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Mr. Chairman, I agree with my friend from Missouri that Congress is dysfunctional.
I am told by people that were here in the late seventies, eighties, nineties, that if a President started usurping power of the legislature, of the Congress, that very quietly, the leaders of the House and Senate from both parties would make a quick trip down Pennsylvania Avenue to tell the President that he either needed to stop usurping congressional authority, start living within the law, or quit being lawless, and that would have generally taken care of it, and it was a bipartisan and bicameral effort.
Unfortunately, this body is dysfunctional, when you look at the efforts to protect an administration that keeps acting lawlessly.
I would like to have had accurate numbers showing the percentage of section 8 housing that is being provided to people illegally; that is, providing section 8 housing to people who are not authorized, who are getting that housing against the law, mainly people illegally here, but the last official numbers that my staff and I could find go back to the January 1, 2009.
Under the Bush administration, 0.4 percent of section 8 housing was going to people illegally. In other words, it was illegally going to people because they were not authorized to be here.
There are indications from a report in 2010 that it increased to 1.17 percent, but, Mr. Chairman, I just felt that it was imperative for us to send a message: if you are not going to provide the housing to Americans who desperately need it and you are going to continue to provide housing to people who are not legally authorized to have that housing, then we will make a small cut here.
Then we will get more accurate numbers in the future, and we will continue to cut the program until the Department of Housing and Urban Development gets serious about making sure that only people authorized under the law to have the section 8 housing get it.
So we took four-tenths of a percent times that set-aside for the Public Housing Capital Fund at line 3 and the same percentage from the Public Housing Operating Fund at line 24, page 87, and then added that to the spending reduction account.
Why? Because this generation has shown that we are immoral. We, like no other generation before us, are spending lavishly on our own generation without regard for the massive millstone--or albatross, if you prefer--around future generations' necks. That is immoral. That is immoral that we cannot live within our means, and we would cast that upon future generations.
So with that, I would argue for the passage of this amendment. It does not legislate. It simply appropriates a more appropriate amount.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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