Marty Walsh: “The point I wanted to have the opportunity to make is if we look at the budget request of the President, there was…”

“The point I wanted to have the opportunity to make is if we look at the budget request of the President, there was enough funding in the bill on paper to increase these programs. But if we look at the bill closely, we can see there is a $4.2 billion advance appropriation in there that some would refer to as a gimmick because it looks like the President has increased HUD's budget when in reality the $4.2 billion is not available to be spent until the year 2001. So if those funds are not available in the year 2000, then without that gimmick the President would have had to show reductions in those same programs. We did it honestly. We presented what we felt was a real budget with real money for real people and real programs. If we are to compare apples with apples and throw out the $4.2 billion budget gimmick, we have put more money into housing than the President did.”