[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 131 (Thursday, September 6, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H10164-H10166]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 2786, NATIVE AMERICAN HOUSING 
     ASSISTANCE AND SELF-DETERMINATION REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2007

  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I 
call up House Resolution 633 and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 633

       Resolved,  That at any time after the adoption of this 
     resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule 
     XVIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the 
     Whole House on the state of the Union for consideration of 
     the bill (H.R. 2786) to reauthorize the programs for housing 
     assistance for Native Americans. The first reading of the 
     bill shall be dispensed with. All points of order against 
     consideration of the bill are waived except those arising 
     under clause 9 or 10 of rule XXI. General debate shall be 
     confined to the bill and shall not exceed one hour equally 
     divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority 
     member of the Committee on Financial Services. After general 
     debate the bill shall be considered for amendment under the 
     five-minute rule. The bill shall be considered as read. All 
     points of order against provisions of the bill are waived. 
     Notwithstanding clause 11 of rule XVIII, no amendment to the 
     bill shall be in order except those printed in the portion of 
     the Congressional Record designated for that purpose in 
     clause 8 of rule XVIII and except pro forma amendments for 
     the purpose of debate. Each amendment so printed may be 
     offered only by the Member who caused it to be printed or his 
     designee and shall be considered as read. At the conclusion 
     of consideration of the bill for amendment the Committee 
     shall rise and report the bill to the House with such 
     amendments as may have been adopted. The previous question 
     shall be considered as ordered on the bill and amendments 
     thereto to final passage without intervening motion except 
     one motion to recommit with or without instructions.
       Sec. 2. During consideration in the House of H.R. 2786 
     pursuant to this resolution, notwithstanding the operation of 
     the previous question, the Chair may postpone further 
     consideration of the bill to such time as may be designated 
     by the Speaker.
       Sec. 3. House Resolutions 595, 596, 613, and 614 are laid 
     upon the table.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Massachusetts is 
recognized for 1 hour.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield 
the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions). 
All time yielded during consideration of the rule is for debate only.


                             General Leave

  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
be given 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks 
on House Resolution 633.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Massachusetts?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 633 provides for the consideration of H.R. 2786, 
the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination 
Reauthorization Act of 2007, under an open rule with a preprinting 
requirement. The rule provides for 1 hour of general debate controlled 
by the Committee on Financial Services. The rule tables H. Res. 595, H. 
Res. 596, H. Res. 613, and H. Res. 614.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this rule and in support of 
the Native American Housing Assistance and

[[Page H10165]]

Self-Determination Reauthorizaton Act of 2007. This is an open rule 
that allows for any germane amendment to be offered to this bill, as 
long as it is preprinted in the Congressional Record. I am pleased to 
see seven amendments were preprinted in the Record, and it is important 
to note that six of these are Republican amendments.
  I commend my colleagues Chairman Frank, Ranking Member Bachus, 
Housing Subcommittee Chair Waters, Housing Subcommittee Ranking Member 
Biggert, and the members of the Committee on Financial Services for 
their hard work and for this excellent bill. I also want to commend the 
bipartisan efforts of Congressmen Kildee, Cole, Pearce, Boren and Renzi 
for their tireless work on this bill and on Native American issues 
overall.
  H.R. 2786 takes a critical step in addressing Native American housing 
needs. By providing desperately needed reforms, this legislation allows 
Native American communities to put roofs over the heads of its neediest 
members.

