achieving this settlement. and we have partnered with state

banking regulators from across the country and attorney general's across the country -- and attorneys general across the country. in particular, i want to recognize the outstanding work of the justice department, and our united states attorney's offices. federal bankruptcy court operations was one of the first organizations to investigate the cases of homeowners in financial distress. they're reviewed more than 30,000 documents -- they reviewed more than 30,000 documents in federal bankruptcy court and discovered more than 175 cases of fraud across the country. we have reviewed this with u.s. attorneys from around the country. her office interviewed numerous

witnesses and issued multiple subpoenas. they have worked tirelessly to help homeowners and the taxpayers to foot the bill. the evidence these teams compiled was essential in reaching this historic selma. similar large-scale abuses -- similar large scale reviews were conducted by hud. services pushed far worse into foreclosure, even the federal regulations required servicers to pursue other options first. this is not only hurt our worst. it fuelled the down spiral of our economy. it eroded faith in the financial system. and it punished the taxpayers who had to foot the bill for

foreclosures that could have been avoided. with the settlement, we are recovering precious taxpayer resources and the state attorney general will be facilitating payments to bar workers -- to bar workers who lost their homes in the crisis -- to borrowers who lost their homes in the crisis. approximately $20 billion will provide relief and assistance to struggling homeowners. the agreement include specific provisions that will enhance protections for u.s. service members and their families. i also want to note that we are not just holding mortgage services accountable for wrongs. we're using this opportunity to fix a broken system and lay the groundwork for a better future. lenderson's mortgage will be required to follow a new

standard that will be enforceable in federal court with a new independent monitor. i encourage anyone seeking additional information to visit a new web site we have established, www.nationalmortgagesettlement.c om. i would like to thank everyone who contributed to this settlement. i would like to introduce my colleague in cabinet, secretary sean donovan. >> eric, thank you. i want to thank everyone here on the stage, but also the countless folks who were here in the office to of worked closely for so long hours, including the we hours last night to make this day possible. i want to return in a moment to

talk about the remarkable work of our state partners at the attorneys general. i do want to single out in particular caparelli who was a relentless, relentless partner in this work. eric, thank you for picking tom as a partner. i appreciate the work you did together with my team. as attorney general holder just mentioned, this historic settlement will not only help families and right wrongs that contributed to the downfall of the american economy, not just hold them accountable, but it will also provide an immediate

relief to homeowners, refinancing loans for underwater bar worse -- borrowers and using money as direct help for consumers struggling today. and it comes not a moment too soon for homeowners, the housing market, and our economy. we all know how the housing bubble burst, of undersold loans to people -- how lenders sold loans to people who cannot afford them. and we know these actions hurt millions of families. families to did the right thing, but still lost their house or so -- or saw their own license drop through no fault of the rhone. they heard from consumers in every state of this nation. they did not stop there keeping the continued long after people

got the keys to their new homes. we know this not only because of the investigations attorney- general holder spoke about, but because in the summit of 2010, long before the robo-signing scandal erupted into public view, but it did an examination of the nation's servicers. between us, we devoted more than 15,000 hours to reviewing servicing files for thousands insured usands of fha- loans. in the scope is not just been the scandal so publicly discussed, but the paperwork, long delays, missed deadlines, or problematic loan

modifications offered to homeowners. as the hud office of inspector general found, the country's five largest loan servicers were also routinely signed foreclosure-related documents without knowing if the facts they contained were correct. in effect, many of the same financial institutions responsible for so much of this crisis were making it worse, farming families, neighborhoods, and our economy. the settlement holds those institutions accountable for their actions. as you have heard in this court settlement we are announcing today, more than $25 billion in total. and that number could grow as we look at additional institutions for the settlement. this is not just about punishing the banks for their irresponsible behavior. is also about requiring them to

help the people they have arms -- it is also about requiring them to help the people they have harmed. bad as the settlement they deliver. reducing the loan settlements for approximately 1 million families who own more on their mortgages than they are worth or who have suffered in an otherwise. principal reduction on the scale will not only hope underwater homeowners, but also their neighbors who watched their homes dropped in value each time of foreclosure sign goes up in their neighborhood. the settlement will help unemployed homeowners catch up on late mortgage payments, provide counseling services to at risk families, and it helps neighborhood struggling with vacant properties that drive down-home values. by instituting tough penalties and stringent time lines and forced by our respected and

independent monitor, joe smith, banks can provide this help quickly and effectively. the settlement also provides cash payments to homeowners who were victims of deceptive servicing practices. we all recognize you cannot undo the pain of this crisis simply by writing a check. but these payments provide victims with needed relief. one of the most important ways the settlement helps homeowners is it not only rights past wrongs, but it forces the banks to clean up their acts and fix the problem uncovered by our investigations going forward. and it does that with immediate reforms in the way mortgage loans are serviced. these new standards are in keeping with the homeowner bill of rights announced by president obama in the last few weeks. a simple straightforward set of common sense rules families can

count on when they're making the single most important purchase of their lives. and it requires lenders and servicers in the settlement -- with just the five of them representing two out of every three mortgage loans in this country -- to follow a long list of rights. no more lost paperwork. this is just one step in making sure we right the wrongs of this crisis. attorney general holder and i announced with state partner is an investigation into the misconduct of financial institutions that broke the law, including securities and origination-related cases. while this was designed to address all the issues of the housing crisis, it is an historic agreement and a big victory to those who were harmed the most. combined with the broad base

financing plan -- with the broad based financing plan and additional steps to reduce principal production come up it provides lead to a broader economy and the housing market. homeowners should have the very same expectations of their financial institutions, and with the settlement, those institutions will be forced to live up to those expectations. holding these banks accountable is what the settlement is about and helping the millions of ed by this crisis. is why i am so proud to join my partners today -- it is why i am so proud to join my partners today and not only attorney general tom weller -- tom miller, but also my colleagues

in reaching this agreement. you know, many americans have lost faith in institutions in this country and our ability to cross party lines and but country ahead of politics. -- put country ahead of politics. this agreement restores my faith and so many others' faith that we can do things regardless of party divisions and geographic lines. this would not have been possible without the early and relentless leadership up tom miller and john southers, and i recognize the remarkable work of their colleagues as well. but i need to single them out, in particular as i welcome tom miller to the podium, for their remarkable, remarkable work. many steps to go forward will

require congressional action, and i think we have an example of what we can do when we put country ahead of party. but we also, as president obama has said, cannot wait for that action. this announcement shows we can do big things in this country across partisan lines and restore faith in the ability of our institutions to help families who need it most. tom, thank you, congratulations. john, thank you. >> this settlement is about homeowners. homeowners in distress. people in our country who need help as much as anybody else. and that is what we have focused on and that is what the settlement does. as outlined by the attorney general and the hud secretary, there are a number of things that will help homeowners a lot. i want to talk about two

aspects. 1 it is servicing standards. comprehensive servicing standards, are real bill of rights of how they treat homeowners in distress -- bill of rights of how they treat homeowners in distress. the wrong decisions are made on loan modifications in the past. it is a dysfunctional system. this set of agreements, this set of guidelines and has the potential to change all that. and it will be incumbent on all of us to make sure that potential is realized. we have the states, the federal government, the decree, the monitor, a monitor we never had before to make sure they do what they promised. and if they do, as debbie hagen of illinois said yesterday, it

is a sea change. in your enlightened self- interest, homeowners, this is your opportunity to change things for the benefit of your homeowners, your investors, and yourself and your reputation. this is an opportunity to do the right thing. this is also about -- this agreement came about as a result of strong, healthy, bipartisan relationships. the attorney-general -- the attorneys general have a rich tradition of being a bipartisan group. that has never been more true than in the settlement. john southers led the republican. along with rob mckenna, they were coordinated and worked with the republicans. and attorney general pam bondi,

she contributed a lot on this. roy cooper of north carolina, like me, a democrat, was the steady hand in all of this as we went forward. richard madigan of illinois contributed so much. through debbie a word, her leadership and -- hayward, her leadership, and her courage. we saw that with lisa as she supported and worked on this agreement during difficult times. that is good stuff, lisa, and we respect and admire you for that. george jefferson of connecticut, who is here with us, did a great job keeping the attorney general preston mcdaniel of arkansas -- the attorney-general of indiana,

also your. they contributed as well. we have this great group working together on this bipartisan avenue. and you know, we must admit we do not do all the work in the attorneys general offices. we have a remarkable set of attorneys general who were done this in an incredible way. i would just like to mention their names. madigan from my office was remarkable, debbie hagen, matt from connecticut, phil layman from north carolina, phil butler. they were the work force is on all of this. and then for the last seven

years, we had another great relationship. that is with the state banking regulators. john ryan, their executive director is there. again, a great relationship. you know, i keep trying to think of myself as a relatively young man. but i have been attorney general for 30 years. and during that time, i have been involved in a lot of multi stakes, worked with the federal government in a lot of ways. i have had good relationships, and sometimes not good relationships working with the fed. that may surprise you, but it is true. in all the time, i have never seen such a wonderful, effective, based on respect relationship as we had with tom and shaun donovan.

