Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I oppose the amendment. This is an amendment which carves out of the bill regulations issued by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mr. Chairman, there is no basis upon which to single out HUD as an agency to which courts should defer on questions of statutory and regulatory interpretation. To the contrary, HUD has proven that it can overreach just as egregiously, just as oppressively as any other agency, and, therefore, needs just as strong a check and balance from the courts like any other agency. Mr. Chairman, like too many of its sister agencies, HUD is attempting to use Federal regulation to unconstitutionally assert control over wide swaths of American life. To see this, one need look no further than HUD's controversial regulation in 2015 that threatens to federalize local zoning authority. That regulation would withhold Federal funding if municipalities all across the land don't actively work to change residential patterns that don't conform to the desires of HUD bureaucrats. The regulation is a major extension of HUD's authority. It challenges local, neutral zoning policies merely because they produce uneven effects across population groups. And the use of the withholding of Federal funds to make localities knuckle under to HUD's dictates is an attempt to extort local communities into giving up control of local zoning decisions that have traditionally been theirs under the Constitution.…”