Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009

Floor Speech

HELPING FAMILIES SAVE THEIR HOMES ACT OF 2009 -- (House of Representatives - February 26, 2009)

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Chairman, Chairman Conyers has done a wonderful job bringing this bill to the floor with others. This is a bill that shouldn't be partisan, but the other side has tried to make it such. And obviously it's not because otherwise Jack Kemp wouldn't be wholeheartedly supporting this. Besides Jack Kemp, Nobel Prize winners in economics, Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, as well as George Soros, endorse it. In fact, this is something the American people need.

President Obama just the other night spoke about doing something worthwhile, words engraved above the Speaker's rostrum. This is something worthwhile we can do to help individuals stay in their homes, help communities, help local governments.

If we lose these people's homes to foreclosure, which otherwise we would, it's no cupcake ride into the bankruptcy court. There are strict rules about income and assets that allow a person to get in there. And the judges who are there, who might be decried by some, are judges that are appointed and sit as a decider between the borrowers and lenders for what's equitable and right. These people lose their homes and the neighborhoods' values will go down, home values will go down, tax revenues to local and State governments will go down, crime will go up. This is an effective way for neighborhood stabilizations and to keep families in their homes.

The fact is this law came out of a compromise in the Congress in 1978. And Justice Stevens might have been talking about that legislation, but it wasn't Justice Stevens' logic. And he talked about the flow of capital into the housing market. Well, there was too much flowing of capital into the housing market, and that's what's caused these foreclosures.

This bill will force modifications. People have to give 15 days' notice before they can go into bankruptcy, and hopefully banks will then have voluntary modifications, which they've refused to do up to this point. And remember, the key to this bill is FDIC insurance. And if we don't pass this bill, the banks and the community banks and the credit unions won't get $250,000 of FDIC insurance to protect the banks for what has been their profligate ways that have put us in this circumstance that we are in now in this economy and in this country.

But we need to support this legislation and see that we get the FDIC insurance for the right spot, and then we need to do something for our families and our neighborhoods.

Source