Bob Menendez Jr.

Congress does not have the resources to meet those recommendations.

Now, when you lose 20 percent of your ratable base--I was a mayor for 6 years--that is a nightmare because there is no way to make it up except for shifting the responsibility for that community's cost to all of the other ratepayers and/or…

I urge Congress to act as soon as possible in approving recovery funding for the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut region.

This is the worst natural disaster that my State has ever faced.

I appreciate that the supplemental appropriation that we will be considering has CDBG monies that can give us the wherewithal with the flexibility.

These small businesses simply do not have the resources or capital that larger companies do to quickly rebuild.

It took a lot of work to restore service on New Jersey Transit which suffered disruptions on every rail line.

There is a clear case to be made, in my mind, that but for FHA in the midst of this housing crisis we would have a far greater crisis on our hands.

Do you have a different view than Moody's data that shows that the FHA's presence in the market prevented housing prices from dropping another 25 percent?

I am going to be working with this Committee--I look forward to it--to rebuild New Jersey's transportation infrastructure to make it stronger and more resilient.

We desperately need, Madam Chair, to provide the Army Corps the funding it needs to do not beach replenishment; this is about engineered beaches that save lives, save money, and stop us from repetitive loss.

Well, getting electricity back up. I think we've done a pretty good job on search and rescue.

You know, can we use military transport? ... Great. Can we transport them in a C-130?

So just thinking outside of the box and cutting through the bureaucracy and getting it straight to the relief.

I have introduced the Prepaid Card Consumer Protection Act, and I want to applaud the agency for starting the process of regulating prepaid cards.

I have long advocated national standards for banks that collect homeowners' mortgage payments.

But I know that the President and Congressional Democrats, including myself, fought hard to create this agency, and dismantling it or weakening it would be a terrible mistake.

So you have done that despite the fact that many Members have fought tooth and nail against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

I am told--our crack staff wanted me to tell you that we believe we have received over 3,000 consumer complaints thus far from the State of New Jersey.

I look forward to working with the Chair and his leadership hopefully in the next Congress to see if this is something that we within the housing context could prioritize.

Local public housing agencies across the Nation face an existential threat.

I want to speak to you about interest rate manipulations by large banks since the Fed plays a role, a key role in ensuring the integrity of interest rates that affect consumers, small businesses, and cities and towns across the country.

Congress should thus pass S. 1616, the 'Real Estate Investment and Jobs Act'.

At our hearing last November, I expressed concerns about the Military Lending Act, which caps interest rates for consumer credit to military borrowers at 36 percent but does not cover all loans.

Your testimony underscores a critical need for Washington to remember that our first project must be, as you put it, to accelerate economic growth and job creation.