Melvin Watt: “I have made it clear from day one that I do not support this volunteer requirement. I do not know how you can require…”

“I have made it clear from day one that I do not support this volunteer requirement. I do not know how you can require somebody to volunteer without compensation. This is not about whether I support or do not support that concept. This is about the rules of the House that we adopted and the law that is in place that says we cannot pass an unfunded mandate down to local governments and not pay for that mandate. The Congressional Budget Office says that section 105 will cost local public housing authorities $35 million a year. The Congressional Budget Office says section 106 will cost local housing authorities an additional $30 million a year. That is a total of $65 million in additional costs that we are passing along. The argument seems to be, well, these are not local governments, but if anybody believes that a local housing authority is not a part of the local government, they ought to read the definition on page 17 of this bill.”