Tom Latham: “I do rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment. This is an amendment that on face value is somewhat confusing…”

“I do rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment. This is an amendment that on face value is somewhat confusing, shall we say. While it appears that there is a large increase in this account when it says $562 million over last year, this account is approximately level funded from last year because last year we went in and took $500 million out of reserve funds of the public housing authorities that were sitting there that were unexpended balances. {time} 1330 Those reserves are no longer there. So what we're having to do in this bill basically to stay virtually even is to have the $562 million over last year. This fund provides many of the necessary operating and maintenance activities for our housing authorities, including health, safety, and sanitation. Our funding levels for public housing build in savings from reform proposals that we urge the authorizers to complete before we go to a final conference on this bill. Again, in this entire bill, while you talk about the highway bill, financial services doing their work, but that would be extremely helpful if, in fact, we had authorizations that would actually limit spending and that we could follow. But again, I just wanted to reiterate: We used $500 million a year ago out of the funds that were available, sitting there idle. So what, in fact, this does is basically even from last year.…”