Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I call for regular order with respect to the Blunt amendment No. 3900.

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Mr. LEE. Thank you, Mr. President.

I rise not to debate the broad question of the Federal Government's proper role in protecting and advancing public health; instead, I am here to stress to my colleagues that with a growing national debt that will soon exceed $20 trillion, we cannot continue spending money we don't have.

If this emergency supplemental measure is adopted, it will be the 15th emergency supplemental we have passed since 2006, totaling about $190 billion in deficit spending. This is not how responsible governments budget. It is not how responsible governments behave.

Indeed, we have the ability to provide the resources the country needs to fight the Zika virus without adding to our national debt. For starters, we can undo the $500 million President Obama took from the international infectious diseases account which was placed in his unapproved Green Climate Fund. USAID is sitting on $1.2 billion in unobligated Ebola funds. The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response currently has $347 million not being put to use. There is $525 million in CDC's global health security agenda that is unspoken for.

To the extent that the Zika virus is truly an emergency, one that deserves the Federal Government's attention, we already have more than enough unused emergency funds to pay for the fight against this emerging threat.

Yesterday, my colleague, the distinguished junior senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Lankford, illustrated that this administration has tens of billions of dollars in unobligated discretionary funds to pay for this as well.

What we should not do, however, is allow the Zika virus to be yet another excuse to run up the national debt, just so appropriators can come back and use unspent emergency money on nonemergency parochial priorities at some later date.

The entire emergency spending label is to some, perhaps, a little bit misleading. It does not mean that the money gets spent any faster. All it does is give Congress the ability to spend the money without having to pay for it, to spend the money without having to offset it somewhere else. That is not how we should operate.

I urge my colleagues to uphold this budget point of order.

Mr. President, pursuant to section 314(e) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, I raise a point of order against all of the emergency designations contained in amendment No. 3900, a list of which I am sending to the desk.

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, the affirmatively furthering fair housing rule, which my amendment would defund, is equal parts condescension and willful blindness. The condescension of this particular rule and its proponents is that local governments and public housing authorities across America can't figure out how to provide fair and affordable housing to their communities without the help, without the paternalistic interference of Federal bureaucrats. This is the epitome of the paternalism that informs so much of what happens in Washington, DC, today.

I don't doubt, as Senator Collins has said repeatedly, that local governments would like ``better guidance'' from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington. But this is a problem that was created by HUD, with its onerous requirements and its vague mandates, not the result of local governments being unable or unwilling to provide adequate low-cost housing for their neighbors in need.

This brings us to the willful blindness part of the affirmative furthering fair housing rule. Proponents of the rule claim that HUD officials consulted closely with local governments and public housing authorities when drafting and finalizing the AFFH rule. In their telling, local housing agencies across the country are welcoming the AFFH rule with open arms. But this ignores what local officials have actually said about AFFH.

I will let these local officials speak for themselves. Roger Partridge, the county commissioner of Douglas County, CO, had this to say, in an email, about AFFH, the closed process that produced it, and the immense burdens it will place on local governments:

Douglas County believes that the Assessment of Fair Housing tool as it now stands is an unfunded mandate that will create an administrative nightmare for jurisdictions who want to further fair housing and implement community programs with HUD grants.

Partridge continues:

HUD headquarters has repeatedly ignored the local practitioners responsible for AFFH and implementing the AFH in our communities.

He continues:

In fact, HUD headquarters staff was in Denver for a Public AFFH roundtable on April 21st, during [the AFH tool] comment period. They ignored the opportunity to inform Region VIII Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) staff or the local practitioners attending the roundtable. No notice from the HUD EXCHANGE to the grantee list serve was found. The local governments who were asked to comment on the publication were shut out of the process.

Likewise, this is what we have heard from Salt Lake County officials:

The administrative burden imposed by this tool is excessive. Resources that could be put into housing related tasks are being funneled into completing the tool and its associated administrative tasks.

Additionally, although HUD claims that this tool can be completed without the use of a consultant, the assessment is complex enough to warrant considering a consultant. The rule imposes a jurisdictional and regional analysis that is too complex to be effectively completed by staff without specific statistical and mapping knowledge. As housing providers, most staff at PHAs have comparative advantages that lie in providing affordable housing services, but not providing complex statistical data analysis. Forcing PHA staff to do this analysis is an inefficient use of their scarce time.

Salt Lake County officials added the following:

The AFH does not recognize the zero-sum nature of a PHA's resource allocation. By allocating resources to complete this process, PHAs are not allocating resources somewhere else. Those resources could be used to provide additional housing assistance.

Instead of ignoring the words and the experiences of our local officials, and instead of condescending to them, we should listen to them and learn from them. We should stop this disastrous new housing rule from causing more problems than it has already caused.

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, the amendment offered by my friend and colleague from Maine in and of itself is unobjectionable and does no harm, and on that basis I intend to vote for it. Unfortunately, it also doesn't do anything. It does nothing to help the many housing agencies that have told the Federal Government that President Obama's AFFH rule imposes far too many reporting costs and their already stretched staffs are going to suffer as a result. It does nothing to shield local housing authorities from the very many real lawsuits they will face as a result of the data collected from this regulation, and it does nothing to stop HUD from blackmailing local housing agencies with Community Development Block Grant Program funds.

At this time, I wish to cede the remainder of my time to my friend, the senior Senator from Alabama.

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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, unlike the Collins amendment that just passed with broad support, my amendment would actually do something with respect to affirmatively furthering the fair housing rule. Specifically, it would defund this rule and ultimately force the Department of Housing and Urban Development to respond to the GAO in a way that does not undermine local control or increase costs on already stretched thin local housing agencies.

My colleagues who oppose this amendment have given a number of examples of local governments being newly connected to make better governing decisions, but my amendment in no way stops local governments from continuing to do that. All my amendment does--the only thing it does--is to prevent the Federal Government from forcing local governments to comply with a costly and unnecessary new data collection program, and it does so in order to protect local autonomy. I therefore encourage each of my colleagues to support this amendment.

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