On the recordFebruary 9, 2012
I am so happy the gentleman has asked that question. I have served on the Housing committees for my entire career in Congress. There has been no modern recovery in our country that has not been led by housing development. If you talk to Realtors, if you talk to homebuilders, you'll see how poor that market is right now. We have to fix the housing sector. On the part of the majority here, there haven't been any serious hearings on this. Have we gone out to the country? We used to go out to the country. When there is a crisis, you go out to the country. If Louisiana loses part of its southern edge, we go down there. We try to help. We try to figure out what's going on. On this housing problem, there has been such timid action, almost no action, by this Congress. We've just let it fester and hemorrhage across the country. History will show this was one of the most irresponsible periods that damaged our housing stock from coast to coast, and we will be paying for it for years to come--in shattered lives, in shattered communities. If I chaired the committee, we'd be all over the country. We wouldn't be sitting here in Washington doing nothing. We would be going out to these communities.
