Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014
Floor Speech
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Chairman, much of the debate today on this bill has focused on tough choices--accepting cuts to one program to make sure another program stays afloat. But the reality is that these so-called tough choices are nothing compared to the choices this bill would force on hundreds of thousands of low-income families: whether to buy food for their children, to fill their necessary prescriptions, or to pay their rent.
Today, the Housing Choice Voucher program, commonly known as section 8, ensures that many fewer families have to make such choices by providing rental assistance to 2.2 million households with incomes well below the poverty line. Half of these households are headed by seniors or people with disabilities, and the rest are typically families with children. Study after study by HUD, GAO, and independent researchers have demonstrated that the section 8 voucher program is a cost-effective means of providing very low-income families secure housing and preventing homelessness.
Typically, Congress has provided State and local housing agencies the funds necessary to renew every housing voucher used in the previous fiscal year, thereby ensuring that families have stable housing, kids stay in school, and parents stay in the workforce. This year, however, for only the third time in the program's 40-year history, this bill would fail to provide sufficient, or even close to sufficient, funding to renew all existing housing vouchers.
Because of sequestration, nearly 100,000 fewer families, and maybe as many as 150,000 fewer families, will receive housing assistance this year. I have already heard from housing agencies across New York State who are turning away families on waiting lists and pulling back issued vouchers for families who have not yet signed a lease agreement. If the bill becomes law as written, thousands of low-income families will lose their existing vouchers, will be evicted from their homes, and will end up living on the streets.
Despite the risks for these families, the bill before us today provides only $17 billion for housing choice voucher renewals, locking in sequestration cuts, and cutting off 100,000 families from housing assistance. To protect these families, I am offering this amendment to increase funding for section 8 voucher renewals by $1 billion.
These additional funds will ensure that housing agencies can renew existing eligible vouchers this year and that no additional families will have to face the choice between putting food on the table and paying their rent, between filling their prescriptions and living on the street. I say no additional families will have to face this choice because the current allocation of section 8 is far too meager and there are hundreds of thousands of families on the waiting list. But at least with this amendment, no additional families will be thrown out on the street because we will renew existing vouchers.
Under the bill as written, upwards of 100,000 or so families will not have their vouchers renewed and will be forced to be evicted. This amendment will ensure not additional section 8 vouchers but simply that existing vouchers will be maintained for people who are living on section 8 vouchers now.
Madam Chairperson, our first objective must be to prevent further hardship to the poorest among us and to prevent the evictions of people currently receiving section 8 vouchers.
I urge my colleagues to support the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Chairwoman, I think we can all agree the amendment is necessary. We are talking about evicting 100,000 to 150,000 families from an efficient, cost-effective program that keeps families together and that lowers our costs over the long term. Without this amendment, you will see a spike in homelessness, a spike in medical costs and a spike in hungry kids.
I understand the chairman's point of order, and I understand that the rules demand an offset for any funding increase in the bill. However, when funding levels are as restrictive across the board as they are in this bill and when the rules require that a majority in the House cannot increase the total funds allocated by the Appropriations Committee to this bill, it is impossible to----
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Mr. NADLER. I am very much on the point.
When the rules require that a majority in the House cannot increase the total funds allocated by the Appropriations Committee to this bill, it is impossible to remedy such a drastic cut without hurting other people in need. I hope, as we go forward, that we can find a way to provide these funds so that hundreds of thousands of very low-income working families and seniors are not put out on the street. I hope we will recognize that the Senate bill is less brutal than the bill now before us.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Chairman, since 1992, the Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS, or HOPWA, has provided a vital housing safety net for people battling HIV-AIDS. Nearly 1.2 million Americans are living with HIV-AIDS. More than 145,000 currently lack stable housing, and 500,000 will need some form of housing assistance during the course of their illnesses. Research consistently shows that a lack of stable housing is a major barrier to effective treatment for people living with AIDS and puts them at significant risk of premature death from poor nutrition, exposure to other diseases and a lack of medical care.
HOPWA fills this gap by providing secure housing through one of the most effective programs in HUD's portfolio, and it is the only one that addresses the intersection of housing and health. Within 1 year, 96 percent of HOPWA participants achieve disease stabilization and reduced viral loads. Because housing stability plays a key role in preventing the spread of the virus, HOPWA contributes to better individual and community health outcomes. Further, for every $1 of HOPWA funding spent, $3.35 is leveraged from other Federal, State and local programs, and every $1 million in HOPWA funding provides housing and support for 171 families. For that reason, HOPWA has enjoyed broad, bipartisan support since its first authorization more than 20 years ago.
