On the recordMay 13, 2022
I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Madam Speaker, there are certainly many concerns over this bill. The one that I would like to highlight today is that they are greatly increasing the expansion of eligibility for the bill. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean the bill is going to make things more expensive, but you know very well if we are going to bring a whole lot of new areas into the bill, if we don't increase the spending, the areas that are currently part of the community services block grant are going to go down. I don't believe the majority party is going to let anybody go down, which means this bill anticipates a significant increase in spending on this program. This is one of many programs that I would argue, under the Constitution, really even should not be a Federal concern. It should be a local concern. To double the eligibility to 200 percent and make that permanent is resulting at a time when our spending is just completely out of control, setting up a situation in which there will be dramatic spending on another government program.
