Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I join with the gentleman in his comments about how we need to protect our veterans from the ill-considered actions of President Trump and, I was about to say Secretary Musk, whatever he is. I, of course, join with Mr. Vargas in welcoming our new chair of the Financial Services Committee. I want to focus on the bill at hand, actually two bills at hand. We are dealing with this bill now and about four other bills will go by, and then we will deal with the companion legislation. Ms. De La Cruz is the chief Republican on my bill, which is going to come up in what I hope will be only 30 or 40 minutes. I am the chief Democrat on her bill. Mr. Speaker, Congress has created various Federal programs to help those who are housing insecure, particularly veterans. Of course, to qualify for those programs, Mr. Speaker, you have to have an income under a certain threshold, so we have to define what is income. In particular, we have to ask: Do disability benefits paid by the VA count as income which might put a veteran over the threshold and deny the veteran participation in the housing benefits? I think it should not for a number of reasons. First, we don't want disabled American veterans who are homeless or near homeless to be excluded from homeless programs. Second, the Internal Revenue Code already recognizes that disability benefits paid to veterans should not be considered income.…”