Despite HOPWA's proven track record in improving health and housing outcomes for communities, this year's Transportation-HUD appropriations bill would cut $29 million in HOPWA funding. The committee's recommendation of $303 million brings the allocation for HOPWA back to FY 2008 funding levels despite the fact that there are 100,000 individuals more who are infected with HIV-AIDS than in 2008.
I recognize that $29 million may sound small by Federal budgeting standards, but to the individuals and families who rely on HOPWA for stable housing and access to support services, these cuts are anything but small. If this funding level becomes law, nearly 5,000 families and individuals will lose access to HOPWA housing and all the health benefits that go with it. For those families, this cut is a matter of life and death.
For that reason, I am offering this amendment to restore the $29 million cut from HOPWA this year and return it to the same funding level it has received for the last 2 fiscal years. This amendment would ensure that those 5,000 families and individuals who rely on HOPWA for secure, stable housing will not suddenly find themselves back on the street with no access to life-saving medical treatment.
To protect those 5,000 households and stay within the House rules, I would have to cut $29 million from another account, but at the funding levels included in this bill, any offset would fundamentally undermine HUD's ability to provide services to hundreds of millions of families every day.
HOPWA provides life-saving, efficient services to thousands of families and individuals impacted by HIV-AIDS. Will you work in conference to reach a workable funding level that ensures families and individuals currently served by HOPWA do not lose access to their housing?
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Chairman, I listened carefully to the gentleman from Georgia, who talks about the fiscal crisis--that this country is broke and that we have to cut spending drastically. This country is not broke. This country is the wealthiest country in the world, but we are breaking ourselves, and we are breaking ourselves by cutting too much and by following a silly economic policy.
When President Obama took office, this country had a deficit in the first fiscal year of $1.6 trillion. That was the last Bush budget, because, in the first year of any President, he is living under the former budget. The budget passed just before he took office.
We had a $1.6 trillion budget deficit, and we were losing 800,000 jobs a month. The President and the Democratic Congress decided that to reduce the deficit and to reduce unemployment, we had to spend some money to stimulate the economy. We had to put money into infrastructure, into jobs; and we did it. Congress passed it. It didn't do enough. But the fact is, within a year, we were gaining 250,000 jobs a month instead of losing 800,000 a month. We turned the economy around by a million jobs a month, and the deficit started falling.
The deficit has fallen like a rock. It's been reduced by 60 percent since the 2009 fiscal year. We've had the fastest deficit reduction in the last 3 years since the demobilization after World War II; and, frankly, it's going too fast. Any economist will tell you that the too-rapid reduction in Federal spending is hindering the economy and hurting jobs.
The sequester has probably cut about one point off the gross domestic product. We have done what we have to do on the deficit for now. We have to do more in the long term. For now, it's still dropping like a rock. It's been cut by 60 percent. And now we ought to pivot and create jobs, even if that means spending money, but certainly not by cutting so much more. When we create jobs, that creates tax revenues; it reduces expenditures on things like unemployment and food stamps and reduces the deficit.
If you want to see exactly what happened--it's rare in life that you get a controlled experiment. The economies in the United States and Europe tracked. They collapsed in 2007 until 2009. In 2009, they started going up slowly, and they kept going up until 2010. In 2010, the U.S. economy kept going up slowly, and the European economies went into a double-dip recession and tanked and unemployment went way up. Why? Because in Europe in 2010, they did what the American voters wisely refused to do, they elected conservative governments which cut spending much more and which endorsed austerity policies. What did they get? Higher unemployment and higher deficits.
When I hear this rhetoric, it's just backwards. We've done enough on the deficit for now. We have more to do later, but for now we ought to create jobs. That will reduce the deficit by increasing employment, by increasing tax revenues from people who are employed, and by decreasing expenditures that go up when there's unemployment, mainly food stamps and unemployment insurance.
I just had to say that this rhetoric is just wrong. The policies that we keep hearing about from that side of the aisle are driving us more and more into debt and more and more into unemployment.
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