Rick Lazio: “I will reclaim my time and I will try and identify that part as I continue to speak here. As I said, Mr. Chairman…”

“I will reclaim my time and I will try and identify that part as I continue to speak here. As I said, Mr. Chairman, everybody should pay something but we should also protect the most vulnerable people. We have done that through a number of different ways, including working with members of the minority and the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Gonzalez], and making sure that any possible minimum rent increase is phased in, so there are phase-in protections. But we cannot transform a culture if we expect people to live without any reciprocity, without paying anything at all. We expect everybody to pay minimum rents because that pool of money helps provide more opportunities for more people to have access to apartments. The more that we say that people should not have to do anything, should not have any minimum rent, whether it is $25 or $30 or whether through hardship exemption it is reduced to $10 or $5, the more than we are continuing to perpetuate a culture that suggests that people should be able to get, Americans should be able to get an apartment for virtually nothing, not pay the utility bills, not pay for any rent, live for nothing and not have to budget anything, having to budget for an apartment, having to budget for their household, having to budget for, if they are a home owner, if they were lucky enough to be a home owner, is part of transforming themselves and moving back into the work force.”