Barney Frank: “I was quoting him when he said, if a Republican President did this, we would have an outcry. A Republican President did…”

“I was quoting him when he said, if a Republican President did this, we would have an outcry. A Republican President did much worse. In fact, I think the current administration of HUD is doing a very good job in difficult circumstances. I think there is a misperception about the section 8 program. The section 8 program is not one undifferentiated pile here in Washington that is doled out from Washington. It is broken up, it is allocated among thousands of jurisdictions, and the rate at which section 8 is utilized depends on the jurisdictions, the administrative efficiency in the jurisdictions, the rents that go up in the jurisdictions, the difficulty that people have in those jurisdictions of finding housing. I know of section 8 vouchers that have gone unused in my own district because the rents have been so high. Indeed, there is probably a logic in linking this to the Space Station, because pretty soon it is going to be as about as expensive to live in parts of Boston and San Francisco as it is to get them up there in the Space Station. The section 8 program is a decentralized program in its administration, and the failure to have a 100 percent utilization rate is inherent in the program.”