Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, my constituents and I have been anxiously awaiting the VA-HUD appropriations to be presented to the entire House. We have been watching and have received some of the preliminary reports in the latest bill with dread. Just in my district alone, one of the highest housing cost areas in the country, we lose over $12 million and hundreds and hundreds of jobs. We are appalled with the proposed cuts, all of the proposed cuts. However, I want to focus very quickly now on what the bill does to our housing programs. As a member of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunities of the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, I am acutely aware of the enormous housing needs of this country and of my constituents and of the efforts made by our economy to respond to our national housing crisis. Housing costs in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area are particularly alarming. Housing costs are reaching astronomical heights and are becoming increasingly impossible for moderate wage earners to meet. The working poor and disabled are in greater jeopardy than ever. In this best of all economic times for some and the worst of times for many, why are the Republicans cutting the bare necessities for keeping the poorest of our working people working and those who absolutely cannot survive without help, why are we cutting their bare bones of housing and the economic opportunities to reach some level of self-sufficiency?”