We are all feeling the impact of the nation’s housing crisis. Long Island, like most of the country, is in the midst of a sea change in our housing market and the ripple effects are being felt throughout the entire economy.

Long Island offers an interesting example of how the housing and mortgage crisis developed throughout the nation. For a number of years, home prices on Long Island were soaring while credit and lending opportunities became more and more available to consumers. Many of us either refinanced our homes for renovations, moved into larger or more expensive houses and many first time home buyers took the plunge and purchased homes with variable rate interest loans.

As the housing market bubble burst and monthly mortgage payments increased when introductory interest rates that enticed so many to venture into the new housing market reset to higher levels, many consumers were unable to afford the increased payments and could not refinance into loans they could afford.

These practices combined with other changes in the economy lead to an alarming increase in foreclosures and ultimately, many of the financial and homeownership dreams of millions of Americans were destroyed. Read the rest of this entry »

I spoke and voted against H.R. 1108, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, because it was an ill-conceived, unfair and unrealistic attempt to add additional regulatory control over a legal product.  For too many years, tobacco has become a convenient whipping boy here on Capitol Hill.  It may not be fashionable today, but I am proud to represent the thousands of residents of the 6th District of North Carolina who make their living from the golden leaf.

I think it is wrong-headed to give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) jurisdiction over tobacco. The FDA is an over-burdened, under-funded bureaucracy that needs to focus more effectively on its core mission of protecting our food supply and bringing new and helpful medicines to the public.  To ask the FDA to take on regulatory oversight of the tobacco industry makes no sense to me.

The bill, which passed the House on Wednesday is misguided, and in my opinion will not achieve the goals identified by its supporters.  Instead, I believe it will further exacerbate an already stretched FDA, negatively impact manufacturers and farmers, and create a strain on federal revenues to the Treasury. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday evening, the House of Representatives approved an ill-conceived bill to force the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to abandon its core mission – making sure that the foods we eat and the medicines we take are safe.  The bill would gut the authority that Congress has bestowed and staunchly defended for the FDA – the authority to remove health threats from the marketplace. Instead, this bill would require that FDA use its limited resources and staff to regulate and approve products that we all know, when used properly, will kill you – cigarettes.

This so-called “Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act,” H.R. 1108, would, in fact, coddle Big Tobacco while protecting the industry’s best tools to recruit and addict your children to tobacco.  That’s why the nation’s largest cigarette maker – Philip Morris – helped write the bill and is one of its strongest supporters.

Trying to make cigarettes safer through a billion-dollar bureaucracy is a waste of time and money.  The right approach is to get people to stop smoking, or better yet, never to start. Big Tobacco supports this bill because it will not stop anyone from smoking. Read the rest of this entry »

Speculation in the commodity markets is preventing some agricultural producers from participating in the futures market and having a negative impact on rural America. Unfortunately, an effort to remedy the situation, the Commodity Markets Transparency and Accountability Act of 2008 (H.R. 6604) failed in the House of Representatives yesterday.

Without the adequate oversight and transparency this legislation would provide, we will only continue down this slippery slope, leaving America’s family farmers and ranchers in jeopardy. Read the rest of this entry »

Recent reports of the budget deficit are troubling. Not because of the size of the deficit, indeed we had proportionally larger deficits in the eighties and nineties, but because talk of the deficit threatens to limit the measures Congress and the President are willing to take to turn this economy around.

There’s no doubt about it, we’re in the midst of a slow-motion recession, and it’s going to take more than one round of stimulus checks to get out of it. This is not to say that the stimulus checks were ineffective. They were the right thing to do, and while much of the data has yet to be collected, it appears they blunted the worst of the downturn to date.

President Bush would like to sit on his laurels at this moment and wait to see if everything gets better before passing another round of legislation to jumpstart the economy. This would be unwise. State budgets that began on July 1, 2008 contain sharp cuts in spending that will affect both the public payrolls and employment in health care and other services that rely on state government expenditures. These sectors were some of the only bright spots in the employment picture over the past year. From December 2007 to June 2008, the private sector lost 564,000 jobs. Our economy needs positive intervention now to help those who are suffering from rising prices, reduced hours and unemployment. And in the long run, Congress needs to address the structural problems that led to the last jobless recovery and the housing bubble. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday’s adjournment vote is a prime example of just how out of touch the Democratic majority in Congress is with the American people.  Families are working extra hours and making financial sacrifices just to fill the tank and put food on the table.  Meanwhile, Democrats are voting to take the rest of the summer off even though the House has yet to vote on a single bill to increase the production of American-made energy.  Gas prices impact every aspect of American life, from our schools to our small businesses.  Every single Republican voted against the Democrats’ summer vacation because we believe Congress should remain in Washington until we finally do something to bring down the price at the pump.

I think that all the witnesses, but especially Steven Hawking, put into perspective the long-term importance of human space exploration. Hawking talked about a 200- to 500-year time span, and Americans—government in particular—are not accustomed to thinking of those types of time frames. But we need to think that way for economic reasons, for technological and scientific reasons, and most especially for spiritual reasons—how we view ourselves and the rest of the world.

Senate Democrats accuse the GOP of obstructing legislation to lower gas prices.

This week, President Bush signed into law the Lantos-Hyde U.S. Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008. This is the culmination of over a year’s worth of very work by many legislators, from both sides of the aisle, and their staffs.

This bill will expand American leadership, not only on AIDS but also on TB and malaria and care and support for millions of orphaned children. The amount authorized per year, about $10 billion, is less than 1% of this year’s federal budget. That is small price to pay for a program that will save millions of lives and foster good will around the world.

US global AIDS programs are already making a big difference. In the last year, thanks in large part to the US, the number of new HIV infections among children dropped by 40,000, from 410,000 to 370,000. That means at least 40,000 children have been saved from HIV/AIDS. Read the rest of this entry »

It is unacceptable that Democrat majority voted to force Congress to leave for August recess without taking any substantive steps to help ease gas prices and lessen the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

Fuel prices are crippling almost every aspect of our economy, yet the Democrats continue to do nothing but offer hollow solutions, excuses, and delays. Instead of answering the demand by the American people to do something about their pain at the pump, the Democrat majority is forcing Congress into recess without allowing any vote on substantive energy solutions. Read the rest of this entry »