                              {time}  1030

  Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2786 increases flexibility and independence within 
the tribal housing authorities to best meet the needs of their 
individual communities. This legislation ensures safety and quality of 
housing by allowing Native American tribes to set aside up to 15 
percent of their grant funding for housing rehabilitation, construction 
and acquisition. Increased efficiency within housing authorities means 
more affordable housing for more low-income families.
  In addition to guaranteeing available and quality housing, H.R. 2786 
allows tribes discretion in tailoring block grant funding to their 
community. Tribes will be able to compete for a greater variety of 
available grants and attend educational seminars from the Department of 
Housing and Urban Development on how best to utilize funds and 
programs.
  Currently, the cost to rent a house or apartment is at an all-time 
high across the United States, and the wages people earn have not kept 
up with the increases in housing, food, transportation and other basic 
necessities. Having shelter for you and your family, a decent place to 
live, is not a luxury. It's a basic human need that everyone requires 
and deserves.
  Too many people face the choice every day between paying the rent or 
being able to put food on the table or buying medicine for a sick 
child. That simply should not be happening in America.
  Once again, I commend the efforts of the House Financial Services 
Committee, and I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 2786, the Native 
American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Reauthorization Act 
of 2007.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from 
Massachusetts for yielding his time, and I yield myself such time as I 
may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to this unnecessarily 
restrictive rule and to parts of the potentially unconstitutional 
legislation that the Democrat majority is bringing to the floor today.
  I would like to note at the outset of this debate that this 
legislation accomplishes a number of positive things, including making 
the Indian Housing Block Grant program more flexible and helping Native 
American tribes become less dependent on the Federal Government by 
giving them the tools that they need to exercise greater autonomy over 
their own affairs. I would like to commend my friend from New Mexico 
(Mr. Pearce) for his hard work on this legislation on behalf of his 
well-represented constituents and for Native American tribes across the 
United States.
  However, this legislation does include language that places funding 
for Native Hawaiians at great risk because of its extremely suspect 
constitutionality. In 2000, the Supreme Court decided in Rice v. 
Cayetano that the current configuration of justices would likely strike 
down most Federal benefits flowing to Native Hawaiians as an 
unconstitutional racial set-aside, if given a chance.
  I am already aware of this problem because these exact same 
constitutional concerns plagued H.R. 835, the Hawaiian Homeownership 
Opportunity Act of 2007, which the Democrat leadership allowed to fail 
under suspension of the rules earlier this year.
  Title VIII of today's bill contains this same language and opens up 
today's legislation to all of the same concerns that were leveled 
against H.R. 835. I understand that my good friend from Georgia (Mr. 
Westmoreland) has submitted an amendment to correct this problem, and I 
look forward to hearing the debate on its passage later this afternoon.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, I am concerned by the open-ended nature of this 
authorization. I understand that about $650 million has been 
appropriated annually for Native American housing over the last few 
years. Today's bill authorizes an unlimited amount of spending for the 
next 5 years for these programs.
  While I understand very well the need for funding in a number of 
impoverished communities across this country, I believe that in the 
current fiscal climate, a climate in which Democrats have proposed an 
enormous $26 billion of additional new spending over last year, that 
authorizing an unlimited amount of money for the program is simply 
irresponsible.
  Limits need to be set, Mr. Speaker, and it's the job of a majority to 
make tough decisions as to where spending is most needed and from which 
other programs it should be taken. By authorizing as much money as the 
appropriators care to spend, this legislation shirks its responsibility 
to provide guidance to an appropriate level of spending. As a fiscal 
conservative who is greatly concerned about runaway spending in this 
Democrat Congress, I believe this is simply wrong.
  Mr. Speaker, I encourage all of my colleagues to oppose this 
restrictive rule that is not an open rule, despite Democrat claims to 
the contrary. I understand that they are in the majority and that the 
Democrat leadership has the ability to pressure their Members into 
supporting a resolution stating that Congress believes that two plus 
two equals five. However, that simply does not make it so and true.
  In this same vein, despite their protests when they came to the floor 
and the claim that this modified open rule is open, that too is simply 
not so. It restricts Members who have ideas about how to improve this 
legislation during the debate from having their proposals heard, and 
there is simply no denying that fact.
  I oppose this restrictive rule and the unconstitutional and 
irresponsible spending provisions included in the underlying 
legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I am proud of what the Democratic Rules 
Committee did last night. I think the gentleman has a little problem 
saying Democratic, but that's what it is, Democratic Rules Committee.
  Yes, this is an open rule that calls for a preprinting requirement so 
that people can actually read what we're going to debate. I'm sorry 
that the gentleman from Texas doesn't believe that Members of Congress 
deserve the courtesy of being able to read what they should vote on.
  I should also say that the gentleman, if he's got a brilliant idea 
along the way, that his leadership can work with our leadership and 
maybe we can come to some sort of accommodation if there's another 
amendment that hasn't been offered. But I will remind him that the 
majority of amendments that have been preprinted are Republican 
amendments.
  I will also remind him, in case he forgot, that last night in the 
Rules Committee when we called for a roll call vote, the former 
chairman of the Rules Committee, the distinguished Republican from 
California (Mr. Dreier) voted ``yes'' for the rule. The distinguished 
Republican gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart) voted 
``yes'' for the rule.
  So I'm not quite sure what the controversy is.
  Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve my time at this point.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce), one of the sponsors of this 
bill and the leader behind this effort.
  Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for 
yielding,

