Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. Mr. Chairman, this is an amendment that is known to the ranking member as well as the chairman of the committee. I will not complicate it. It is a very simple amendment. It simply says that HUD may--HUD may--develop a pilot program to consider additional credit scoring information.

We know that there are people who have insufficient credit files and, as a result, they don't get consideration for a light bill, gas bill, water bill, or phone bill. These are some of the things that we have people making payments on quite regularly timely, but they don't get considered.

We are simply asking HUD to develop a pilot program. We say ``may develop.'' There really is no requirement that HUD do it within some statutory period of time. There is no requirement that HUD will perform this in a certain way. But just see if there is some way to help people who make these payments timely such that this can become a part of the additional credit information.

Now, I am emphasizing ``additional'' because, quite frankly, I had ``alternative'' at one time, ``alternative credit scoring.'' That created some confusion because we are not using this as an alternative. This becomes additional information.

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Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?

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Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) is imminently correct. We are friends. I say it in the sincerest way as well. He and I have collaborated on many issues, and we have gotten a lot of things done in Congress. I hope that doesn't hurt him back home, letting people know that we have worked on things together.

But, obviously, I have a different perch, and from my perch here is what I see. I see an opportunity for additional credit scoring to be used, and if it is negative, it is not going to benefit the person that is being scored. It does not prevent any other negative information from being properly scored. It simply says that HUD may use this information, indicating that persons have paid a light bill, gas bill, water bill, or phone bill as additional information. That is all it says, that it may do this and it may create the scoring.

Now, with reference to HUD, HUD has given me an indication--and I don't have it in writing to hand to you, Mr. Chairman, but I believe you would trust my word--that they are not opposing this.

One of the reasons why it wasn't done previously was a function of HUD's budget. I believe this to be the reason. And because of budgetary concerns, it did not get done--it was codified in the law--and that is why I am reintroducing it. But this is a milder version of what I introduced previously, because previously we said HUD shall do this, and this time we have made it as mild as possible.

The Realtors are very much supportive of it. This will give 50 million people who are currently with light credit files, don't have sufficient credit scores, to have some additional information to be considered.

But it does not in any way require that negative information be received in a positive manner. If it is negative, it remains negative. If you haven't paid your car note, it is still a negative. If you haven't paid your light bill, gas bill, or water bill, it is still a negative.

It only gives the opportunity to add these other things as things to consider for many people who, quite frankly, don't have a lot of traditional credit. They don't have bad credit; they just don't have traditional credit. There are a lot of my constituents who fall into this category.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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