Jerry Lewis: “reluctantly, I rise in opposition to the amendment of my colleague. Mr. Chairman, I believe the body knows that we have…”

“reluctantly, I rise in opposition to the amendment of my colleague. Mr. Chairman, I believe the body knows that we have not had any significant funding for this program since 1995. The reason for that is that the voucher program essentially has been in serious disarray. It has not delivered service or money in a way that really made sense to those of us who know that we have challenges here in terms of serving poor people, but at the same time, as we try to meet those challenges, we would like to have the programs involved to work effectively. This current year is the first year for some time we have provided significant dollars. There is some $100 million in the current fiscal year. That involves some 17,600 vouchers. We are really taking a hard look at the way HUD is implementing this program. We want to measure whether or not they will get the job done this time. What this amendment suggests is that before that measurement actually takes place we ought to kind of double the program. We would go from 17,600 vouchers to 34,800. We would go from $100 million to $197 million. Now while I have a good deal of empathy for what we are attempting to do here, frankly, I think we ought to deal as much as we can in the real world. The other body is more skeptical than we. They are providing some $40 million in their proposal this year, frankly, in no small part because they have some of those questions from the past still remaining.…”