Pete Stark: “I rise against H.R. 3058, the Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary, the District of…”

“I rise against H.R. 3058, the Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary, the District of Columbia, and Independent Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006, because it shortchanges critical needs of the most vulnerable Americans while continuing to make room for tax breaks for millionaires and our unwinnable quagmire in Iraq. This bill eliminates funding for the Housing and Urban Development Brownfields program and Youthbuild. It cuts funding for the successful HOPE VI public housing redevelopment program by over $80 million and for Community Development grants by $250 million. The Brownfields program helps cities redevelop abandoned and underused industrial sites. Youthbuild allows unemployed young people aged 16 to 24 to work toward their high school diploma while building housing for low-income people and the homeless. All of these programs could have been fully funded for $430 million more, or about the cost of 3 days of the Iraq occupation. I will not vote to deny a high school diploma to an underprivileged youth who's willing to build housing so that Halliburton can waste more than $1 billion, including charges for 10,000 meals never served, $152,000 in ``movie library costs,'' and $1.5 million for tailoring. A Democratic colleague of mine wrote an amendment to reverse these cuts by reducing the 2006 tax break for individuals making more than $1 million by a mere $9,000.…”