they treated us as equals. they rolled up their sleeves. it has been a model for federal-state relationships. the relationship we had with them. just going back for one second to the assistant attorney generals, the attorney-general offices over the last few months since the mortgage meltdown in 2007, we have been prodding, pushing, threatening to sue the servicers of loans and anybody else in terms of knowledge. us and the banking regulators are unparalleled in our knowledge and experience in " we have done. i just wanted to mention that. but to conclude here, what we have done is to do something that is very important for homeowners. at this current time, we are the

only ones able to do the servicing standards and get them implemented now. at this time, we are the only ones, i think, that can deal effectively with principal reduction. will happen with principal reduction is briefly this -- what will happen with principal reduction is briefly this. once it happens, something will become apparent. all those things they worry about -- the sky is falling. guess what? it will not happen. and on the positive side, the re-default rate will be all -- will be the lowest or among the lowest. at that point, principal reduction will become a regular, common tool, i think, for everybody in this country. there is a precedent for. is on interest rate reductions. for two years, we kept telling

banks, you need to cut interest rates. they resisted that. finally, as a result of a number things, they started to do principle reductions. it worked. now it is commonplace. it is an extraordinary opportunity to help homeowners, one that is not present anywhere else in our configuration of state, local, or national government. finally, i reiterate what shaun ended with. i believe the public wants us to work across party lines and do things for ordinary americans. and homeowners in distress are ordinary americans need help more than most others. it is exactly what the public wants us to do, and i believe we have done that, work across party lines to serve the interests of ordinary americans. with that, i am delighted to

introduce one of my colleagues. he is a terrific guy. he is a straight shooter. john southers of colorado. >> thank you, tom. i appreciate. there are 25 democrats state attorney general's -- the question is, how did 49 come together to agree on this settlement? the answer is simple. the attorneys general realized the settlement is very, very much in the interest of their stays. why is that? -- very much in the interest of their states. why is that? with's negotiating national bank's pose significant problems.

first, federal pre-emption. there has been indication in case law and congressional legislation about that. is a murky world. we would be litigating some of those issues for least the next five years. number two, all of us have very disparate consumer protection laws. some states like mine have relatively small limits on money that can be recovered for consumer protection act violations. so when all these attorney- general look at these sediments the structure, they realize the bottom line was, there is no way that without the federal partnership in this case could we have achieved the results we have achieved. the notion, for example, of the states being able to impose servicing standards on a national bank, that would not have happened.

the notion of being able to utilize a monitor, that cannot happen without a partnership between the states and the federal government. so the bottom line is, they entered into this agreement because it is in their interest in the interest of their citizens. i am not quite as old as tom miller. [laughter] i may look older, but i am not quite as old. i have had the privilege of serving as an elected district attorney and now is the attorney general. i have been involved in a lot of joint federal and state task forces, investigations, and whatever. like tom, i can tell you some horror stories. the conclusion i came to many years ago is that so many of these unfortunately, but inevitably, our personality driven. the fact of the matter is, we

had the incredible fortune of having this joint federal-state partnership driven by two people in the federal government that i have never seen anything like it, the extent to which tom and shaun donovan, as i said, did not do any of that fed stuff that we states see so often. [laughter] they did, in fact, treat us as equal partners. frankly, if i were them, i would have given us if given up on us a long time ago. it was brutal. with their patients, they brought this thing together, and i cannot say enough about the perseverance and dedication that have shown. on behalf of my attorney general colleagues, i am very proud to be up here today announcing what i see as an incredible example of federal and state

cooperation. now, is my privilege to introduce the hud inspector with the general, david montoya. >> good morning. i am pleased to be here today with you to highlight the indictable and tireless work of my audit, investigated, and legal staff and their crucial role in enabling today's announcement on multistate settlement on loan underwriting practices for mortgages insured by the fha. i also commend the efforts between my office and the office of housing and urban development and justice as well as the state attorneys general to bring this matter to closure. but not for simple greed and inappropriate behavior that some of the corporate level of our banking and mortgage industry exhibited, many americans would still be in their homes. i am proud that my office played such a critical part in addressing this conduct. the settlement, the largest ever for hud involving mortgage, and

foreclosure become a benefit spoken distressed homeowners and the taxpayers of the united states. want to insure all americans that my office will remain vigilant in defending their interests. we are committed to aggressively pursuing those business conduct contributed to the housing crisis and those who frequently content -- flagrantly continue to do so. at this point out like introduced to the attorney general from the great state of illinois, lisa madigan. >> today it would pick up another piece of the wreckage caused by the foreclosure crisis. as we determine previously with salvage pieces of this crisis, the banks abuses and the mortgage servicing and foreclosure process were pervasive and preventable. yet it took state and federal investigations and legal actions to stop these illegal, immoral, and often inhumane practices. the largest bank mortgage services deepen the the despair

for millions of homeowners and have stall the recovery of the housing market. and chicago, there are whole blocks of neighborhoods riddled with foreclosed homes and haunted by the lost opportunities of those who lived there. know that this is neither the beginning nor the end of our work to hold banks and other institutions accountable for the destruction have caused our families, communities, and country. settlement -- today's settlement should serve as a warning to financial institutions. there are consequences for engaging in practices that jeopardize the stability of our communities and our economy. in state and federal governments remain committed to continue our investigations and prosecutions of all the players in the marketplace to contributed to housing and economic collapse. i would like to join my colleagues in thanking all of them for their hard work and participation, but specifically

banking our attorneys general for the hard work they have done day after day and month after month during this investigation and negotiation. not enough can be said about our federal partners. they have been an absolute incredible. they have stuck with us, so my great thanks to the hud secretary the state attorney general. let me introduce the great attorney general from the state of north carolina, roy cooper. >> thank you, lisa. state attorneys general are on the front lines and we heard thousands of complaints from homeowners. so here we are today with our state and federal partners. strong, court ordered enforcement with teeth distinguishes this deal from earlier efforts to help homeowners through this foreclosure crisis.

this is a strong agreement, backed by a court order and financial penalties and supervised by an independent monitor. the monitor will make sure the banks follow the rules. former north carolina commissioner banks, joe smith, will serve as a martyr. he and his team will look over the bank's shoulders to make sure that they meet targets for homeowners. i know joe. he will be tough. he will be thorough, and he will be fair. if prohibited foreclosure fees are charged, if homeowners get the runaround for modification, if homes are for clothes before other options expire, the monitor and the courts can step in and make it right. banks will be forced to follow a clear set of rules that will give a better chance to homeowners in trouble. this helps our communities and

our economy. as the immediate past president of the national association of attorneys general, i look at the state-federal partnerships as a model for the future. we will continue to work together to level the financial playing field for consumers. and now to wrap this up is a guy you have heard a lot about. his negotiations sometimes had to resemble hand-to-hand combat. [laughter] but he did with perseverance. i want to introduce to you the associate attorney general, tom pirelli. >> thanks, everybody. i really appreciate the very kind words. i think it has been said, in washington you hear a lot about bureaucracies and multiple agencies with overlapping missions, about turf fights,

battles between federal authorities and state sovereignty. but when you lose your home to foreclosure, you don't want to hear about bureaucracies and you don't want excuses. you want a government that actually solves problems. the resolution reached today shows what can happen when people put aside her force and focus on what they can do to make things better. it was apparent an alphabet soup of government agencies has various roles to play cricket to all federal agencies that support and enforce the law in the housing market in various ways, there were any number of ways the government could have addressed this. what could have pulled at each other in the wrong direction. instead, we decided to work together. we began working together about all the different ways to solve the problems that we face. public officials on both sides of the aisle decided what to do

something together that would be better law enforcement, better housing policy, and better for the consumers will serve. you will be hard-pressed to find more effective state and federal court of effort anywhere. on the federal side we had agencies with teams of investigators, strong enforcement authorities expertise. we join with states that have longstanding investigation, very different housing markets, and step by step with a united front, we found our way. there are so many people that one could thank, some of the agencies that have been extraordinary partners in this, the federal banking regulators, the fed, and the fdic, who have worked with us over time and will be issuing some orders of their own today and in the coming days. when a chapter of this history is written, were the things they will find is that the program

represented by cliff white and the federal trade commission were actually the first recognized many of those issues and to go back in history, to see the settlement they negotiated some time ago, they were at the forefront of this. i really thank them and appreciate them. the treasury department here has been a tremendous partner both with their deep knowledge of the housing market, as well as understanding how we can best and most effectively help homeowners. a number of the state attorneys general talk about the extraordinary work of the assistance throughout the country and i would like to thank brian from my office who has been extraordinary public servant who has worked tirelessly on this. while people have said nice things about me, they should be talking tenfold about his work. he has been the glue that held

