An Immoral Budget Proposal

AN IMMORAL BUDGET PROPOSAL -- (House of Representatives - February 08, 2005)

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Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman, my colleague, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) for yielding to me.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the President released his budget blueprint for the 2006 fiscal year. While many of us are still reviewing the document, one thing is evident. The President proposes Draconian cuts to scores of programs which millions of people depend on in order to protect the tax cuts which only benefit a few Americans.

The President's $2.57 trillion budget calls for freezing or cutting the funding for nearly every domestic discretionary program except defense and homeland security in the hopes of reducing the budget deficit. However, this budget does virtually nothing to reduce the deficit this year or any other year. In fact, the President's budget is calling for a deficit of $427 billion in 2005, a record high, and $390 billion in 2006. And since the President fails to include the cost of many of his top priorities in this budget, which will cost at least $2 trillion, the deficit will likely be either larger this year, next year and for many of the following years.

Mr. Speaker, as ranking Democratic member of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity of the House Committee on Financial Services, I am extremely alarmed about the President's decision to transfer community development programs from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, that is HUD, to the Department of Commerce.

Under the President's misguided plan, nearly all of the programs that comprise the Community Development Fund, including the Community Development Block Grant, will be moved out of the HUD program and combined with 17 other programs in the Commerce Department.

Brownfields, section 108 loan guarantees, and the Renewal Communities/Empowerment Zone Program are all slated to move to Commerce.

Once these programs are relocated to the Commerce Department, the President proposes to fund the 18 combined programs at 35 percent less than they are receiving now. This will be devastating to my home city of Los Angeles and many other urban and rural areas which depend on Community Development Fund programs to improve their communities.

Mr. Speaker, cities, States, and community-based organizations throughout the country depend on Community Development Block Grant funds because they are extremely flexible. In fact, Community Development Block Grant funds can be used for housing rehabilitation; new housing construction; down payment assistance and other help for first-time home buyers; lead-based paint detection and removal; the purchase of land and buildings; the construction or rehabilitation of public facilities such as shelters for people experiencing homelessness or victims of domestic violence; making buildings accessible to the elderly and disabled; ``public services'' such as job training, transportation, health care, and child care, public services are capped at 15 percent of a jurisdiction's CDBG funds; capacity building for nonprofits; rehabilitating commercial or industrial buildings; and loans or grant to businesses.

Mr. Speaker, the Commerce Department has no experience in community development programs, and it is likely that programs like the Community Development Block Grant with targeting provisions to focus on people with low and moderate incomes would receive far less consideration from the Commerce Department than other parts of the consolidated program. Thus, while the overall cut in community development funds is about 35 percent, the cuts to the Community Development Block Grant would be even larger.

The public may not know or understand the details of how the Community Development Block Grant funds are allocated to local community, but every mayor, every county official, every community development professional knows the indispensable role of Community Development Block Grant funds in funding housing, neighborhood improvements, and public services.

The proposed cuts to the Community Development Block Grant program will leave a huge hole in the budgets of our local governments, a hole they cannot and will not be able to fill with their own resources.

The net effect of cuts to the Community Development Block Grant program will be a huge decrease in housing and economic revitalization at the local level. When the public sees the programs and services that will have to be eliminated if these cuts are enacted, they will be outraged, as they should be.

Mr. Speaker, we cannot shoehorn $5.6 billion in programs into a $3.71 billion program without many people being hurt. Unfortunately, as is usually the case with this administration, it is low- and moderate-income Americans who will suffer.

These cuts would devastate local efforts in my city, in my county and in local communities throughout America to provide housing, neighborhood improvements and public services to youth, the disabled, battered and abused spouses and the elderly.

These proposals are designed to decimate the CDBG program, to end it as we know it, not to improve the program. They must be resisted.

May I close, Mr. Speaker, by saying, it is outrageous that this so-called conservative President has been spending like a drunken sailor, and he has created this situation that we are in with this huge deficit; and now, after having given cuts to the richest 1 percent in America, he would try to fool the American people by saying he is going to cut back on programs or services that are not needed. It is shameful and it is unconscionable that he would balance the budget on the backs of the most needy, on the backs of working families who are trying to get along.

This country must be organized to deal with this issue, and I intend to be very active in the effort to educate the public about what this President is doing.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her statement, and I might want to consider also, and all of us should consider, the fact that in this area of Community Development Block Grants, it is one of the areas where great promises are being made to faith-based organizations; and I wonder if the movement of this program from HUD into the Commerce Department is partially to facilitate a movement of grants into faith-based organizations, without scrutiny, without any peer review process and with the maximum amount of favoritism. It is something we should bear in mind.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen).

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