Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development. and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. GOSAR. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

The Acting CHAIR. The Clerk will report the amendment.

The Clerk read as follows:

At the end of the bill (before the short title), insert the following:

Sec. __. The amount otherwise made available by this Act for ``Department of Housing and Urban Development--Management and Administration--Executive Offices'' is hereby reduced by $2,000,000.

The Acting CHAIR. The gentleman from Arizona is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. GOSAR. Madam Chair, I rise today to offer an amendment to save taxpayers money and to hold a disorganized and wasteful department accountable for its actions and inactions.

My amendment is very simple. It reduces the funding to the executive offices at the Department of Housing and Urban Development by $2 million, which brings their funding levels back to fiscal year 2014 levels.

As always, I appreciate the work the committee does to put these bills and committee reports together. It is not an easy job, but I am also glad that Members are able to read their work and offer further input here on the House floor.

Since Republicans took the House majority in 2012, we have done our best to bring regular order and an open process to the House proceedings. I am happy to see a return to regular order, and I am further grateful that I and my colleagues are able to participate in the appropriations process.

For the second year in a row, I have read the committee's report on the administrative offices at HUD and was stunned to see that, yet again, HUD is running in an inefficient manner and has, again, likely violated the Antideficiency Act.

Further, HUD did not notify or request permission from Congress for certain budget reprogramming activities and hired more people than they could afford to pay.

I would like to quickly cite excerpts from the committee report on this issue:

HUD must have systems in place to track fundamental budgetary resource data, including budget authority and FTE levels.

A lack of essential information at HUD has, in the past, led to Antideficiency Act violations in which HUD hired more people than it had resources to pay.

While the committee recognizes deficiencies caused by antiquated enterprise systems and acknowledges HUD's effort to address these deficiencies, proper management of agency resources is a fundamental responsibility and antiquated systems are no excuse for the violation of Federal law.

The committee also directs HUD to clearly identify in its budget justifications the movement or transfer of budgetary resources from one account to another account, so that year-over-year comparisons are possible.

The fact that the committee must specifically spell out and direct an executive department or agency to conduct its affairs properly is, quite frankly, embarrassing and deplorable.

Then again, I suppose government inefficiency is the status quo these days. These same inefficiencies have been identified year after year now. HUD cannot get its affairs in order. As such, Congress should not be increasing funding for paper pushers and other bureaucrats.

I would also demand that HUD stop hiring more people than they can pay, stop reprogramming money within their accounts to fix self-imposed mistakes and then withhold that information from Congress, and finally, stop breaking Federal law. Congress must not reward bad behavior with increased funding levels.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office stated this amendment reduces both the budget authority in the bill and the 2015 outlays by $2 million. With a Federal debt surpassing $18 trillion, it is irresponsible to throw more money at a department that cannot manage its own affairs.

I ask my colleagues to support this commonsense amendment. I thank the chairman and ranking member for their continued work on the committee.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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