Political Quotes

“I am glad the gentleman from New York brought out his chart; it was his chart, and he picked 1982, not as a random number but because that is the point at which he believes the Brooke amendment began to have a negative effect. Interestingly, that is the year the Brooke amendment was changed. The Brooke amendment began as a limit on the overall amount that could be charged. It never argued for income-based rent in every case. It simply said no matter what your basis is, housing authority, this high and no higher. In 1981, as part of the Republican program of Ronald Reagan passed by a Republican conservative Democratic coalition, that was changed and it became both the ceiling and a floor. At that point, yes, it did have some unintended negative consequences. The theory was in Gramm-Latta that they did not want to appropriate that much more Federal money, so the reason they did that in 1981 was to force the housing authorities to take more money in than they otherwise would, and that was wrong. The amendment we are offering today restores the original Brooke amendment, the pre-1981 amendment. It says there will be an overall limit, and that is all it says. In fact, no one has shown any negative effect during that period. We are restoring the Brooke amendment to what it was in the 1960's and the 1970's. In other words, this argument that the gentleman is making about a work disincentive is dead wrong.”