Bob Menendez Jr.

I have worked hard this Congress to show how increased Federal investment in transit could result in the continued expansion of public transportation options.

I encourage Congress to include funding for transit projects in the climate change bill currently being developed.

Thank you for your extraordinary leadership on the SILO/LILO issue which continues to haunt a number of transit systems.

I think that our colleagues in the Congress have to understand that as one of the fundamental issues in whether or not you want an effective mass transit system.

A healthy transit system helps to alleviate congestion on the Nation's roads.

Like my counterparts, I believe that a healthy transit system helps to alleviate congestion on the Nation's roads.

We have substantial results in New Jersey.

We have taken aggressive steps to meet those.

We have established a clean energy program which uses market-based techniques to establish support and grant making the possibilities.

How can any servicer or any lender say you have to be delinquent? There should be a consequence for that. It is false.

You testified that servicers have incentives that keep them from forgiving principal, even when doing so might be better for the investor as well as the homeowner. How do you explain that?

Let me ask you this. When are those--will those with VA, FHA, and home equity loans be eligible for the program?

So in Mr. Perretta's case, you would advocate having the Government give him a direct grant and/or loan in order to meet his present challenge?

If the data coming out in August and then this fall supports our experience that changes to HAMP in design and implementation cannot address the foreclosure crisis, mandated loan modifications, bankruptcy reform, and servicing legislation…

I do have concerns about how we structure this in a way that affects community banks that clearly have not been at the forefront of our economic challenges.

So it just seems to me that when we go down the list of questions of what the average consumer might find themselves in, we see the incentives, for example, in the mortgage crisis for lenders to move people into products that, at the end…

community banks are likely to have greatly increased fees to fund a system that falls disproportionately and unfairly on them.

This Committee doesn't have to wait for 18 months. We can begin to do an awful lot here in this Committee to highlight the interest and the concerns about these matters.

Let me start by congratulating the House of Representatives on passing a cap and trade bill last month.

I am always impressed when I go to places that have good transit with how much happier the kids are.

I'm talking about a strategy that brings in the military element, that brings in the diplomatic element, that brings in the economic element.

I don't have the sense of that. And so, I'd like--you know, I look at what the GAO report said about our ability to validate funds.

Congress is the only entity that can designate wilderness, the only entity under the law.

Let me first start off, sort of, by saying this is the first meeting of the Subcommittee on International Development, Foreign Assistance, and International Environmental Protection, and Economic Affairs.

Business Development Companies (BDCs), which are regulated under the Investment Company Act, support more than 10,000 jobs in my home State of New Jersey.