Political Quotes

“If there was ever an Augean stable that had to be cleaned out, it is probably HUD. What was referred to in the article today by our colleague and what our colleague from North Dakota mentioned is a real problem of management by HUD of its facilities and all of the housing that it provides. It is my belief and understanding that HUD has the authority to deal with these problems. And there are a lot more problems. Let me assure you just renting to relatives and getting section 8 contracts is not the whole game. There is equity skimming. There are many other abuses. One of the things we have attempted to do in recent years is to get HUD to focus on its job which is assuring that we provide good, clean, affordable housing to people who are entitled to it and do not pay one cent more out of the taxpayers' hard-earned money than we should pay. Many of us have been on the floor ranting and raving that we have put too many programs into HUD. Congress has been at fault. We have some 240 programs that HUD is supposed to administer. And we have chastised the Secretary and predecessors of HUD for coming up with new ideas and new programs. And almost every week there has been a new program coming out of HUD. Some of us in frustration have said: Stop. Time out. Stop creating new programs. Focus the resources on the programs that you have because there are problems.”