Providing for Consideration of H.R. 5072, FHA Reform Act of 2010

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Mrs. CAPITO. Madam Speaker, I would like to thank Mr. Sessions from Texas and I would like to thank Mr. Frank, the chairman of our committee, for the work that we've done on the underlying bill, the FHA reform bill. It is an important bill, and we will be debating that and talking about that quite a bit for the next 2 days.

What I've heard over the last week when I was home for the district work period is that people are really concerned about the spending and overspending that's going on here in Washington. Folks in West Virginia are tightening their belts and making difficult decisions, but they don't see that happening here in Washington.

Right today, we have before us in the previous question vote, we're going to have an opportunity to make a cut in government that makes a lot of sense. Over 315,000 Americans have voted to perform this cut on government spending by voting to reform Fannie and Freddie. We estimate that we could save approximately $30 billion over 10 years--that's significant--by ending some of the government conservatorship, shrinking their portfolios of Fannie and Freddie, establishing minimum capital standards, and bringing transparency to taxpayer exposure.

Since going into conservatorship--and many folks have been quoting this figure--the U.S. taxpayer has supported the GSEs to the tune of over $145 billion.

As we heard from Mr. Garrett from New Jersey, that is limitless, how far that can go.

One of the things I don't think taxpayers realize when they made this vote on YouCut was that recently the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency approved compensation packages for the chief executive officers of Fannie and Freddie of $6 million each, including $2 million incentive payments for each executive.

These compensation levels are 30 times that of a Cabinet Secretary, and they were approved for entities that are owned basically by the taxpayers and entities that have borrowed large sums from the taxpayers.

And I think by this YouCut vote what Americans are saying is, ``Enough is enough.'' We have heard a lot about the past and whose fault it is, quite frankly, over the last week. I didn't hear anybody wanting to cast blame; they want people to solve problems. That's what they have sent us here to Washington to do. We need to look forward to solve these problems.

So, as we all know, both Republicans and Democrats, lots of times the American people are a lot farther ahead of us in their thinking and in their commonsense solutions. And one of these is this YouCut proposal before us today, which will give us an opportunity to put their voices before us and for us to give them a sign of approval that, yes, $30 billion from Fannie and Freddie to save government money, to also end the conservatorship of Fannie and Freddie.

That's another thing I hear in town hall meetings across the district: People don't know who Fannie or Freddie are. They are costing each American taxpayer dollars every day to the tune of over $145 billion in total.

So, with that, I would ask that we vote ``yes'' on this YouCut proposal. It makes good, common sense.

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