Maurice Hinchey: “the consideration of this appropriations bill and the rule attendant to it presents somewhat of a serious dilemma to all…”

“the consideration of this appropriations bill and the rule attendant to it presents somewhat of a serious dilemma to all of us who are approaching this issue very carefully. On the one hand, it elicits only a sense of praise for the subcommittee chairman, the chairman of the full committee, the ranking members, for the way in which they have squeezed as much as they have into this bill, given the limited resources that they had to work with. But that is essentially the problem. We have choked ourselves off in this country by this enormous tax cut that we passed earlier this year preceding the budget, in the craziest way of approaching fiscal policy I think we have seen in this government in a long, long time. What does that leave us with? It leaves us with some very serious problems we are not addressing. The gentleman from South Carolina just made the point about housing. We have a $20 billion backlog in housing. We have a housing crisis in this country. Many people, in urban and rural areas across America, find it impossible to get a house. Municipal workers, for example, are not making enough money to afford a house in the present market. This is a housing crisis. There is no place for them to live and raise their families. Similar things can be said about environmental protection.”