us together. our work will not be finished as we filed this case and the consent judgment federal court in the next several weeks. the attorney general said we will continue to investigate and collaborate with our state and federal parties on issues related to mortgage-backed securities and other issues. we will continue to work to make sure this settlement is fully in force and it fulfills its goal. this team you see here and many folks around the country and in the audience will continue to try to ensure that we obtain complete redress for all the harm brought to the american public and housing crisis. thank you very much. with that, and we will take some questions. >> for attorney-general miller, not to dismiss how hard this deal was and the complexity involved, but when you look at the actual average rallied on the principal reduction side and on the cash payment to foreclose homeowners, it is a bit low. those homeowners may well ask,

is the settlement enough? >> i would look them in in say no. here is what i would tell them. this agreement has more things to help homeowners than anything we have seen before and probably ever will see again. principal reduction, let me make the point i made before. i believe that this agreement will eventually make widespread principal reduction throughout the country commonplace, for the reason i said. there is going to be a significant amount done right away, particularly bank of america is going to have a wide open plan, that anyone who meets the basic criteria of a very large pool canada's principal reduction. once this demonstration of principal reduction takes place, it will work and it will become commonplace. this agreement is the only thing out there that has any kind of a

chance to get to that place a principal reduction. so in terms of homeowners that one principal reduction, this is the vehicle. in terms of the other benefits, $3 billion for refinancing of loans, for the people that are forgotten. they are the people that are underwater, their mortgages greater than the value of the home. they make their payments day in and day out, month in and month out, they meet all the other criteria to get a lower interest-rate, but they are blocked because their home is under water. they cannot get refinanced to lower rate. that is unfair. this breaks that unfairness. i don't think those homeowners would tell us we settled too low. on barona payments, that is a small part of this -- on the borrower payments. the context is this, that if you refer -- foreclosed upon in

the last few years, and you can point to anything wrong that the servicers bid, lost your paperwork, missed the deadline, then you can get this payment of 1500-$2,000. this will go to people who could not recover in any other way. if they sued, they could not recover. it also will have a situation where if they find out later they could have recovered, they are not giving up any legal rights. in that context, that homeowner that could not get any relief, could not get $1, and they are getting a check for $1,500, they are not going to tell us was settled into cheap. this is a strong, balanced agreement. it has a lot of other things almost hidden in there that will help homeowners. one of the really great things is that if people are eligible for loan modification, the banks will not screw up those

decisions anymore. there are regulations in there to make that happen. the homeowner is not going to say it was too low. sometimes they are charged fees that they should not be charged. the monitor will be looking at that. if they find that these are being charged that should not and there's an indication is widespread, the monitor will go and get those fees back. those people are not going to tell us we settled to cheat. -- that we settled too cheap. this is going to help homeowners in significant ways, or more than anyone help -- than anyone else has in the past, and i predict for more than anyone will in the future. >> i think there are cut two specific misunderstandings about this that have contributed to this question here. one is that dematha of this,

given the complexity of it, there has been some misunderstanding about, and just to be specific, many people are taking $20 billion in expected homeowner relieved, which is the portion of $5 billion in cash and the peace we are now seeing today, and $20 billion in benefits to homeowners, dividing that by the number of 1 million and saying if you have $20,000 per homeowner, that does not sound like much, given the construct -- context of people that are under water up to $50,000. the way it works is, we will be crediting the banks against their requirements, not for best efforts, their requirements to actually reduce principal and deliver benefits. but we will not be crediting them dollar for dollar. if alone is highly delinquent -- if a loan is highly delinquent

and the bank would not rationally be expected to collect on that loan, we would not give them a dollar of credit for writing off a dollar of that loan. we will be given them far less credit. in the end, what we are likely to get in terms of principle reduction is in the neighborhood of $35 billion out of the $20 billion in consumer relief. so the matter is actually much more significant than many have been reporting in terms of the direct benefits of the principal reduction. we would be happy to go through the specifics of that. we have available state-by-state what is expected to add to that total, but that is very important. the second thing, the portion of this that is for homeowners that have been wrong in the restitution portion, it was designed to sit in parallel to a separate process that has been

set up by federal regulators as a result of a consent judgment, and the idea of that process is a homeowner can comment, have their claims and reviewed at the cost of the banks, and full compensation is made for the wrong at the cost of the banks. it does not have to go into court. the process is now set up and running. the idea is, there are many small wrongs that were done here that might have cost homeowners a few hundred dollars, a few thousand dollars. the idea was almost in a class action not to have to make every one of those homeowners come in and work with a lawyer, through extended arm, but toward the restitution as a class. that does not impede in any way in their ability to go into this separate process. if they were wrong by $200,000 because they lost their house, they can collect that from that

process. the misinterpretation is this is some help all that will be available to those homeowners, it is not true. the processes are set up and designed together. going back to my comments earlier, in the end, it was not the servicing practices that created a bubble nor caused its collapse. it was the origination and securitization of these horrendous products that created it. there is no question that the servicing practices that are issued today furthered that damage substantially, but even though there were hundreds of billions of dollars of harm done in the crisis, the wrongs that we are writing today are a piece of that, and we believe strongly, and we have done extensive research to see what we could have recovered if we won every suit that could be brought under this, and we

believe this settlement is an extremely good settlement in terms of recovery for the claims that were released. just to be clear, no fannie and freddie loans are issued here. they represent about two-thirds of the market. none of those claims are being released. no criminal claims, no claims related to civil rights of any kind. the origination claims of fha, in addition to the securitization claims, we are retaining those. you have to look to this in the context of what is actually being released today. that is why it is so important, we announced our task force. that makes it very clear point. we are retain those rights and will be aggressive about going after those claims going forward. >> you are saying that the banks may be paying something close to $40 billion? >> i said the benefit -- the

direct benefit to homeowners will be larger -- go ahead. >> from the banking side, some of these banks are still struggling to recover from the financial crisis. do they have the capacity to make these fixes, to pay this money? have they been served already brought some of these payments? are you concerned at all that this could hurt the financial help of some of these tanks? >> there is no question that there are reserves that have been taken. this process obviously has been extensive. we have had lengthy discussions, and reserves have been taken i believe at all of the institutions that are part of this, and even some institutions that we are discussing these claims with but are not part of

the announcement today. we believe that is the case. in the and, one of the critical things about this is, and to repeat tom miller, principal reduction is an important part of steps that we need to take, and they include steps like the refinancing plan that the president announced and the work we have done with fannie and freddie. those are steps that will help all our housing market recover. the benefits not only to homeowners and the broader economy, but to these very institutions themselves are enormous if the value of properties across the country began to rise as a result of these actions. in the end, we believe that this announcement is not just good for homeowners and the, -- and the economy, but ultimately will help the financial institutions project while there may be short term impact to their balance

sheets, it is critical for all of us to be able to get the housing market accelerating in its recovery. >> are fannie and freddie loans exempt, or just future claims? >> fannie and freddie have a separate process of enforcing servicing violations. they are pursuing those claims and they have separate processes, as fha does, for origination violations, etc. specifically on which loans this will apply to, and we see the refinancing portion that is part of this settlement as a perfect complement to the refinancing effort that the president has already talked about and that are moving forward for underwater current homeowners in fannie and freddie

loans. we knew as we were designing the settlement that we had already made steps to ensure that fannie and freddie borrowers who are under water could refinance at record low interest rates today, but we knew that that option is not available to homeowners that had loans that were in the portfolios of the bank. that is what the refinancing component is focused on, so it complements what is available to fannie and freddie borrowers. and modifications, fannie and freddie are already doing extensive payment modifications for those homeowners. that are not doing significant principal reduction. this settlement, because fannie and freddie are not part of it, cannot require that they do print or reduction, but the president announced just a few weeks ago steps that would make, for the first time, fannie and freddie eligible for incentives to do significant printed or reduction. they are violating that as we speak, and we look forward to taking additional steps that could make principal reduction

available to fannie and freddie homeowners. >> a very important point. we worked very hard to align the servicing standards and to bring fannie and freddie on board. so the servicing standards do apply across the board, not just to private-label securities or portfolio loans for the banks, but also to fannie and freddie loans. a critical 0.3 >> -- a critical point. >> is there a maximum amount of credits that can be earned by a mortgage-backed securities? >> there is not a cap on that. there has been a lot of misunderstanding about this issue so let me just try to clarify. there is a dramatically lower

credit, if you will, or principal reduction for investor-owned loan, also called service or other loans. we expect of the principal reduction and it's done -- and principal reduction on first and second loans that keeps families in their homes is a minimum of 60% of the consumer menu that is available. we expect a relatively small share in the range of 15% of the principal reduction to be done in service for other loans. there is a special kind of effort that bank of america will make as part of this agreement where they have agreed to doody principal reduction and to solicit every single one of the old country wide homeowners. about 80 percent of those are

