Jack Reed

These are families who are working and they make too much, in most cases, to qualify for public housing, you know, but they do not make enough to get to be able to afford decent rental housing.

This is a very small fraction of resources that is going to a very compelling need, in my view, which is housing for low-income.

I ask that you protect and fund the National Housing Trust Fund in your bipartisan bill.

I am here today to ask that you make sure that the least fortunate are included in your legislation.

What you are offering in the Housing Trust Fund is a sense of hope, that we have something that may happen.

As an appropriator, Senator, I concur.

We need to grow the program. I can't do that until we get a bill in 2014.

One of the reasons that we are so well schooled in counterinsurgency is we invested over the last decade billions of dollars in counterinsurgency.

I have the great honor and privilege to introduce Sloan Gibson, President Obama's nominee to be Deputy Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

And then there are other times when, frankly, it is in our best interest economically to try to encourage the housing market.

It looks like we are sort of making--the Government is making up for the miscues of the private sector on a regular basis, which is not a very popular position anywhere.

But I would say this, Senator, is legislating these numbers may be locking in to a position where a regulator could do a better job if they were required to be transparent, use econometric modeling, use the data elements of the loans that…

And I think that is an opportunity, to the degree that we can be helpful, we would love to talk about other ways to get there that hopefully could satisfy the broad set of stakeholders.

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen, thank you for your testimony, and not only your testimony but the work you have done over many years to help us understand the issues and come up with some concrete proposals.

The Servicemember Housing Protection Act would help military families in three ways.

Senator Jack Reed's Servicemember Housing Protection Act, S. 1593, complements your bill, Mr. Chairman.

Our bill extends this 1-year window of foreclosure protection to a surviving spouse who is the successor in interest to the home.

MOAA strongly supports the Servicemember Housing Protection Act of 2013 to expand protections under the SCRA for military families and surviving spouses.

My proposed legislation would continue this tradition of protecting our servicemen and women, and it seeks to address a continuing challenge, helping them with their housing needs.

Currently, creditors require a copy of military orders in order to trigger SCRA protections.

Our country has had a strong tradition of ensuring that the laws that protect our servicemembers keep pace with the challenges they face.

The other thing, obviously, as you emphasize in your testimony, is that with the lifting of the ban on general solicitation under Rule 506, there is an enhanced possibility of fraud.

What we are working off is a basis of the--you know, there was a general rule of no public solicitation.

But the issuers, you know, are a critical part of this.

I think we have a lot to do, and it comes back to that sort of often used term of balance between investor protections, State regulation, Federal regulation, and capital formation.