On the recordJune 27, 2012
I believe, with the offering of this amendment, we are in great need of a reality check in this Chamber. After all, it was President Nixon, and it was a strong, bipartisan majority, with the Republicans playing a leading role, that first initiated the Community Development Block Grant programs, and I assume that this amendment will be rejected today by that same kind of bipartisan coalition. The whole idea of the CDBG program was to get away from inflexible, one-size-fits-all approaches to urban development. The whole idea was to get away from top-down bureaucratic direction. CDBG was designed to empower communities, to give them flexibility, to maximize the possibility for leverage of private sector funds, to let the community determine its own projects and its own priorities. All of us have experience with this program, I dare say. My experience has been that the bang for the buck from CDBG is virtually unmatched in any other Federal program. Housing rehabilitation, for example, is one of the main uses in many communities of CDBG funds. What you're doing with housing rehabilitation is not building public housing from scratch. You're not totally developing new neighborhoods, but you're taking houses that are likely to deteriorate, where a relatively small investment can rehab those houses, can salvage those houses, and can make quality housing available more widely in the community. Another major use of CDBG funds is infrastructure.…
