CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 3074, TRANSPORTATION, HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - November 14, 2007)
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Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to make a few observations about the White House comments on this bill, because we are told that the White House intends to veto this bill.
Let me point out some facts about this bill. This bill spends about $105 billion, all told. Much has been made in the debate this morning or this afternoon about earmarks in this bill. Earmarks are about 1 percent of all of the funds that are provided in this bill, around $1.2 billion.
For reference, last year, the appropriation, or rather the transportation authorization bill included about $20 billion in earmarks. I didn't see the President talking about vetoing that bill. I find it quaint that he now purports to be upset because this bill contains \1/20\ the earmark level of bills that he has previously signed.
I would also note that the President objects to the elimination of the deep cuts which this bill contains for the Community Development Block Grant and for housing programs. There is no individual in this country who is a greater beneficiary of taxpayer-subsidized housing than the President of the United States. He lives in that big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. He doesn't have to worry about having a driver's license to drive on the roads in this country because he has nice chauffeurs and nice limousines which are transported everywhere around the country. He has lots of people in the kitchen to prepare any meal that he wants prepared. If he wants to have a relaxing weekend, he can go out to Camp David, and he can take a helicopter so he doesn't have to worry about beating the traffic. And yet, this President objects to the fact that we are trying to do a mite more than his budget does for low-income housing in this country.
Section 8 housing, he's very unhappy about the fact that we've increased funding for that. It just seems to me that this is one case of the pot calling the kettle black if the President objects to that kind of funding.
When we first started putting together appropriation bills, Mr. Speaker, I asked each of the subcommittee Chairs to disregard the year-to-year arguments that we've usually had in this place, and I asked all of the chairmen and chairwomen to ask themselves: What is this country going to look like in 5 and 10 years? And in the case of this bill, how many more cars are there going to be on the road? How much more pressure are we going to have for our rail traffic, both passenger and transport, or freight?
I asked people to look at what the expanded population would mean in terms of added demand for housing for the elderly, as well as low-income housing. And then I asked the Chairs to try to prepare a bill which would get us to where we needed to be over a 5- or 10-year period in order to meet those challenges. And that is essentially what this bill tries to do with very limited available funds.
Now, this bill contains about $5 billion increase in funding above the President's level. That's about 2 weeks of what we spend in Iraq. I make no apology for it. I wish it were more. No country can have an efficient economy if it doesn't have an efficient transportation system and if it doesn't have modern infrastructure. This is one of the bills that tries to meet those demands.
So the President, if he wants, can invent a disagreement with the Congress and veto the bill if he wants. But I think the American people will recognize, the American taxpayer will recognize, while they may not agree with every choice made in the bill, that this is a far more reasonable response to the future needs of the country than is the President's very pinched view of the investment needs that we have here at home.
So I would urge support to this bill on both sides of the aisle. It's been put together on a bipartisan basis. To my knowledge, every single Republican on the subcommittee signed the conference report. I think that there is not really very much in terms of policy which would recommend a ``no'' vote on this bill. And I urge Members to recognize that we've got an obligation to deal with the needs of the least visible people in our society, the least powerful, and the least well connected. This is one of the bills that tries to do that.
I urge an ``aye'' vote for the bill.
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