[[Page H10166]]

and I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for his work on this bill.
  The Native American Housing Assistance Self-Determination 
Reauthorization is actually quite a bipartisan effort in the Financial 
Services Committee. We had Representative Waters, Chairman Frank, 
myself, and Mr. Kildee working on the bill.
  Basically, we're faced in many of the States with Indian tribes with 
large Indian populations. We are faced with the problem of consistent 
high unemployment, consistent homelessness, substandard housing, 
infrastructure that is not developed.
  In New Mexico, I've seen Native American homes which consist of 
cardboard, corrugated tin, bare boards, no insulation, and I've seen 
where toilets simply flush out the bottom of the trailer out onto the 
ground with no sewage infrastructure.
  And so what I began to do when I first came to Congress is sit down 
and meet with the tribal leaders. We formed not only a working 
relationship but a strong friendship as we tried to wrestle with these 
problems in New Mexico, as we began to wrestle with the problems of 
self-determination, the problems of self-sufficiency, the problems of 
employment of tribal members. They understand there's a cultural 
problem, as well as a systemic economic problem; but we have committed 
ourselves together to work one issue at a time, side by side, to 
accomplish what we can.
  So when we come to this housing problem, this reauthorization, and I 
understand my friend from Texas and in his objections, and do not 
disagree with those, but at some point, I myself am faced with a 
pragmatic decision about just what can we do and what are we going to 
do.
  So I find that the greater discretion that's allowed in this 
language, the greater flexibility that is allowed to the Native 
Americans to begin to make their own decisions, and we've had frank, 
straightforward discussions about accountability, about the needs of 
these funds to be measured and where they go and what they accomplish, 
and never do I find them to be wary of this accountability. It's just 
that they are trying to get their feet underneath them to try to solve 
the problems on their tribal grounds.
  And so I come to the floor to support the reauthorization and several 
of the underlying amendments that will come up on that.
  One of the things that this bill does is begin to set up block grant 
programs to where the tribes can take out loans for infrastructure, 
clean water, healthy drinking water, ways to dispose of raw sewage. 
Those are things that really affect every tribe, and not many of them 
have very good solutions. Many in New Mexico are a long way away from 
the urban centers where the funds are available to create sewage 
treatment plants, wastewater treatment plants; and so it's an important 
addition to this bill that we allow them that flexibility and that 
ability to create the loan programs, much like the CDBG program which 
affects small communities, rural communities throughout New Mexico.
  So as we begin to look at this reauthorization again, I would come to 
the floor in support of that and in support of the idea that we must 
begin to pay attention to the very desperate needs that exist on many 
of the tribal grounds throughout this country; and as we do that, I 
think that we'll find when housing begins to stabilize, then those 
cultures begin to stabilize because homeownership is one of the basic 
building blocks of a society, that ability to have some place where you 
can retreat and be away from the cares of the world with the family 
structure gathered around.
  So it would work well. The idea of affordable housing is one that is 
extraordinarily important in all of New Mexico. We have a very low per 
capita income, and so affordable housing is important in every 
community but especially in our Native American communities, and the 
affordable housing is addressed here in this reauthorization, too.
  So understanding the objection of my friend from Texas, I would still 
rise in support of the underlying legislation of this rule.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, if I could inquire from my friend from 
Massachusetts about additional speakers that he may have, I do not have 
any additional speakers at this time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. I am the final speaker on this side, so I will let the 
gentleman close.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I would close by simply saying that this 
is a good underlying bill. I hope it passes, but this is also a good 
rule. It is an open rule that requires the preprinting of amendments so 
that Members who come to the floor can have an opportunity to read and 
to study what they're going to vote on.
  This was a rule that had strong bipartisan support in the Rules 
Committee last night, including from the distinguished former chairman, 
the ranking Republican from California (Mr. Dreier); from Mr. Lincoln 
Diaz-Balart, the Republican from Florida.
  This is a good way to approach this issue, and with that, Mr. 
Speaker, I would urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule and I would urge a 
``yes'' vote on the underlying bill as well.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the 
previous question on the resolution.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the resolution.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further 
proceedings on this question will be postponed.

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