Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Ms. LEE. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman for yielding but also for his very thoughtful leadership on the subcommittee as our ranking member.

I rise to express my grave concerns regarding the funding levels for our transportation and housing programs provided in this bill. Once again, the majority has brought a bill to the floor that includes drastic and misguided sequester cuts to programs that are critical to the American economy and to the lives of the most vulnerable and to creating jobs.

Under the transportation title, the bill funds TIGER grants $1.15 billion below the President's request. Similarly, Small Starts and New Starts are underfunded from the President's request by over $1 billion. These are programs that create jobs and create economic growth. It is completely nonsensical to starve our communities of the proven Federal investments in transportation that we so desperately need.

The bill before us drastically underfunds our critical housing programs, including $25 million less than the President's request for elderly and disabled housing. Yes, that is elderly and disabled housing. It zeroes out the housing trust fund, which helps the lowest income Americans, and it is $320 million less than the request for Choice Neighborhoods. These cuts keep people living on the margins and push more people into poverty and homelessness.

Before I conclude, let me just say how inappropriate it is in this bill, like all these bills that we are seeing, they contain language that would turn, now, this bill, the Treasury-HUD bill, into an ideological and wrongheaded foreign policy document by restricting travel to Cuba. I introduced an amendment to strike this language and will be introducing a bipartisan amendment with my friend Representative Mark Sanford to do the same on this bill. We need a 21st century approach to our relations with the nation that is 90 miles from our shores, not to cling to cold war era policies.

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Ms. LEE. Americans deserve the right to travel to wherever they would so desire. They travel to China and Vietnam; Americans have that right. Why shouldn't they have the right to travel to a country 90 miles off of our shores? Cold war era policies are just that, 50-year-old policies that have failed. They are wrong, first of all. They are very ridiculous at this point, and they don't make any sense. So to keep trying to put these amendments into nongermane bills where it makes no sense is mind-boggling to me. I hope that we can get that amendment out.

I just want to thank the ranking member for his efforts, given the tremendous constraints allotted by Republican austerity budgeting.

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