private label securities loans, and they have already made a significant, or agreed to make a substantial payment to investors in those loans. our expectation is that the vast majority of private label security loans that are reduced in principle as a result of this would be the old countrywide loans, and investors are being compensated on those loans. let me be very clear, career is clear language in this document, in the settlement agreement, that says nothing in it requires any trusty or servicer to reduce principal where it is not allowed to legally buy the underlying documents, nor where it is not a net present value positive, or in the interest of those investors. the misunderstanding somehow that investors will be paying the banks share is just false. this is real penalties for the bank, real cost for the banks,

and the vast majority of loans will be in the portfolio of the banks anyway. >> there is no max. let me try and clear up a little bit of confusion. some have written that when investors' loans are modified by friends for reduction, the investors will lose money, and that is unfair to them. that reveals -- and not only you, but a very prominent united states senator who i have a lot of respect for wrote a letter saying the same thing. but that misunderstand principal reduction. principal reduction is an effective way for everybody to win good when i say that, i mean this. there are some homeowners that cannot make a full payment, but they can make part of it. apart that they make is more

than the investor would realize under foreclosure. so it is in everybody's interest to do that modification. a homeowner stays in his home. the community is protected, the investor gets more money by the modification, not less money and. that is what principal reduction is all about. that is the fallacy of some of those stories in the letter by the senator. this is something that we in iowa and know very, very well. we had a terrible farm crisis in the 1980's, and our whole farm community was being torn asunder. we came up with this idea of a loan modifications. the head of the bankers' association in iowa went arm in arm to the legislature, the two of us, and got legislation passed so that there was required mediation before there could be a foreclosure. that was the vehicle to get to this win-win situation. and many farmers stay in their

homes. investors realized more. and when we saw this crisis coming for homeowners. we said we have seen this before. that is why patrick madigan and i and others in 2007 and to the bank and made this appeal to do loan modifications, but interest-rate reductions and principal reductions. it is a win-win-win for everybody in the right set of circumstances, and guess what? what is designed in this package is exactly looking at the right circumstances. >> will the banks get credit for prior modification to principal reduction? >> it is soon, but not yet. [captioning performed by

national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> the american conservative union's annual political action conference kicked off earlier today. the speakers included house speaker john boehner, michele bachmann, and texas governor rick perry. coming up in about 50 minutes, we will take you back to cpac for a panel looking ahead to the 2012 elections. following that we will have remarks from former presidential candidate herman cain, kentucky senator rand paul, and more coverage coming up beyond that into the weekend. our coverage this afternoon starts at 3:45 here on c-span. over on capitol hill today, the senate judiciary committee voted 11-7 in favor of a bill that would open the supreme court oral arguments to television cameras. it would give authority to the

justices to block cameras for any case by majority vote. you can watch the entire hearing in our video library at c-span.org, and also check out our facebook page where you can cast your vote on whether you think supreme court proceeding should be televised. shortly after the justice department was the announcement, president obama spoke about the mortgage settlement under the agreement -- under the agreement announced, several banks will reduce loans for nearly a million households, with nearly another 750 billion -- 750,000 americans receiving checks for $2,000. the president's remarks or little under 10 minutes. -- are a little under 10 minutes. >> all right, good afternoon, everybody. before i start, i just want to introduce the folks on stage here, because the extraordinary

work that they did is the reason that a lot of families are going to be helped all across the country. first of all, our attorney general eric holder, secretary of housing and urban development shaun donovan, associate attorney general -- and former classmate of mine -- tom perrelli. we've got attorney general george jepsen from connecticut, roy cooper, attorney general from north carolina, lisa madigan from my home state of illinois, and former seatmate of mine when we were in the state legislature together, dustin mcdaniel from arkansas, gregory zoeller from indiana, and tom miller from iowa. and i also want to acknowledge bob ryan, who worked with shaun donovan extensively on this issue, as well as tim massad of treasury. and i'm going to acknowledge also gene sperling, who doesn't always get the credit he

deserves for doing outstanding work. the housing bubble that burst nearly six years ago triggered, as we all know, the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes. it cost millions of innocent americans their jobs and their homes. and it remains one of the biggest drags on our economy. last fall, my administration unveiled a series of steps to help responsible homeowners refinance their mortgages to take advantage of historically low rates. and last week, i urged congress to pass a plan that would help millions more americans refinance and stay in their homes. and i indicated that the american people need congress to act on this piece of legislation. but in the meantime, we can't wait to get things done and to provide relief to america's homeowners. we need to keep doing everything we can to help homeowners and our economy.

and today, with the help of democratic and republican attorney generals from nearly every state in the country, we are about to take a major step on our own. we have reached a landmark settlement with the nation's largest banks that will speed relief to the hardest-hit homeowners, end some of the most abusive practices of the mortgage industry, and begin to turn the page on an era of recklessness that has left so much damage in its wake. by now, it's well known that millions of americans who did the right thing and the responsible thing -- shopped for a house, secured a mortgage that they could afford, made their payments on time -- were, nevertheless, hurt badly by the irresponsible actions of others -- by lenders who sold loans to people who couldn't afford them, by buyers who knew they couldn't afford them, by speculators who were looking to make a quick buck, by banks that

took risky mortgages, packaged them up, and traded them off for large profits. it was wrong. and it cost more than 4 million families their homes to foreclosure. even worse, many companies that handled these foreclosures didn't give people a fighting chance to hold onto their homes. in many cases, they didn't even verify that these foreclosures were actually legitimate. some of the people they hired to process foreclosures used fake signatures to -- on fake documents to speed up the foreclosure process. some of them didn't read what they were signing at all. we've got to think about that. you work and you save your entire life to buy a home. that's where you raise your family. that's where your kids' memories are formed. that's your stake, your claim on the american dream. and the person signing the document couldn't take enough time to even make sure that the

foreclosure was legitimate. these practices were plainly irresponsible. and we refused to let them go unanswered. so about a year ago, our federal law enforcement agencies teamed up with state attorneys general to get to the bottom of these abuses. the settlement we've reached today, thanks to the work of some of the folks who are on this stage -- this is the largest joint federal-state settlement in our nation's history -- is the result of that extraordinary cooperation. under the terms of this settlement, america's biggest banks -- banks that were rescued by taxpayer dollars -- will be required to right these wrongs. that means more than just paying a fee. these banks will put billions of dollars towards relief for families across the nation. they'll provide refinancing for borrowers that are stuck in high interest rate mortgages. they'll reduce loans for families who owe more on their

homes than they're worth. and they will deliver some measure of justice for families that have already been victims of abusive practices. all told, this isn't just good for those families -- it's good for their neighborhoods, it's good for their communities, and it's good for our economy. this settlement also protects our ability to further investigate the practices that caused this mess. and this is important. the mortgage fraud task force i announced in my state of the union address retains its full authority to aggressively investigate the packaging and selling of risky mortgages that led to this crisis. this investigation is already well underway. and working closely with state attorneys general, we're going to keep at it until we hold those who broke the law fully accountable. now, i want to be clear. no compensation, no amount of money, no measure of justice is enough to make it right for a family who's had their piece of the american dream wrongly taken

from them. and no action, no matter how meaningful, is going to, by itself, entirely heal the housing market. but this settlement is a start. and we're going to make sure that the banks live up to their end of the bargain. anthey don't, we've set up independent inspector, a monitor, that has the power to make sure they pay exactly what they agreed to pay, plus a penalty if they fail to act in accordance with this agreement. so this will be a big help. of course, even with this settlement, there's still millions of responsible homeowners who are out there doing their best. and they need us to do more to help them get back on their feet. we've still got to stoke the fires of our economic recovery. so now is not the time to pull back. to build on this settlement, congress still needs to send me

the bill i've proposed that gives every responsible homeowner in america the chance to refinance their mortgage and save about $3,000 a year. it would help millions of homeowners who make their payments on time save hundreds of dollars a month, and it can broaden the impact building off this settlement. that's money that can be put back into the homes of those folks who are saving money on the refinancing, helping to build their equity back up. they may decide to spend that money on local businesses. either way, it's good for families, and it's good for our economy. but it's only going to happen if congress musters the will to act. and i ask every american to raise your voice and demand that they do. because there really is no excuse for inaction. there's no excuse for doing nothing to help more families avoid foreclosure. that's not who we are. we are americans, and we look out for one another, we get each other's backs. that's not a democratic issue, that's not a republican issue.

that's who we are as americans. and the bipartisan nature of this settlement and the outstanding work that these state attorneys general did is a testament to what happens when everybody is pulling in the same direction. and that's what today's settlement is all about -- standing up for the american people, holding those who broke the law accountable, restoring confidence in our housing market and our financial sector, getting things moving. and we're going to keep on at it until everyone shares in america's comeback. so, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your outstanding efforts. we are very, very proud of you. and we look forward to seeing this settlement lead to some small measure of relief to a lot of families out there that need help. and that's going to strengthen the american economy overall. so thank you very much.

