Providing For Consideration Of H.R. 1427, Federal Housing Finance Reform Act Of 2007
Floor Speech
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 1427, FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE REFORM ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - May 17, 2007)
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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Vermont, my friend, for not only his friendship, but also for our opportunity to engage today on this important bill.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this unorthodox rule and to a number of provisions in the underlying legislation in its current form. While I do appreciate and support the committee's effort to provide for the safety and soundness of our Nation's housing finance system and broader financial system, this legislation has a number of fatal shortcomings that I hope will be corrected during the modified open amendment process provided for by this rule.
Unfortunately, I cannot support this rule, which breaks with the longstanding, bipartisan precedent of providing Members with the certainty of a specific date by which their amendments must be printed in the Congressional Record so that they may be included in the debate under this rule. By changing this longstanding, established practice and only providing Members with the requirement that their amendments must be printed at an undetermined, unannounced time before the consideration that this bill begins, Members from both sides of the aisle are left vulnerable to the scheduling whims of the majority, which is neither an open nor a transparent way to run the House of Representatives.
I also find it odd that a majority of the Rules Committee members would vote to provide for such an open deadline. Just this week, they demanded such precision in timing from Members and an overworked Legislative Counsel Office with a filing deadline for the Defense authorization bill. That is an unprecedented move. Amendments filed less than 12 hours after this deadline were simply turned away at the door.
Members were informed that their noncompliance with the arbitrary deadline meant that their voices would not even have the opportunity to be heard in the House.
I wish I could say that I was surprised by this decision made by the Democrat members of the Rules Committee. Unfortunately, the majority's selective enforcement of amendment deadlines and disregard for other long-standing House precedents has become the status quo in the Democrat Rules Committee. So much for all of those campaign promises to run the most honest, ethical and transparent House in history.
While this bill does provide for a stronger regulator with increased powers to ensure the safe and sound operations of the housing government sponsored enterprises, I must rise in strong opposition to this bill's worst flaw: A new housing fund mandate that would create a de facto tax on the middle-class homeowners to finance an expensive and ill-defined big government housing program.
In its budget score of the legislation, the Congressional Budget Office acknowledges that the new government-mandated assessments on the GSEs could very easily be passed on to their customers in the form of higher fees, meaning that this fund would unfairly target the most modest home prices to finance this unprecedented government-mandated redistribution of wealth from the middle class.
I believe it is bad public policy to tie the fate of families that need housing support to the success or failure of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac's portfolios. Even worse because the affordable housing funds would come from loans that are less than $417,000, which in 12 metropolitan areas in the country is dangerously close to or below the median home price, this bill levies a new stealth tax on the most modest home buyers without even disclosing to them the costs associated with this new Federal mandate. Mr. Speaker, it is the same as a tax increase to these middle income home buyers.
To deal with this problem, I will be offering an amendment that provides useful information to home buyers about the real costs of this stealth tax. This amendment would require that the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency determine what the cost per $1,000 finance would be to home buyers whose mortgages are purchased by the housing GSEs. This information would need to be disclosed to the home buyer at or before closing for these mortgages, who qualify for future GSE purchase, and any additional cost for mortgage originators created by this new disclosure regulation would be paid for by the housing fund so that the new disclosure requirement does not create a new, costly private sector mandate.
Mr. Speaker, if we are going to pass along a brand new, stealth $2.5 billion tax increase on the middle class to pay for their affordable housing, I think that Congress should at the very least be up front about the true cost of this fund with those who are being asked to foot the bill. My amendment simply provides for transparency for mortgage consumers about the true cost of this new government $2.5 billion mandate, and I would encourage all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support it.
Mr. Speaker, I encourage all my colleagues to oppose this restrictive rule and the underlying legislation in its current form, particularly this stealth tax contained in the affordable housing fund provision.
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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I want to notify my colleague from the Rules Committee that I have no additional speakers at this time. We had spoken about that before. But, in fact, as a result of the scheduling that has taken place this morning, none of my colleagues on my side are available to come down this morning.
Mr. Speaker, as is generally always understood in this House, the gentleman is generally correct, that the Rules Committee, in fact, did provide a good number of wonderful amendments that would be made in order.
The fact of the matter is that as part of this House majority and minority being able to understand what the Rules Committee is going to do, we were looking for some transparency and some consistency. I believe it is important for Members to be able to know when they can submit those amendments that they might want to have.
It is also true that the majority is the one that determines what this schedule would be. Members generally have no clue exactly when amendments are going to be due if you do not give them a deadline and if you simply say well, before the bill is called up.
The bottom line is we are simply asking that the Rules Committee would state very clearly when amendments would need to be placed for consideration, and that is what our point is.
The gentleman also makes other points about the GSEs and about this House voting on this money that would become available for affordable housing.
I recall that earlier this year this House provided for Katrina housing relief. We've done that, and yet that's now what this bill that is left over for, that was passed last year was for. And so now what we're doing is taking a bill that was passed last year through a huge number of votes in this House, did not pass the other body, was not signed into law, and yet earlier this year we provided for a housing fund for Katrina earlier.
Now we're asking for $2.5 billion increase on middle class homeowners. We're simply saying that we believe that there should be transparency. We believe that the processes by which this takes place should be more apparent to Members where they would have these opportunities to come down.
If the gentleman wants to support a $2.5 billion increase for middle class consumers, as he did last year by bringing the bill forward, as he's doing this year, then we will let the Members decide by voting on that. But I think there should be transparency to the people who will be footing or paying the bill as to why there's additional costs that may keep people out of the marketplace because of additional costs related to them by buying their new home.
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Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
The gentleman from Massachusetts makes important points. I think that the gentleman should also hear that we believe there should be transparency to make sure that these middle class homeowners who would be buying and paying for this $2.5 billion increase, that they would understand why that additional cost is being placed on them, and these are the transparency things that we think that good government can be about.
The process also has developed itself to where we began talking about the Rules Committee once again, and Mr. Speaker, two nights ago I was provided with a summary by the majority party of a breakdown of the rules, what we have done when I was in the majority in the Rules Committee versus the Democrats now being the majority party.
And the fact of the matter is through May 15, which is what this is talking about, the Democrats have had 13 closed rules. The Republicans had six closed rules over the same period of time. Six closed rules for Republicans; 13 closed rules for Democrats. Eight open rules for the Democrats, which they call open rules but that had a preprinting requirement, so they really should be modified open rules, but the bottom line is a number of those have been over suspensions that Republicans did not even place a rule on. We just brought them to the floor of the House of Representatives and let them see what that outcome would be.
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