Rick Lazio: “Let me just correct some misperceptions laying out here on the floor with respect to the so-called Brooke amendment…”

“Let me just correct some misperceptions laying out here on the floor with respect to the so-called Brooke amendment, which is a job killer. There is a presumption here that, if we maintain the tie between salary and rent as a percentage, that that is fine for working people. The opposite is true. It is a job killer. As long as the Federal Government continues to mandate the one-size-fits-all rule that every community in the country must follow, so that some person who is in an apartment, the day they go to work they immediately pay more rent the day they go to work. Now, some people are suggesting that we take care of that by making Brooke a ceiling. In fact, the ceiling will become a floor, given the financial situation that many housing authorities are in right now. So people will go, instead of knowing that they have to pay $25 for a particular unit, $50 for a particular unit, regardless of whether they go to work and make more money, they will do, under the suggestion by my friends from the minority, they will go back in time to where we were before, which is a disincentive to work, where a person who wants to go to work has to pay this additional tax on employment. That is what we oppose, Mr. Chairman. That is why we urge adoption and support for this bill, which is a prowork, profamily, procommunity bill.”