Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary, the District of Columbia, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006
TRANSPORTATION, TREASURY, THE JUDICIARY, HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (Senate - October 20, 2005)
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I rise today to join Senator Bond in strongly opposing the Coburn amendment and the numerous other amendments he has filed with the same type of philosophy, as he calls it, in the Senate.
I join with my colleague from Missouri, the chairman of this committee. I, like him, go home every single weekend to Washington State, which is 2,500 miles away from the Nation's Capital. I, like the Senator from Missouri, do not believe the bureaucrats sitting in Washington, DC, know what is happening on the ground in my home State 2,500 miles away from here. I am out there. I am out in every community, talking to people, listening to them, knowing what their concerns are, knowing what they are developing within their own communities, within their own cities, within their own capabilities, to help stimulate the economy and to do good things. It is my job to be their partner in that. I tell them that all the time. You get it going on the ground here, you develop the projects, you get the consensus within your own communities, and I will do what I can to get some small part of help from the Federal Government. That is how I, like most Senators in the Senate, am sent projects.
Last year, I was in Yakima Valley and talked to our farmers out there. This is a remote community. They are struggling with putting together a clinic. I talked to them. They developed the ideas at the local level and put together a building, a job training center, to assist our State's large farmworker community to help further their education and acquire some critical new skills. This was an important project for them. I was able to come back here and partner with $500,000 from the Federal Government to help stimulate that project to make sure it was going to succeed.
Another time, I was traveling in King County, talking to community leaders there who were working to fund a Greenbridge community center in the heart of an exciting Hope VI project that is bringing affordable housing and economic development to one of the poorest communities in King County. I came back here. It is my job to represent a State that is thousands of miles away from here, and I flew back and said I will do my part to help with this important project. And we were able to get $500,000.
Today, the Senator from Oklahoma has targeted another project that I sat down and discussed with local community leaders. I didn't come up with this. This came from the heart of my local community because they are working very hard in an urban core in the city of Seattle to turn a brownfield into a hub of activity. It is a project that is stimulating jobs and investments. That is exactly what this EDI program is intended to do. We didn't need to cut investments to clean up brownfields to produce jobs. We need more projects like this.
If the Senator from Oklahoma wants to look for a culprit for the fiscal situation in this country, he should look into the billions and billions of dollars in tax cuts that have been granted to multimillionaires in this country, and he should look at additional tax cuts his party wants to implement in future years if he wants to find incredible savings.
To take apart a Senator's projects, who worked very hard, as I have and as the Senator from Missouri has, the Senator from Rhode Island, the Senator from Mississippi, and the Senator from Nebraska have done with their projects and numerous other Senators who have gone home like we have, listened to the leadership in their communities, heard their projects, filtered through them as we have had to because we do not have a lot of money in these accounts, and said these are the ones we will partner with you at the Federal level and put into this bill.
The Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, the Judiciary, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies, under the leadership of my capable colleague from Missouri, Senator Bond, has been respectful and responsive to requests of Senators who have come up with projects. Contrary to the representation that some Members have made in the Senate, these EDI projects we are talking about are not the centerpiece of our efforts of community development in this bill. In fact, they are far from it. The funding for these EDI projects that the Senator from Oklahoma is targeting amounts to less than 8 percent of the overall funding we provide in this bill for HUD's community development fund.
In fact, my colleagues should remember that President Bush's budget looked to take the Community Development Block Grant Program out of this bill and fund it in the Department of Commerce while cutting its funding by more than a third. Senator Bond and I fought to continue the funding for the CDBG Program in our bill because we all heard from our local communities how important these funds were for development across the country.
The Senator from Oklahoma now comes to the Senate with a series of amendments targeting a few States to pick out individually named projects and eliminate those projects' funding. We are not going to go down that road. There are criteria that pertain to the funding for the project that I have, for the project the Senator from Oklahoma has, the project from Nebraska, the project from Missouri, the project from Mississippi, the project from Rhode Island, and the other projects on which he has amendments. There are criteria for these. They are not random. These funds have to be used for capital expenses rather than operating costs. None of the funds are dedicated to for-profit entities. The vast majority are dedicated to projects in underprivileged communities.
I don't care if it is my project, Senator Bond's project, Senator Nelson's project, Senator Chafee's project, or the other projects that the Senator from Oklahoma has randomly picked to target, the Senators that have EDI projects in this bill--and that, by the way, is almost every Senator in this Senate--are going to have to stand together. We are not going to watch the Senator pick out one project and make it into a whipping boy.
Now, it is true that Senator Bond and I allow Senators to allocate EDI funds to those projects in their States that they think make best use of the funds. We do not make any apology for that practice.
As the Senator from Missouri has said--which I agree with, I do not think the bureaucrats at the Department of Housing and Urban Development know better than I do--a Senator from a State thousands of miles away from here, who goes home every single weekend and is on the ground talking to community leaders in every county and every city in my State, and hearing from them what they think is important.
We do not choose these projects randomly sitting on high from back here. We go out and talk to our community leaders. They tell us this project, the one the Senator has decided to target, is a project, as I said, that is turning a brownfield into a hub of an urban center, into a center of activity, and it is critical for their economic development.
When the community leaders come together, and they have a consensus for it, and they have built the funding for it in the State, it is my job, I believe, to represent my State, which is thousands of miles away from here, and to come back and be an advocate for them.
I don't know that the bureaucrats at the Department of Housing and Urban Development ever take the opportunity to go out and sit on the ground in my State. It is my job to do that. I take it seriously. And I am happy to come back here and fight for them, such as most of the other Senators have done who have given us EDI projects in this bill this year--next year or the following year.
There is not a lot of money in these accounts. We allocate them correctly. I sat across the table from the Senator from Missouri in the Budget Committee for many years, and I can vouch for him that he is not someone who spends money randomly. He and I have disagreed, in fact, on budgets and spending over the years, but I do know that he takes his job seriously, to make sure we spend the taxpayers' dollars wisely. He votes, every time, for a budget where most of the time I say I am willing to spend more than he does. He cuts those budgets. And we have done so this year.
It is a very tight budget year. Our committee is operating within the confines of that budget. I commend my colleague from Missouri for doing so because I know how many requests we got for funding within this bill. It was a tough year. I watched him work his way through a bill, telling Members of the Senate that he could not fund all their projects. But he has moved this bill forward under the confines of that budget.
It is our job to make sure that every Senator has the ability we have to go home to their States, listen to their community leaders, and then be their partner in the Senate for this small amount of EDI funding that is available. These projects in this bill have to fall under the criteria that the EDI funds do so, and we make sure they do.
I hope the Senate will not go down the road of cherry-picking individual projects that Senators have come to us and have championed on behalf of their constituents who do not live here in Washington, DC. I hope we do not go down the road deciding we know better than home State Senators about the merits of the projects they bring to us.
As the old saying goes: What is good for the goose is good for the gander. And I tell my colleagues, if we start cutting funding for individual projects, your project may be next.
So, Mr. President, when Members come down to the floor to vote on this amendment, they need to know if they support stripping out this project, Senator Bond and I are likely to be taking a long, serious look at their projects to determine whether they should be preserved during our upcoming conference negotiations.
We must not and we will not go down the road of picking on one Senator or another on the floor of the Senate. I urge a no vote on this amendment.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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