President's Compassionate Conservatism a Failure in America

PRESIDENT'S COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM A FAILURE IN AMERICA -- (House of Representatives - April 22, 2008)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, last week when Pope Benedict XVI visited our Nation's Capital and then the United Nations, he inspired America and the world by invoking the moral imperatives of peace, justice and human rights. In greeting the Pope to America, President Bush dusted off his message of ``compassionate conservatism,'' which has lain dormant for 8 years since the Bush-Cheney campaigns of 2000.

President Bush said as the Pope sat there, ``Here in America, you will find a Nation of compassion. Americans believe that the measure of a free society is how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable among us.'' The President said, ``So each day citizens across America answer the universal call to feed the hungry and comfort the sick and care for the infirm.''

The President might be correct that American citizens try to fulfill these moral obligations of feeding the hungry and comforting the sick, but they are doing it with no help from his administration. Surely his administration has been conservative, but not compassionate.

The United States Government under George W. Bush has turned its back on the hungry. Ask any person who handles a food bank in this Nation. They took one program, the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, and totally eliminated it, a program that feeds our Nation's hungriest. And while food pantries across our Nation are short and donations way down, the President turns a blind eye and utters those false words before the Pope.

The United States Government under George W. Bush has turned its back on the sick and the infirm. It was he who vetoed the children's health program and has since failed to provide health care for so many millions of our Nation's children whose families are working but still have no health insurance.

If the measure of a President is how his administration has treated the weakest and most vulnerable among us, then George W. Bush has failed the test of that leadership.

Here at home we have people converging on food pantries that are not able to cope with the demand. We have young people unable to find summer jobs, find it difficult to get student loans, and even more difficult to get a job to pay them off. We have families that lack health insurance. We have 10 seniors waiting for every one available affordable housing unit. And we have veterans in dilapidated facilities without the proper health care and support they need to rebuild their lives when they return home. This in a land where President Bush says, ``Each of us is willed and each of us is loved.''

Mortgage foreclosures have a death grip on our economy, yet Washington continues to drag its feet on a solution with real bite. An estimated 1.6 million foreclosures occurred in 2007, and as of December, 2.9 million loans were past due, signaling that the worst is in front of us. This means that more than 40 million homeowners are at risk of seeing their property values decline as a result. And by early 2009 as many as 12.5 million homeowners will have no equity in their homes or will owe more than their homes are worth. In fact, America today is experiencing something it never has before, negative net equity in home mortgages. The value of the home is less than what people owe.

Where is the Bush administration? I invite the President to Ohio. Help us get these mortgage servicers to a table so we can do workouts. Where is HUD? Where is the Federal Reserve? Where are all these regulatory agencies? Where are they? Where is the President?

States and localities are struggling because of the Federal Government's absence in this area of workouts, and municipalities' tax bases may drop as much as $356 billion over the next 2 years, further undermining their ability to provide vital services for strapped residents because their tax bases are going down as a result of declining property values.

We have had the largest home equity washout in U.S. history. And what is the Bush response? To transfer $29 billion to bail out Bear Stearns, a Wall Street fast buck operation which is a Federal Reserve favorite and a primary dealer of U.S. Government securities. Yet nothing is done to help the States where these foreclosure crises are going on every day, to help America's families reposition so that they don't lose their major asset.

Yes, the Bush administration is conservative, but it is not compassionate. In the Middle East, the Bush invasion of Iraq has yielded over 5 million refugees. The President has done nothing to help those displaced refugees have some semblance of a decent life. A million and a half Iraqis have fled to Syria alone.

Mr. Speaker, justice demands more than individual charity. It demands justice of us as a rich and powerful Nation.

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