[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 148 (Thursday, September 21, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S14100]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                SUPPORT OF THE LOW-INCOME HOUSING CREDIT

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to express my great 
dismay at a proposal passed this week by the House Ways and Means 
Committee to repeal the low-income housing tax credit.
  The housing credit is the Federal Government's principal and most 
successful affordable housing program. The Enterprise Foundation 
estimates that the housing credit is responsible for almost all of the 
new private construction of housing units for lower income renters, and 
that almost 800,000 units of rental housing for lower income working 
families and the elderly have been constructed or rehabilitated as a 
result of the housing credit. They also report that the 106,000 
affordable housing units generated with the housing credit in 1993 
resulted in the creation of approximately 90,000 jobs, $2.8 billion in 
wages, and $1.3 billion in additional tax revenues.
  I have visited many of the projects in New York that have been made 
possible by the housing credit, and I can assure you the credit is 
having a dramatic effect on the availability of good, affordable 
housing. Yet now some of our colleagues in the House would repeal it. I 
do not understand what their reasoning is.
  The House Ways and Means Committee proposal would sunset the credit 
at the end of 1997. The committee acted without holding any hearings to 
review the housing credit. And while the committee calls on the 
Government Accounting Office to review the management and operation of 
the housing credit, it acts nonetheless.
  The housing credit was devised by the Senate Finance Committee during 
consideration of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, and was signed into law by 
President Reagan. It has enjoyed solid bipartisan support for nearly a 
decade.
  I was pleased in 1993, as Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, 
to bring legislation before the Senate which permanently extended the 
housing credit. That legislation was enacted as the Omnibus Budget 
Reconciliation Act of 1993. We were able to permanently extend the 
housing credit in a bill which produced the largest amount of deficit 
reduction in this country's history. The Office of Management and 
Budget estimates that the direct and indirect effects of the bill were 
to reduce the baseline deficit by a cumulative amount of one trillion 
dollars. In sum, while making a very significant attack on the deficit, 
we were still able to find the resources for this important national 
priority. And yet just 2 years later we see an effort to repeal it. 
This is an odd development, indeed, and I urge my colleagues to join me 
in opposing it.

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