Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

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Ms. CASTOR of Florida. I thank my colleague from California (Ms. Matsui).

I rise in support of the Matsui amendment.

Madam Chair, all across America, families are doing everything right. They are paying their mortgages. They want to stay in their homes, but loan servicers and the banks have been slow to respond to reasonable requests for modifications.

Like many Democratic Members, I've held a number of foreclosure prevention workshops. What I hear from families is that these banks and the lenders and the servicers will not answer the phones to complete a modification and that, once they get the paperwork, they are not completing these modifications as they should.

Now, while President Obama's Making Home Affordable program has been positive in Florida and while we have over 83,000 modifications underway, we do not have the information necessary to tell where it is working, who it is working for, and which banks and servicers are not helping. So this amendment gets tough on those lenders and servicers.

It says that they have to demonstrate that they are following through with their responsibilities to modify mortgages for qualified families. It will keep the lenders honest by requiring up-to-date information about modifications, and that information will be made public. No more excuses for these lenders and servicers that have not been holding up their end of the bargain for America's families.

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