Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary, the District of Columbia, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006

TRANSPORTATION, TREASURY, HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, THE JUDICIARY, THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, AND INDEPENDENT AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - June 29, 2005)

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Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I certainly appreciate the opportunity to speak on this appropriation that is before us.

I am perplexed with how and why decisions are made, basically, by my friends on the opposite side of the aisle to do away with economic development. And as I look at what is happening, what is proposed, for example, to be transferred to Commerce, what is zeroed out, what I see is an attack on programs that could create some real initiative and self-reliance.

The YouthBuild program was just talked about. YouthBuild is an important program where young people are developing skills and attitudes to become independent. Why would we zero that out?

In addition to that, the section 108 loan guarantee program is an economic development program for cities that does job creation and helps to improve cities and build up the old towns. Many of our cities are using this; and for some of the little towns and cities, they absolutely depend on these kinds of economic development funds.

Mr. Chairman, I do not understand why the attack on these economic development programs, these programs that will help to make our young people self-reliant, and the block grant program that is being reduced by 21 percent, that goes into our cities to help us deal with not only senior problems, young people, the gangs, et cetera. I think we are undermining our efforts to strengthen America and to invest in human potential by cutting these programs and zeroing them out.

I would ask that reconsideration be given, if no place else, but in conference. I am going to come back later on today with an amendment on section 108 loan guarantee programs, because that will not be scored against the budget. These programs are kind of guaranteed by CDBG moneys, and you do not have to spend the money to get this economic development.

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Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I have examined very carefully this budget that we have oversight responsibility for in the Committee on Financial Services and the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Development, and it is a matter of whether or not we are going to stand up here on every issue and try and get those programs back that have been zeroed out and attempted to transfer over to Commerce, whether or not we are going to stand here and beg for some meager assistance to help us with the Section 8 program, whether or not we are trying to get the Brownfields back or the section 108.

Well, it is pretty difficult to choose which one you want to spend your time on. As ranking member of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Development, I really would like to speak on all of them because it is really unconscionable that in this time in the United States of America, 2005, that we are haggling over dollars to help American citizens have a decent quality of life with decent housing.

We have a crisis in housing in America, not just in our cities, in our rural areas. People are not able to have decent housing. They are looking to their government for some help. We are giving some help. And I am appreciative of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg) for the hard work that he has put into this budget. I know that given what he had to work with, with the limitations of this budget, he has done the best job that he could possibly do. That is why some of us have been so opposed to these tax cuts.

We know that the tax cuts that we have passed in this Congress have benefited the richest 1 percent in America while we have people who are sleeping under bridges, families that are living in cars, people who work every day who cannot get into apartments because they cannot pay the first and last month's rent; children who go to school every day living in cars who are basically homeless because they do not have a place to live.

For those people who are fortunate enough to get the Section 8 vouchers, now we have to say to them as we did in Los Angeles that we cannot fund some of those vouchers. We made some mistakes in Los Angeles, and we over subscribed what we had. And we had people out there that we had given the authorizations to that we cannot honor. And now we are talking about taking money from one of the most profound programs in all of government, a program that simply allows individuals and families to have a decent place to live, and we are going to eliminate their ability to have decent housing because we want to spend money on some computers.

Well, I am all for good systems. I am all for upgrading. Now is not the time. Let us not take money from these housing subsidies in order to have computers when, in fact, if we take this amendment, we can fund 15,000 more vouchers. That is not too much to ask.

I know that there are those who have said we have made the additions. We are not going to undo them. We are not going to turn them around. But those of us who get these calls in our offices, ask us, Where can you find me a place to live? How can you help me?

The lines are long all over America. People wish to get in this Section 8 program because they cannot do any better.

Our ranking member referred to housing production. It is next to nothing. We do not have housing production. The cost of the land acquisition is too high. It is absolutely prohibitive to try and build low-cost units for people who really need them without some government help. And we do not have enough government help in order to acquire the lands and to write down the costs of building these units.

The best thing that we could do for those who could not do it without us is to provide them with Section 8 housing vouchers. I do not think it is too much to ask. I support this amendment, and I am very thankful that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) and the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velázquez), despite the fact that they were advised not to do it, had the courage and the guts to do it. So I stand here with them to say no matter what else we are cutting, let us put the money back into this program.

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