John W. Olver: “This amendment again, as the gentleman has said, is an amendment that would freeze at the level of the 2012 funding here…”

“This amendment again, as the gentleman has said, is an amendment that would freeze at the level of the 2012 funding here for salaries and expenses of the Office of Community Planning and Development. Now, this office, it turns out, administers and implements the CDBG program, which in the bill, as presented by my chairman, is increased substantially--several hundred million dollars in the CDBG program--and increases the funding for the HOME program, which had been held at a much lower level in last year's program. In both of those cases, they were considerably lower. {time} 1240 And just last night, we added an amendment to increase the funding for HPWA, Helping Persons With AIDS, one of those vulnerable populations that we have, and our housing programs--as with veterans who are homeless, others who are homeless, those who are vulnerable such as those living with AIDS--have proven to be rather strong programs that have strong support. Furthermore, already, across the board in HUD, there has been a reduction in personnel services and in the salaries and expenses of $20 million already compared with last year's overall within HUD. So this is a duplicate and hitting at vulnerable populations that we do not want to or should not want to be reducing. The reduction again requires that there be some reduction in personnel because people's salaries go up.…”