Unanimous-Consent Request

Floor Speech

UNANIMOUS-CONSENT REQUEST--H.R. 3074 -- (Senate - December 05, 2007)

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I have come to the floor today to make sure the record is clear on the difference between what is being said in Washington, DC, today and what is actually taking place.

Yesterday, President Bush took to the microphones to complain for the second day in a row that Congress was not getting its work done. For a second day in a row, he complained that Congress is not sending him appropriations bills that fund the most basic functions of Government. And for a second day in a row, our minority leader, Senator McConnell, followed suit. He came out on the Senate floor and complained that Congress has not sent the appropriations bills to the President.

Let's be clear, I made a request to pass the final conference bill for the transportation-housing appropriations bill so it could be sent to President Bush. What was the result? The Republican Senators blocked it from going to the White House, and that was not the first time that happened. They blocked the transportation-housing appropriations bill from going to the White House twice before. Mr. President, 2 1/2 weeks ago on November 15, they blocked it; 2 1/2 weeks ago on November 16, they blocked it; and then they blocked it again today.

Let me tell you what is going on here. President Bush and the Senate Republican leadership are trying to quietly block our progress on funding the needs of the American people while loudly complaining about our failure to make progress.

I would understand the actions of the Senate Republican leadership if our transportation-housing bill was partisan

or divisive, but the conference agreement we are trying to move again today has the support of every single Republican who sat on the conference committee in the House and in the Senate. That bill originally passed the Senate with 88 votes. That conference agreement has already passed the House with 270 votes.

This is not a controversial bill. It makes critical investments in some of the most urgent needs of the American people and their local communities. That bill provides $195 million to replace the I-35W bridge that collapsed in Minnesota, an issue all of us came out on the floor and said we would move rapidly to take care of. It is sitting right here in the Senate, one step away from getting it to the President to be signed into law, and the Republican leadership said no. So they are loudly complaining about our failure to make progress.

I would understand the actions of the Senate Republican leadership if they had not taken a look at this bill and realized the critical funding in it. Besides the $195 million for the I-35W bridge, we have $1 billion in enhanced highway formula funding so all our States--all 50 States--can inspect and make repairs to their most deficient bridges, an issue we all agreed was important.

We have $75 million in new housing vouchers that will shelter homeless veterans, including our struggling veterans who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. This is critical funding for which our communities and our veterans are waiting.

It rejects hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts that were originally proposed by the White House, cuts that would have thrown Amtrak into bankruptcy and made the congestion at our airports worse, not better.

Our bill also includes $200 million which is urgently needed to provide housing counseling services to keep struggling mortgage holders in their homes.

I wish to take a moment to talk about that last item, the $200 million for housing counseling. This Nation is in the middle of a housing crisis. Millions of homeowners are at risk of losing their homes in the next few quarters as interest rates on billions and billions of dollars in mortgages are being adjusted upward.

On Monday, a few days ago, the President's own Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, and his Housing Secretary, Alphonso Jackson, made speeches on the need for Congress to address the many steps necessary to minimize this crisis. Secretary Paulson complained at a national housing forum about the number of borrowers who were entering foreclosure without contacting either their lender or their mortgage counselor. He said:

For this public outreach campaign to be successful, there must be enough trained mortgage counselors to answer the phone when homeowners call. The administration requested funding for NeighborWorks America and other nonprofit mortgage counseling operations in its budget.

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