John Ensign: “I wish to applaud the Senator from Maryland, Mr. Cardin, for his great work. It has been a pleasure working with his…”

“I wish to applaud the Senator from Maryland, Mr. Cardin, for his great work. It has been a pleasure working with his staff and with him personally on this very important amendment. We are trying to help the housing situation in the United States. My State, Nevada, leads in foreclosures. I saw a statistic the other day that, after a record month of foreclosures in February, foreclosures in March were up another 50 percent over February. So it is a huge problem. There are a lot of young people out there--first-time home buyers--who want to get into the marketplace to try to participate in the American dream. That is what this amendment is about. It is targeted right at those young people, or the single person, who is trying to buy a home for the first time. And maybe they might even be a little older but have never been able to afford a home until now. This might be the economic incentive to get them into owning their home for the first time. There are so many benefits to home ownership. There is more of a sense of community when you are paying property taxes; you care more about the schools; you care more about where those taxes are going. So this is an excellent amendment at a great time when we are trying to help the housing market. But we will also be helping individual Americans with this tax credit at the same time. I wish to applaud the leadership of Senator Cardin on this.”