Youthbuild Transfer Act

YOUTHBUILD TRANSFER ACT -- (House of Representatives - September 06, 2006)

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Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate very much the yielding by the ranking member from the Education and Workforce Committee. I hope we are going to set some good examples for the body today.

First, my friend from Illinois correctly noted that I am the ranking member of the Committee on Financial Services, which under this bill will lose jurisdiction over the program. And I cheerfully get up here to thank my colleagues for doing this.

We are too consumed by turf in this body. I must say, having served on a number of committees, there is not a committee in the Congress that does not have more to do than any rational human being can handle. I wish people would be less concerned about turf.

I agree here: this is a program that makes more sense in the Workforce Committee. It will also resolve a problem we have had in which the appropriation for this program was bounced back and forth between the appropriations subcommittee that deals with HUD and the appropriations committee that deals with the Department of Labor.

I do note parenthetically, I guess, I am surprised that my Republican colleagues have not yet changed the name of the Secretary of Labor to the Secretary of Workforce. They let that nasty word ``labor'' survive longer than I think they meant to.

The point is that there was a tension that was there. I want to express my appreciation to all of my colleagues, including those on the appropriations committee, for dealing with it. And my understanding is that once this bill, which goes from here to the President's desk for what I know is a sure signature, it will free up a contingent appropriation that we have, that is, an appropriation was in, I think, the Labor-H bill contingent on this being done.

So this is a good example, I hope, of cooperation between committees about how to do things. It is also a very good example of bipartisanship. I want to particularly express my appreciation and admiration to the gentleman from Delaware. This was a subject that should not have been hard, but for a variety of reasons it became hard. It involved two appropriations subcommittees, two standing committees, and then it involved that wondrous place, the United States Senate, where very little is simple.

And I want to express my admiration for the extent to which the gentleman from Delaware navigated between shoals in the Senate. I do notice that the Washingtonian magazine listed him as a ``bridge builder.'' And I have to say that in getting all of the various pieces together, and he was able to take the lead in this, he built a bridge that rivals the Delaware Water Gap Bridge in terms of what he was able to do. I am very appreciative.

Because what we have here, as both of my colleagues have said, is a wonderful program. It does what a lot of people talk about doing, but we are rarely able to do. It goes to young people, including many young people who have had troubled pasts who have been not only troubled, but let's be honest, troubling to others. And it takes some of those who are willing to make an effort to straighten out their lives and gives them a framework in which to do it. I have experienced this program in the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts, which has had some problems.

I see my colleague from Georgia here, who did us the great honor of coming to New Bedford and was very well received. We have a situation there with young people who were in those circumstances, and this program has been a wonderful program.

It is actually kind of a two-in-one program, because it provides great help to the young people, and we also get some affordable housing out of it. It is not primarily a housing program, that is why it belongs in this Committee on Workforce, but it does have a housing benefit. And so what we have is a very good program tangled up in jurisdictional issues.

Thanks to the leadership of the gentleman from Delaware, and it was a fortuitous circumstance that he serves on both of the committees, Financial Services and Education and Workforce, and the great enthusiasm of the gentleman from Illinois who has been a strong advocate of this and has helped when we tried to save it a couple of times.

Because of this ambiguity, it was in nobody's appropriation bill. Given the limited allocations that appropriators have, they have the reverse turf issue, because the more you have to cover a program, the less you have got for your other programs. So for a couple of years now, we have had this problem where this program became orphaned in the appropriations process. It was the subject of an unusual custody: both parents were insisting that the other one take responsibility.

We finally resolved that. And so what has happened is that the legislative situation has caught up with an excellent substance. And I now am very pleased that we are going to pass this bill. It is going to be signed by the President. The appropriation will go forward. I have to say the appropriation is not what I would like it to be. Like a lot of other good programs, it has suffered from being squeezed by the, I think, the distorted priorities of this Congress. I do not want to be wholly bipartisan about all of this.

But at least we have saved the program to fight again for a better day. For that I thank the gentleman from Delaware for his leadership, the gentleman from Illinois who has been a strong supporter, and let me say, as a member of the Financial Services Committee, and we had jurisdiction over this program, I say good-bye to it cheerfully, because I understand that in its new home it will be very well taken care of.

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