Melvin Watt: “I want to make it clear what this debate tomorrow will not be about, because it really has surprised me what the general…”

“I want to make it clear what this debate tomorrow will not be about, because it really has surprised me what the general debate has tried to posture as an issue. We worked very hard in the Committee on Banking and Financial Services to try to make this a better bill. And what this debate will not be about is a choice between whether we are in favor of reform or the status quo. The bill itself can be improved. And to posture this bill as the only version of reform that anybody can support and the alternative is that we are supporting the status quo is just a very, very, very bad thing to do, and I hope my colleagues on the other side will not do it. Second, this debate is not about flexibility because, while all of us support more flexibility for local housing authorities, time after time after time in this bill we are taking away flexibility from local housing authorities by mandating that they do a number of different things, not the least of which is to require occupants in public housing to volunteer. Now, how we require somebody to volunteer and call it volunteerism, I simply do not understand. What this debate is about is how the Republicans would like to posture the poorest people in this country against those who are also working poor or the near poor, as I will call them, because that is the dilemma that this bill will put all of us in.”