>> are there any thoughts, mr. president, you can share on the contraception policy before you leave? >> that live in washington here on c-span. and this side of the conservative political action conference hosted by the american conservative union, the 39th annual coverage started this morning on the c-span network. included john boehner and texas governor rick perry. coming up in just a little bit, we'll start off with a discussion on the 2012 elections. will also hear from former presidential candidate herman cain and kentucky senator rand paul, the son of candidate ron paul. that will get underway shortly and we will have a live for you here on c-span. senate minority leader mitch mcconnell was one of the speakers in the morning program and he laid out there line of

attack against president obama in the coming election. he talked about the recent decision by the white house on contraception coverage in health care plans. >> thank you very much. it is great to see all of you. good morning. i want to thank the acu war, staff, and volunteers. thanks for the opportunity to gather as a movement to share of our ideas and our talents in the great calls of liberty. every year at cpac, past meets present. both gain new energy, enthusiasm, and allies for the fight. we have a chance to honor and to learn from the conservative giants of the past and to size up new ones. we get to hear from those who are leading the cause of state houses across the country and here in washington. for those of you who have not noticed, our ranks are growing. one of the great developments in

congress of the past few years is the emergence of so many strong, principled, conservative leaders. you just had a chance to hear from mike lee and ron johnson and you heard from marco rubio, i think we would all agree on one of the most inspiring young conservatives in america. [applause] our numbers in congress are expanding, and i can tell you this, i am very happy to have the right -- the reinforcements. we needed them after 2009 and a 2010. now the trick is to stick together and keep our focus where it belongs. i always love coming to cpac. [applause] and you probably know why. conservatives are just simply more fun than liberals. there is a reason for that, by the way. it is because we are always right. [laughter]

the reason liberals are always wringing their hands all the time is they know we have better arguments than they do. so they spend half their time thinking how to convince people that what is wrong is right, and the other half looking for conservatives to tear down, or cpac conferences to disrupt. you all know the liberal playbook. here is how it works. pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, and then polarize it. rarely have we seen those tactics imposed with the kind of zeal we see today. the white house and its lieutenants have made an art form out of the orchestrated attack. they have shown they will go after anybody or any organization they think is standing in their way. we saw just last week when one of the top democrats in the senate announced a plan to all law abiding citizens before a congressional panel just because

they don't happen to agree with causes that he supports. you know the drill. expose the folks to public view, released the liberal foes on them, and then hope the public pressure or unwanted attentions of projects scare's them from supporting similar causes down the road. for president who's been so much time talking about fairness, there is a serious shortage of it in the white house and among many of his closest allies. again and again, this administration and its allies have used the resources of the government itself to intimidate or silence those who question or oppose it. and reward their friends and punish their enemies. this is why an administration that claims to support private sector job creation ended up killing a pipeline project that promised to create tens of thousands of private sector jobs. this is why a president who claims to value diversity is

telling the men and women who run religious schools and hospitals and charities in this country that they now face a choice that no one in the united states should ever have to make. violate your conscience, pay a penalty, or close your doors. we saw during the health-care debate when the department of health and human services issued a gag order on a private insurance company for the supposed offense -- listen to this -- of telling seniors what the president's health care bill would mean for them. as americans continue to struggle as a result of this president's economic policies, we see it in the personal attacks on private citizens or industries that the administration wants to make a convenient foil. these things that mean the office of president. they corrode our democracy, and they need to stop. [applause]

look, if our democratic friends cannot convince people of the wisdom of their policies, they should change those policies. but attacking private citizens or groups for the supposed crime of turning a profit, or expressing an opinion that the administration does not happen to share, is not in the president's job description. [applause] no look, the president's job is to unite the country, not divide it. his job is to bridge differences, not aggravate them. to encourage success, not condemned it. and to honor the free exercise of religion, and right there in the first amendment, not to suppress it. he was elected to lead all americans, not to occupy wall street fan club.

[applause] i don't know about your, but i think that the leader of the free world and his advisers have better things to do than dig through other people's tax returns, at a time when nearly 13 million americans are looking for jobs and cannot find one. i think the president of the united states has higher priorities than picking on fox news. [applause] at a moment when the national debt makes us look more like a third world country than the last best hope on earth, i think our highest elected official should be looking for solutions instead of steak -- of scapegoats. but unfortunately, that is what passes for leadership in the white house these days. here is a president who spent two years reconfiguring the u.s. economy, who put the government

in charge of banks, the auto industry, the insurance industry, the student loan business, and held garrett kern. now we are seeing the results, -- and health care. he acts like he had nothing to do with it. we know new president's face challenges when they come to office. ronald reagan certainly did. but once the of the office has been taken, americans expect their president to forge ahead and take responsibility for the policies that put in place. [applause] not this president. he wants to change the subject. here is my message to cpac. we are not going to let him get away with it, are we? [applause] look, we are going to push hard to reform the tax code. we will keep up the fight against a regulatory regime that is suffocating free enterprise.

we'll keep pushing the white house to allow americans to use american energy, and we will not let a single day pass from now until november without reminding the american people of what this president has done. [applause] we are going to remind folks that we are not in this mess because of a tsunami in japan or a debt crisis in europe. we are in it because the president got nearly everything he wanted for two long years. i assure you that when november rolls around, americans will know who is in charge when the stimulus was passed, when obamacare became law, it was in charge when america's credit rating was downgraded for the first time ever. they will know this president's record. [applause]

after that he will have enough time to play golf as he wants to. let's face it, the only reason we are getting any positive economic news at all, more than three years after this presidency began, is because the american people put a restraining order on him and pelosi in november 2010. last week's jobs report happen in spite of the president's policies, not because of them. it is the obama economy now, and we are not going to let people forget it. we will start with his promises. it is long list, so i will just mention a couple. three years ago, the president signed a trillion dollars stimulus bill that we were told would keep unemployment below

half a percent sign and -- below eight%. how did that work out? unemployment has now stood above 8% for 36 months, three straight years. if you lose a job in the obama economy, you can now expect to spend four weeks looking for a new one. fewer people have jobs today than when the stimulus was signed. more than three years into his presidency, there are still 5.6 million fewer jobs in this country than when the great recession began. among african-americans, unemployment is nearly 14%. among hispanics, 10.5%. among recent college graduates, and more than 13%. for those who need help the most, this president's economic policies have done the least. so if i were president obama, i

would keep the champagne on ice. this is not an economy to be proud of. shortly after they stimulus bill was signed, president obama and another promise. he said he would cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. how did that work out? last week had the congressional budget office said that the federal deficit for the coming year would be over a trillion dollars for the fourth consecutive year garrett kern he has not even come close, not even close -- for the fourth consecutive year. republicans have had to fight tooth and nail for every dime in savings we have secured. president obama has ignored the advice of his own deficit- reduction commission. he has ignored the dire warnings that come to us every single day from across the atlantic, and he has failed the american people who entrusted him with the stewardship of this country.

more spending, more debt, fewer jobs. that is the sad legacy of this administration chose the policies. - of this administration's policies. that is held they will remember this president's three-year experiment in big government as a colossal failure that manage to bring about one good thing. one good thing came out of all this -- a resurgence of common- sense conservatism. [applause] thanks to the liberal overreach of the obama administration, countless americans have rediscovered the constitutional principles that bind us. they have a new appreciation for the fact that in this country, the government serves the people, and not the other way around. that is why when the american people read that the compensation gap between federal

and private workers has doubled over the last 10 years, and that the benefit for federal workers are about 60% higher than taxpayers who pay for them, they have every reason to demand a federal pay freeze. [applause] now listen to this. right now, there are 2.2 million people on the federal workforce. yet at a time when the federal government in washington is routinely spending upwards of a trillion dollars a year more than it is taking in, layoffs of federal workers have dropped to fewer than 300 a year. according to one analysis i read, that means federal workers are 13 times more likely to die of natural causes than to be laid off. and this president, by the way, has added 150,000 jobs to the federal government during his term.

