Barney Frank: “Mr. Chairman, if someone is doing an illustrated dictionary and needs perhaps a metaphorical or a dictionary of figures…”

“Mr. Chairman, if someone is doing an illustrated dictionary and needs perhaps a metaphorical or a dictionary of figures of speech and wants to illustrate the phrase ``robbing Peter to pay Paul,'' that is the dilemma we are in now. I know the gentleman from Illinois who cares deeply about lower income people is as unhappy as many of us on this side in particular are at this kind of choice. I admire his commitment to the HOPE VI program which has been a very important one, because HOPE VI has been extremely useful in my district. My dilemma is that we also have a problem with public housing capital funds. And so, Mr. Chairman, Members who are undecided as to how to vote on this will get no guidance from me. They seem on the whole to do without that in general, so that is okay. But this is important because it underlines the tragedy that this bill represents. It quite literally sets the poor against the poor, lower income working people against lower income working people, public housing against subsidized housing for the elderly, anticrime/drug efforts in public housing against efforts to rehabilitate that housing. This indicates how terribly inadequate this bill is.”