Providing For Consideration Of H.R. 3074, Transportation, Housing And Urban Development, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 3074, TRANSPORTATION, HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - July 23, 2007)

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Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, today, the House will take up the ninth of 12 appropriation measures where we will continue the effort to take America in a new direction, where we focus on priorities of concern to average Americans throughout this country.

Through these bills, the new Congress is restoring our focus on a domestic agenda that helps all Americans, not just the wealthy few and not just the well-connected corporations.

We will make sure, as we have, that our veterans have the care they need. We'll reverse neglect in environmental protection that's been abandoned, been neglected for the past several years, and we'll fund housing programs for low- and moderate-income Americans. We will provide resources to ensure that children arrive at school ready to learn and have the health care that they need, and we will make certain that our law enforcement officials have the tools that they need to protect our citizens.

Madam Speaker, House Resolution 558 provides for consideration of H.R. 3074, the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act for 2008. This will be done under an open rule. This is a bipartisan bill that was presented before the Rules Committee by Chairman Olver and Ranking Member Knollenberg. It was a pleasure, frankly, to see the cooperation of these two gentlemen and the members of that committee coming together to present to the House for its consideration a very impressive plan to meet our infrastructure and housing needs in the future.

As you know, demographic changes and growth patterns in the United States over the next decade will continue to have a major impact on transportation networks and the need for affordable housing. This bill seeks to ensure that our Nation's transportation system is safe and efficient and that our citizens have access to safe and affordable housing. The bill does so in a way that strengthens the economy and is environmentally and fiscally responsible.

The bill safeguards the regional needs of our Nation by rejecting administration proposed cuts that provide air service to rural communities, and it invests in transit projects for our urban areas that will help our commuters save time and money getting to work. The bill also rejects administration cuts to Amtrak, protects national rail service, and fully funds the highway and transit guarantees set forth in the SAFETEA-LU authorization bill.

The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee recognized the need to support rural airports, something very important to people like me from a rural State like Vermont. Investments in airports, like the Rutland State Airport in Vermont, are critical to rural States and an effective transportation system. The bill includes $110 million for essential air service to continue service to small and/or rural communities as well as $10 million for the Small Community Air Service Development Program that will continue the Department of Transportation grant program to help our small communities to attract commercial air services.

Among other things, the committee also includes $75 million for the FTA's Clean Fuels Grant program, $26 million above 2007 for clean fuel bus technology. Public transportation companies like the Chittenden County Transportation Authority in Vermont are taking responsibility for their fleet's emissions by making investments in new, fuel-efficient, low-carbon-emitting buses; and this legislation supports those efforts.

In housing, the bill rejects a $2 billion cut proposed by the administration to eliminate housing programs for the poorest citizens in this country and, instead, aims to make sure that all Americans have adequate shelter. The proposed cuts that this bill would reject include deep cuts to HUD, Community Development Block Grants and programs that provide housing for the elderly and disabled. Funding is included so that anyone with a voucher will not lose it. The President's proposed cuts come at a time when fully three-quarters of households that are actually eligible for HUD assistance are not receiving that assistance.

And more than 1 million low-income households across New England, including elderly, disabled and families, live in federally assisted housing. Most of these households have annual incomes of less than $8,000, and they're obviously at serious risk of homelessness. Even larger numbers of households are struggling to survive in a private housing market and are paying more than 50 percent of their income for rent.

The Community Development Block Grant is a valuable resource for cities and States struggling to ensure opportunities for residents to live in safe and affordable communities. It's a tool that helps our local officials do, locally, something that builds up their communities. This program has funded projects that improve the quality of life across the country, including infrastructure improvement and economic development.

In 2007, again using Vermont as an example, we received $8.4 million in CDBG funds. This bill provides $4 billion for CDBG grants across the country. That's $228 million above the 2007 appropriation.

The need to recommit to housing and transportation priorities is necessary in every State in the country. It's a priority we must address head on in this body. This bill takes a big step in the right direction.

I also commend the committee for including very strong language requiring HUD to incorporate strong green building and rehabilitation standards into its housing program, particularly focusing on improved energy efficiency, good for the environment, a pretty quick payoff and good for keeping costs down. While green building is relatively new, it's clearly vital to our Nation's homes and buildings, and to our country, that those homes and buildings become more environmentally friendly.

Finally, this bill also reinforces the link between housing and transportation. It establishes a new interagency working group to coordinate transportation and housing policies on the Federal, State and local level.

I again applaud Chairman Olver and Ranking Member Knollenberg for their hard and cooperative work in crafting this excellent bill, and thank them and their staffs for their attention to the needs of the people of Vermont and all States in this country.

I will be urging all of my colleagues to support the rule and the underlying bill.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Madam Speaker, to respond to a couple of comments that my friend from Texas said, this bill complies with PAYGO. It absolutely meets the commitment that this Congress made to pay the bills that go along with the legislation we propose. It is a commitment to fiscal responsibility.

The past Congresses, as is well known and is just factually beyond dispute, abandoned PAYGO, and it has resulted in the largest deficit of this country. That's number one.

Number two, there really is a bipartisan desire to keep taxes as low as possible and spending as low as possible, but this bill also reflects a bipartisan commitment to build our infrastructure, to provide our citizens with the transportation that they need and the housing that we need. It was passed on a very strong voice vote, bipartisan work by this committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield 4 1/2 minutes to the distinguished Chair of the subcommittee, Mr. Olver from Massachusetts.

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Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Madam Speaker, I have a newfound respect for the Chair of this committee and the ranking member, Mr. Olver and Mr. Knollenberg. They have an incredibly difficult job, and that is to take the responsibility that this House of Representatives has, Democrats and Republicans, to put together a transportation infrastructure program and a housing program, and to do that when they have 435 Members of Congress tugging on their arms every day asking them to include projects in their districts because the Members from those districts sincerely believe that those are essential to the economic development and the transportation needs and the housing needs of the people who live there.

And they managed to do it. They came in, treated every Member of this body with enormous courtesy and patience, listened to what our requests were, and then put together a bill that was bipartisan. It was quite extraordinary. And it was a pleasure to be a member of the Rules Committee and to see these two gentlemen come up and be mutually complimentary after a hard process of allocating $50 billion of taxpayer money for infrastructure and housing improvement in this country. They are to be commended for that.

We then come down to the floor and we get into the back and forth about specific projects and try to pick and cherry pick examples of what is bad when it was the recommendation of the chairman of the committee that this be an open rule; so anybody who has got a problem with any particular project is going to have an opportunity to offer amendment to strike that project and make whatever arguments they want.

This issue of how we restore the transportation infrastructure of our country is vital. The fact is we spend too little, not too much, and it is the funding issue that is a challenge in every Congress. But our infrastructure compared to many of the countries with which we compete economically is woefully behind what the economy of our country needs and the citizens of our country deserve.

I applaud the work of this subcommittee, bipartisan work. And why it is that we have to beat up on the work of the committee by claiming it is partisan, Democrat and Republican, really escapes me. There is nothing partisan about meeting the infrastructure needs of our country. There may be fierce debates about the best way to do it, which projects should get funding, how much you allocate towards the air system versus rail; but the fact is we have got an obligation to improve a crumbling infrastructure in this country, and the bill that has been presented to this Congress on a bipartisan basis, under the leadership of Mr. Olver and Mr. Knollenberg, takes us a solid step forward.

I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question and on the rule so that the House can consider H.R. 3074.

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