washington is a boom town. now you tell me, what about the performance of the federal government over the past few years makes you believe that everyone who works for it is absolutely necessary? the government is doing too much already. it is time to stop hiring people to fill jobs in washington that don't need to be done. [applause] it is time to impose some balance between the public and the private sector. under this president, government spending has gone up more than 20%. the federal debt has gone up 43%. this is one of the reasons i never tire of telling people the problem is not that government taxes too little, but that it spends too much. i don't know about you, but the way i see it, until washington proves it can spend money more

wisely than it does right now, the taxpayers have no reason to hand over another single dime in higher taxes. [applause] look, until washington puts a higher priority on using the money it gets on things we need, instead of blowing it on solar panel companies, the american people should tell congress it does not need another sent cent. that leads to another thing the american people are reminded of the past few years. people should be rewarded for what they know, rather than who they know. you remember throughout the debate over health care, americans saw the white house cut deals with special interest and lawmakers that we later

learned foreign-exchange for their vote that favored obamacare. then they watched as they granted waivers to the very groups that lobbied for the bill. they lobbied for the bill, but they don't want it to apply to them. most americans don't think that one group of americans should be entitled to special treatment just because of their political sympathies. that is just one of the reasons they will keep fighting to repeal this bill. [applause] i can tell you this, senate republicans want everybody in america to get a waiver from obamacare, everybody. not just the politically collected project not just the politically connected few. that is why republicans in congress have joined together to fight the individual mandate in the courts and why we will continue to do so until this

unconstitutional burden is overturned. then we are going to replace it with the common-sense reforms that lower costs, and that is what americans really want. these things have one thing in common. every special favor or preference we have seen from the white house reveals the very same thing. and that is a lack of faith in the ability of americans to figure things out on their own. the roots of liberalism have always been the same. what liberals cannot accept is the idea of a free people and free institutions pursuing happenings -- happiness as they see fit. with a deep respect for the rights and differences of others. without the heavy hand of government to direct their lives for them. the administration's recent assault on religious liberty is a vivid and troubling example of

this. what this white house is saying is the federal government will impose a fine of catholic institutions for no other reason than the religious beliefs of catholics happen to run counter from those of the sitting president. it is more than just a violation of conscience. this means that a place like the university of merlin came -- university of notre dame the free exercise of religion will a year.0 million thes for others, the cost could be as much as $100 million a year. this is not an administration that welcomes diversity. it is an administration that fears that diversity.

the obama administration has crossed a dangerous line, and we will fight this attack on the fundamental right to religious freedom until the courts over tune that -- overturn it. picking winners and losers, rewarding friends, punishing enemies, silencing critics -- these things do not strike at the heart of confered served as -- conservatives, they strike at the heart of what america is all about. these are the things that drive the obama economy and drive an agenda that as we have seen again and again as little regard for those who dissent or for a

constitution that is meant to protect them. keep up the fight. if some would use the powers of their office to curtail our freedoms, we need to use the power of free citizens to restore them. you know before i became a republican leader i was best known for a very long fight i waged against campaign finance laws. they were in my view a serious blow to the right of free speech. i can tell you it was not easy. it did not win me a lot of friends, and that includes some in my own party. the low point was when i watched a republican president signed into law a bill that i had been fighting for a decade. . but i did not give up. i see the government's.

-- i sued the government. i'm still fighting the state. i bring it up and i will continue to fight it through constitutional channels. this is the great power the founder's day each and every one of us. each and every one of us has the power to fight back against the infringement of our freedoms. no president is more powerful than the constitution of the united states. you know your job is to share that with others. to share that with others. the theme of this year's cpac is a question answers itself -- do we still hold these truths?

rarely in my lifetime or yours have we had such an opportunity or obligation to prove that we do. i want to thank you, all of you, for your devotion to the constitution and to the principles that in for it. i want to thank you for the determination. i want to thank you for the energy and -- in supporting candidates who share our views. it is to your commitment to the cause of liberty that liberty is actually preserved. it will not happen any other way. as reagan put it, and freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. we did not pass it to our children in the bloodstream. and must be fought for, protected, and handed on to them to do the same.

you are doing that necessary work. i can tell you, the rest of us are so very, very grateful. thank you so much. ♪ >> some of the comments earlier today from mitch mcconnell, the republican leader. we will take you back live now in washington. they are getting under way with a discussion on the 2012 election. we will hear from herman cain and rand paul. live coverage on c-span. >> "the new york times" best seller, we're glad you're here.

john gizzi, the political editor for "human events." you're given the journalist of the year award in 2002. thank you for being here. on my left, is the one and only cal thomas, america's number 1 nationally syndicated host. last but not least, from california, roger hedgecock. thank you for being with us. we will talk about a lot of news today, what is going on in the middle east, where we're headed with the presidential race, but

we will start with a topic which is "obamacare." i thought we would start with a panelist who could not be with us today. let's hear from rachel matt oddow. >> mitt romney is campaigning saying he would like to end all family planning support at the federal level. rick santorum says he would like state to make contraception illegal. you can try to make an issue of democrats' heat religion, but this is about -- eight religion, but republican party is -- >> is the republican party

waging war on contraception? what is the right message? >> we will fight the condoms the beaches. i am waiting for my draft notice for the war against birth control. some people might say looking at me is my contribution and off. the point is, rachel maddow, they have to scared their base. they have to do, crazy klansmen are coming for you, birth control, otherwise there guys will stay home. one thing he say about rachel, she is always on message. >> roger, what would you say on this? >> you hear a lot of things, but in california this is a primitive debate because we already have free transgendered

operations in prisons. we have gone be on this issue of contraceptives. we have a much more liberal view of health care as being anything that liberals want any time they won it, and you have to pay for it. in california, and this is a warning who did not live in california, where living in obama's second term. we are already there. which already have these debates behind us. it is not a question of whether or not we should have free condoms, but the question is should we expand it to all the illegal aliens who want to come here, and all their progeny, and then free education on top of that. we are more progress of that anything you have seen before. >> cal, this is serious, in terms of if they get away with

this, what would happen in a second term? we seek out rich, but if the outrage does not turned action in november, what we are we looking at -- what are we looking at here? >> rachel maddow is the best argument in favor of her parents using contraception. i would be all for that. and all the rest of the crop at msnbc. all great inhumanities start at the fringes, so you have the 95- year-old double brain tumor grandmother who signed a living will and what's the government to kill her, although we will not call it that, and that is how euthanasia gets accepted. you have something like this that is forced into the insurance policies, and not only catholics, but any religious institution or even a secular

one that might not believe doing it. it is a wedge issue. once established a beachhead as a right, they would use that as precedent for increasing our righteousness. the government considers it itself god now. since it does, it immediately disenfranchises itself on the basis of separation of church and state. how is that? >> you have this, you have gay marriage being pass in washington state yesterday. the top of the race? issue to >> let me say that after having me as the cleanup batter after the three gentlemen, the only thing that this gentleman can do is died. the fact -- is die.

republicans did not intend to make this a campaign year in which social issues were front and center. i have been to several political conferences in california. for example, covering iowa, new hampshire, south carolina, and most recently florida. the social issues are almost never brought up. i'd submit to you that they have been injected into the political debate by barack obama, not the democratic party, but barack obama. this is a president who received 54% of the roman catholic vote, and as someone who has been baptized, received first communion, confirmed, and married in the catholic church, i am stunned to say the least, but i see the divisions beginning already. senator rubio told me this morning that the president made this decision against the advice

of vice-president joe biden, of his outgoing chief of staff william daley, and in deed the first members of the senate to join with senator rubio in his legislation to overturn the government's coercion of contraception and faith-based hospitals are robert casey of pennsylvania, ben nelson of nebraska, and joe lieberman from connecticut. democratic senators all. and i knew lieberman would get it right once in awhile. we could almost forget him for the defense of bill clinton on the senate floor that time. this is an important issue, and i submit to you that unless the president reverses himself for senator rubio's legislation, to

overturn the hhs order, will be front and center in the debate, and i can say -- i did not make predictions, but barack obama will not receive any where near 54% of the roman catholic vote. >> i was not baptized in the catholic church, but although i have catholic friends -- it is a big social issue think, yes, a gift from god for rick santorum that obama gave him this big fat pitch. at the same time, which should be cautious about passing it as a stand-alone social issue. this is the fighting which of "obamacare." when conservatives said there are thousands of decisions that

are left up to the winds of bureaucrats and technocrats, unelected people who have an agenda and want to cede that power to the state, who knows what could happen. this is one of the things that could happen. it is important not to make this like a wedge social issue thing, but say this is that on its own, absolutely evil to force these institutions to violate their consciences, but the thing you could expect when the government takes over something essential to our lives as our own health care. >> a lot of people see it that way. would you agree? >> this gets to the heart of who we are. are recreated or did we evolves from slime. is the power of individual more power than the collective power of governments. are our rights and out by the

crater court granted by the state. this gets back to the fundamental issue of who we are and what we are and what we want to be, and that is the bottom line debate and all these other things are symptoms of that greater debate that we need to be having. >> this is important, because our candidates, whoever they are, have to start talking like this. they have to make that bright line. they have to say we did not stand -- we stand for this individual liberty. we stand for the idea that the poor individual american is more important than the government. we stand for the declaration of independence describing the swarms of bureaucrat spirit they did and they are doing it all the time, and not just for catholics on contraceptives. they're coming for all these people, and all these bureaucratic ways, interpreting all these lost in a new dictatorship that excludes congress, and gives all power to

the president. >> look what he told lauer in the super bowl interview. he said congress has gotten in my way from my ability to bring change to america. yes, that is right, it is called the separation of powers. >> let's talk about the republicans running for the highest office in the land. how are they doing on the message he talked about and making -- in making that case? how is santorum, romney doing? >> santorum has the credentials to talk about this because he has been so identified with the cultural issues for so long. i first interviewed him when he

was a candidate for the house of representatives 22 years ago. new would have thought he would be where he is today? that was his agenda, a no-holds- barred protests like stance. you name it, santorum was there. >> will he be able to broaden it out? >> if he has goldberger as a policy adviser and speech writer, he will. at the same time, i think other candidates are going to have to look carefully at this issue and how to address it. new newt gingrich to the best of my knowledge can point to his record in congress on similar issues, and that was a long time ago.

