Political Quotes

“I support Senator Bond's amendment. It starts to address the serious problem with section 8. A large number of housing projects, or housing programs, are subsidized by rents that far exceed the rent in a given area. In 1997 alone, over 2,100 of these section 8 contracts with nearly 132,000 units will expire. The Government cannot afford to continue paying these excessive rents indefinitely. This is almost like a Ponzi scheme, which is to come on in and get an FHA mortgage to build it. But in order to sustain the mortgage at inflated rents so you don't default, you need section 8 contracts. Well, we are heading for a financial disaster in three ways. No. 1, this could become an incredible taxpayer liability if all this begins to cascade in default. No. 2, we cannot continue to pay rents above market value, nor should we. No. 3, what we find is that we have an incredible number of these section 8 contracts coming due over the next 3 to 5 years. We must get a handle on the problem. Senator Bond's approach is a very, very reasonable approach. It is a demonstration project. It gives a variety of tools to the local area to resolve this, because so much housing in a national program is locally set. The market value in Utah of section 8 is remarkably different than in the San Francisco area or the Seattle area. So we think it is a very good approach.”