Rick Lazio: “Let me again urge my colleagues to support this important piece of legislation. It is a complement, not a substitute…”

“Let me again urge my colleagues to support this important piece of legislation. It is a complement, not a substitute, for our other tools that are available to combat poverty and substandard housing in rural America. I want to emphasize once again, because so often the illustrations that we see on the news, the shows that we see on television, the things that we talk about tend to focus on what happens in urban America, and the need is great in urban America. And the fact is that we have extraordinary needs in terms of housing and community development in both suburban and urban America. But poverty does not end at the city boundary. Nor does it end at the suburban boundary. It is a fact of life all too often in our rural areas. In this case, we are doing what I think is an extraordinarily efficient thing, which is to leverage our dollars, making our dollars work as hard as possible. In this case, $1.2 million will leverage $20 million in construction, bringing housing to scores of Americans that would otherwise potentially be homeless or, at least, be in terribly substandard housing.”