mitt romney, a businessman and governor, never had to deal with them until the marriage issue can about. some of the candidates have to play a little bit of catch-up ball. for ron paul, it should be simple -- the government is involved in something, it is wrong. >> one of the other issues we heard a lot about the weekend was the jobs report that came out, the unemployment rate going down. we can debate what those numbers mean, but one question was the economy has been a separate -- a central focus of the campaign. what to play a clip of david brooks, saying that is not exactly the right message. >> that is the wrong strategy for republicans. you cannot wait it on the ups and downs of the economies.

i would say cyclical, we are doing better, we have a huge structural problems, we have families falling apart, and highlight the deep structural problems. the message from it is i have to have big policies, and he is cruising on a bad economy, but that may go away. >> cal thomas, how would you address this? is he right? >> i do not have the foggiest idea what he is talking about. we did not just crawl out of a cave. we do not have to invent the wheel. we know what works. the principles i grew up with, live within your means, do not envy your neighbor, the responsible for yourself. all of these principles work. we have a $15 trillion debt because the government tries to get everybody everything.

it cannot do its. -- it. we cannot tell anybody know. this is a government that cannot say no to anybody. it is like a drug. we have 15% of the country on a food -- on food stamps. that is a disgrace, not something to be proud of. you have half the country getting a government check. we have perverted the 23rd psalm. the government is my keeper, i shall not want. it is an outrage. >> [unintelligible] i want to get a plug for the

heritage foundation. we came out with an index of dependency. we now have the highest level of people in united states on a government program ever in history. one in five getting some subsidy from the government, and over 49% no longer pay taxes. that is the tipping point we are apt. >> that is exactly right. this is by design. we are getting this dependency growing by designed so the democrats will never lose another election. they will run out of peters to pay paul. they will run out of money to fund it. brooks saying this is a fallacy. these unemployment numbers are so wrong. we know unemployment is higher. we know this economy is not recovering. a government-led recovery is not working and will not work.

>> let me at a post script. so many of the characteristics of the economic calumny we are facing in this country, we are being dealt with and are being dealt with in your plan now. one only has to look at the european countries where the leviathan was so much bigger than in this country, and of the government in people's everyday lives, greater, and taxes higher. and debt accumulated. we know about the cases of greece and ireland and portugal and we may know about italy before long. but i would say to you, and of course you ever wonder why more than half the republicans in congress want to stop the line of credit for the hundred billion dollars that this country -- this country, this

congress voted to the international monetary fund in 2009. i submit to you that every country in europe that was facing the flow of red ink, there were five governments that dealt with it severely, five governments changed hands in europe in the past year. two are now being run by unelected technocrats, italy and greece, three others completely tossed out. there is elections coming up in slovakia, in france, and in greece, and i submit that there will not be a common pattern except one, throwing out the people who could not deal with the problem. i dare say what is happening in europe could happen here on the economic and political fronts. >> getting back to the republican field, a couple things i agree with roger about.

it has been the end of liberalism since fdr to make the american people clients of the state, and unless you are a client of the state, you will keep voting for the state to keep getting used up. that has been a democratic policy. we say we have a large number, 25%, dependent on the government now, i am sure the people in the administration welcomed that and say we still have four out of five to go. this is a serious problem for mitt romney. but from a -- his instincts are to talk to liberal arguments, his instincts are to the to the liberal members. gdp went up, unemployment went down, those numbers are good, so the economy is getting better. that is not the way good politicians should be talking about this. the numbers are these abstractions. the when you talk about art, are

you better off, are your neighbors better off? when you see the dow you of your own home, those of what people when you see the dow you of your own home -- those of what people need. if romney or santorum gingrich or paul -- ever it is, they have to speak to that fact, about what life as lived in the united states is like, not looking in the what the numbers are like today. that is a gift to barack obama. >> there's something else we make a mistake in doing and that is playing on liberal turf. we allow them to set the agenda on taxes and fairness. you're not paying enough, not paying your fair share.

the debate should be shifted to how much you are wasting and spending the money we entrusted to you. the governments cannot tell a how much money we should keep. we should be telling them much money to spend. the way you do that, i would say we will have an auditor command. reagan said the only proof of eternal life in washington is a government program. i would take every government program and make them justify their exits -- their existence, not their budget. that would cut it real fast. and i nominate him for president. cal thomas for president. >> i could not afford the pay gap. -- cut.

>> as a student of history, what counts, says it's not anything fresh or original or unproven. in world war ii, congress created a joint committee on unnecessary government expenditures. they held hearings from 1942 to 1943, and it weighed the existence of government programs up and down and decided on its future. a good part of the new deal was struck down by the supreme court decisions in the 1930's. almost the remainder of it was struck down by this committee, which defunded the programs that were handling the bulk of domestic discretionary spending before the war. president roosevelt had said if we are going to war, we have to

have less domestic spending, and me -- he may not have liked it, but he signed all the bills thatdefunded new deal agencies that came out of this committee. it has been done before and war ii. >> if you think about the candidates and the debates, what is the missing issue or message that you did not here either romney or gingrey or santorum talking about? is there something they are missing right now, if you were advising, you need to be out there on? >> why was ronald reagan so successful? he was so successful because he inspired us. his message was you can do it. we the people, not yet the government, the power of the individual -- this is what the founders had in mind -- individual liberty, bubble-up

morality, not top down that is imposed by politicians. reagan's greatness was that he saw in us our greatness, and that is what we admired him, apart from his good ideas in bringing down the soviet union. that is why he was inspirational. that is what commercial in 1984 touched our hearts, unlike the clint eastwood thing. what jonah said, they want a collective, they want to dependency because this ensures their power in office. i believe in recycling trash and congress for the same reason, because each left too long in the same place leads to a foul odor. get them out. >> a brokered convention -- the

you think that is where we are headed? >> more and more. rick santorum's when this week was a big deal. -- win this week is a big deal. i have been liberated it as a communist and that i have not been super enthusiastic about any of them. mitt romney is a decent man, but we saw this week he has a very hard time connecting with conservatives. there's something that people do not like. he says the right things, but like he has memorized them from a phrase book. it becomes a real problem for him. he says the right thing, but he does not convey the rights the motion. -- emotion. whether or not it is right or fair to romney, it looks more

and more like the people of the base of the republican party, the tea party, they want more items on the menu. >> are we going to get more items? >> no. look at these candidates. what have they not said? what they have not set is not only that we trust the individual, we are conservatives, we think it comes up from the people -- that is the way we think the government should be organized, to serve and protect liberty. but they need to also say look at the way the economic policies that reagan foster because of that philosophy, look how they worked. he took a 10.1% unemployment rate in 1981-1982, turned it into 1984, reduced it because of his policies of free market, regulation, the regulation,

lower taxes, to 7.1%. the growth rate was 7% in the second month 1984 because of free markets. why aren't these candidates topping we know what works because we have done this? -- touting we know what works because we have done this? >> one of the things the government is supposed to do is defend this country, and a lot has gone on in the middle east or lately. here is a clip talking about what is happening, and egypt, israel, iran, and how the administration is dealing with it. >> it is not just about syria. it goes back to the rest of iran, and the policy towards the whole reasgion.

president obama wanted to negotiate with iran. united states wanted to reset relations with russia. the russians are supporting the syrians. we have no power because the russians and the chinese stand in the way in the u.n. iran is sending its own military people to syria to help with the slaughter. here we are four years of wasting time trying to negotiate with iran and the whole middle east is on fire. >> the middle east seems to be crumbling right now, and i would argue that the administration's foreign policy is going down with it. >> it is true, not just this administration. the state and aren't as felt if we give those people -- the state department feels that we want to give those people --

want to take over the world and create caliphate -- if we give away more israeli land, they will not kill us. if you're caught has told you to kill somebody else, where is the negotiating room in this? i cannot say anything they are not saying. i repeat what they say. after a period of time and after they killed 3000 of our people and then caught trying to plant bombs in times square, a prudent person might conclude that may be enough of them are serious that we ought to respond in kind. anything -- the anything -- the only thing the islamic extremists understand its power. the only thing they understand strength. this has been turned into a ball

must -- obama's more through weakness. they're coming after us. >> even panetta said this week iran is close to having a nuclear bomb. they seem to know what we are up against, but no one is doing anything about it. >> the administration's mixed messages and mixed metaphors on foreign policy leave the not involved or even in vault observer nonplussed. i can say this as a white house correspondent. after panetta made that statement, carney was asked, as israel made up its mind and is that the basis of u.s. foreign policy? no, that is not the basis and

they have not decided. if you look at the phrases and get to the diplomatic heaves and press talked and fluff, you find the administration speaks with no solid and firm voice on what is clearly the biggest danger in the middle east. remember, even if iran does not strike at israel, if it were ever to have a nuclear weapon of any kind, the arms race in the middle east would commence and accelerate at a level and known in recent history. turkey would pursue getting a bomb, as with other neighboring countries, and we would see what he saw during the cold war repeated in the middle east. i submit to you, i say even if they would not use it against israel, in the last few days the spiritual leader in iran once again refer to israel as "a

cancer within the middle east." this is the kind of thing we hear. i would also say the situation is further complicated by the fact that we may be dealing with devils we do not know rather than doubles we know. what we know about the proposition that would come after an assad or is going to come in libya, egypt is a big question mark, the government that is supposed to be a stopgap regina holds americans hostages at this point. i am getting to be more and more sentimental for mubarak every day. >> when you look at the foreign policy this president has put in place, he mentions that getting osama bin laden is great. when you look at it in total, it is a frightening thing when you look at the situations are abroad, and what the u.s. role is in it, where are we headed?

