[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 38 (Wednesday, March 1, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E476]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


  DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT ELIMINATION ACT OF 1995

                                 ______


                            HON. JOEL HEFLEY

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, March 1, 1995
  Mr. HEFLEY. Mr. Speaker, French economist Jean-Baptiste Say is famous 
as the author of Say's Law, sometimes summarized as ``Supply creates 
its own demand.'' In economic circles, this law is still the subject of 
debate.
  Here in Washington, however, the Department of Housing and Urban 
Development has been proving Say's Law for the past 30 years. We keep 
increasing spending on public housing, and the problem just gets worse.
  Contrary to popular belief, housing assistance was not cut during the 
Reagan years. Discretionary Federal assisted housing outlays have grown 
from $165 million in 1962 to $5.5 billion in 1980 and $23.7 billion in 
1994, resulting in 55 percent more families being assisted today than 
in 1980.
  Has this dramatic growth solved the problem? No. Today, after HUD's 
budget has grown by over 400 percent in 15 years, only 30 percent of 
the families eligible to receive housing assistance are doing so.
  And what kind of housing are they receiving? The 1992 report on 
severely distressed public housing found many public housing residents 
afraid to leave their own homes due to prevalent crime while others 
were living in decaying conditions that threatened their safety and 
health.
  Three decades of HUD and homeownership is down, homelessness is up, 
and millions of low-income Americans are condemned to live in 
substandard housing which would be unacceptable if it were owned by 
anyone else.
  Quite simply, HUD has failed its mission of providing decent, low-
income housing to America's poor. On the other hand, it has done an 
excellent job of providing jobs to over four thousand Washington 
bureaucrats who oversee the hundred of programs within the Department.
  For these reasons, today I am introducing legislation to abolish HUD 
by January 1, 1998 and consolidate its existing programs into block 
grants and vouchers.
  If it is truly the job of government to subsidize low-income housing, 
then let's do it without the middle-man. Rent vouchers allow low-income 
people to choose their own home, rather than have some bureaucrat 
choose it for them. Block grants give money directly to the States and 
local governments--that much closer to the taxpayers who pay the bills.
  It is time to admit that Uncle Sam makes a lousy landlord and end 
this 30-year experiment in socialist domestic policy. As Bill Clinton 
said in his State of the Union Address, ``The old way of governing 
around here actually seemed to reward failure.''
  Let's stop rewarding HUD's failure by abolishing HUD and eliminating 
the unnecessary bureaucracy. The alternative is to continue investing 
in instant ghettos and Federal bureaucrats. That's a solution we've 
tried for 30 years, and it just hasn't worked.


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