[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 121 (Tuesday, July 25, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H7558-H7559]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


             MEDICARE AND SOCIAL PROGRAMS ARE UNDER ATTACK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Vento] is recognized during 
morning business for 2\1/2\ minutes.
  Mr. VENTO. Mr. Speaker, we have seen a lot of policy changes that are 
flowing from the budget, and the fact is that the story about whether 
something is going to be cut or how it is going to be affected reminds 
me of the fisherman that is cleaning the catfish. He is saying: Please 
little catfish, hold still. I am not going to do anything but gut you.
  The fact is that there is a denial of the intention and the proposal. 
There is a denial while it is going on. There will be a denial after 
the cuts and after the changes have taken place. But the fact of the 
matter is the Medicare and social programs are under attack. This year 
in 1995, in the housing programs, out of the $16 billion rescission 
measure, $6 to $7 billion of that came out of housing programs. In the 
appropriation bill for HUD-VA that is being proposed, there is a 26-
percent cut for housing. There is $4 billion more taken from housing. 
Programs are eliminated. Programs are proposed to be severely cut back.
  Public and assisted housing in this Nation, while we frequently look 
at problem public housing in terms of the media attention, the fact is 
that it is an overwhelming success in many instances. Four and a half 
million American families, we have in excess of 4\1/2\ million units of 
assisted and public housing in our Nation. The Federal Government has 
worked collaboratively, cooperatively, with States and local 
governments. These public housing programs are enormously important 
programs for low-income Americans.
  If anything is happening in our society today, it is of course the 
deterioration of income, of wages and jobs, the lack of empowerment for 
working people. This directly has resulted in their inability to meet 
their basic needs.
  One of those basic needs is housing. Others are health care. Of 
course, some of these have not passed in entitlements, but the new 
Republican majority have got plans for you on that. But housing has 
never been an entitlement. So the consequence is that when we run out 
of housing, the public or the assisted housing, we end up with people 
and problems. Those problems have in recent years emerged as a growing 
and alarming rate of homelessness.
  This bill not only cuts the basic programs to build any new housing 
for seniors and others and the services that will help those people, 
whether they exist today such as drug elimination, grants for kids or 
congregate housing services, special services for the elderly, but this 
HUD-VA appropriation measure goes on to cut the homeless programs by 50 
percent from what was provided last year. So not only will they not 
address the chronic problem of providing decent, sanitary housing for 
Americans, but the Republicans also go on in this bill to cut the 
homeless program. So once you are down and out, you are going to be out 
and on the street.
  This answer, this Republican answer, is not the answer, the policy 
path the American people voted for last November.
  What we have in this mean-spirited; extreme unbalanced HUD-VA 
appropriations bill is a circumstance where those least able to bear 
the burden of cost cuts are being asked to take on an inequitable 
share: Housing cuts of 26 percent while we preserve a project for a 
techno-mansion in space.
  Adding insult to injury, the Gingrich-led Appropriations Committee 
has cut HUD homeless assistance essentially by 50 percent. Further, the 
highly praised FEMA Emergency Food and Shelter Program is being cut by 
23 percent. This is unconscionable. It is reckless.
  The cuts in senior housing, disabled citizens housing, and housing 
for persons with AIDS, are also drastic and unfair. These three 
programs are lumped together to compete against each other with a 
severely smaller pool of dollars--roughly a 46-percent reduction: from 
1995 levels of $1.852 to $1 billion for 1996. Additionally, as a result 
of requiring public housing and section 8 residents to pay a minimum 
rent of $50 plus utilities, rents will be increased by an average $463 
per year for some 600,000 families. About 85 percent of these 
households are families with children, 10 percent are elderly and 5 
percent disabled. Many of these Americans are on fixed incomes. Average 
annual income in public housing rests around $7,000. An increase of 
$463 represents nearly 7 percent of those low-income families' income--
and while it may not seem like much to some--it will simply be a make 
or break situation for many of these families.
  We cannot ignore the plight and impact on public housing under this 
harsh Republican legislative initiative. While assuring the continued 
flow of spending expenditures, in reality precious and scarce Federal 
dollars for the NASA space station, this Republican appropriations 
sledgehammer destroys public housing brick-by-brick, tenant-by-tenant, 
housing authority by authority. The bill would delay outlays for public 
housing modernization and/or development. It suspends without recourse 
one-for-one replacement of public housing. It cuts $2.8 billion in 
capital and operating subsidies as compared from the 1995 level.
  Coupled with the elimination of new section 8 assistance to tenants, 
this bill will literally guarantee an increase in homelessness. This 
relates to my initial point regarding the vicious cuts in homeless 
assistance. By making seemingly endless assisted housing waiting lists 
in reality a dead-end path, this HUD appropriations bill would force an 
explosion of families, children, and the elderly into the ranks of the 
Nation's homeless citizens.
  And, why? For a space station? Or worse yet tax breaks for affluent 
Americans, who no doubt have their own housing subsidy in the form of 
the much supported mortgage interest and State and local tax 
deductions.
  There is no equity in this bill, this budget or the actions to date 
of this 104th Congress. There is no justice when the rescission bill 
finally sent to the President the cuts from 1995 spending is 50 to 60 
percent in essence $6 to $7 billion from housing programs. And peace 
will be hard to come by in the future because we will suffer from these 
shortsighted policies, as sure as millions of our friends and neighbors 
will languish on terminal waiting lists while enduring substandard 
housing; as sure as our parents lose their apartments in senior housing 
projects, or pay the rent with their food or prescription money; or, as 
certain as more children find it normal to wake up on the street or in 
a shelter. Our Nation will suffer and the notion and hope of our 
society will be diminished by such phenomena.
  As the able Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary 
Cisneros pointed out, these cuts will affect literally millions of 
people and will devastate the communities in which we live. The 
Republican housing appropriations will be a monumental setback for 
revitalizing our distressed communities, and will cripple efforts to 
provide decent, safe, affordable housing opportunities for all 
Americans--a fundamental premise of our Nation's housing policy.
  The impact in Minnesota graphically illustrates how people are 
affected by focusing on the changes more closely help place a face of 
the impact homeless cuts would represent just for the city of 
Minneapolis: A cut of $3 million--which would cut their transitional 
and permanent housing by 46 units and reduce the number of people that 
would be able to be served by over 500 people. My home city of St. Paul 
would lose $1.7 million in the next fiscal year if these cuts are made.
  St. Paul, Minnesota's Public Housing Authority, a nationally 
recognized PHA will lose over $4.5 million in operating subsidies and 
modernization dollars.
  Because the GOP appropriations bill requires public housing and 
section 8 residents to pay a minimum rent plus utilities. As I noted 
earlier, HUD estimates that this would immediately raise rents for 
approximately 600,000 public housing and section 8 families by an 
average of $463 per year. Nearly 50 percent of all assisted households 
in Minnesota would 

[[Page H 7559]]
face an average monthly rent increase of $45 or an average annual 
increase of $541. Naturally, utilities would include heat--and with no 
heating assistance, a cold winter could be as deadly as the recent heat 
wave has been.
  People utilizing public housing today are very low income they can't 
contribute what they don't have, discretionary income. These dollars 
will be stripped from the necessities of their life and the families 
that comprise these low-income groups. This little change will work a 
significant problem, real hardship on the poor--an unfair hardship--on 
the poorest of the poor.


                          ____________________