On the recordMarch 16, 2011
I yield myself another 30 seconds. The gentleman made a big point of saying, buy the property from this person. He doesn't know who owns the property. No one knows who owns the property because no one owns the property. They walked away from it. And what we're saying is part of this is not to pay off the bank. And I will say, last point, and as you know, the taxpayers shouldn't do it. In the bill that passed the conference committee which authorized this billion dollars, we said that the money should come not from the taxpayers but from large financial institutions that have more than $50 billion in assets and hedge funds with more than $10 billion. Republican opposition killed it. I'm going to refile that bill today. So I invite my Republican colleagues to join me and we will sponsor this bill, and it's in the committee that the gentleman chairs. Let's pass a bill that says the money that will go to cities to knock down property where they can't find the owner will get it from the large banks and from the large hedge funds. And if the gentleman will agree with that, then this whole argument about the deficit will disappear. But I will predict, Mr. Chairman, that they will find that that's not so persuasive, and they will put up with the deficit when it means saving money for the large banks.