>> he ran on the assumption -- was, peoplemise of earth, stop your bickering. i'm here to help. the guy campaigned in berlin, and i'm still trying to figure that out, but the essence of what he proposes is that because barack obama is so super awesome, that lions and lambs everything will be fine. he thinks he wins by pulling out of iraq. he is correct if those places do not become humiliating failures in the next year, which i would like to give them a chance to. the same thing with iran.

he is in a position, the equivalent of what is going on with greece, so much of his presidency is based on matters outside of his control, and he can hold up osama bin laden's take himthat will only so far, and i do not have any confidence this guy knows how to deal with a true international crisis. giving the go ahead was the right thing to do, but it is not the same thing as dealing with iran going to war with srael or the middle is teast blowing up. he has handled these things as if his own cult will win the day, and i do not think it will. >> roger, do you get a sense that people are paying attention to the foreign policy issues? >> in san diego, there's a huge budgetary basis -- a huge

military presence. we are drawing down the military, which are going to plan b to attempt to keep deterrence. at the same time we are facing huge new risks in the international field, and president to go to turkey to make a speech to the muslim world and the dog whistle goes off when he says the u.s. is no longer a christian nation. the message goes out to muslims, and we are not want to stand behind christians in your midst or ultimately the jews in israel, and ever since then, christian populations in every muslim country have been persecuted, they're people run out of the country. it is an outrage. >> we only have a minute and a half left, and we will do that lightning round.

roger, i will start with you. what is the one thing we should look out between now and election day? >> the issue is liberty. this is an election about preserving the liberty or ultimately losing it. it is that important, that is what 2012 is about. >> we cannot be read reactive. we have got to be aggressive, and i would encourage everybody here at the conference to get on facebook and twitter and to communicate with five people in your own peer group who are either on offense or who are tending toward voting for obama and showed them the facts, get on the heritage wed page, get on these great other web page. show them the facts and tried to convert them to the correct with a view. if everybody did that for five

people, depending on the state you are coming from, california forget it, then we could make a serious difference in this election, but we better go out and do it, and get all your dead friends the vote, too. that will help. >> i will make a quick plug, because i encourage you all to look at these brochures -- is $200,000 in debt today, like everybody in this room 65 and under because the promises we have made today. not the ones that are coming in the future, we're giving you five packets to pass out because it takes that one in five number, the $50 trillion number and puts it in a perspective. everybody knows somebody who looks like this and we have got to get that message out. john? >> what does the future hold and

what we should be doing? i would say pray that the first debate in the general election is held and a teleprompter-free zone. >> we're over time, this is a referendum on barack obama. if you think obama's ideas are right, his ideas of government are right, if you find the prospect of obama without the prospect of having to run for reelection again is scary, you know how to vote and if you think it is exciting, know how to vote. republicans can make the case and why this should be a referendum on him -- that is the republican he need to run in 2012. >> thank our all-star panel. ♪

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] ♪ >> ladies and gentlemen, amy frederick. >> is everybody having a great cpac? are we going to beat obama and take back the white house in november? our next speaker is someone who knows something about putting together a winning message. less than four months ago he was beating obama head to head in the polls and leading the field of republican presidential candidates. to say herman cain needs no introduction, is an

understatement. it is like saying our nation has a debt problem. i doubt there is anybody here who is not aware of this dynamic and unflinching leadership on behalf of conservatism or his economic proposal that does more to promote the number 9 man su duko. his life is one that reminds everyone that american offers the possibility for the highest flight path for the individual spirit. herman cain learn from his parents that their family not have had much money, but they were rich because of their spirit and optimism. relentless in his pursuit of that dream, he earned degrees in mathematics and science and his talents that into careers working in the navy and for pills very. we know about his incredible

success in the business world. he was responsible for providing godfather's pizza, an achievement that earned him the special scorn of michelle obama. a branch of the national restaurant association were confronted bill clinton at a town hall meeting, helping to plan inhillary clinton's 1993. he has been fighting in the trenches for years, promoting principles to our constitution far and wide from the border to the inner city and everywhere in between. he is one of the founding fathers of the tea party movement and gave the response to the president's state of the union address. he understands what it is like to fight. five years ago he was diagnosed

cancer. for a man who built the success of been able to do the math, the 30% odds of survival the doctors gave him were another number and thankfully he is here today with us, cancer free. herman is a man who understands what matters most in life, and with his trademark smile, always available to show others, optimism, polish, artwork, family, industry, consistency, and though he is no longer running, he is far from steny on sidelines. his mission is to keep the torch of liberty and limited government a life. it's my pleasure to introduce to you a shining light, herman cain.

♪ >> thank you. thank you very much. just so there is no confusion, these teleprompter as are not for me. i do not do it teleprompter is. i do not -- i do not the teleprompters. in 1770, colonists were fed up with king george, and the abuse

and the arrogance imposed upon citizens and patriots who all they wanted to do was to create a free nation. 1785, the american revolution started. eight years after that, we won the american revolution. our nation today has become a nation of crises. we have an economic crisis. we have an energy crisis. we have an illegal immigration crisis. we have a fog a foreign-policy crisis. we have a moral crisis. and the biggest crisis we have

is a severe deficiency of leadership crisis. here is what this administration and many of the d.c.,e in washington , did not understand -- the american people are fed up again with the abuse and arrogance. we need another revolution in this country. it will not be bombs and bullets. not this time. it will be brains and balance at the ballot box. we must outsmart the liberals. we must outsmart the stupid turned thatarhave

around america. we outnumber the stupid people. trust me. i counted them. my good friend, a talk-show host out of a plant that -- out of atlanta, he said, herman, i beg to differ with you. i said what is that? he said, there is a difference between people being stupid and ignorant. i said you are right. he said they do not have the ability to learn. if your people have the ability to learn, but they will not learn. they do not know any better. i said you are technically correct. what you are saying is stupid

people can ignore and people are ruining pamerica, both of them. there are both ruining america. this is how we save this nation, folks. i challenged to be last year at this conference to do three things. i challenge you to stay informed, state involved, and to stay inspired. and those three strategies are still applicable today. because since we met here a year ago, those three strategies have become even more important, and i know that many of you were big supporters of mind when i was a candidate for president.

thank you. thank you. i want you to note that that is not something that i do not appreciate. just so i will say it to you directly, because of your support and the enthusiasm, there were two reasons i dropped out of the race. gutter politics and, number two, i chose to put family first. and in making that decision, i knew that we together could change washington, d.c., from the outside and from the bottom of, even if your david did not make it to the white house.

what i decided to do is create an army of davids, and you will be part of that army. stay informed. this administration is deceiving the american people. they say we are any recovery, but how can 1.7% growth in gdp be a recovery? it is not. this is the only president where gdp has not gotten above 4% in the three years he as been there and is not anticipated to happen this year, and he says on tv, i deserved another term. for what?

1.7% gdp growth is not a recovery. yet the thing that this administration is deceiving the american people on, unemployment rate. some of you may recall i was in mathematics major in college. i can count. and i also know when they have manipulated the numbers to present whatever result they want. it is called if you change the assumptions, you can get a different result. that is what they did. they stopped counting the people that had dropped out of the work force. they stopped counting the people that were under employed. that is how they can up with 8.3%, but if you add those people back in, the real unemployment rate exceeds 15%. that is the real number. stay informed.

know the facts. i am not the only one who uncovered their little scam. former labor secretary -- did kerr analysis and came up with the same result. d, becauseme, the lane lap dog media cannot do those calculations, and most of the people will be buffaloed by false facts. state informed. know the facts. good to my web site, cainconnections.com. secondly, stay involved. many of you are involved in different organizations. you are here because you are involved, and you want to learn. involved, and you want to learn.