Melvin Watt: “I want to thank my colleague for the time and for his leadership in this tremendous effort. I would like to spend some…”

“I want to thank my colleague for the time and for his leadership in this tremendous effort. I would like to spend some time just challenging a notion that is out there that this whole meltdown was unforeseeable by anybody, that nobody could have foreseen it, and dispel that notion by understanding that on March 16, 2004, the first anti-predatory lending bill was introduced in this House of Representatives by Brad Miller of North Carolina and myself. We saw forthcoming the possibility of this substantial meltdown, because we knew that predatory loans were out there being made to people who could not afford to pay them back. Again, on March 9, 2005, in the 109th Congress we reintroduced the bill, the anti-predatory lending bill. On October 22, 2007, we reintroduced the anti-predatory lending bill in the 110th Congress. Finally, finally, in this term of Congress, on March 26, 2009, we reintroduced it for a fourth time, and finally it is incorporated into this legislation. Now, why is that important? It for the first time puts around loans some prudential rules that say you ought to exercise some common sense when you make a loan to somebody. Don't do a loan to people without proper documentation of their income. Don't give them a teaser rate for six months and then escalate it by two or three percentage points and increase their fees and their payments exponentially so that they can't pay it back.”