On the recordJuly 29, 2010
I offer this amendment on behalf of myself and other Members, including Mr. Dennis Cardoza of California and Mr. Jim Costa of California, as a way to awaken HUD from its cavalier slumber. Essentially what we do is we take away HUD's travel budget. The idea is that we want HUD to be aggressive in doing mortgage workouts, not traveling all around the world at taxpayer expense. Our Nation must aggressively confront the continuing hemorrhage of mortgage foreclosures and dead real estate markets across this country. We have not hit bottom in that market yet as the crisis spreads from toxic subprime mortgages to solid mortgages held by the middle class. But where is HUD? Housing workouts are impossible without them. We know that Wall Street committed the perfect crime, executing the largest transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street by washing out our middle class--over 7.5 million families are scheduled to lose their homes--and then putting their bills, any losses that the Big Six had up there on Wall Street, right back on our taxpayers, and then being reimbursed by our taxpayers 100 cents on the dollar. Wall Street's six megabanks, and we all know the names--Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, HSBC--control two-thirds of the wealth in our country now, including mortgages twisted up in the moral hazard of securitization.
